Alec Holcombe is assistant professor of Southeast Asian history at Ohio University, Athens.
Alec Holcombe’s groundbreaking and superbly crafted manuscript—Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960—is even broader in scope than its capacious title implies. The book is the first serious English-language history of the policy orientation of the Vietnamese communist state during the critical fifteen-year period following World War II. The odd periodization here, conjoining segments of the pre- and post-1954 eras (when contending northern and southern Vietnamese states were first established), reveals insight into modern Vietnamese history that upsets conventional wisdom about continuity and change. Holcombe’s book advances a set of interesting and important arguments based on a deep reading of archival material. It suggests that communist policy toward "mass mobilization" was a key (perhaps the key) element of the movement’s remarkable success.
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