Embedded Files
From: Pierre Asselin via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 9, 2025 7:09 PM
To: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>; vsg@uw.edu
Subject: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Beloved Comrades:
Cold War History has published (electronically for now, in print shortly) my article addressing Vietnam War historiography. It considers some but unfortunately not all of the input I received from VSG members owing to the submission deadline. It's entitled "The Vietnam War at 50: The (Tragic) State of the Field" and part of a special feature, "Round Table for the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, Part I: America’s Vietnam War." The article is accessible at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14682745.2025.2465101
Colleagues in Vietnam, independent scholars, and others who may not have institutional access to the journal are welcome to reach out to me at passelin@sdsu.edu for a copy. A favorable review on worldsgreatestandmostawesomefrenchcanadiancholarsworkingonthevietnamwar.com is all I ask in return.
Any feedback on my take on the war's historiography would be greatly appreciated as I intend to make the substance of this piece part of my next book.
With all the Aloha in the world in this time of universal peace and harmony,
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations
San Diego State University
History Department
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050
From: Cau Thai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2025 6:45 AM
To: Carlyle Thayer <c.thayer@unsw.edu.au>; David Marr <phanmarr@gmail.com>; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>; vsg@uw.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] The 1954 Geneva Accords, Regroupment and Elections
Dear Carl, David and List,
1. On the 1954 Geneva Accords:
Carl wrote,
"The Southern Regional Party Committee (Xu Uy Nam Bo) held its first conference in June 1956 long after the 300-day period for regroupment.
Le Duan was recalled to the north after July 1956 and left in mid-1957 according to a CIA study cited in my War By Other Means,
The Central Office of South Vietnam (Trung ương Cục miền Nam) was established in 1961-62 after Le Duan became Secretary of the Lao Dong Party in September 1960 at its third national congress in Hanoi."
The paragraph above seems to be misleading by ignoring Le Duan's leadership role in the armed struggle in the South prior to the signing of the Geneva Accords.
After his release from prison in 1945, Le Duan was the secretary of the Southern Regional Party Committee-SRPC (bí thư Xứ ủy Nam Bộ) from 1946 to 1951. The SRPC was replaced with the Central Office of South Vietnam-COSVN (Trung ương Cục miền Nam) after the second Party Congress of the Worker's Party of Vietnam-WPV in 1951. Le Duan was the first secretary of the COSVN, Le Duc Tho was his deputy. The COSVN was replaced with the SRPC in the fall of 1954. Le Duan was the secretary of the SRPC again until the time he left the South for Hanoi in 1957. The SPRC was replaced with the COSVN after the 3rd Conference of the WPV Central Executive Committee in early 1961. Nguyen Van Linh was the secretary of the COSVN, Vo Chi Cong and Phan Van Dang were his deputies.
Carl wrote,
"Le Duan didn't go straight to "the enemy" but to the French Command and then safely boarded a friendly Polish ship. If Le Duan had remained in Ca Mau where the Viet Minh had been in administrative control, he would have lacked the security forces to protect him as a ranking party member after People's Army military forces left. So, he was able to travel in the south without being molested. I would put that down to prudence and good personal security. The post-Geneva period was not peaceful. The Binh Xuyen battled it out in Saigon against the Diem regime; Cao Dai and Hoa Hoa military forces were active iopposing Diem. Many VWP cadres secretly crossed into Cambodia for their security."
Since when the French Command was Le Duan's friend, not his enemy? :-)
During the First Indochina War, Le Duan was the boss of the bosses of the communists' military and civilian units in the South. The story about Le Duan's jumping ship was told and retold by Vietnam's mainstream media and especially by two people close to Le Duan, 1-Vo Van Kiet who greeted him that night in 1955, and 2-Le Han, his oldest son. These sources and my previous post have one thing in common: a lack of security was not the reason for what Le Duan did.
In other words, Carl's reasoning is unsubstantiated.
Without full access to Vietnam's archives and based on the discussion, on-list and off-list, I would say Le Duan's jumping ship was, at the very least, a violation of the spirit of the Geneva Accords.
2. On regroupment:
Since I was on travel, I did not have access to Shawn's book until returning home. Chapter 10 in "The First Vietnam War" provided good material for anyone interested in an area that had long been neglected in scholarships about the Vietnam War during a time of turmoil: the Mekong Delta in the period 1953-1956. The Mekong Delta is also where the regroupment took place.
Regarding the communists' ruses mentioned previously: 1-hiding weapons and keeping combatants behind, and 2-sending fake combatants North in the regroupment phase, the first ruse came from the VWP top level as confirmed by Qian Jiang and others, the second ruse might have come from local leaders for various reasons. The COSVN issued several directives and resolutions in the second half of 1954 to address problems arising from the regroupment, including communes (xa) sending large numbers of cadres to the North.
While we may never know the exact regroupees figure, I would say it was around 28,000 cadres and soldiers heading North in those 300 days. This information is based on the 2018 Nhan Dan article that Shawn's book referred to and I now have a copy of the article in my archive.
3. On elections:
Carl wrote,
"And before we get ahead of ourselves, Le Duan was under party orders in 1954 to organise a political struggle movement called Movement for the Protection of Peace and the Geneva Agreements to agitate peacefully for north-south consultations to hold elections.
...
If you read intelligence reports in the official government version of The Pentagon Papers, it was widely assessed that Ho Chi Minh's popularity would carry the day (certainly not Bao Dai or Ngo Dinh Diem). But the Soviet Union didn't press for elections because it was in their interest to keep Germany divided as well as Korea."
David wrote earlier,
"The US and Saigon government refused to follow through on the Geneva Agreement provision for free elections by 1956. That helps to explain Le Duan’s statement."
An article in Vietnam's mainstream media read,
"Although our country was divided into two regions by the 17th parallel, parties at the Conference emphasised that in any circumstance, it would be impossible to regard the 17th parallel as a political boundary or territory. The two regions must be unified before July 1956 by a “free and democratic” general election. However, the U.S. and the puppet Government led by Ngo Dinh Diem knew that a majority of Vietnamese people would support the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam; therefore, they sought every way to damage the Geneva Accords, “denounce and destroy communists,” and suppress religions."
These three paragraphs had a similar view: Ngo Dinh Diem's failure to abide by the terms of the Geneva Accords.
I wrote in my previous post:
"From the day before the opening of the Geneva Conference to its last day, at different times, the State of Vietnam (SoVN) made their position about the Agreements unequivocally clear.
