Download or read book The Mekong written by Milton Osborne and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “remarkable” history of the great river of Southeast Asia (Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain). The Mekong River runs over nearly three thousand miles, beginning in the mountains of Tibet and flowing through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam before emptying into the China Sea. Its waters are the lifeblood of Southeast Asia, and first begot civilization on the fertile banks of its delta region at Oc Eo nearly two millennia ago. This is the story of the peoples and cultures of the great river, from these obscure beginnings to the emergence of today’s independent nations. Drawing on research gathered over forty years, Milton Osborne traces the Mekong’s dramatic history through the rise and fall of civilizations and the era of colonization and exploration. He details the struggle for liberation during a twentieth century in which Southeast Asia has seen almost constant conflict, including two world wars, the Indochina War, the Vietnam War, and its bloody aftermath—and explores the prospects for peace and prosperity as the region enters a new millennium. Along the way, he brings to life those who witnessed and shaped events along the river, including Chou Ta-kuan, the thirteenth-century Chinese envoy who recorded the glory of Angkor Wat, the capital of the Khmer Empire; the Iberian mercenaries Blas Ruiz and Diego Veloso, whose involvement in the intrigues of Cambodia’s royal family shook Southeast Asia’s politics in the sixteenth century; and the revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh, whose campaigns to liberate Vietnam from the French and unify the nation under communism changed the course of history. “[A] pathbreaking, ecologically informed chronicle . . . A pulsating journey through the heart of Southeast Asia.” —Publishers Weekly

Download or read book The Mekong written by Ian Charles Campbell and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2009-11-20 with total page 647 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mekong is the most controversial river in Southeast Asia, and increasingly the focus of international attention. It flows through 6 counties, China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam. The 4 downstream countries have formed the Mekong River Commission to promote sustainable development of the river and many of their people depend on it for their subsistence ? it has possible the largest freshwater fishery in the world, and the Mekong waters support rice agriculture in the delta in Viet Nam (which produces about 40% of that country's food) as well as in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. China is now building the first large mainstream dam on the river, and has proposals for several more. These dams are likely to affect the downstream countries. Several of the downstream countries also have plans for large scale hydropower and irrigation development which could also impact the river. This book will provide a solid overview of the biophysical environment of the Mekong together with a discussion of the possible impacts, biophysical, economic and social, of some possible development scenarios. It is intended to provide a technical basis which can inform the growing political and conservation debate about the future of the Mekong River, and those who depend on it. It is aimed at river ecologists, geographers, environmentalists and development specialists both in the basin and (especially) outside for whom access to this material is most difficult. This book will be the first comprehensive treatment of the Mekong system. The first comprehensive overview of all aspects of the Mekong River system Deals with a regionally critical ecosystem and one under threat The Mekong supports the world's largest freshwater fishery and provides water underpinning a major regional rice paddy system Presents the authoritative findings of the Mekong River Commission's research for a wider audience for the first time outside of limited distribution reports

Download or read book Across the Mekong River written by Elaine Russell and published by . This book was released on 2023-09-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a California courtroom, seventeen-year-old Nou Lee reels with what she is about to do. What she must do to survive. She reflects on the splintered path that led to this moment, beginning twelve years ago in 1978, when her Hmong family escaped from Laos after the Communist takeover. The story follows the Lees from a squalid refugee camp in Thailand to a new life in Minnesota and eventually California. Family members struggle to survive in a strange foreign land, haunted by the scars of war and loss of family. Across the Mekong River paints a vivid picture of the Hmong immigrant experience, exploring family love, sacrifice, and the resiliency of the human spirit to overcome tragic circumstances.

Download or read book Last Days of the Mighty Mekong written by Brian Eyler and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrated for its natural beauty and its abundance of wildlife, the Mekong river runs thousands of miles through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Its basin is home to more than 70 million people and has for centuries been one of the world's richest agricultural areas and a biodynamic wonder. Today, however, it is undergoing profound changes. Development policies, led by a rising China in particular, aim to interconnect the region and urbanize the inhabitants. And a series of dams will harness the river's energy, while also stymieing its natural cycles and cutting off food supplies for swathes of the population. In Last Days of the Mighty Mekong, Brian Eyler travels from the river's headwaters in China to its delta in southern Vietnam to explore its modern evolution. Along the way he meets the region’s diverse peoples, from villagers to community leaders, politicians to policy makers. Through conversations with them he reveals the urgent struggle to save the Mekong and its unique ecosystem.

