ABSTRACT
Vietnam is a country of about 128,000 square miles stretching more than 1,200 miles from the southern boundary of China along the eastern coast of the Indochinese Peninsula and curving into the Gulf of Siam between the eighth and ninth parallels. The central part of the country, traditionally referred to by the Vietnamese as the shoulder pole for carrying the two rice baskets, is a narrow strip of land that extends from near the nineteenth to the twelfth parallel. The explanation by US policymakers and mainstream scholars has been that the South Vietnamese had been coerced and terrorized by the North Vietnamese Communists and their henchmen in the South, the Vietcong. Rice exporting was the biggest and most profitable way of making money for the French and the Vietnamese ruling class. French and Vietnamese descriptions generally indicate that the workers there suffered more deprivation and poverty than their counterparts in the plantations.