On April 25, 1954, the SoVN issued a statement that said in part:
"... neither the Chief of State, nor the Vietnamese Government, will consider themselves as bound by decisions running counter to the interests, i.e., independence and unity, of their country that would, at the same time, violate the rights of the peoples and offer a reward to aggression in opposition to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and democratic ideals".
On July 18, 1954, the SoVN delegation head, Tran Van Do, stated that:
"... he must categorically dissociate himself from any discussion on either the French or the Soviet draft of the proposed final conference resolution on the grounds that he could not accept the principle of partition on which the cease-fire in Vietnam was to be based. He reserved the right to make known the views of his Government at a subsequent session. The Vietnamese Delegation formally protested against partition and therefore rejected both French and Soviet drafts."
On July 21, 1954, Tran Van Do requested without success that the Final Declaration included the paragraph below:
"The Conference takes note of the Declaration of the Government of the State of Vietnam undertaking: to make and support every effort to re-establish a real and lasting peace in Vietnam; not to use force to resist procedures for carrying the cease-fire into effect, in spite of the objections and reservations that the State of Vietnam has expressed."
Tran Van Do made another statement that protested against
(i) The fact that the South Vietnamese proposals had been "rejected without examination";
(ii) the "hasty" conclusion of an armistice agreement by the French and Viet-minh High Commands containing many provisions detrimental to the Vietnamese people;
(iii) the fixing of the date of future elections;
and concluded as follows:
".. the Government of the State of Vietnam requests that this Conference note that it does protest solemnly against the way in which the armistice has been concluded and the conditions of this armistice, without taking into account the deep aspirations of the Vietnamese people, and it reserves its full freedom of action [emphasis added] in order to safeguard the sacred right of the Vietnamese people to territorial unity, national independence and freedom." (Alan Watt, "The Geneva Agreements 1954 in Relation to Vietnam", 1967.)
At the end, neither the State of Vietnam nor the U.S. signed the Geneva Accords."
Since historians and scholars are held to a higher standard than the authors of the quoted article, in light of the SoVN's position as shown above, I would like to kindly request Carl and David to present evidence and facts to support the argument of why the Government of the Republic of Vietnam had to honor the Geneva Accords and to hold the elections.
While the Pentagon Papers was an interesting document at the time of its publication in 1971, quoting the Pentagon Papers and the likes in 2025 is doing a disservice to scholarships about the Vietnam War in the past 20-plus years to say the least.
Cheers,
Calvin Thai
Independent
From: Chau NGUYEN NGOC via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2025 2:54 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
Dear all,
Before I stop talking about this subject, I just want to thank all those of you who sent me a kind personal message. It made me think of the words of Professor Nguyễn Thế Anh when I told him that I wanted, with his help, to complete my way with a completely different one.
Best regards,
Nguyễn Ngọc Châu
yakiribocou@gmail.com
Mes 100 articles (plus de 40.400 vues)
https://independent.academia.edu/ChauNGUYENNGOC2
From: Carlyle Thayer via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2025 6:25 PM
To: Cau Thai <cvthai75@gmail.com>; David Marr <phanmarr@gmail.com>; Mc Hale, Shawn <mchale@gwu.edu>; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>; vsg@uw.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] The 1954 Geneva Accords, Regroupment and Elections
My reply to Calvin who wrote "Le Duan was the secretary of the Southern Regional Party Committee, then secretary of the Central Office of South Vietnam in the First Indochina War. He was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces in the South."
The Southern Regional Party Committee (Xu Uy Nam Bo) held its first conference in June 1956 long after the 300-day period for regroupment.
Le Duan was recalled to the north after July 1956 and left in mid-1957 according to a CIA study cited in my War By Other Means,
The Central Office of South Vietnam (Trung ương Cục miền Nam) was established in 1961-62 after Le Duan became Secretary of the Lao Dong Party in September 1960 at its third national congress in Hanoi.
Genera Vo Nguyen Giap was commander in chief the "Viet Minh forces" (People's Army of Vietnam) during the First Indo-China War. After the ceasefire Pham Hung and Van Tien Dung both represented the People's Army of Vietnam in Saigon to the International Control Commission and French High
I am not sure there was an "armed forces in the South" command. This was during the French period and Vietnam was divided into three regions North (Bac Ky), Centre (Trung Ky) and South (Nam Ky. If you consult the map on page 4 of my War By Other Means, you will note that Viet Minh control was in the form of "ink spots" with a heavy concentration in the lower Mekong Delta (Ca Mau and Ha Tien and adjacent to the Cambodian "Parrots beak)".
Carlyle A. Thayer, War By Other Means" National Liberation and Revolution in Viet-Nam 1954-60 (Sydney, Wellington, London and Boston: Allen & Unwin 1989) reprinted War By Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam, 1954-1960, Routledge Library Editions: Revolution in Vietnam Series, Volume 7 (London and New York: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), 2022).
Index page 248:
Nam Bo Regional Committee (Xu Uy Nam Bo), se also communist military forces xxiv, 50-2, 57, 59, 84, 86-8, 103, 131, 135-6, 190, 195; first conference (June 1956), 70, 83; fourteen point plan, 58-9, 64; Le Duan as secretary, 111, 154, 196; liaison with Trung Bo Regional Committee, 150, 153; meetings of 105 (dec 1956); policy on armed force, 86, 131, 154, 195; 142; policy review 83, 100; second conference (late 1956), 130-1, 151; third conference (Aug 1958), 151-3.
Calvin is beating a dead horse when he writes: "Le Duan’s jumping ship was a gross violation of the Geneva Accords". The ceasefire agreement made provision for the free movement of persons from one zone of control to another; that is from a French controlled zone to a zone controlled by the People's Army of Vietnam. The French were to assume control of provisional regroupment zones inthe south after the departure of the People's Army of Vietnam. Both forces (fr4ench and People's Army) were enjoined from reprisals.
Le Duan didn't go straight to "the enemy" but to the French Command and then safely boarded a friendly Polish ship. If Le Duan had remained in Ca Mau where the Viet Minh had been in administrative control, he would have lacked the security forces to protect him as a ranking party member after People's Army military forces left. So, he was able to travel in the south without being molested. I would put that down to prudence and good personal security. The post-Geneva period was not peaceful. The Binh Xuyen battled it out in Saigon against the Diem regime; Cao Dai and Hoa Hoa military forces were active iopposing Diem. Many VWP cadres secretly crossed into Cambodia for their security.
