Contested Territory is a fascinating monograph that describes a complex picture of post–World War II local administration in Northwest Vietnam's Black River borderlands through the 1954 Điện Biên Phủ campaign and subsequent land reform and political realignment efforts by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) government. Most readers are familiar with the prominent historiographical position that the Điện Biên Phủ campaign occupies in Vietnam's nationalist narrative of casting off French colonial bondage, including accounts of the region's indigenous non-Kinh inhabitants assisting the Việt Minh in defeating the materially superior French. Christian C. Lentz's study recontextualizes the military campaign as a significant midpoint, and not a triumphal endpoint, in the creation of a postcolonial Vietnamese state. In this process, Lentz explores DRV state engagement with local Tai-speaking communities and their Hmong, Khmu, and Dao swidden cultivator neighbors, in a multilayered and dynamic study that draws as much on research methods from...

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