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Vietnam Over the Long Twentieth Century
Over the past century, Vietnam has undergone a remarkable series of transformations. If we could go back in time to the mid-nineteenth century, we would find
an early modern kingdom deeply influenced by Sinitic culture. By the end of the
nineteenth century, some members of that elite, now under French colonial rule but
still connected to a broader East Asian intellectual network, began to examine an
alternative to their cultural world, the world of Western culture. The door to that
world opened and new ideas and practices rapidly transformed elements of Vietnamese society through a process that has often been labeled as “modernization” or
“Westernization.” While such terms suggest a uniform process, the reality was of
course very complex as there were different forms of modernity and the West was
not homogenous.
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