259 DOI: 10.4324/9781315762302-19 In the Mekong Delta in the 1990s, farmers joked that the state’s much-vaunted reforms repre- sented less a đổi mới – literally change for the new – than a đổi lại, or a reversion to the norms that operated in Southern Vietnam before reunifcation in 1975 [Biggs 2012, 68]. The anecdote is a useful reminder that our decision whether to use terms like new or old, forward or back- ward, reform or reaction, depends very much on our point of view and the historical scale we adopt. So while most of the chapters in this collection focus on the new, I’d like to highlight some of the old and argue for the importance of placing developments in contemporary Viet- nam in a longer historical perspective. My interest in this theme stems from a dialogue with Scott Cheshier, a political scientist who has examined the transition period and its relationship to class formation (Cheshier 2010). My work, on the other hand, looks at the political economy of the colonial period. As we read each other’s work, if often seemed we were describing similar phenomenon, just using diferent vocabularies. In 2012, we co-authored an article that highlighted the continuities we saw in the political economies of the colonial and Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV, 1976 to present) periods (Sasges and Cheshier 2012). We argued that many enduring features stemmed from the state’s dependence – taken for granted for the SRV but more surprising for the colonial period – on monopolies as a tool of state policy. The result was political economies where state and enterprise were highly interpenetrated, where policies were deformed by regional and ethnic dynamics; where monopolies proved unenforceable; and where the state was unable to disci- pline its monopolists as they pursued their own, rather than state, aims. By pointing out these continuities, we hoped to call into question the assumption of rup- ture that underpins conventional labels like “pre-colonial,” “colonial,” “planned economy,” and “transition.” These assumed breaks have made it difcult for scholars of contemporary Vietnam to see back in time beyond 1954 and the DRV’s establishment of control over all of Northern Vietnam. Aside from the occasional invocation of ill-defned terms like “Confucianism” or “Southeast Asian political tradition,” or sayings like “phép vua thua lệ làng” [“the King’s writ stops at the village gate”], the more distant past remains largely absent from our understanding of the present. It may be tempting to ask what it matters if we begin our account in 1954 or 1858 when our concern lies with the undeniable changes occurring in the present. Yet failing 17 CONTEMPORARY VIETNAM’S ECONOMY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Đổi Mới or Đổi Lại? Gerard Sasges