Imperial Heights

📖 The Scoop

“By using both macro and micro lenses, Eric T. Jennings has written a book which is a model of global history under the guise of a monographic study. He convincingly demonstrates that throughout fifty years, Dalat as a climatic resort built by the French colonizers in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, was upgraded to far more than a mere R&R place for white people. Jennings has kneaded together a huge and rich amount of primary and secondary sources that he masters perfectly due to his sound and balanced method of critical analysis. As we say in French: de la belle ouvrage.”

—Pierre Brocheux, author of Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954



“Written in a vivid and engaging style, Imperial Heights is an exceptional piece of scholarship. It is impeccably researched, drawing on private, institutional, and national archives in at least five countries. Making wonderful use of ‘thick description,’ Jennings brilliantly recreates the story of one small town to capture the varied and complex history of French colonialism and its afterlives in Southeast Asia.”

—J.P. Daughton, author of An Empire Divided

Genre: History / General (fancy, right?)