The Mekong
Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Mekong River, which begins in windswept, upland Tibet and runs through China, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, has a rich history, the subject of Osborne's pathbreaking, ecologically informed chronicle. Beginning with the fifth-century Khmer empire and the magnificent Angkor temple complex, his brisk narrative moves on to a colorful account of 16th-century explorers, missionaries and merchants who vied for supremacy in the region. Osborne retraces the French Mekong Expedition of 1866-1868, which he calls a heroic, epic endeavor, but he also emphasizes the bloody repression and inequities fostered by French colonialism. From 1966 onward came multiple tragedies--years of relentless American bombing, the Khmer Rouge's genocide, massacres of Vietnamese living in Cambodia, imposition of harsh communist regimes--and Osborne, a former Australian diplomat, U.N. advisor and author of seven books on Southeast Asia, graphically records the human costs to the Mekong region's inhabitants. The Mekong Delta is Vietnam's rice basket, thanks to centuries of canal building, and the fish in Cambodia's Great Lake, linked to a Mekong tributary, provide 60% of Cambodia's protein intake. Although China's hydroelectric dam-building projects pose the threat of declining fish catches and disruption of subsistence agriculture, China has shown scant concern for the environmental consequences. Clear-felling of timber, disastrous floods, pollution and an AIDS epidemic also threaten the Mekong civilizations. Although Osborne's amalgam of travel, reportage and history is not quite the full-bodied cultural saga the river deserves, his book is a pulsating journey through the heart of Southeast Asia. Illus.
