Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 17:41:00 EST
              USENET." <VIETNET@USCVM.BITNET>
From:         EEMOISE@CLEMSON.BITNET
Subject:      Re: POL/HIS Some books: Hoang Van Chi

     I must thank Nguyen Xuan for pointing out my error in regard to
the timing of the supposed halt in land reform.  Hoang Van Chi, on
p. 163 of _From Colonialism to Communism_, indeed described a halt
in land reform only in 1955, not (as I had mistakenly said) late 1954
and early 1955.  This remains an error on Hoang Van Chi's part; there
was no halt, or even a slowdown, in 1955.

     I am also, of course, extremely grateful to Xuan for the long
discussion of errors in chapter 2 of Karnow's book.  I might add one
more: on p. 51, Karnow says that Phan Thanh Giang travelled to Paris
to negotiate a treaty with Napoleon II.  I believe this should be
Napoleon III.

     Comments from several people have suggested that I should not
have dismissed Hoang Van Chi's work on the basis of just a couple
of errors.  I did not do so.  I simply gave a couple of errors as
examples of the reason I have no use for the book.  It seems
necessary now for me to give a few more examples.  After I had
checked to make sure that Xuan was right and I was wrong about
p. 163 of the book, I read on for a few more pages.  Among the
things I found were:

p. 163: "The Land Reform was carried out in two successive campaigns:
the Land Rent Reduction Campaign during the years 1953 and 1954; the
Land Reform Campaign proper during the years 1954 and 1956."  The
correct dates would be 1953, 1954, and 1955 for the Land Rent
Reduction Campaign; they would be 1954, 1955, and 1956 for the Land
Reform Campaign proper.

p. 166 suggests that in a village of twenty-six families, ten would
have been classified as landlords during the land reform.  This is
a grotesque exaggeration; the proportion of rural households
classified as landlords generally ran slightly over 5%, which
would mean one or two families out of a group of twenty-six would
typically have been classified as landlords.

p. 167 describes the Land Rent Reduction Campaign and the Land Reform
Campaign proper as having been "carried through in five successive
waves . . . The pattern was something like this.  The first wave
was started in a few carefully selected villages in each province . . ."
     The Land Rent Reduction Campaign was carried out in eight waves,
not five.  The land reform proper was carried out in five waves, but
it is not correct to say that the first wave covered a few selected
villages in each province.  On the contrary, most provinces did not
begin to undergo land reform until the fourth or fifth of the five
waves.  The first wave of the rent reduction campaign
covered selected villages in only three provinces, Phu Tho, Thai
Nguyen, and Thanh Hoa.  The first wave of the land reform proper
covered selected villages in only two provinces,
Thai Nguyen and Thanh Hoa.  The fact that Hoang Van Chi came from
Thanh Hoa may be part of the explanation for his mistake.

     This is a considerable number of mistakes for such a small
number of pages, and the one on page 166 is a very important
mistake.  Overall, Hoang Van Chi makes so many mistakes
about things that I can check, that I would never dare to trust
him about anything I cannot check.  This is why I found his book
to be of no use to me.

Edwin E. Moise
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese