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This book deals with Vietnam's ethnic and religious minorities in a historical perspective. The time frame stretches from the pre-colonial era to contemporary times. Except for one paper on the situation of the Vietnam-China border area, the authors focus on South or Southern Central Vietnam. The Chinese, the Cham and the Bahnar represent three different categories of ethnic minorities: the so-called Foreign Asians, the highly developed nationalities and the former tribal populations, who once lived at the margins. The Vietnamese and Highland Catholics as well as the French Protestants are two prominent religious minorities. The aim of this book is to contribute to a discussion about common features, categories and tasks, which transcend regional, ethnic or religious particularities and the familiar lowland-highland divide.

From modest beginnings in the 1950s and 1960s, Vietnamese studies experienced a slow but consistent rise in Germany. In the GDR, the rise was connected first with close relations between the two communist states. Second, the area studies' concept favored Vietnamese studies as a subject of Southeast Asian studies, rather than as a side subject of sinology as it had been before. In both parts of Germany, the interest in Vietnam has grown, especially after its reunification in 1975. Since 1990, at least one place is continuing to teach the subject in the framework of the Southeast Asian Languages and Cultures Program. In this way, one of the two professorships could be preserved.

Vietnamese Studies are about the language and culture of the Vietnamese people. This academic subject first originated in France in the 19th century. In the 20th century, the United States and Eastern Europe became new centres of Vietnamese Studies research. Nowadays, it is the country's Asian neighbours who are developing this academic field more extensively. However in all countries it has continued to remain only a "small subject." At the moment, indeed, the University of Hamburg is the only place where Vietnamese Studies can be pursued in the whole of Germany. (Asien/GIGA)

During the First Indochina War, the Chinese population of southern Vietnam played an important role in trade between the zones occupied by French and rival military forces, and with the wider region. So flourishing did this illicit trade become that it forced the main contenders in the war to change their economic policies. Chinese Nationalist and communist organizations were implicated in this trade along with individual merchants. Exploring this chapter in the history of the Chinese in Vietnam complicates depictions of the Chinese as profiteers of questionable loyalty, or as inevitably in conflict with the dominant power of the day.

Chapter. 1 -- An Unprejudiced Education and the Development of Literature in South Vietnam in 1954-1975 -- Chapter. 2 -- Vietnamese Personalism: The Communitarian Humanism of the Early South Vietnamese State -- Chapter. 3 -- Spiritual Personalism on the Bimonthly Newspaper Society and the Daily Newspaper National Revolution of Saigon before 1975 -- Chapter. 4 -- Continental Philosophy and Buddhism in the Journal Tư Tưởng (Thought), 1967-1975 -- Chapter. 5 -- The Reception of Western Feminism in Feminist Literature in Urban South Vietnam 1955-1975 -- Chapter. 6 -- Rewriting the History of Vietnamese Children's Literature: Portrayals of Children in South Vietnamese Literature -- Chapter. 7 -- The Wave of Existentialist Feminism in South Vietnamese Literature (1955-1975) -- Chapter. 8 -- Existentialist Elements in Nguyễn Đình Toàn's Literary Works -- Chapter. 9 -- Vu Hanh (1926 - 2021) – A typical Left-Leaning Writer -- Chapter. 10 -- Phạm Công Thiện's Ontological Dialogue with Martin Heidegger and Henry Miller -- Chapter. 11 -- The Tragical Hero: Nguyễn Mạnh Côn -- Chapter. 12 -- Notes on Nationalism in South Vietnam: Vulnerable Indian Migrants.