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From: Mac McIntosh
Date: Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 3:54 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I would say that Diem's most aclaimed quote was " Follow me , if I advance, kill me if i retreat, revenge me if i die ."
Whereas , Ho's was - " You kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and we will win."
I prefer Diem's words , myself .
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 4:57 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I thought the comparison was with MLK. Very strange...
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Kenneth T. Young Professor
of Sino-Vietnamese History
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From: Vuong Vu-Duc
Date: Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 5:59 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
For H?, I think this quote is more representative both of his
character and his life work: "Không có gì quí hon d?c l?p, t? do";
As for Di?m, I don't recall any memorable saying at all, so I'll just
comment on Mac's selection : Any leader who doesn't know when (and
how) to retreat is, shall we say charitably, one dimentional. And
that was Di?m's undoing in the end.
Vu-Ð?c Vu?ng.
Hà N?i.
--
Vu-Ð?c Vu?ng
Resident Director, Vi?t Nam
SCHOOL YEAR ABROAD
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From: David Del Testa
Date: Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 6:05 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Um, I think that Diem may have copied the Count Henri de Rochejacqulain (August 30, 1772 - January 28, 1794), a young Catholic leader of the anti-Republic Vendée revolt. "Mes amis, si j'avance, suivez-moi! Si je recule, tuez-moi! Si je meurs, vengez-moi!"
David
David Del Testa, Ph.D.
Department of History
Bucknell University
111 Carnegie Building
Lewisburg, PA 17837 USA
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From: Walter james Mc intosh
Date: Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 6:31 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
David, Well researched. I wonder if Diem ever gave Count Henri credit ?
Mac
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From: phuxuan700@gmail.com
Date: Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 10:39 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
In the past 50 plus years, all of VCP/Vietnamese leaders have been considered as either Ho's best students or best followers.
If "Không có gì quí hon d?c l?p, t? do" is to represent Ho's character and life work, his commitment should have not been lost with his passing.
Would a reality check support such representation ?
http://boxitvn.blogspot.com/2011/02/on-cua-chi-nguyen-thi-duong-ha-khieu.html
http://sgtt.vn/Thoi-su/137543/Ngu-dan-mat-tich-o-Hoang-Sa-Ngu-dan-can-quan-chua-voi.html
Calvin Thai
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From: Thaveeporn Vasavakul
Date: Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 11:24 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
It would be interesting to study Ho's and Diem's political thought and the way in which they tried to communicate it. The two were very different. Ho left VN when young and spent three decades before he returned. Diem was a bureaucrat of the Nguyen Court before moving out to explore different possible political paths.
My research work did not require that I read Diem's speech, so I don't have much to say. But I did at one point looked through Ho's speeches and writings from around 1945 to 1969. His speeches and his writings addressed very specific groups of people (he wrote extensively for various newspapers under various pen names), so I would assume that different peoples remembered different things. "Không có gì quý hon d?c l?p và tu do" is well known. For the Vietnamese, it may not only be because of its nationalist tone but also the fact that it was used to make fun of the late "socialist" period.
Try this one:
" Không s? thi?u, ch? s? không công b?ng;
Không s? nghèo, ch? s? lòng dân không yên"
It certainly can be interpreted in various ways, can't it?
Thaveeporn Vasavakul
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 11:55 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Concerning the similarities and differences between HCM and Diem, it may be worth comparing how the North and South Vietnamese regimes treated the tribal ethnic minorities in Viet Bac, the Central Highlands, and elsewhere. In the mid-1950s, the contrast was very pronounced, since Diem was trying to bring the minorities under strong central control and assimilate them, whereas the DRV created autonomous regions, and declared its readiness to let the minorities develop their own ethnic culture. But then the lines became increasingly blurred. In the 1960s, Wilfred Burchett, an apologist of the DRV regime if there ever was one, extensively and approvingly quoted various VWP cadres on the party's minorities policy, and the attitude of said cadres, if one can read betwen the lines, was hardly different from the good ol' Dai Phap conception of "mission civilisatrice." By the time the war came to an end and Hanoi's control was established over the whole country, Communist policies toward the tribes, as the noted anthopologist Gerald Hickey notes, became disturbingly similar to the practices which Diem had pursued twenty years before.
