Webb Keane
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691167732
- eISBN:
- 9781400873593
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691167732.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines the case of moral revolutions that are bound up with political ones that are self-consciously atheist. One of the hallmarks of the twentieth-century socialist and communist ...
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This chapter examines the case of moral revolutions that are bound up with political ones that are self-consciously atheist. One of the hallmarks of the twentieth-century socialist and communist revolutions was the effort to remake societies that were more or less dominated by religious faith on nonreligious or even militantly antireligious grounds. The chapter then focuses on some of the ethical sources and goals of Vietnam's anticolonial and communist revolution. By looking at how, in everyday practices, revolutions attempted to propagate an expanded moral sensibility, inculcate people with egalitarian values, and reconfigure their intuitions about agency and responsibility, one can see some of the links among psychology, face-to-face interaction, and social history.Less
This chapter examines the case of moral revolutions that are bound up with political ones that are self-consciously atheist. One of the hallmarks of the twentieth-century socialist and communist revolutions was the effort to remake societies that were more or less dominated by religious faith on nonreligious or even militantly antireligious grounds. The chapter then focuses on some of the ethical sources and goals of Vietnam's anticolonial and communist revolution. By looking at how, in everyday practices, revolutions attempted to propagate an expanded moral sensibility, inculcate people with egalitarian values, and reconfigure their intuitions about agency and responsibility, one can see some of the links among psychology, face-to-face interaction, and social history.
Hy V. Luong
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833701
- eISBN:
- 9780824870447
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833701.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This book examines both continuity and change over eight decades in a small rural village deep in the North Vietnamese countryside. Son-Duong, a community near the Red River, experienced first-hand ...
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This book examines both continuity and change over eight decades in a small rural village deep in the North Vietnamese countryside. Son-Duong, a community near the Red River, experienced first-hand the ravages of French colonialism and the American war, as well as the socialist revolution and Vietnam's recent reintegration into the global market economy. This revised and expanded edition of the 1992 book, Revolution in the Village, draws on newly available archival documents in Hanoi, narratives by villagers, and three field seasons from the late 1980s to 2006. It situates the finely drawn village portrait within the historical framework of the Vietnamese revolution and the recent reforms in Vietnam. The book follows the oral testimony of surviving villagers throughout political and economic upheavals, compiling a wealth of original data as they actively restructure their daily lives. In the analysis of the implications of these data for theoretical models of agrarian transformation, the book argues that local traditions have played a major role in shaping villagers' responses to colonialism, socialist policies, and the global market economy. The work, spanning eight decades of sociocultural change, will interest students and scholars of the Vietnamese revolution, agrarian politics, peasant societies, French colonialism, and socialist transformation.Less
This book examines both continuity and change over eight decades in a small rural village deep in the North Vietnamese countryside. Son-Duong, a community near the Red River, experienced first-hand the ravages of French colonialism and the American war, as well as the socialist revolution and Vietnam's recent reintegration into the global market economy. This revised and expanded edition of the 1992 book, Revolution in the Village, draws on newly available archival documents in Hanoi, narratives by villagers, and three field seasons from the late 1980s to 2006. It situates the finely drawn village portrait within the historical framework of the Vietnamese revolution and the recent reforms in Vietnam. The book follows the oral testimony of surviving villagers throughout political and economic upheavals, compiling a wealth of original data as they actively restructure their daily lives. In the analysis of the implications of these data for theoretical models of agrarian transformation, the book argues that local traditions have played a major role in shaping villagers' responses to colonialism, socialist policies, and the global market economy. The work, spanning eight decades of sociocultural change, will interest students and scholars of the Vietnamese revolution, agrarian politics, peasant societies, French colonialism, and socialist transformation.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195146998
- eISBN:
- 9780199787890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146998.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
This chapter examines how the figure of the victim is important in the cultural representations of American wars in Asia, particularly Viet Nam. The Vietnam War has, of course, been that most ...
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This chapter examines how the figure of the victim is important in the cultural representations of American wars in Asia, particularly Viet Nam. The Vietnam War has, of course, been that most difficult of wars for the United States, and not surprisingly, the figure of the victim appears often in the American iconography of the war. One of the most important of “victims” to emerge from the war is Le Ly Hayslip, Vietnamese American author of two autobiographies, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace. Through her extraordinary personal story, she not only symbolically assumes the collective pain of millions of Vietnamese, but also the victim's burden of forgiving the victimizer. Hayslip's role as emblematic victim is crucial in the postwar American discourse of recovery and reconciliation.Less
This chapter examines how the figure of the victim is important in the cultural representations of American wars in Asia, particularly Viet Nam. The Vietnam War has, of course, been that most difficult of wars for the United States, and not surprisingly, the figure of the victim appears often in the American iconography of the war. One of the most important of “victims” to emerge from the war is Le Ly Hayslip, Vietnamese American author of two autobiographies, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace. Through her extraordinary personal story, she not only symbolically assumes the collective pain of millions of Vietnamese, but also the victim's burden of forgiving the victimizer. Hayslip's role as emblematic victim is crucial in the postwar American discourse of recovery and reconciliation.
Gregory A. Daddis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199746873
- eISBN:
- 9780199897179
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199746873.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This chapter, focusing on 1966, evaluates why MACV concentrated on military operations to entice the enemy to battle. It analyzes how field commanders attempted to measure their progress once ...
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This chapter, focusing on 1966, evaluates why MACV concentrated on military operations to entice the enemy to battle. It analyzes how field commanders attempted to measure their progress once committed to combat operations. There seemed a belief held by many officers in MACV that security preceded pacification and that their primary mission was to defeat North Vietnamese and Vietcong units in the field. This chapter explores the problems of using body counts as a metric of success in counterinsurgency. While army officers professed their commitment to the “other war” of pacification, they still felt a need to show results by killing the enemy.Less
This chapter, focusing on 1966, evaluates why MACV concentrated on military operations to entice the enemy to battle. It analyzes how field commanders attempted to measure their progress once committed to combat operations. There seemed a belief held by many officers in MACV that security preceded pacification and that their primary mission was to defeat North Vietnamese and Vietcong units in the field. This chapter explores the problems of using body counts as a metric of success in counterinsurgency. While army officers professed their commitment to the “other war” of pacification, they still felt a need to show results by killing the enemy.
Yen Le Espiritu
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520277700
- eISBN:
- 9780520959002
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520277700.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Migration Studies (including Refugee Studies)
This book examines how the Vietnam War has continued to serve as a stage for the shoring up of American imperialist adventure and for the (re)production of American and Vietnamese American ...
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This book examines how the Vietnam War has continued to serve as a stage for the shoring up of American imperialist adventure and for the (re)production of American and Vietnamese American identities. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, this book retheorizes the connections among history, memory, and power and refashions the fields of American studies, Asian American studies, and refugee studies not around the narratives of American exceptionalism, immigration, and transnationalism but around the crucial issues of war, race, and violence—and the history and memories that are forged in the aftermath of war. At the same time, the book moves decisively away from the “damage-centered” approach that pathologizes loss and trauma by detailing how first- and second-generation Vietnamese have created alternative memories and epistemologies that challenge the established public narratives of the Vietnam War and Vietnamese people. Explicitly interdisciplinary, the book moves between the humanities and social sciences, drawing on historical, ethnographic, cultural, and virtual evidence in order to illuminate the places where Vietnamese refugees have managed to conjure up social, public, and collective remembering.Less
This book examines how the Vietnam War has continued to serve as a stage for the shoring up of American imperialist adventure and for the (re)production of American and Vietnamese American identities. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, this book retheorizes the connections among history, memory, and power and refashions the fields of American studies, Asian American studies, and refugee studies not around the narratives of American exceptionalism, immigration, and transnationalism but around the crucial issues of war, race, and violence—and the history and memories that are forged in the aftermath of war. At the same time, the book moves decisively away from the “damage-centered” approach that pathologizes loss and trauma by detailing how first- and second-generation Vietnamese have created alternative memories and epistemologies that challenge the established public narratives of the Vietnam War and Vietnamese people. Explicitly interdisciplinary, the book moves between the humanities and social sciences, drawing on historical, ethnographic, cultural, and virtual evidence in order to illuminate the places where Vietnamese refugees have managed to conjure up social, public, and collective remembering.
Matthew J. Magee, Lucy Guo, Ami M. Shah, and Hong Liu
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199731190
- eISBN:
- 9780199866465
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199731190.003.0005
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health
Inspired by the Sinai's Improving Community Health Survey (Sinai Survey), the Asian Health Coalition of Illinois (AHCI) and its community partners began implementing a similar local assessment of ...