And before we get ahead of ourselves, Le Duan was under party orders in 1954 to organise a political struggle movement called Movement for the Protection of Peace and the Geneva Agreements to agitate peacefully for north-south consultations to hold elections. Recall that Article 14(a) of the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam, signed by French and People's Army High Commands, stated: "Pending the general elections which will bring about the unification of Viet-Nam, the conduct of civil administration in each regrouping zone shall be in the hands of the party whose forces are to be regrouped there in virtue of the present Agreement."
Article 14(b) provided that once "all the troops who are to be transferred have completely left that territory so as to free the zone assigned to the party in question." France was the party in question, not the State of Vietnam/Republic of Vietnam who were not bound by the Geneva Agreements. Was it realistic to expect that French Union forces could provide security to vast swaths of Nam Bo where the Viet Minh had been in control?
Le Duan began to advocate armed force when the Vietnam Workers' Party's (VWP) strategy of relying on the Geneva Agreements failed and the Diem government began reprisals under its Anti-Communist Denunciation Campaign (see my War By Other Means, 49, 55-56, 79, 81-82, 86, 88, 112, 114-117, 128, 131, 145, 147, 152, 183 and 194). The VWP's strategy also failed because the French withdrew from South Vietnam
If you read intelligence reports in the official government version of The Pentagon Papers, it was widely assessed that Ho Chi Minh's popularity would carry the day (certainly not Bao Dai or Ngo Dinh Diem). But the Soviet Union didn't press for elections because it was in their interest to keep Germany divided as well as Korea.
Carlyle A. Thayer
Emeritus Professor
UNSW Canberra
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
The University of New South Wales at the
Australian Defence Force Academy
Canberra, ACT 2610 Australia
Phone: +61 02 6251 1849
Mobile: 0437 376 429
Calling Mobile from overseas +61 437 376 429
From: Cau Thai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2025 7:03 AM
To: Carlyle Thayer <c.thayer@unsw.edu.au>; David Marr <phanmarr@gmail.com>; Mc Hale, Shawn <mchale@gwu.edu>; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>; vsg@uw.edu
Subject: [Vsg] The 1954 Geneva Accords, Regroupment and Elections
Dear Carl, Shawn, David and List,
For ease of discussion, I would like to create a new thread.
1. On the 1954 Geneva Accords:
Carl wrote,
"I categorically reject Calvin's assertion that Le Duan’s jumping ship was a gross violation of the “Geneva Accords”.
It is repeatedly clear from the text of the ceasefire agreement that “forces” (Article 1), refers to “armed forces” and “combatants,” specifically the People’s Army of Viet Nam and the French Union Forces Indo-China.
...
Le Duan was a member of Politburo of the Vietnam Workers’ Party a national political organisation. No matter how colorful the account of his escapades during the regroupment process, he was a non-combatant and was not required to regroup to the north.
...
Le Duan jumped ship to get out of Ca Mau in security, rather than travel by land through zones where control was contested."
Facts:
Le Duan was the secretary of the Southern Regional Party Committee, then secretary of the Central Office of South Vietnam in the First Indochina War. He was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces in the South.
For more than 10 years prior to his permanent move to Hanoi in the spring of 1957, Duan travelled across the country multiple times. However, there was not a single report of his close call of being captured by the adversary's forces.
Therefore, I am afraid it is in defiance of logic to say that on that January day in 1955, Duan came out of hiding, walked straight to his enemy to be checked in, and went aboard a Polish ship so that hours later, in the dark of the night, he could "get out of Ca Mau in security, rather than travel by land through zones where control was contested".
Unless there are more convincing arguments, let us agree to disagree on whether Le Duan’s jumping ship was a gross violation of the Geneva Accords.
For the rest of Carl's posting, the first sentence in his last paragraph is probably my best reply. It would be quite a bit challenging to address the Vietnam War in 100 words:-)
2. On regroupment:
Shawn wrote,
"A note on the 90,000 regroupees figure, which for decades has been used to underline the strength of the communists and of the DRV in the "south" in 1956. In fact, as I note in The First Vietnam War (2021), this statistic has often been misinterpreted. Vietnamese sources suggest that 80,000-90,000 regrouped from the south and Cambodia. "Roughly a third of them, or 27,962, were communist party cadres and soldiers; 13,327 Party cadres, military leaders, and soldiers came from the Mekong delta in particular. A 'not small number of relatives' and assorted others also made the trip" .(First Vietnam War, 263). My general estimate comes from Goscha; the precise numbers come from a 2018 Nhân Dân article. In short, the relatively low number of Party cadres and soldiers reflects the fact that the communists had a harder time recruiting in the South -- her defined as Nam Bộ/ Nam Kỳ/ Cochinchine than in other parts of Vietnam. "
Days leading to the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Geneva Accords last year, some social media users in Vietnam shared stories about how their relatives were ordered to stay behind despite of being fighters in the 9-year war or about how local men in the South were given uniforms, weapons and then sent to the gathering places to board ships heading North despite of never being fighters.
At the Liuzhou Conference in early July 1954 between Chinese and Vietnamese leaders, Vo Nguyen Giap talked of 4,000 Laotian soldiers and 3,000 Cambodian soldiers in addition to his army of roughly 300,000 soldiers. After Zhou Enlai suggested hiding weapons of non-uniformed fighters for later use, keeping some combatants back, Giap then said of a plan to regroup roughly 50,000 soldiers and 10,000 political personnel, and to have 5,000-10,000 staying behind. (Qian Jiang, "Zhou Enlai and the Geneva Conference", 1991.)
While we may never know the exact regroupees figure, it should be somewhere between Shawn's figure (low) and Giap's (high).
On elections:
David wrote,
"The US and Saigon government refused to follow through on the Geneva Agreement provision for free elections by 1956. That helps to explain Le Duan’s statement."
Facts:
From the day before the opening of the Geneva Conference to its last day, at different times, the State of Vietnam (SoVN) made their position about the Agreements unequivocally clear.
On April 25, 1954, the SoVN issued a statement that said in part:
"... neither the Chief of State, nor the Vietnamese Government, will consider themselves as bound by decisions running counter to the interests, i.e., independence and unity, of their country that would, at the same time, violate the rights of the peoples and offer a reward to aggression in opposition to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and democratic ideals".
