ABSTRACT
As is often the case, it is impossible to study the Vietnamese reform process without at least some understanding of the country’s recent history. TheVietnamese doi moi was launched in a concrete context shaped by decades of war, attempts to create a socialist state in the North and after 1976 in the unified country, and trialand-error reforms and ‘fence-breaking’ activities that had already characterized the Vietnamese economy in the 1960s. While this chapter does not have the ambition to present an original and systematic reconstruction of Vietnamese recent history, it will try at least to present key events and issues to help the reader to put the analysis of the recent phases of the reform process into a meaningful perspective.