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Inspired by the Sinai's Improving Community Health Survey (Sinai Survey), the Asian Health Coalition of Illinois (AHCI) and its community partners began implementing a similar local assessment of health in three Asian populations in Chicago. They conducted health surveys in the Chinese, Cambodian, and Vietnamese communities; together these are called the Chicago Asian Community Health Surveys (Asian Surveys). This chapter discusses the background, methods, and key findings to highlight the processes, achievements, and impact of the Asian Survey project.Less
Inspired by the Sinai's Improving Community Health Survey (Sinai Survey), the Asian Health Coalition of Illinois (AHCI) and its community partners began implementing a similar local assessment of health in three Asian populations in Chicago. They conducted health surveys in the Chinese, Cambodian, and Vietnamese communities; together these are called the Chicago Asian Community Health Surveys (Asian Surveys). This chapter discusses the background, methods, and key findings to highlight the processes, achievements, and impact of the Asian Survey project.
David G. Marr
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520274150
- eISBN:
- 9780520954977
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520274150.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
In 1945, government attempts to color in the desires of the Vietnamese public became repressed by the reality of revolutionary poverty. Famine, shelter, and natural disasters continued to impede ...
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In 1945, government attempts to color in the desires of the Vietnamese public became repressed by the reality of revolutionary poverty. Famine, shelter, and natural disasters continued to impede social efforts of economic and cultural progression. The DRV government looked to donations, increased taxes, and the preservation of salt, alcohol, and opium monopolies to steady a failing agricultural industry and the corresponding public reaction. As currency and commodity occluded the developmental aspirations of the Vietnamese masses, materialism took to an increased weight within the priorities of the DRV government.Less
In 1945, government attempts to color in the desires of the Vietnamese public became repressed by the reality of revolutionary poverty. Famine, shelter, and natural disasters continued to impede social efforts of economic and cultural progression. The DRV government looked to donations, increased taxes, and the preservation of salt, alcohol, and opium monopolies to steady a failing agricultural industry and the corresponding public reaction. As currency and commodity occluded the developmental aspirations of the Vietnamese masses, materialism took to an increased weight within the priorities of the DRV government.
Mark Salber Phillips
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300140378
- eISBN:
- 9780300195255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300140378.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter analyzes the historical aspects of the death notices for Hugh Thompson, the American helicopter pilot who put a stop to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. It suggests that ...
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This chapter analyzes the historical aspects of the death notices for Hugh Thompson, the American helicopter pilot who put a stop to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. It suggests that while the obituarists attempted to recover some sense of humanity in Thompson's life, their flat accounts did little to illuminate the source of his courageous resistance or explain the brutalities perpetrated by the men in Charlie Company at the My Lai Massacre. This chapter also suggests that histories of whatever genre can never escape the limitations of representation to become history as such.Less
This chapter analyzes the historical aspects of the death notices for Hugh Thompson, the American helicopter pilot who put a stop to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. It suggests that while the obituarists attempted to recover some sense of humanity in Thompson's life, their flat accounts did little to illuminate the source of his courageous resistance or explain the brutalities perpetrated by the men in Charlie Company at the My Lai Massacre. This chapter also suggests that histories of whatever genre can never escape the limitations of representation to become history as such.
Ben Tran
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823273133
- eISBN:
- 9780823273188
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823273133.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Post-Mandarin: Masculinity and Aesthetic Modernity in Colonial Vietnam redefines global modernism in terms of realism. The monograph challenges some of the central assumptions about the literary ...