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From: Thaveeporn Vasavakul
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:28 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Leadership styles and political thought should also involve the way in which the leadership views "others".
In terms of regime policies, I am indeed eager to see more work on ethnic minorities, probably not strictly on the comparison of what the DRV or the RVN were doing but more on what the issues have been overtime when it comes to the relationship between the Kinh/Viet and ethnic groups and how these issues have been dealt with. I am not sure how the study of the autonomous zone concept will help at this stage. Maybe looking at education, language, health, tangible/intangible culture, poverty reduction, representation, beauty contest........?
I think it is interesting also to look at state policy in conjunction with regime change. One definition of the state that I still think about often:"the state not only has its own memory but harbors self-preserving and self-aggrandizing impulses, which at any given moment are expressed through its living members but which cannot be reduced to their passing personal ambitions."
That's it for the comments, for now.
Thaveeporn Vasavakul
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:38 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Probably no accident that Ho effectively lost power in 1959-60. He was pushed aside by much younger and much more radical 'Turks'.
Melanie
Melanie Beresford
Associate Dean Research
Associate Professor in Economics
Faculty of Business & Economics
Macquarie University, NSW 2109
Australia
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 1:00 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Yes, this was probably one of the factors involved, for HCM had lived in a relatively close contact with minorities in 1944-45. Another factor that seems to have strongly influenced the leadership's thinking was the increasing involvement of Americans in South Vietnamese ethnic affairs. As early as 1964, the head of the Unification Committee told a Hungarian diplomat that a recent uprising of montagnard soldiers, even though it was directed against the authorities in Saigon, was not really an advantageous development, because its character was not anti-American, only anti-GVN. By 1968, DRV authorities complained that the Americans were trying to stir up trouble among the northern ethnic minorities. Their logic seems to have been the following: "if we grant some concessions to the minorities, and the enemy does not, this is beneficial for us; but if the enemy also does likewise, this is no longer so beneficial for us."
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 4:19 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
In terms of mission civilisatrice, the French had nothing on Confucian monarchs. Try saying Minh Mang to Cambodians...
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Kenneth T. Young Professor
of Sino-Vietnamese History
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 4:45 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Very much true. It was the very same Minh Mang whose edits on the compulsory wearing of trousers provoked uprisings among some tribal minorities. What is particularly interesting from a historiographical view that East European Communist historians covered the history of pre-colonial Cambodia and Laos from a strongly Vietnam-centric perspective, depicting Thai monarchs as aggressors and overlooking the, hm, controversial aspects of Vietnamese policies in occupied Cambodia. If Vietnam was the embodiment of virtue vis-a-vis Bangkok and Phnom Penh in 1975-79, it must have been also so in the 19th century and before.
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:54 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Well it is the case that Siam occupied the whole of western Cambodia during most of the 19th century. They ceded it to France at the beginning of the 20th, took it back during WW2 and had to give it back again afterwards. I doubt that Cambodia would exist as a separate state today if not for the French (hence the Francophilia of the Cambodian monarchy).
I imagine the stronger anti-Vietnamese feeling stems from the fact that the eastern half of the country was in fact the only part the Cambodian ruler had control over during the 19th century and that was also the part Vietnam showed interest in. Again, saved by France.
Melanie
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 1:21 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
What actually sets most Cambodians off is Minh Mang's invasion in the 1830s and his attempt to force Cambodians to assimilate completely, from what to wear to how to mourn and bury their dead.
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 8:22 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Very much right again. The culture of the Thai Buddhist kingdom had far more in common with that of the Khmers than with Vietnamese Confucianism, which probably lessened Cambodian resentment to some extent. Still, Cambodians remained suspicious of both of their big neighbors, which inspired a quite abnormal attitude under Sihanouk and Pol Pot: "we don't like if the Vietnamese and the Thai fight against each other, because then they'll use our country as a battlefield, but we also don't like if they are good terms with each other, because then they might reach an agreement at our expense.":))
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