On July 18, 1954, the SoVN delegation head, Tran Van Do, stated that:
"... he must categorically dissociate himself from any discussion on either the French or the Soviet draft of the proposed final conference resolution on the grounds that he could not accept the principle of partition on which the cease-fire in Vietnam was to be based. He reserved the right to make known the views of his Government at a subsequent session. The Vietnamese Delegation formally protested against partition and therefore rejected both French and Soviet drafts."
On July 21, 1954, Tran Van Do requested without success that the Final Declaration included the paragraph below:
"The Conference takes note of the Declaration of the Government of the State of Vietnam undertaking: to make and support every effort to re-establish a real and lasting peace in Vietnam; not to use force to resist procedures for carrying the cease-fire into effect, in spite of the objections and reservations that the State of Vietnam has expressed."
Tran Van Do made another statement that protested against
(i) The fact that the South Vietnamese proposals had been "rejected without examination";
(ii) the "hasty" conclusion of an armistice agreement by the French and Viet-minh High Commands containing many provisions detrimental to the Vietnamese people;
(iii) the fixing of the date of future elections;
and concluded as follows:
".. the Government of the State of Vietnam requests that this Conference note that it does protest solemnly against the way in which the armistice has been concluded and the conditions of this armistice, without taking into account the deep aspirations of the Vietnamese people, and it reserves its full freedom of action [emphasis added] in order to safeguard the sacred right of the Vietnamese people to territorial unity, national independence and freedom." (Alan Watt, "The Geneva Agreements 1954 in Relation to Vietnam", 1967.)
At the end, neither the State of Vietnam nor the U.S. signed the Geneva Accords.
Since information about the Geneva Accords from all sides is widely available nowadays, it would be great if David can provide a rationale of why the Government of the State of Vietnam/Republic of Vietnam had to "follow through on the Geneva Agreement provision for free elections by 1956"?
Best,
Calvin Thai
Independent
From: Chau NGUYEN NGOC via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2025 2:14 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Vietnam historiography
Dear all,
I'm sorry that what I said hurt some of you. I just did the difference between the western or occidental way of thinking and the one of the IPC members i.e the vietnamese professional revolutionaries.
Myself I practice the western way of thinking since Ĩ'm not a vietnamese professional revolutionary and I have been educated in France where I lived for more than 60 years. I'm sorry to make you think
other than what I wanted to tell you. Having a name like mine doesn't mean that I cannot have a way of thinking with heart and sentiments.
I just wanted to show my point of view based on my personal experience. I don't need to discuss what I don't agree with, since I respect everybody's opinion, even those that are different from mine.
I still affirm here my opinion which is that the Vietnamese professional revolutionaries have their own way of thinking when they have a major objective to obtain, here to organise and to win the general elections, and they didn't care to have to violate or not the Geneva agreement.
Nguyễn Ngọc Châu
yakiribocou@gmail.com
Mes 100 articles (plus de 40.200 vues)
https://independent.academia.edu/ChauNGUYENNGOC2
From: Nguyen-Vo, Thu-Huong via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2025 1:34 AM
To: Nhung Tran <nhungtuyet.tran@utoronto.ca>; mchale@gwu.edu; Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>; vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
I agree with Nhung about respecting colleagues who comment in good faith even when we disagree. I do not agree with Mr. Nguyễn Ngọc Châu’s frame of analysis, but it’s disturbing to see a number of Western (take your pick of whatever term—racially or geographically essentializing and place it in the historical context of colonization) academics rush to discipline a Viet-identified independent scholar. “Debasing,” really? This field may benefit from less policing of high-minded standards and more decolonization.
T. Nguyen-vo
From: Hiep Duc via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 8:24 PM
To: Nhung Tran <nhungtuyet.tran@utoronto.ca>; mchale@gwu.edu; Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>; vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
Change “occidental” to “western” then it is wholly acceptable.
From: Nhung Tran via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 7:36 PM
To: mchale@gwu.edu; Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>; vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
It's been pointed out to me off-list that Pierre's comment was meant to be ironic. I apologize missing this and offer as an explanation that in the context of current news, I can't tell the difference any longer. I apologize unreservedly for missing the irony intended.
In any case, I don't think it appropriate to pile on a colleague who is trying to comment in good faith, even if we may disagree with them, and even if in heated exchange, word choice may not be optimal.
Ntt
From: Nhung Tran <nhungtuyet.tran@utoronto.ca>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 9:17 PM
To: mchale@gwu.edu <mchale@gwu.edu>; Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>; vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu <vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu>; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
With all do respect to my esteemed colleague, the comment below is factually incorrect and as essentializing as previous references to "Vietnamese" or occidentals. I agree with Shawn about ensuring that VSG academic standards should apply to everyone.
Nhung Tuyet Tran
University of Toronto
From: Jerry Mark Silverman via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 7:04 PM
To: Larry Berman <lsberman@ucdavis.edu>; Larry Berman via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>; Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>; vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
Pham Xuan An was not the only one. As only one other example, Dinh Van De, who I considered to be a good friend and source of information, fooled Me completely from early 1972 until April 1975. As a former ARVN full Colonel he had served as a Deputy Chief of Staff to a Commander of an ARVN Corps, Mayor of Da Lat, and Governor of (former) Tuyen Duc and Binh Thuan before resigning his Commission to stand as a civilian and win election to the National Assembly (1967) -- serving as its Vice President (1967-1975) and Chairperson of the National Defense Committee (1974-1975). In that position, he maintained close relations with the most senior ARVN officers and other RVN Government officials. Finally, De was also a senior member of the official RVN delegation to Washington, DC in March 1975 to try and convince the U.S. Congress to renew American funding of the Thieu Government. During at least much of that time, he also served concurrently as a PLAF Military Intelligence Officer; the military consequences of which were significant on the ground in the south. Thus, whether or not the result of those last-minute meetings in Washington, DC, was a success or failure from De's perspective depends on which side you were on.
Jerry Mark Silverman
Retired World Bank Staff
Independent Researcher
Savannah, GA
From: Chau NGUYEN NGOC via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 4:39 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Vietnam hítoriography
Dear all,
I'm sorry to make you upset. For me, occidental people have a heart and think with their sentiments. And sometime, they think that the Vietnamese think like them. While, for a Vietnamese professional revolutionary, the objective is priority and all means could be used to get success. This is what I heard and learnt from my frequent conversations with a number of Vietnamese professional revolutionaries.
From: Larry Berman via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 3:09 PM
To: Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>; vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
Just one additional point: Mr. Chau is incorrect on the point he is trying to make about Pham Xuan An, who actually fooled everyone with his cover, most notably the RVN’s own Central Intelligence Organization, Vietnamese journalists, ARVN leaders, senior RVN leadership and a host of other Vietnamese.
