Introduction: Documenting Vietnam over the Long Twentieth Century—Becoming Modern, Going Global

Abstract

This chapter places the chapters in this volume in the context of the evolution of scholarship from Area Studies to Global Studies,and the accompanying transition from a nation-focused and language-based approach to a transnational perspective that leverages Western-language sources. Combining the best of both approaches, the authors in this volume emphasize the importance of language-based research while still remaining attentive to the global dimensions of the Vietnamese past.