‘The Sea Becomes Mulberry Fields and Mulberry Fields Become the Sea’: Dikes in the Eastern Red River Delta, c.200 BCE to the Twenty-First Century CE

Abstract

It is well known that Vietnam’s Red River delta is essentially land reclaimed from the sea. This chapter looks beyond the simple triumphalism of narratives of territorial expansion to explore an untold story which reveals the exposure and vulnerability of human attempts at reclamation. Rather than a tale of continuous growth and the accumulation of land area and productivity, we find discontinuity, reduction, abandonment and the flight of people in the face of natural disasters. When viewed in the longue durée, the dikes of the Red River delta in fact tell a story of how fragile, temporary and fluid human efforts have been in this ancient delta area.