Agriculture in the Mekong Delta was developed to some extent in the first half of the twentieth century during French colonial period. In the latter half, however, the Mekong Delta became a battlefield of the civil war and international conflict caused by the interferences of the super powers, and the Vietnamese people had no chance to develop the potential of the land. It was just after the unification of Vietnam that a big irrigation project was undertaken under the unified political power. Then, the Doi Moi policy in agriculture since 1988 and the introduction of the market economy promoted dramatic change in agriculture. Surveying the development of agriculture in the Mekong Delta, the last decade of the twentieth century can be regarded as the second peak of development since the “mise en valeur” period of the early twentieth century.
 In Japan, the first comprehensive research on agriculture and rural society in the Mekong Delta was done by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and other scholars in the early 1970s. Many articles and research reports on geography, hydology, and rice agriculture in the Delta were published in the Center' s journal Tonan Ajia Kenkyu [Southeas Atsian Studies]. The research done during the Vietnam War and the various papers based on them, with appreaches from the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences, aimed to comprehensively study rice agricultural society in the Mekong Delta. Hewever, as in the case studies in rural societies by Americans in the 1960s, those studies were discontinued after the end of the Vietnam War.
 The articles published here represent the small, but important results of the first joint research done in the Mekong Delta since research was discontinued until 1980s. In 1990s, the Vietnamese government began to accept agricultural research teams from foreign countries. We formed a research team, whose members consisted of historians, agronomists, sociologists, and geographers from Japan, Vietnam, and France, with a research grant from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, government of Japan (History of Agriculture in the Mekong Delta, team leader, Takada Yoko, Keiai University, 1995-97). We also published Mekong Report, Nos. 1-6 containing articles, research summaries, field notes, and lists of data collected during the research.
 The aim of the research was to uncover the diversity in agricultural societies in the Mekong Delta. The diversity stems from the geographical characteristics classified by Nguyen Huu Chiem 1) of Cantho University. We tried to make clear that rural society in the Delta, superficially monolithic, consists of several regions with different historical backgrounds. Then, research members with different disciplines like history, agronomy, sociology, and geography, selected geographically typical villages in the Delta for the research, and studied their agricultural histories and social develpment according to the member's own interest.
 The villages selected are 1) a village that stands at the mouth of the Hau River in a coastal complex composed of lowland of brackish soil and sand ridges (going), lagoons and mangroves; 2) a village in the central Delta where the Tien River is split into several streams and affected by tides, where the flood spreads slowly ; 3) a village in a broad depression floodplain on the right side of the Hau River in the western Delta; and 4) a village on the frontier in an inundated area at the edge of the Delta with acid sulfate soil.
 These four typologies do not cover the full diversity of agricultural develepment in the Mekong Delta. However, those four represent unique characteristics of locality, different from land forms, and also have the common feature of agricultural processes. The authors chose crucial factors to study land-use development and rural society in the Mekong Delta in the twentieth century. ...

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According to N.H. Chiem, an agronomist familiar with the Mekong Delta, the region is divided into several geographical parts from the point of rice agriculture. Among them, the “coastal complex” is a unique area, composed of sand ridges, coastal flats, inter-ridges, and mangroves. This paper focuses on the development of land use in one particular village in the coastal complex division in order to gain a better understanding of the history of multiethnic society in the Mekong Delta.
 The research village is in the east of Tra Vinh City, which is characterised by multiethnic society: the Khmer (Cambodian) people, who occupied the sand ridges from an earlier time, the Kinh (Vietnamese) people, who began living along the small rivers, and the Hoa (Overseas Chinese), who have mixed intermittently with both groups.
 First, intensive field research involved observing the natural conditions of agriculture, the geographical distribution of ethnic groups, and how land use in the village determined the process of settlement and land clearing by the different groups. Second, based on accounts of Buddhist monks and village elders of both ethnic groups in local hamlets, and considering the origins of Buddhist temples (Theravada, Mahayana) and old community buildings, the writer assumes the process of village development. It is supposed that Khmer society was found there earlier than the 16th century. The Kinh advanced from the right side of Cochien river to the north area in the sand ridge at the beginnig of the 19th century and was organized along with the Khmer people in the same administrative unit under French colonial rule in the late 19th century. Changes in the population shares of each ethnic group and landholding from the French colonial period until today are analyzed through the results of interviews with village elders and also the use of related colonial documents held in the National Archives.
 At last, the writer presents a history of the village giving attention to the historical relations in the ethnic groups, and finally points out how structural social problems were cased during French colonial time and one of the reasons for the revolution occured in the village during the Indochina war.

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The purpose of this paper is to study the establishment and collapse of a system for rice production in the western Mekong Delta during the French colonial period. The first half of this paper examines the process of settlement of one village located on the flood plain, based on field research done by Takada in 1997-98. The village contains a vast area along three canals dug in colonial times.
 It is an area where the system of agriculture for export-oriented rice production flourished and hence where absentee landlordism was prominent. Analyzing the results of interviews with 37 farmers who were the children or grandchildren of landless immigrants who settled in the village to clear land in colonial days, the writer reports on when and from where they came to work, how they grew rice and other crops, local subsystems serving for landlordism, the typical mobile society characterizing a frontier village, and what happened to farmers during and just after the Indochina war.
 In the latter half of this paper, Brocheux focuses on the exploitation of rice fields that belonged to Europeans in the Transbassac. Although there were a few French colons who cultivated and managed them directly, the writer evaluates their contributions to open the estates, introduce agricultural modernization, rationalize rice circulation, and overcome financial difficulties during the world economic depression. During the Indochina War, the colons organized a private army to protect their estates from Viet Minh guerrillas and tried to continue production by pursuing compromise. The writer discusses the politically interested agreement between the Republic of Vietnam and the French government that obliged the withdrawal and end of the French estates in the Mekong Delta.