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Post-Mandarin: Masculinity and Aesthetic Modernity in Colonial Vietnam redefines global modernism in terms of realism. The monograph challenges some of the central assumptions about the literary aesthetics of colonial modernity. The book has two interlocking arguments. First, it underscores the radical transformation of Vietnam’s literary field from a 1000-year-old Chinese-influenced mandarin system to the supply-and-demand market of 20th-century print culture—linguistically, from Examination Chinese to the Vietnamese romanized alphabet of quốc ngữ. Second, it shows that as much as this transformation was an intellectual disruption, it was equally a gendered historical upheaval. The book demonstrates how the dissolution of the all-male mandarinate and the simultaneous emergence of a female reading public underwrote the significant realist aesthetics of Vietnamese modernity. The project employs the term “post-mandarin” to describe how native intellectuals educated in the French baccalaureate system adopted European fields of knowledge, a new romanized writing script, and print media—all of which were foreign and illegible to their fathers. Post-mandarin intellectuals mediated their critique of colonial modernity through the various subjectivities of modern women, portraying these women as transgressive romantics, sex workers catering to European men, patients in colonial dispensaries, and readers of novels. The book’s focus on sexuality reveals how masculine anxiety undercut the purportedly objective genre of journalistic reportage, how Vietnam’s modernist turn was a turn toward literary realism, and how Vietnamese socialist realism derived from a queer internationalism.Less
Post-Mandarin: Masculinity and Aesthetic Modernity in Colonial Vietnam redefines global modernism in terms of realism. The monograph challenges some of the central assumptions about the literary aesthetics of colonial modernity. The book has two interlocking arguments. First, it underscores the radical transformation of Vietnam’s literary field from a 1000-year-old Chinese-influenced mandarin system to the supply-and-demand market of 20th-century print culture—linguistically, from Examination Chinese to the Vietnamese romanized alphabet of quốc ngữ. Second, it shows that as much as this transformation was an intellectual disruption, it was equally a gendered historical upheaval. The book demonstrates how the dissolution of the all-male mandarinate and the simultaneous emergence of a female reading public underwrote the significant realist aesthetics of Vietnamese modernity. The project employs the term “post-mandarin” to describe how native intellectuals educated in the French baccalaureate system adopted European fields of knowledge, a new romanized writing script, and print media—all of which were foreign and illegible to their fathers. Post-mandarin intellectuals mediated their critique of colonial modernity through the various subjectivities of modern women, portraying these women as transgressive romantics, sex workers catering to European men, patients in colonial dispensaries, and readers of novels. The book’s focus on sexuality reveals how masculine anxiety undercut the purportedly objective genre of journalistic reportage, how Vietnam’s modernist turn was a turn toward literary realism, and how Vietnamese socialist realism derived from a queer internationalism.
Rosemary Foot
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198292920
- eISBN:
- 9780191599286
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198292929.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This is the second of four chapters focusing on America’s perceptions of China’s capabilities, and dwelling on the correspondence between those perceptions and the projected consequences. It looks at ...
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This is the second of four chapters focusing on America’s perceptions of China’s capabilities, and dwelling on the correspondence between those perceptions and the projected consequences. It looks at American perceptions of China’s capabilities as a military power, discussing them in relation to the successive conflicts in which China was involved: the Korean war, the two Taiwan Straits crises, the Sino-Indian and Sino-Soviet border conflicts, the Vietnam war and the Sino-Vietnamese fighting in 1979. The discussion marks the transition from the Truman and Eisenhower administration appraisals of China’s conventional strength as a ‘candidate great power’ (in military terms), to the perceptions in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s, that China had not developed advanced conventional forces, and had been sufficiently weakened through its domestic and foreign policies eventually to require it to embark on a domestic modernization programme that led to the reduction and then ending of its support for the national liberation struggles it had previously championed. Moreover, it needed American military protection to help it deal with Soviet encirclement. This evolution in the understanding of China’s needs and capacities helped ease the path to the rapprochement and then normalization of relations between these two former military opponents, much as America’s own defeat in Vietnam made it easier for Mao to turn to Washington.Less
This is the second of four chapters focusing on America’s perceptions of China’s capabilities, and dwelling on the correspondence between those perceptions and the projected consequences. It looks at American perceptions of China’s capabilities as a military power, discussing them in relation to the successive conflicts in which China was involved: the Korean war, the two Taiwan Straits crises, the Sino-Indian and Sino-Soviet border conflicts, the Vietnam war and the Sino-Vietnamese fighting in 1979. The discussion marks the transition from the Truman and Eisenhower administration appraisals of China’s conventional strength as a ‘candidate great power’ (in military terms), to the perceptions in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s, that China had not developed advanced conventional forces, and had been sufficiently weakened through its domestic and foreign policies eventually to require it to embark on a domestic modernization programme that led to the reduction and then ending of its support for the national liberation struggles it had previously championed. Moreover, it needed American military protection to help it deal with Soviet encirclement. This evolution in the understanding of China’s needs and capacities helped ease the path to the rapprochement and then normalization of relations between these two former military opponents, much as America’s own defeat in Vietnam made it easier for Mao to turn to Washington.
Xiaoming Zhang
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469621241
- eISBN:
- 9781469623399
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469621241.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The surprise Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 shocked the international community. The two communist nations had seemed firm political and cultural allies, but the twenty-nine-day border war ...
