Imagined Ancestries Of Vietnamese Communism

"Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism illuminates the real and imagined lives of Ton Duc Thang (1888-1980), a celebrated revolutionary activist and Vietnamese communist icon, but it is much more than a conventional biography. This multi-faceted study constitutes the first detailed re-evaluation of the official history of the Vietnamese Communist Party and is a critical analysis of the inner workings of Vietnamese historiography never before undertaken in its scope." "Based on innovative archival research in Viet Nam and France and on analyses of biographical writings, propaganda, and museum representations, the study challenges core assumptions about the history of the Vietnamese Communist Party and sheds light on divisions within the revolutionary movement along regional, class, and ideological lines. Giebel uses the fictions and contested facts of Ton's life to demonstrate that history-writing and the constructions of memories and identities are always political acts."--Jacket.