Larry Berman
Professor Emeritus
University of California, Davis
From: Pierre Asselin via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 2:40 PM
To: mchale@gwu.edu
Cc: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>; vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
Shawn makes an important point here, Mr. Chau. You shouldn't write things like that on VSG.
Pierre
PS: Your comment is doubly offensive in light of the fact that throughout the modern era occidental people have been nothing but kind, supportive, generous, and peaceable toward Vietnam and the Vietnamese.
Pierre Asselin
Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations
San Diego State University
History Department
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050
From: Shawn McHale via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 2:27 PM
To: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>; vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
Chau Nguyen Ngoc informs us, about comments on the Geneva Accords, that "this is a thinking way of occidental people. The Vietnamese don't think with such kind of subtlety."
May I remind the interlocutor hat this is a listserv established by a professional group of academics. It is not a place to debase our discussion with such caricatured understandings of how "Occidentals" and "Vietnamese" think. It's embarrassing to see such claims on a professional list.
Shawn McHale
From: Chau NGUYEN NGOC via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 5:52 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>; vsg-request@mailman12.u.washington.edu
Subject: [Vsg] Vietnam war historiography
This is a thinking way of occidental people. The Vietnamese don't think with such kind of subtlety. That is why spies like Pham Van An had success with the occidental media. They have a problem to solve, they take all the means to solve it. A military can leave his rifle and become a civilian. But a Communist Party member without rifle is more dangerous than a soldier with one hundred rifles. The ICP didn't care of any treaty signed. As the French did with the treaties signed with the successive Vietnamese Emperors. Treaties are made to be torn when necessary. In 1991, the allies accepted orally not to expand NATO over the Elbe river. Orally acceptances of course have much less value .
Facts are there. Geneva Agreement or not, all the best Party members needed to organize and mobilise population in the South for the general elections received secret orders to stay in the South.
From: Shawn McHale via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 4:48 AM
To: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam War historiography
Re: Chau Nguyen Ngoc's statements, the Geneva Accords were about regroupment of *military* forces. It was not a violation of these accords for persons who were not in the military, but were Lao Đông party members, to stay behind.
From: Chau NGUYEN NGOC via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2025 6:56 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Vietnam War historiography
Dear all,
Just to tell you that an important number of Party members had the secret mission to stay in the South to organize the election supposed to be held in 1956. The Party did not care about violation or not of the Geneva Agreement.It has an objective to fulfill until success.
Two excerpts from What is to be done? by Lenin under the title of the cover page of the document Đường Kách mệnh (The Way of the Revolution), a collection of writings by Nguyễn Ái Quốc used to train selected new Thanh Niên members in 1925 showed that any Party member is more than a fighter: a professional revolutionary. 1) Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement.2) The role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a revolutionary party that is guided by the most advanced theory.
Did not Lenin say in his What is to be done? : « The only serious organizational principle for the active members of our movement should be the strictest secrecy, the strictest selection of members, and the training of professional revolutionaries»?
Secondly, I experienced direct long discussions with these professional revolutionaries about their role and combat during the war in the South and even after1975. My book in vietnamese talked about that.
Excerpt from “Cuộc hành trình xuyên thế kỷ XX của một gia đình Việt Nam”, Nguyễn Ngọc Châu, nxb Hội Nhà Văn, 2025
Chapter XIII
The Đổi Mới
13.1 Stories of cooperation with Vietnam
30 years of going regularly to Asia and Vietnam, Châu can tell a lot of his discussions with all the people he met during his trips. The following are some stories from these old days.
Nguyễn Vĩnh Nghiệp, President of the People's Committee of Hồ Chí Minh City (1989-1991)
In 1989, when Châu stepped back into Sài Gòn, this city had already the new name Hồ Chí Minh City, and its People's Committee President was Mr. Nguyễn Vĩnh Nghiệp after Mr. Phan Văn Khải and before Mr. Trương Tấn Sang. It is worth noting that, like many other Southern leaders, he did not gather in the North after the Geneva Conference (1954) although he had been a member of the Communist Party of Indochina since 1948. He had the secret mission to stay. In 1960, he was arrested and in 1964, he was given the opportunity to get out of prison in the turmoil of the government of the Republic of Vietnam following the coup d'état of General Nguyễn Khánh.
Nguyễn Ngọc Châu
yakiribocou@gmail.com
Mes 100 articles (plus de 40.100 vues)
https://independent.academia.edu/ChauNGUYENNGOC2
From: Paul Schmehl via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2025 2:05 PM
To: Mike High <mikebiking@yahoo.com>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Mike, this thread had so many nested comments it was getting very hard to follow. So, I deleted all except yours.
While your speculations are possible, another scenario fits too. The ICP could’ve lied about the numbers—routine for them—to fake Accord compliance and inflate their southern strength.
Ho’s 1941 Viet Minh united independence groups, only to purge rivals by 1947—Trotskyists like Tạ Thu Thâu and Tran Dinh Minh dead, Ngô Văn Xuyết fleeing to France for Crossfire. Nationalists fell too—Phan Bội Châu, spared by 1940’s death, but Trương Tử Anh, Phạm Quỳnh, Ngô Đình Khôi, and Lý Đông A gone by ’47.
By 1950, Ho’s opposition was crushed, though southern sects (Cao Đài, Hòa Hảo, Bình Xuyên) resisted him and Diệm alike, fueled by purge backlash.
Exact Viet Minh counts in 1954 or regroupees north are unknowable—90,000’s a plausible fabrication. By 1956, Diệm’s gains wowed Nixon (“inspiring accomplishment,” NYT, July 8, 1956); Life’s “Tough Miracle Man” hit May 13, 1957. Alarmed, the ICP’s May 1959 Resolution 15 sent men south, assassinating chiefs. In 1960, their Hanoi-orchestrated NLF masked an invasion of a sovereign state.
Paul Schmehl
paul.schmehl@gmail.com
From: Shawn McHale via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2025 1:54 PM
To: Mike High <mikebiking@yahoo.com>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear all,
A note on the 90,000 regroupees figure, which for decades has been used to underline the strength of the communists and of the DRV in the "south" in 1956. In fact, as I note in The First Vietnam War (2021), this statistic has often been misinterpreted. Vietnamese sources suggest that 80,000-90,000 regrouped from the south and Cambodia. "Roughly a third of them, or 27,962, were communist party cadres and soldiers; 13,327 Party cadres, military leaders, and soldiers came from the Mekong delta in particular. A 'not small number of relatives' and assorted others also made the trip" .(First Vietnam War, 263). My general estimate comes from Goscha; the precise numbers come from a 2018 Nhân Dân article. In short, the relatively low number of Party cadres and soldiers reflects the fact that the communists had a harder time recruiting in the South -- her defined as Nam Bộ/ Nam Kỳ/ Cochinchine than in other parts of Vietnam.