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The surprise Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 shocked the international community. The two communist nations had seemed firm political and cultural allies, but the twenty-nine-day border war imposed heavy casualties, ruined urban and agricultural infrastructure, leveled three Vietnamese cities, and catalyzed a decade-long conflict. This book traces the roots of the conflict to the historic relationship between the peoples of China and Vietnam, the ongoing Sino-Soviet dispute, and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's desire to modernize his country. The book takes readers into the heart of Beijing's decision-making process and illustrates the war's importance for understanding the modern Chinese military, as well as China's role in the Asian-Pacific world today.Less
The surprise Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 shocked the international community. The two communist nations had seemed firm political and cultural allies, but the twenty-nine-day border war imposed heavy casualties, ruined urban and agricultural infrastructure, leveled three Vietnamese cities, and catalyzed a decade-long conflict. This book traces the roots of the conflict to the historic relationship between the peoples of China and Vietnam, the ongoing Sino-Soviet dispute, and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's desire to modernize his country. The book takes readers into the heart of Beijing's decision-making process and illustrates the war's importance for understanding the modern Chinese military, as well as China's role in the Asian-Pacific world today.
Jussi Hanhimäki
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195172218
- eISBN:
- 9780199849994
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195172218.003.0017
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
The events of spring 1975 were a tragedy of immense proportions for countless South Vietnamese. However, the October War in the Middle East and the impact of the oil crisis had shifted the focus of ...
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The events of spring 1975 were a tragedy of immense proportions for countless South Vietnamese. However, the October War in the Middle East and the impact of the oil crisis had shifted the focus of Washington and Kissinger. From their standpoint, Vietnam had become a sideshow. Furthermore, Kissinger stated that Vietnam was no longer a policy issue and there was nothing the administration could do to alter the course of events. This chapter illustrates how Kissinger held Congress responsible for the collapse of Vietnam and Cambodia due to its decision to decrease America's assistance to them. However, the author contends that despite Congress's cutbacks, Kissinger's diplomacy hardly improved Saigon's chances and the secretary of state's own policies heavily contributed to the disaster in Indochina in 1975.Less
The events of spring 1975 were a tragedy of immense proportions for countless South Vietnamese. However, the October War in the Middle East and the impact of the oil crisis had shifted the focus of Washington and Kissinger. From their standpoint, Vietnam had become a sideshow. Furthermore, Kissinger stated that Vietnam was no longer a policy issue and there was nothing the administration could do to alter the course of events. This chapter illustrates how Kissinger held Congress responsible for the collapse of Vietnam and Cambodia due to its decision to decrease America's assistance to them. However, the author contends that despite Congress's cutbacks, Kissinger's diplomacy hardly improved Saigon's chances and the secretary of state's own policies heavily contributed to the disaster in Indochina in 1975.
Neil L. Jamieson
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520201576
- eISBN:
- 9780520916586
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520201576.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
The American experience in Vietnam divided America as a nation and eroded its confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of its foreign policy. Yet America's understanding of this tragic ...
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The American experience in Vietnam divided America as a nation and eroded its confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of its foreign policy. Yet America's understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, it has never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. This book paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, it takes the reader through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout this analysis, it allows the Vietnamese—both America's friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither—to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials, and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting America's old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, the book provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from its involvement in Vietnam.Less
The American experience in Vietnam divided America as a nation and eroded its confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of its foreign policy. Yet America's understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, it has never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. This book paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, it takes the reader through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout this analysis, it allows the Vietnamese—both America's friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither—to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials, and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting America's old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, the book provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from its involvement in Vietnam.
Phuong Tran Nguyen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041358
- eISBN:
- 9780252099953
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041358.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This pioneering social history of Little Saigon examines the institutionalization and preservation of a Southern California ethnic enclave and its people through the politics of rescue. It argues ...
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This pioneering social history of Little Saigon examines the institutionalization and preservation of a Southern California ethnic enclave and its people through the politics of rescue. It argues that Little Saigon’s emergence and growth was fuelled by American guilt over losing the war and Vietnamese gratitude for being rescued from communism. Thus the largest of diasporic Vietnamese communities, along with most of its counterparts nationwide, was framed as the least a guilt-ridden country could do to atone for its Cold War failures. The politics of rescue helps to explain why Little Saigon enjoyed a level of mainstream moral, economic, and political support historically unknown to most other Asian Americans. As for the Vietnamese exiles, the politics of rescue placed extreme pressure on them to act like model minorities in order to justify an unpopular war that killed 58,000 Americans and nearly invalidated American Exceptionalism. By becoming Refugee American, the losers of the Vietnam War could cast themselves as winners of the postwar, whereby Vietnamese and Americans, rather than forgetting, could mutually affirm a tragic past by rewriting it.Less
This pioneering social history of Little Saigon examines the institutionalization and preservation of a Southern California ethnic enclave and its people through the politics of rescue. It argues that Little Saigon’s emergence and growth was fuelled by American guilt over losing the war and Vietnamese gratitude for being rescued from communism. Thus the largest of diasporic Vietnamese communities, along with most of its counterparts nationwide, was framed as the least a guilt-ridden country could do to atone for its Cold War failures. The politics of rescue helps to explain why Little Saigon enjoyed a level of mainstream moral, economic, and political support historically unknown to most other Asian Americans. As for the Vietnamese exiles, the politics of rescue placed extreme pressure on them to act like model minorities in order to justify an unpopular war that killed 58,000 Americans and nearly invalidated American Exceptionalism. By becoming Refugee American, the losers of the Vietnam War could cast themselves as winners of the postwar, whereby Vietnamese and Americans, rather than forgetting, could mutually affirm a tragic past by rewriting it.
