Going Indochinese: Contesting Concepts of Space and Place in French Indochina

Why, Benedict Anderson once asked, did Javanese become Indonesian in 1945 whereas the Vietnamese balked at becoming Indochinese? In this classic study, Goscha shows that Vietnamese of all political colours came remarkably close to building a modern national identity based on the colonial model of Indochina while Lao and Cambodian nationalists rejected this precisely because it represented a Vietnamese entity. Specialists of French colonial, Vietnamese, Southeast Asia and nationalism studies will all find much of value in Goscha’s provocative rethinking of the relationship between colonialism and nationalism in Indochina.

First published in 1995, a revised edition of this remarkable study is now issued, augmented with new material by the author and a foreword by Eric Jennings.

• Christopher E. Goscha, Author