Fundamentally, South Vietnamese society is rural and agrarian. Over the centuries the Vietnamese have tended to cluster in tiny hamlets strewn down the coastal plain and across the Mekong Delta. Usually composed of a handful of closely knit families whose ancestors settled the surrounding land generations earlier, the hamlet is South Vietnam’s basic community unit. Next larger is the village which resembles the American township in function in that it encompasses a number of adjacent hamlets. The Vietnamese people have naturally developed strong emotional ties with their native villages. “To the Vietnamese,” it has been said without exaggeration, “the village is his land’s heart, mind, and soul.”[1-3] Given the rural nature of the country it is understandable that the inhabitants of the villages and hamlets have retained a large degree of self-government. “The laws of the emperor,” states an ancient Vietnamese proverb, “are less than the customs of the village.”[1-4] Overlaying this rural mosaic are two intermediate governmental echelons--the districts and the provinces, The district, the smaller of these political and geographic subdivisions, first appeared in Vietnamese history following the earliest annexation of Tonkin by the Chinese in 111 B.C. It remained in use and was extended down the Annamese coast and into Cochinchina by the successive Vietnamese dynasties which came to power in the ensuing centuries. Provinces, larger geographic subdivisions, eventually were superimposed over groups of contiguous districts, thus adding another echelon between the reigning central government and the villages. This structure remained in existence under the French after they took control of all Vietnam in the late 19th century. In order to make their administration more efficient French colonial authorities modernized the cumbersome administrative machinery and adjusted provincial boundaries. It is essentially this French-influenced structure that exists in South Vietnam today. Still, after years of use and modification, the system seems somewhat superficial as traditional self-rule of the villages tends to nullify the efforts of provinces and districts to govern rural areas. Often the central government’s influence is unable to seep lower than the district headquarters, particularly in more remote areas.