Quagmire
David Andrew Biggs
Winner of the 2012 George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History
In the twentieth century, the Mekong Delta has emerged as one of Vietnam’s most important economic regions. Its swamps, marshes, creeks, and canals have played a major role in Vietnam’s turbulent past, from the struggles of colonialism to the Cold War and the present day. Quagmire considers these struggles, their antecedents, and their legacies through the lens of environmental history.
Beginning with the French conquest in the 1860s, colonial reclamation schemes and pacification efforts centered on the development of a dense network of new canals to open land ... Read more
By exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape - channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation - have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region. Quagmire delves beyond common stereotypes to present an intricate, rich history that shows how closely political and ecological issues are intertwined in the human interactions with the water environment in the Mekong Delta.
Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/user/UWashingtonPress#p/u/2/gp1-UItZqsk
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About David Andrew Biggs
Reviews for Quagmire
Shawn McHale
Asian Studies Review
Impressively written and well-researched.
Michitake Aso
Journal of Asian Studies
Quagmire is also an example of the challenges faced when trying to translate ambitions ... Read more