From: Mike High via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2025 10:26 AM
To: Carlyle Thayer <c.thayer@unsw.edu.au>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear all,
One thing that has always struck me about the regroupments of 1954-1955 was the number of Viet Minh “regroupees” to the north, typically estimated at 90,000 but sometimes much higher. (I have found surprisingly little concrete information about this estimate, but it seems to be accepted by many historians.)
Ninety thousand is a striking number, considering that the insurgency in the south relied a great deal on irregular forces who couldn’t simply be removed from their farmsteads and home villages and moved north. Some have accuseed the Viet Minh of “leaving behind” many of its supporters in case the planned reunification failed. But I find it a remarkably high number for an organization that didn’t have much in the way of full-time, regularly provisioned units.
This suggests that the Viet Minh’s footprint in the south was considerably larger than its critics suppose. I believe this to be another case (see Bay of Pigs) where American strategists were blinded by Cold War polemics, and underestimated the popular support for the Viet Minh in many areas. We always tended to assume that the Communists were succeeding primarily through subversion and sleight-of-hand, and ignoring the patient grass-level organizing that it had conducted for decades. Because of French efforts to suppress all resistance to their colonial regime, these efforts had to be clandestine, which in part explains the tunnel vision of high-ranking decisionmakers.
I’m not trying to take sides here; I say all of this in the context of a much broader mosaic that includes a brutal land reform campaign in the north, and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Catholics (not anticipated in the regroupment arrangement).
:: Mike High
Independent | Author
Great Falls, Virginia
USA
From: Carlyle Thayer via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2025 4:38 PM
To: via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>; vsg@uw.edu
Subject: [Vsg] Fw: Fw: VN War Historiography
Reply to Calvin Thai
My research on the 1954-1960 period has stood the test of time. Among things, it was based on documents produced by the Xứ Ủy Nam Bộ during this period that were captured later during the Vietnam War and deposited with the Combined Documentation Exploitation Center. I was given access in 1972.
The Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam was signed by the Commander-In-Chief of the People’s Army of Viet Nam and the Commander-In-Chief of the French Union Forces Indo-China. This document set out details of a ceasefire and regroupment of forces into zones on either side of a military demarcation line.
I categorically reject Calvin's assertion that Le Duan’s jumping ship was a gross violation of the “Geneva Accords”.
It is repeatedly clear from the text of the ceasefire agreement that “forces” (Article 1), refers to “armed forces” and “combatants,” specifically the People’s Army of Viet Nam and the French Union Forces Indo-China.
In July 1954 there were areas in southern Vietnam below the 17th parallel that were under the administrative control of the Vietnam Workers’ Party/Democratic Republic of Vietnam/Viet Minh. The Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam did not include any stipulation that the administrators of these areas or their supporters were required to regroup.
Le Duan was a member of Politburo of the Vietnam Workers’ Party a national political organisation. No matter how colorful the account of his escapades during the regroupment process, he was a non-combatant and was not required to regroup to the north.
Article 13 of the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam states:
“Pending general elections which will bring about the unification of Viet-Nam, the conduct of civil administration in each regrouping zone shall be in the hands of the party whose forces are to be regrouped there in virtue of the present agreement.”
“The party” does not include the State of Vietnam but the French Union in the south.
Le Duan jumped ship to get out of Ca Mau in security, rather than travel by land through zones where control was contested.
After the Geneva Conference of July 1954, Le Duan led a political campaign (đấu tranh chính trị) to get the Diem government to consult with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to hold elections mentioned in the unsigned Final Declaration on Indochina. This was political agitation not armed subversion.
Calvin omitted any discussion of Diem’s Anti-Communist Denunciation Campaign that led the People’s Army of Viet Nam to lodge repeated protests to the International Control Commission (India, Canada and Poland) about reprisals against “Viet Minh supporters”.
Calvin wrote; “It was not the people of southern Vietnam who started the Civil War." The “people of southern Vietnam” is an ambiguous term. In the 1950s, you had the State of Vietnam under Bao Dai, armed supporters of the Dai Viet and Vietnam Quoc Dan Dang, then Diem’s attempt to create a republic by taking on the Binh Xuyen mafia, Cao Dai and Hoa Hoa sects, suppression of ethnic minorities (montagnards) and “Vietnam Minh supporters.”
In January 1959, the Vietnam Workers’ Party authorized southern regroupees to return to the south and step up the political struggle movement to protect “Viet Minh supporters” and conduct “armed self-defence” against the Diem regime.
I agree with Calvin that one hundred words does not suffice to explain these complex events. It is not easy to find a single date or incident that initiated a civil war in southern Vietnam. A lot of blood was shed before the third national congress of the Vietnam Workers’ Party approved a strategy for the south that led to the founding of the National Front for the Liberation of South Viet Nam in December 1960.
Carl Thayer
Carlyle A. Thayer
Emeritus Professor
UNSW Canberra
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
The University of New South Wales at the
Australian Defence Force Academy
Canberra, ACT 2610 Australia
Phone: +61 02 6251 1849
Mobile: 0437 376 429
Calling Mobile from overseas +61 437 376 429
From: Paul Schmehl via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2025 3:55 PM
To: David Marr <phanmarr@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
The US and Saigon governments were not a part of the negotiations and were not signatories to the agreements. They had no obligation to follow through on the provision for free elections. Furthermore, the addendum that included the free elections, titled the Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference, was orally agreed to by most delegates (France, Viet Minh, China, USSR, UK) but never formally ratified., so it enforced nothing legally. It was merely an aspirational statement.
Paul Schmehl
paul.schmehl@gmail.com
From: Pierre Asselin via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2025 3:32 PM
To: David Marr <phanmarr@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fw: VN War Historiography
Dear David:
Neither the US nor the SOVN signed the Geneva accords on Vietnam. Neither, too, gave their consent to the Final Declaration that accompanied those accords.
