ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the study of the origins and development of the war in Vietnam in a single province of the Mekong Delta during the period from 1930 to 1975. It documents several periods of extreme crisis and devastating setbacks for the revolutionary movement. Whatever one's view of the outcome, however, in the end it was fundamentally decided by the Vietnamese themselves, bringing to a close 100 years of foreign intervention. The book examines the ups and downs in detail, because grasping the underlying dynamics of these cycles in the conflict is the key to understanding why it ended as it did. Too often, the Vietnam War is portrayed as a long but essentially unchanging struggle that ended because one exhausted side ground down an even more frustrated and weary opponent.