Download or read book The River s Tale written by Edward Gargan and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2003-01-07 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Along the Mekong, from northern Tibet to Lijiang, from Luang Prabang to Phnom Penh to Can Lo, I moved from one world to another, among cultural islands often ignorant of each other’s presence. Yet each island, as if built on shifting sands and eroded and reshaped by a universal sea, was re-forming itself, or was being remolded, was expanding its horizons or sinking under the rising waters of a cultural global warming. It was a journey between worlds, worlds fragiley conjoined by a river both ominous and luminescent, muscular and bosomy, harsh and sensuous. From windswept plateaus to the South China Sea, the Mekong flows for three thousand miles, snaking its way through Southeast Asia. Long fascinated with this part of the world, former New York Times correspondent Edward Gargan embarked on an ambitious exploration of the Mekong and those living within its watershed. The River’s Tale is a rare and profound book that delivers more than a correspondent’s account of a place. It is a seminal examination of the Mekong and its people, a testament to the their struggles, their defeats and their victories.

Download or read book The Mekong A Socio legal Approach to River Basin Development written by Ben Boer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international river basin is an ecological system, an economic thoroughfare, a geographical area, a font of life and livelihoods, a geopolitical network and, often, a cultural icon. It is also a socio-legal phenomenon. This book is the first detailed study of an international river basin from a socio-legal perspective. The Mekong River Basin, which sustains approximately 70 million people across Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, provides a prime example of the socio-legal complexities of governing a transboundary river and its tributaries. The book applies its socio-legal analysis to bring a fresh approach to understanding conflicts surrounding water governance in the Mekong River Basin. The authors describe the wide range of uses being made of legal doctrine and legal argument in ongoing disputes surrounding hydropower development in the Basin, putting to rest lingering caricatures of a single, ‘ASEAN’ way of navigating conflict. They call into question some of the common assumptions concerning the relationship between law and development. The book also sheds light on important questions concerning the global hybridization or crossover of public and private power and its ramifications for water governance. With current debates and looming conflicts over water governance globally, and over shared rivers in particular, these issues could not be more pressing.

Download or read book Mekong written by James R. Reeves and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the experiences of James C. Taylor, a former SEAL, as told to the author in many conversations and taped interviews.

Download or read book Opportunities and Challenges for the Greater Mekong Subregion written by Charles Samuel Johnston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mekong River is a vital and valuable resource, with huge development potential for the six states through which it flows. Given the significant asymmetry of power between those states, however, there is a real risk that some might utilise it to the detriment of others. Without a sense of regional belonging, it is difficult to imagine that these states and their constituent communities will take regional imperatives to heart, participate in joint regulatory frameworks, or adopt behaviours for upstream-downstream and lateral cooperation over the appropriation and use of their shared resources. How effectively has closer interdependence of the Mekong countries accommodated the development of a political-social-cultural space conducive to the growth of a regional "we-ness" among not only political elites, but also the general public? The contributors to this volume approach this question from a range of directions, including the impacts of tourism, regional development programmes, the Mekong Power Grid, and Sino-US rivalry. This edited volume presents valuable insights for scholars of international relations, Asian studies, development studies, environment studies, policy studies, and human geography.

Download or read book Contested Waterscapes in the Mekong Region written by François Molle and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2012 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The water resources of the Mekong river catchment area, from China, through Thailand, Cambodia and Laos to Vietnam, are increasingly contested. Governments, companies and banks are driving new investment in roads, dams, diversions, irrigation schemes, navigation facilities, power plants and other emblems of conventional "development." Their plans and interventions pose multiple burdens and risks to the livelihoods of millions of people dependent on wetlands, floodplains, fisheries and aquatic resources.

Download or read book France on the Mekong written by John Andrew Tully and published by Upa. This book was released on 2002 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on largely unexploited archival sources, France on the Mekong is the first comprehensive history of the colonial era in Cambodia. The book takes as its point of departure Marx's early appraisal of colonialism's "double mission" in Asia. Tully argues that King Norodom's decision to invite in the French in 1863 was a "Faustian bargain" for Cambodia. While the Protectorate did ensure the continued existence of the Cambodian state, and did much to preserve Cambodia's crumbling cultural legacy, the downside was that authoritarian rule was entrenched rather than weakened, and that the country was left seriously underdeveloped when the French left in 1953. Colonialism disturbed the foundations of traditional society, but did not replace them. This was to have disastrous consequences for post-colonial Cambodia-- a point that the author develops at the end of the book.

Download or read book Memory in the Mekong written by Will Brehm and published by International Perspectives on. This book was released on 2022-03-04 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection explores the possibilities, perils, and politics of constructing a regional identity. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a multinational institution comprised of 10 member states, is dedicated to building a Southeast Asian regional identity that includes countries along Southeast Asia's Mekong River delta: Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar. After successfully establishing an economic community in 2015, where capital and people can freely move across national borders, ASEAN and its partners now aim to develop a sociocultural community that is fully functional in a wide range of sectors by 2025. As part of this vision, ASEAN wishes to construct a regional identity by uniting over 600 million people, which will be achieved partly through national school systems that teach shared histories. In this text, the contributors critically examine the many questions that arise in the face of this significant change: What does an ASEAN identity look like? Is it even possible or desirable to create a common identity across the diverse peoples of Southeast Asia? Given the divergent memories of history, how would a regional identity exist alongside national identity? Memory in the Mekong grapples with these questions by exploring issues of shared history, national identity, and schooling in a region that is frequently underexamined and underrepresented in Western scholarship. Book Features: First comparative study of regional identity and schools in the Mekong. In-depth analysis of UNESCO Bangkok's Shared Histories project. Use of historical memory theoretical tools to understand identity formation, extending the work on imagined communities. Chapters written by researchers from across the Mekong.