Christine Su and Paul Tran
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824835804
- eISBN:
- 9780824868529
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824835804.003.0013
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Pacific Studies
This chapter focuses on the Vietnamese in Hawaiʻi and the ways in which life in Hawaiʻi has enabled the Vietnamese to become successful. While Vietnamese ethnocultural identity is incredibly complex, ...
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This chapter focuses on the Vietnamese in Hawaiʻi and the ways in which life in Hawaiʻi has enabled the Vietnamese to become successful. While Vietnamese ethnocultural identity is incredibly complex, there are two major patterns that have been significantly influential in shaping a collective Vietnamese identity: Vietnam's history of domination and colonization and its traditional village life. These patterns can furthermore illuminate the tensions between the Vietnamese community and other ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi, though they have faced less discrimination in the Islands than in other areas. Tensions between Vietnamese and other ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi on the other hand seem to stem from the perception that the Vietnamese are “clannish” and even haughty. Most tensions tend to happen within the Vietnamese community itself, however, rather than between the Vietnamese and other ethnic groups.Less
This chapter focuses on the Vietnamese in Hawaiʻi and the ways in which life in Hawaiʻi has enabled the Vietnamese to become successful. While Vietnamese ethnocultural identity is incredibly complex, there are two major patterns that have been significantly influential in shaping a collective Vietnamese identity: Vietnam's history of domination and colonization and its traditional village life. These patterns can furthermore illuminate the tensions between the Vietnamese community and other ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi, though they have faced less discrimination in the Islands than in other areas. Tensions between Vietnamese and other ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi on the other hand seem to stem from the perception that the Vietnamese are “clannish” and even haughty. Most tensions tend to happen within the Vietnamese community itself, however, rather than between the Vietnamese and other ethnic groups.
Robert D. Schulzinger
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195365924
- eISBN:
- 9780199851966
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365924.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
As the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) and National Liberation Front (NLF) fighters tightened their ring around Saigon in April 1975, tens of thousands of Vietnamese who had worked for the ...
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As the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) and National Liberation Front (NLF) fighters tightened their ring around Saigon in April 1975, tens of thousands of Vietnamese who had worked for the government of the Republic of Vietnam, the American government and military, U.S. construction firms, and dozens of U.S.-sponsored relief agencies were terrified. Accepting Vietnamese refugees soon became a way for Gerald Ford's administration to embarrass the Communist authorities in Vietnam by shining a spotlight on their abuse of their own citizens. And so a mass exodus of immigrants from South Vietnam to the United States began on a small scale in the spring of 1975. Over the next decade, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese made their way to the United States where they settled across the country. Eventually they and their descendants numbered over a million, and they prospered and flourished culturally in their new home. Vietnamese Americans also helped shape the memory of the Vietnam War.Less
As the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) and National Liberation Front (NLF) fighters tightened their ring around Saigon in April 1975, tens of thousands of Vietnamese who had worked for the government of the Republic of Vietnam, the American government and military, U.S. construction firms, and dozens of U.S.-sponsored relief agencies were terrified. Accepting Vietnamese refugees soon became a way for Gerald Ford's administration to embarrass the Communist authorities in Vietnam by shining a spotlight on their abuse of their own citizens. And so a mass exodus of immigrants from South Vietnam to the United States began on a small scale in the spring of 1975. Over the next decade, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese made their way to the United States where they settled across the country. Eventually they and their descendants numbered over a million, and they prospered and flourished culturally in their new home. Vietnamese Americans also helped shape the memory of the Vietnam War.
