Milestones: Dr. Aaron Lillie
From: Hue-Tam Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2021 10:22 PM
To: Guillemot Francois <francois.guillemot@ens-lyon.fr>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>; Laurie Sears <lauriesears@icloud.com>; Christoph Giebel <giebel@uw.edu>; Glennys J Young <glennys@uw.edu>; Raymond Jonas <jonas@uw.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Milestones: Dr. Aaron Lillie
Congratulations to Aaron from me as well. I look forward to the book. It's good of Aaron to seek out individual motivations and experiences. I personally knew some of the urban NLF members in Hue. Some fled to the maquis in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. Perhaps some of them feature in Aaron's account.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
From: Guillemot Francois <francois.guillemot@ens-lyon.fr>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2021 8:56 PM
To: Christoph Giebel <giebel@uw.edu>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>; Raymond Jonas <jonas@uw.edu>; Glennys J Young <glennys@uw.edu>; Laurie Sears <lauriesears@icloud.com>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Milestones: Dr. Aaron Lillie
Dear Christoph, congratulations to Aaron Lilie!
This is a very interesting perspective and, as you underline, it is a piece of history still today largely marginalized.
Hope this forthcoming publication will come soon.
All the best
F
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Guillemot Francois
ENS de Lyon
From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@uw.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2021 7:07 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>; Laurie Sears <lauriesears@icloud.com>; Raymond Jonas <jonas@uw.edu>; Glennys J Young <glennys@uw.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Milestones: Dr. Aaron Lillie
Colleagues,
The last day of summer seems like the appropriate time to announce and celebrate the conclusion of a major piece of academic labor. Earlier this summer at the University of Washington-Seattle, Aaron Lillie successfully defended his dissertation in modern Southeast Asian History, titled "Politics, Protest, and Revolution: The Origins and Evolution of the Urban Network of the NLF and the Communist Party in Central Vietnam, 1930-1975."
At the heart of Aaron’s project lies, broadly speaking, the rediscovery of the southern revolutionary resistance movement during the American phase of the war in Viet Nam. In the historiography of the war years, this distinct group of historical actors is covered the least, in large measure because US-, Sài Gòn-, and Hà Nội-centric narratives actively marginalized, even silenced, their voices. Acknowledging a determined, broad-based and ideologically diverse southern revolutionary-nationalist movement would threaten, on the one hand, Hà Nội-based claims that the Communist Party was due all credit for ultimate victory and, on the other hand, American and Sài Gòn prerogatives in portraying the war as a “Northern” aggression against a presumably separate, homogeneous “South Vietnam.” A sustained scholarly treatment of these southerners, who arguably played the decisive role between 1954–1975 in bringing about the defeat of American and RVN policies in Viet Nam, is long overdue, not the least for it will unsettle hardened ideological assumptions about the war in Viet Nam on all sides.
The oral histories Aaron collected over the years have proven to be a revelation, giving rare insights into biographical details, early organizational efforts, coalition building, social background, patriotic aspirations, and prison experiences of members of this particular NLF and student activist network spanning Huế, Đà Nẵng, and Tam Kỳ.
Aaron describes his dissertation as follows:
"This project combines political history, social history and memory to convey a perspective of the war through the eyes of the people of Central Vietnam who participated in the urban movement of the Vietnamese Revolution. It is intended to address conspicuous gaps within the historical record through an examination of how and why the urban networks of the Communist Party, the Việt Minh and the NLF evolved and attracted new members in Huế and Central Vietnam in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.
Beginning with the inception of the Communist Party in Huế in 1930, this project tracks the various affiliated underground networks' development and evolution through World War II, the French War of decolonization, the Diệm government, the Struggle Movement and the Tết Offensive, concluding in the early 1970s. It offers a view of the Vietnamese revolution and the Vietnam Wars (1945-1975) from the perspective of the people in Huế and Central Vietnam who joined the Communist Party, the NLF and/or the student and Struggle Movements.
Chapters 1 and 2 follow the development of the Communist Party and affiliated networks in central Vietnam through the 1940s and 1950s. Based primarily on recent interviews with participants and eyewitnesses, Chapters 3,4 and 5 incorporate a collection of perspectives of NLF underground agents, dissidents and political activists, who, riding a wave of anti-American nationalism and Buddhist and student anger at the undemocratic policies of the military government in early 1960s central Vietnam, made a choice to become committed revolutionaries. Within this group a diverse assemblage of intellectuals and spiritual leaders debated a myriad of competing political and ideological visions for the future of Vietnam. Despite their commitment to overthrowing the RVN regime, during the 1960s and 70s, a number of NLF cadres and other supporters of the revolution were fearful and anxious about the idea of being forced to submit to the authority of the Communists in Hà Nội, but few have been brave enough to voice those fears publicly after 1975. Chapter 5 also addresses the Tết Offensive in Huế and surrounding controversies in some detail.
In my research I have sought answers to questions like “How much popular support did the NLF have among Vietnamese living south of the 17th parallel?”, “Who were the people who fought for or alongside the NLF?”, “What were their motivations?”, “What did they do, specifically, while they were active in the Revolution?”, and “How did people around them in their communities perceive them at the time?“ By seeking nuanced answers to very specific and detailed inquiries about peoples’ lives and experiences, it is possible to construct a fuller and more accurate portrait of the people who joined the Struggle Movement and the NLF as individuals, a portrait which is less distorted by war propaganda, factionalism, bitterness, or desire for revenge."
Despite challenging circumstances in the last few years that considerably affected Aaron's field research and writing, the dissertation came in at a hefty near-350 pages. Aaron Lillie's doctoral committee at UW comprised Professors Laurie Sears, Raymond Jonas, Glennys Young, the late Bill Rorabaugh, and Christoph Giebel (chair). A book manuscript will be forthcoming. Congratulations, Dr. Aaron Lillie!
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Christoph Giebel, PhD (he), Assoc. Professor, International Studies and History
Director of Graduate Studies, S.E. Asia Center, Jackson School of Int’l. Studies
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3650, USA, < giebel@uw.edu >
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