Download or read book Hydropower Development in the Mekong Region written by Nathanial Matthews and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mekong Basin is home to some 70 million people, for whom this great river is a source of livelihoods, the basis for their ecosystems and a foundation of their economies. But the Mekong is also currently undergoing enormous social, economic, and ecological change of which hydropower development is a significant driver. This book provides a basin-wide analysis of political, socio-economic and environmental perspectives of hydropower development in the Mekong Basin. It includes chapters from China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Written by regional experts from some of the region's leading research institutions, the book provides an holistic analysis of the shifting socio-political contexts within which hydropower is framed, legitimised and executed. Drawing heavily on political ecologies and political economics to examine the economic, social, political and ecological drivers of hydropower, the book's basin wide approach illuminates how hydropower development, and its benefits and impacts, are linked multilaterally across the basin. The research in the book is derived from empirical research conducted from 2012-2013 as part of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food's Mekong programme.

Download or read book Mekong Dreaming written by Andrew Alan Johnson and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-30 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mekong River has undergone vast infrastructural changes in recent years, including the construction of dams across its main stream. These projects, along with the introduction of new fish species, changing political fortunes, and international migrant labor, have all made a profound impact upon the lives of those residing on the great river. It also impacts how they dream. In Mekong Dreaming, Andrew Alan Johnson explores the changing relationship between the river and the residents of Ban Beuk, a village on the Thailand-Laos border, by focusing on the effect that construction has had on human and inhuman elements of the villagers' world. Johnson shows how inhabitants come to terms with the profound impact that remote, intangible, and yet powerful forces—from global markets and remote bureaucrats to ghosts, spirits, and gods—have on their livelihoods. Through dreams, migration, new religious practices, and new ways of dwelling on a changed river, inhabitants struggle to understand and affect the distant, the inassimilable, and the occult, which offer both sources of power and potential disaster.

Download or read book China s Hydro politics in the Mekong written by Sebastian Biba and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China’s Hydro-politics in the Mekong explores the intricate processes of conflict and cooperation over the use of water resources in the Mekong river basin between upstream China and the downstream countries of Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The book tackles two gaps in the empirical literature: first, the neglect of international hydro-politics as one specific and increasingly important issue area of China’s foreign policy behavior, especially its neighborhood diplomacy; and second, the disregard of China’s role in Mekong River politics. In particular, this book scrutinizes the ‘spring 2010 Mekong crisis’ and the events surrounding it which led to a series of complex multi-level, security-related interactions among various state and non-state actors in the region, with China at the center. Analyzing this crisis, the book not only employs securitization theory as its theoretical framework and adds a couple of innovations to this theory, but also gives a detailed account of China’s hydro-political behavior in one specific and particularly revealing case study. Moreover, the book embeds China’s Mekong hydro-politics in the bigger picture of its (sub-)regional international affairs, as the former does not take place in a vacuum, but rather is a part of China’s overall foreign relations with its neighbors. The book acknowledges this link and provides new insights into the role of hydro-politics and its relationship vis-à-vis other issue areas of China’s foreign policy.

Download or read book River Road to China written by Milton E. Osborne and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Vietnamese War written by David Elliott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A monumental work of research and analysis, this is a history of the Vietnam War in a single province of the Mekong Delta over the period 1930-1975. More precisely, it is a study of the Vietnamese dimension of the "Vietnam War, " focusing on the revolutionary movement that became popularly known as the "Viet Cong." There are several distinctive features to this study: (1) it provides an explanation for the paradox of why the revolutionary movement was so successful during the war, but unable to meet the challenges of postwar developments; (2) it challenges the dominant theme of contemporary political analysis which assumes that people are "rational" actors responding to events with careful calculations of self-interest; (3) it closely examines province-level documentation that casts light on a number of important historical controversies about the war. No other history of the Vietnam War has drawn on such a depth of documentation, especially firsthand accounts that allow the Vietnamese participants to spea directly to us.

Download or read book Water Frontier written by Nola Cooke and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative book rethinks the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century history of coastal and riverine southwest Indochina, the 'water frontier' of the title. It repositions old state-centered histories to reveal the region as a single, multiethnic economic zone knit together by the itineraries of junk traders and by the activities of many southern Chinese, settlers, sojourners, and merchants, whose local significance it explores. In so doing, it pioneers a new, nationally-neutral way of perceiving this dynamic region.