Janet Alison Hoskins
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824840044
- eISBN:
- 9780824868611
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824840044.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Caodaism, Vietnam’s third largest religion with four million followers, is now a major world religion. Colorful and strikingly eclectic, it incorporates Chinese, Buddhist and Western traditions along ...
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Caodaism, Vietnam’s third largest religion with four million followers, is now a major world religion. Colorful and strikingly eclectic, it incorporates Chinese, Buddhist and Western traditions along with more recent world figures like Victor Hugo, Jeanne d’Arc, Lenin and (in the USA) the Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Sometimes described as “outrageously syncretistic”, its combination of different elements has been seen as an excessive, even trangressive combination of the traditions of Asia and the West. Caodaism emerged in the 1920s during the struggle against colonialism in French Indochina. Millions converted in the first few decades, and Caodaists played important roles in the nationalist movement and the American war in Vietnam. Communist victory in 1975 led to severe restrictions inside Vietnam, but Caodaism flourished in the diaspora in the US, France, Australia and Canada. The lives of religious founders from the Caodai “the age of revelations” (1925-1934) are contrasted with experiences of their disciples and descendants in the “age of diaspora” (1975-present) when many Caodaists went into exile. Paired biographies of founders and followers show the tension between initial religious inspiration and diasporic re-interpretations in a new context, as the religion has achieved a global outreach on both sides of the Pacific.Less
Caodaism, Vietnam’s third largest religion with four million followers, is now a major world religion. Colorful and strikingly eclectic, it incorporates Chinese, Buddhist and Western traditions along with more recent world figures like Victor Hugo, Jeanne d’Arc, Lenin and (in the USA) the Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Sometimes described as “outrageously syncretistic”, its combination of different elements has been seen as an excessive, even trangressive combination of the traditions of Asia and the West. Caodaism emerged in the 1920s during the struggle against colonialism in French Indochina. Millions converted in the first few decades, and Caodaists played important roles in the nationalist movement and the American war in Vietnam. Communist victory in 1975 led to severe restrictions inside Vietnam, but Caodaism flourished in the diaspora in the US, France, Australia and Canada. The lives of religious founders from the Caodai “the age of revelations” (1925-1934) are contrasted with experiences of their disciples and descendants in the “age of diaspora” (1975-present) when many Caodaists went into exile. Paired biographies of founders and followers show the tension between initial religious inspiration and diasporic re-interpretations in a new context, as the religion has achieved a global outreach on both sides of the Pacific.
Vu Trong Phung
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834678
- eISBN:
- 9780824871642
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834678.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
What does it mean when a city of 180,000 people has more than 5,000 women working as prostitutes? This question frames Vũ Trọng Phụng's 1937 classic reportage Lục Xì. In the late 1930s, Hanoi had a ...
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What does it mean when a city of 180,000 people has more than 5,000 women working as prostitutes? This question frames Vũ Trọng Phụng's 1937 classic reportage Lục Xì. In the late 1930s, Hanoi had a burgeoning commercial sex industry that involved thousands of people and hundreds of businesses. It was the center of the city's nightlife and the source of suffering, violence, exploitation, and a venereal disease epidemic. For Phụng, a popular writer and intellectual, it also raised disturbing questions about the state of Vietnamese society and culture and whether his country really was “progressing” under French colonial rule. This book provides historical background on colonialism, prostitution, and venereal disease in Vietnam and discusses reportage as a literary genre, political tool, and historical source. A fully annotated translation of Lục Xì follows, in which Phụng takes readers into the heart of colonial Hanoi's sex industry. Drawing from his interviews with doctors, officials, and prostitutes and the writings of French doctors on prostitution and venereal disease, Phụng provides a rare, firsthand look at the damage caused by the commercial sex industry. His sympathetic portrayal of the Vietnamese underclass is considered one of the most accurate, but he also provides one of the most acerbic, humorous, and critical views of the changes wrought by colonialism in Southeast Asia.Less
What does it mean when a city of 180,000 people has more than 5,000 women working as prostitutes? This question frames Vũ Trọng Phụng's 1937 classic reportage Lục Xì. In the late 1930s, Hanoi had a burgeoning commercial sex industry that involved thousands of people and hundreds of businesses. It was the center of the city's nightlife and the source of suffering, violence, exploitation, and a venereal disease epidemic. For Phụng, a popular writer and intellectual, it also raised disturbing questions about the state of Vietnamese society and culture and whether his country really was “progressing” under French colonial rule. This book provides historical background on colonialism, prostitution, and venereal disease in Vietnam and discusses reportage as a literary genre, political tool, and historical source. A fully annotated translation of Lục Xì follows, in which Phụng takes readers into the heart of colonial Hanoi's sex industry. Drawing from his interviews with doctors, officials, and prostitutes and the writings of French doctors on prostitution and venereal disease, Phụng provides a rare, firsthand look at the damage caused by the commercial sex industry. His sympathetic portrayal of the Vietnamese underclass is considered one of the most accurate, but he also provides one of the most acerbic, humorous, and critical views of the changes wrought by colonialism in Southeast Asia.
