In one of the first energy histories of Southeast Asia, Thuy Linh Nguyen explores the environmental, economic, and social history of large-scale coal mining in French colonial Vietnam. Focusing on the Quảng Yên coal basin in northern Vietnam, known for the world's largest anthracite coal mines, this deeply researched study demonstrates how mining came to dominate the landscape, restructuring the region's environment and upending local communities. Nguyen pays particular attention to the role of various non-state local actors, often underrepresented in grand narratives of modern Vietnam, including Vietnamese and Chinese migrant mine workers, timber traders, loggers, and local ethnic minorities. Breaking away from the metropole-colony paradigm, Nguyen offers a new lens through which to explore the dynamics of colonial rule and the importance of inter-Asian networks, arguing that the colonial energy regime must be understood as a complex, multilayered interaction between empire, capital, labor, water, sea, land, and timber forests.

‘Vietnam’s Coal Frontier unearths a fascinating history of colonial capitalism, transnational commodity flows, ecological exploitation, and human labor and resistance. A landmark work in the growing field of Vietnamese economic and environmental history.’

Charles Keith - Michigan State University

‘Vietnam’s Coal Frontier tells the fascinating story of coal mining in northern Vietnam from its precolonial foundations to its industrial expansion under French rule. In following a wide array of actors human and nonhuman - most memorably, perhaps, the fast-growing, hard-timbered filao used for mine props - this book vividly reveals how extraction reshaped the region’s social and environmental landscapes in considerable - and sometimes quite surprising - ways.’

Victor Seow - author of Carbon Technocracy

‘Vietnam’s Coal Frontier: Mining, Environment and Empire provides a rigorously researched history of the role of Vietnam's important coal mining industry in the rise of its modern economy. By exploring the profound impact of colonial-era mining on forests, aquaculture, and urban development in the coal frontier of northeastern Vietnam, the book supplements its thoroughly original economic story with a fascinating environmental history of this understudied region of the country. While early sections of the book feature a mass of previously unexploited documentary material unearthed from French colonial archives, a final chapter employs a trove of Vietnamese language journalism and poetry to paint a rich portrait of the cultural and social lives of local mining communities. In addition to making a major contribution to the academic scholarship on modern Vietnamese history, Vietnam's Coal Frontier is also a pleasure to read.’

Peter Zinoman - University of California, Berkeley