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The present study described the development process of water management and rice cultivation at a village in the Mekong Delta in the three periods, before the unification of Vietnam in 1975, the socialist economy period and the doi moi period. The inter-dependencies between canal development and intensification of rice cultivation and between agricultural development and institutional setting are found to be driving factors in agricultural development as well as social changes.

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Though most reports on Vietnam have emphasized the difference of agricultural types between the Mekong and Red River Deltas, according to our observation since 1995, both of them have manifested a similar tendency toward urbanization of agriculture and decreased communal influence over it. The Red River Delta villages have transformed their closed, subsistence structure under the Socialist village system into agricultural diversification and urbanization of rural labor in 1990s. At the same time, the increase in landless farmers has become the biggest problem in the Mekong Delta, a problem which could not be solved in the Socialist period because of rapid population growth and the less than thorough socialization of landholding since 1975. Migration to the newly developed Dong Thap Muoi area peaked between 1989 and 1994 but decreased thereafter because of a shortage of uncultivated land.
 This has also resulted in an increase in small-holdings of less than 5,000 square meters, the development of intensive rice cropping, and the urbanization of village labor. The difference between the two socio-agricultural types has therefore decreased.

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After reunification in 1976, one of largest changes experienced by villages in the Mekong Delta was a shift to collectivized farming. Although the socialist authorities had planned step-up collectivization and forced farmers to join collectivized farming group, almost all farmers resisted these policies strongly, eventually causing the authorities to abondon step-up collectivization and revert to the pre-collectivization landholding situation, as sanctioned in 1988's No. 10 agreement.
 In contrast to the general situation in the Mekong Delta, Khanh Hau village was selected as a model of collectivization by the provincial authority, carried out step-up collectivization, organized some initial agricultural cooperatives, and started collectivized farming in 1978-79. In addition to pressure from the provincial authority, farmers had the following reasons for choosing collectivization: failure to attain self-sufficiency due to continuing landholding fragmentation after the agrarian reforms of the 1950s and 1970s; familiarity with a semi-collective farming system under village labor organizers (trum) before collectivization; and experience with non-agricultural short-time labor, such as in trading, and small-scale farming on their farmstead, with which they continued to supplement their income after collectivization.
 Under collectivized farming, farmers showed reluctance, tinkering in paddy fields, pursuing gainful employment outside the village, and fleeing from labor obligations, although collectivized farming continued until 1984 when converted to individual family farming upon fulfilling quotas. The economic situation in Khanh Hau village during collectivization is an example of economic diversity in the villages of the Mekong Delta after reunification.

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Khanh Hau commune was a typical rural community in the Mekong Delta which still mainifested clear social stratification by land holding when Hickey, an American anthropologist, did fieldwork in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But the social structure of Khanh Hau commune changed sharply in the ensuing 40 years due to a series of institutional agricultural reforms, agricultural collectivization, and the rapid growth of population. According to our questionnaire of 96 households in 1996,we found only small land holders and a large number of landless households existing because of the fractionization of land. Almost all households are engaged in farming and nonfarming wage labor. The greatest number are agricultural laborers, women engaged mainly in transplanting and harvest. Among the various types of informal wage labor available, agricultural labor is regarded as providing relatively stable income. Most laborers are managed by agents (trùm) who live in Khanh Hau. Big agents, those who hire some 100 laborers, are prestigious because they provide stable work and payment in advance, which helps laborers guarantee their daily income.

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Among various agro-ecological units in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, the Broad Depression and the Plain of Reeds had long remained unused for agricultural purposes due to adverse environmental conditions such as deep flooding, poor soil-nutrition and potential acid sulfate soil. Despite these conditions, rice cultivation expanded to a great extent in both areas after the end of the Vietnam War.
 Under the new postwar socialist regime in the South, the government promoted the exploitation of these areas. Excavation of canals and construction of canal networks provided migrants with a place for settlement and the fresh water from the Mekong River enabled them to reduce the potential acidity by washing away the active acid emerging after land reclamation. As this process proceeded, spontaneous pioneer farmers rushed to these areas to reclaim rice fields prior to the implementation of the government's socialist land reform program. As a result, the former grass-and-forest wetlands have been almost completely converted into rice fields.
 Since the end of 1980s, however, a debate has arisen about wetland conservation. This coincided with the “privatization” of the agricultural production system, the introduction of “doi moi, ” new economic policy in Vietnam, and the partial success of rice growing in these areas. The government has enclosed wide areas as natural reserves where Melaleuca, an original species of vegetation, and secondarily emerged aquaflora are preserved. On the other hand, under the pressure of rapid population growth, both the pioneer settlers and new migrants still seek to extend and intensify rice cultivation in these areas.

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