Sokhieng Au
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226031637
- eISBN:
- 9780226031651
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226031651.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
During the first half of the twentieth century, representatives of the French colonial health services actively strove to expand the practice of Western medicine in the frontier colony of Cambodia. ...
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During the first half of the twentieth century, representatives of the French colonial health services actively strove to expand the practice of Western medicine in the frontier colony of Cambodia. But as the French physicians ventured beyond their colonial enclaves, they found themselves negotiating with the plurality of Cambodian cultural practices relating to health and disease, negotiations that were marked by some success, a great deal of misunderstanding, and much failure. Bringing together historical vignettes, social and anthropological theory, and quantitative analyses, this book examines these interactions between the Khmer, Cham, and Vietnamese of Cambodia and the French, documenting the differences in their understandings of medicine and revealing the unexpected transformations that occurred during this period—for both the French and the indigenous population.Less
During the first half of the twentieth century, representatives of the French colonial health services actively strove to expand the practice of Western medicine in the frontier colony of Cambodia. But as the French physicians ventured beyond their colonial enclaves, they found themselves negotiating with the plurality of Cambodian cultural practices relating to health and disease, negotiations that were marked by some success, a great deal of misunderstanding, and much failure. Bringing together historical vignettes, social and anthropological theory, and quantitative analyses, this book examines these interactions between the Khmer, Cham, and Vietnamese of Cambodia and the French, documenting the differences in their understandings of medicine and revealing the unexpected transformations that occurred during this period—for both the French and the indigenous population.
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190677602
- eISBN:
- 9780190677633
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190677602.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Though a minority religion in Vietnam, Christianity has constituted a significant presence in the country since its arrival in the sixteenth century. This translation and analytical study of a 1752 ...
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Though a minority religion in Vietnam, Christianity has constituted a significant presence in the country since its arrival in the sixteenth century. This translation and analytical study of a 1752 document entitled Tam Giáo Chư Vọng [Errors of the Three Religions] adds to the knowledge of its early history within its cultural and religious contexts. This anonymous manuscript paints a rich picture of the three traditional Vietnamese religions (Tam Giáo), i.e., Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Aiming at the new converts, the writer describes the “errors” (Chư Vọng) of these traditional beliefs and religious practices and provides an apologetics for the Christian doctrines. Structured as a dialogue between a Christian priest and a Confucian scholar, the work explains and evaluates many religious customs and rituals of eighteenth-century Vietnam—many of which are still in practice today. In addition, it contains a trove of information on the challenges and struggles that Vietnamese Christian converts had to face in following the new faith. Beside its enormous historical value for studies on Vietnamese religions, language, and culture, this manuscript raises contemporary and highly complex issues concerning the encounter between Christianity and other religions, Christian missions, religious pluralism, interreligious dialogue, and the dialogue between Christianity and cultures.Less
Though a minority religion in Vietnam, Christianity has constituted a significant presence in the country since its arrival in the sixteenth century. This translation and analytical study of a 1752 document entitled Tam Giáo Chư Vọng [Errors of the Three Religions] adds to the knowledge of its early history within its cultural and religious contexts. This anonymous manuscript paints a rich picture of the three traditional Vietnamese religions (Tam Giáo), i.e., Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Aiming at the new converts, the writer describes the “errors” (Chư Vọng) of these traditional beliefs and religious practices and provides an apologetics for the Christian doctrines. Structured as a dialogue between a Christian priest and a Confucian scholar, the work explains and evaluates many religious customs and rituals of eighteenth-century Vietnam—many of which are still in practice today. In addition, it contains a trove of information on the challenges and struggles that Vietnamese Christian converts had to face in following the new faith. Beside its enormous historical value for studies on Vietnamese religions, language, and culture, this manuscript raises contemporary and highly complex issues concerning the encounter between Christianity and other religions, Christian missions, religious pluralism, interreligious dialogue, and the dialogue between Christianity and cultures.
