This book offers the first detailed English-language examination of the Great Vietnamese Famine of 1945, which left at least a million dead, and links it persuasively to the largely unexpected Viet Minh seizure of power only months later. Drawing on extensive research in French archives, Geoffrey C. Gunn offers an important new interpretation of Japanese-Vichy French wartime economic exploitation of Vietnam's agricultural potential. Gunn asks whether the famine signaled a loss of the French administration's "mandate of heaven," or whether the overall dire human condition was the determining fa.

The agrarian setting -- Anti-colonial resistance -- The rice rebellions of 1930-31 -- The popular front years (1936-39) -- Vichy and the Japanese occupation (1940-45) -- Allied power plays -- The August revolution of 1945 and its defense -- The Great Vietnam Famine (1944-45) -- Epilogue -- Bibliography -- Index.