PEOPLE

could have been organized during the early period of emigration.
However, the numbers of the boat people were still small and the
aiticism was often niggdly. Thm wns a sense of something
impending, but not yet a crisis. It was not until 1978-79, when
powerful factor8 of politics and history btgan to bear down upon
the boat people, that the region and the world realized it had a misit
on its hands.
Chapter 2
LeFY
'The history of Viemam irs a pattern of recurrent thema, each of
which bears on the refugee aids: resistance to China politically
while absorbing its culture, an internal seruggle for unity, a claim
on its smaller neighbourn, rejection of western imperial power.
'he French scholar Paul Mu$ says that Vietnam 'entered history'
in 208 FIG, somewhere around tit southern edgc of China. His phrasing
raises an old question about the meaning of history, especially
the history of people who live under the shadow of other8 and who
had gathered in communities, tilled the soil, made artefacts and worshipped,
long before their cxistencc was confirmed by a suprior
political calendar, South-East Asia appears to have been the home
of one of the earliest branches of hmo sapiens and some of the tarliest
mefact8 have hen found in what is now northern Vietnam. The
Ammites, who form thc main ethnic group in Vietnam, are thought
to have come from Tibet, the source of many migrations More the
Christian ern (and mlso of the great rivers Yangtst, Mckong and Salween
which flow into the rice plains). The Khmer people who
beame dominant in what was Cambodia arc believed to have
arrived from the north-weat around 2000 BC. What did they do
before they entered history through the annals of the civilization of
India and China? Recmt research in anthroplogy and archaeology
is responding to the inrsisttnce of IN-1 nationalism: they were
advanced in horticulturt, bronze-asring and navigation. South-East
Asians can now point to a cuimre th~t predates not only the irnpact
of European colonialism but wen the more ancient and pervasive
influence of China and Indh. Tdy, as the great powm once again
vie for influence in South-East Asia, this nationalism is being tested.
Howtvcr, for the Vimamese, China has always cast a long
shadow. It is itnpsible to understand modern Vietnam, mpecially
Vietnamese nationalism, without an appreciation of the conuadic-