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations
San Diego State University
History Department
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050
From: David Marr via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2025 3:19 PM
To: Cau Thai <cvthai75@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fw: VN War Historiography
The US and Saigon government refused to follow through on the Geneva Agreement provision for free elections by 1956. That helps to explain Le Duan’s statement.
David Marr
ANU
From: Pierre Asselin via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2025 9:13 AM
To: Cau Thai <cvthai75@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fw: VN War Historiography
Dearest Calvin:
The English version of the 1954 Geneva accords on Vietnam states that "[t]he withdrawals and transfers of the military forces, equipment and supplies of the two parties shall be completed within three hundred (300) days, as laid down in Article 2 of the present Agreement." There are other references to "forces" having to regroup in the text of the agreement, including specific references to the "Forces of the People's Army of Viet-Nam."
I'm assuming the Party insisted on such language for the express purpose of allowing individuals like Le Duan, who as far as I know was never a force/troop of the PAVN, to stay in the South legally. Fundamentally, him -- and countless other Đảng viêns -- staying back may have been against the spirit of the accords, but not their letter.
I'm with Carl on that one.
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations
San Diego State University
History Department
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050
From: Cau Thai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2025 8:51 AM
To: Carlyle Thayer <c.thayer@unsw.edu.au>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fw: VN War Historiography
Dear Carl and List,
In the first part of your post, you wrote, "Only armed combatants were required to regroup under the Geneva Agreement. Le Duan was a party official. Many communist party members remained in the South and suffered under No Dinh Diem extermination campaign", as a response to the following paragraph of mine:
"As the communist leader in the South, Le Duan had to go North according to the 1954 Geneva Accords.
In the daytime one day, late January 1955, Duan boarded the Hanoi-bound Polish vessel in Camau province. Late that night, he jumped ship to stay behind, a gross violation of the Accords. (See Lien-Hang Nguyen's "Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam", PM Vo Van Kiet's 2007 interview.)".
Did you question the credibility of the cited incident? It came from two independent sources: the first one, by a historian in the U.S, and the second, by a member of the communists' Southern Regional Party Committee in the 1950s and the CPV's Politburo later. Vo Van Kiet picked Le Duan up and took him into hiding that night.
If Le Duan was not required to regroup under the Geneva Agreement as you said, please provide a rationale of why, as the only Politburo member who was stationed in the South, Duan came out of hiding to go aboard the Polish vessel during the daytime and jump ship hours later that day.
In the past 50 years, hundreds of books about the Vietnam War were published in the West but truth was still a luxury until not long ago. There are reasons for this issue. As I recall, a historian once said he was an outcast since his view about the war did not fit the view of the "establishment", i.e. the Americans were bad guys, Ho Chi Minh was part Lenin, part Gandhi, part Confucius, etc. It seems cracks in that "structure" have grown bigger and bigger since the turn of the century. Credits are due to a new generation of historians, including several VSG members, for their dedication, hard work and well-researched scholarships. (As an exception, there were a very few good scholarships done prior to that time.)
Therefore, regarding the rest of your comment, it should be clear that I had no intention to address 20 years of a complicated war in less than 100 words, as shown below:
"In the summer of 1956, in Saigon, Duan completed "The Path of Revolution in the South (Đề cương cách mạng miền Nam)”, advocating violent revolution (bạo lực cách mạng) to take over the South.
Without the Americans' involvement and with guns and bullets from the Chinese and Russians, the Vietnamese communists would give people in the South no chance for a taste of freedom and democracy lasting 20 years.
It was not the people of southern Vietnam who started the Civil War."
The single most important takeaway in the paragraph above is that without Le Duan's drive for a war in which people from the same bloodline killed each other, more than 3 million lives could have been saved. Without the war, Vietnam could have remained a divided country but with a high probability to be similar to North and South Korea nowadays.
Last but not least, Carl's comments are appreciated. I believe in the power of dialogue. It helps build bridges, clears up misunderstanding, gets people closer to the truth, etc.
To mark the 50th anniversary of 30.4.1975, instead of attending protests, toasting wine, watching fireworks, let us have more dialogues.
Any complete disagreement, partial disagreement, partial agreement with what's written above? Since VSG is an academic forum, it would be great to hear from other members, especially members with the DNA of the Hung Kings.
Best,
Calvin Thai
Independent
From: Carlyle Thayer via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2025 5:30 PM
To: via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Fw: VN War Historiography
From: Carlyle Thayer <c.thayer@unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2025 11:12 AM
To: Cau Thai <cvthai75@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear VSG,
Let me add my two cents worth based on my detailed account of this period in War By Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Viet Nam, 1954-60, pp. 88 and 105-106, This was reprinted in Routledge Library Editions: Revolution in Vietnam Series (London: Routledge Publishers (Taylor & Francis Group), 2021).
Only armed combatants were required to regroup under the Geneva Agreement. Le Duan was a party official. Many communist party members remained in the South and suffered under No Dinh Diem extermination campaign.
Le Duan's The Path of Revolution in the South did recommend revolutionary violence but it was more nuanced than Calvin's account and it did not reflect the majority view on the Central Committee. The Central Committee met twice, in September (tenth plenum),k and December (eleventh plenum), 1956. The CD was concerned with the failure of land reform and a violent peasant uprising. In other words, the time was not ripe for armed rebellion in the south. That decision was made in January 1959 at the 15th plenum.
The Nam Bo Regional Committee met in December 1956 to consider the Politburo's Resolution on The Situation and Missions of the Revolution in the South (June 1956) and Le Duan's The Line of the Revolution in the South. The plenum concluded that "to a certain extent it is necessary t have self-defence and armed propaganda forces in order to support the political struggle and eventually use those armed forces to carry out a revolution to overthrow U.S.-Diem.
This was a major decision, by as I wrote it "was not a carte blanche to resume all-out guerilla struggle, however." The plenum's decision resolved a dispute within the Party due to the failure off political struggle, reliance on the framework of the Geneva Agreements and the use of sect force to achieve unification."
And, as I concluded, "The importance of the decision to sanction the use of force should not be underestimated. The policy spelled out in Duong Loi Cach Mang Mien Nam... Was mainly a justification for not taking immediate, premature action. On the one hand, the restriction on the use of force had been removed; yet on the other hand, no encouragement was given to its immediate employment. In brief, force would be used at some future time, when circumstances were ripe. With that issue resolved, cadres were enjoined to build up their organisation in preparation for the future,"
A secret directive accompanied Duong Loi Cach Mang Mien Nam that was sent to all Party members in Nam Bo at province level and above. It authorised limited policy of 'killing tyrants' (tru gian).
Cheers,
Carl
Carlyle A. Thayer
Emeritus Professor
UNSW Canberra
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
The University of New South Wales at the
Australian Defence Force Academy
Canberra, ACT 2610 Australia
Phone: +61 02 6251 1849
Mobile: 0437 376 429
Calling Mobile from overseas +61 437 376 429
From: Cau Thai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2025 9:45 AM
To: vsg@uw.edu
Cc: VietnamStudies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear Michele, Pierre and List,
I apologize for the late reply. I would like to share my humble thoughts on the points raised.
As the communist leader in the South, Le Duan had to go North according to the 1954 Geneva Accords.
In the daytime one day, late January 1955, Duan boarded the Hanoi-bound Polish vessel in Camau province. Late that night, he jumped ship to stay behind, a gross violation of the Accords. (See Lien-Hang Nguyen's "Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam", PM Vo Van Kiet's 2007 interview.)
In the summer of 1956, in Saigon, Duan completed "The Path of Revolution in the South (Đề cương cách mạng miền Nam)”, advocating violent revolution (bạo lực cách mạng) to take over the South.
Without the Americans' involvement and with guns and bullets from the Chinese and Russians, the Vietnamese communists would give people in the South no chance for a taste of freedom and democracy lasting 20 years.
It was not the people of southern Vietnam who started the Civil War.
Unlike decades ago, good scholarships about the war are now widely available. Fifty years should be long enough to clear up any confusion over the war's nature. Therefore, members who may have different thoughts are more than welcome to join this discussion.
Best,
Calvin Thai
Independent
PS: While I am for the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, I am against how Washington conducted and exited the Vietnam War.
From: Mark Sidel via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2025 4:00 PM
To: David Marr <phanmarr@gmail.com>
Cc: VietnamStudies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Here is David’s fascinating piece on his USMC experience, published in JVS.
Best wishes…. Mark
Mark Sidel | UW-Madison | sidel@wisc.edu
From: David Marr via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2025 3:19 PM
To: michele thompson <thompson.michele@sbcglobal.net>
Cc: VietnamStudies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Many thanks for your interest. I published an article on my USMC experience some years ago. I’ll have to track down the citation.
Basically in 1962-63 helicopter ops, we resupplied outlying posts and brought injured to hospital. At CINCPac in Hawaii in 1963-64 I monitored Vietnam events for staff and briefed teams enroute to Saigon.
Cheers,
David
From: Thompson, C. M. via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2025 1:50 PM
To: David Brown <nworbd@gmail.com>
Cc: VietnamStudies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear Pierre,
I think that by the time period this discussion concentrates on, after the introduction of US ground combat troops in March 1965, the thousands of Vietnamese living in the RVN who worked for their own govenment or for the US were in a very tough position with few good choices open to them. In many ways the same can be said of the thousands of residents of the RVN who opposed both their own government and the US involvement in Vietnamese affairs.
If the United States had not supported the return of the French to Vietnam and the rest of French Indochina following World War II and the Vietnamese had been left to argue, perhaps fight, about their own government at that time then by the mid 1960s who can say what choices might have been open to the people of southern Vietnam.
regards
Michele
C. Michele Thompson
Professor of Southeast Asian History
Southern Connecticut State University
From: michele thompson via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2025 1:22 PM
To: Anthony Morreale <amorreale22@gmail.com>
Cc: VietnamStudies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear Everyone,
My apologies for just now starting to fully respond to some of the messages on this thread.
I for one would love to see David Marr write a memoir!
cheers
Michele
C. Michele Thompson
Professor of Southeast Asian History
Southern Connecticut State University
From: David Brown via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2025 2:31 PM
To: Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear Pierre, Mark et al.,
Midway through a four-year posting to Vietnam, my first assignment as a US Foreign Service Officer, I concluded that US Forces' had failed to comprehend what sort of a war they had been sent to fight. There were exceptions -- a few brilliant contrarians like John Paul Vann (to whom I reported for 2+ years) and Frank Scotton, who conceived and trained the Vietnamese teams that, before and after the 1968 Tết offensive, I supported in their mission of tracking popular sentiment in contested areas.
US officers from Westmorland on down in the first years of US intervention were typically rigid in their belief that there was only one way to fight a war in Vietnam or anyplace else. Their Vietnamese counterparts were by and large passionate anti-communists who could perhaps teach the Americans to be tactically effective but more often were ignored.
That hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese found their way south in 1945, and that at least as many risked all to find sanctuary abroad after April 1975 is, to my mind, persuasive evidence that the 'Vietnam War' was fundamentally a civil war.
Regards to all, David Brown
US Foreign Service 1964-96
Contemporary Vietnam-focused journalist 2008-present
From: Dutton, George via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2025 11:47 AM
To: Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
As an avowed pacifist, I hold that wars are, on their face, immoral (and most are likely illegal too from multiple international law vantage points). Wars represent instances of abject human failure. That said, I would argue that any soldier (of any side) who harmed civilians, who killed civilians, who tortured civilians, who destroyed civilian property/homes, who damaged ecosystems, who forcibly removed people from their homes against their will, or who violated the rules of warfare more generally with respect to lawful combatants was engaging in immoral and criminal behavior. I would imagine that such violations would encompass a substantial swath of combatants in this war.
_______________________________________________
George Dutton (Pronouns: He/Him/His)
Professor
UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
tel: (310) 825-0523
fax: (310) 825-8808
http://www.alc.ucla.edu/person/george-e-dutton/
From: Anthony Morreale via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2025 11:46 AM
To: Mark Sidel <mark.sidel@wisc.edu>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Professors Dutton’s and Sidel’s reorienting of the conversation I think provides a sympathetic opening to humbly suggest that what we really need is for VSG’s very own Professor Marr to write his memoirs.
As a founding member of the Bulletin for Concerned Asian Scholars, and a man who went from marine intel officer in country in ’62, was expelled from RVN for participation in peace demonstrations in 1967, completing a Berkeley PhD in tumultuous 1968, to director of the Indochina Resource Center in 1971, he was an invaluable contributor to and witness of the foundation of scholarly orthodoxy. It’s hard to imagine a figure better suited to give testimony on the matter.
It would without a doubt make for a great read.
Best,
Anthony
PhD Candidate
Berkeley History
From: Pierre Asselin via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2025 11:09 AM
To: Mark Sidel <mark.sidel@wisc.edu>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear Mark, George, and All:
Thanks for this. I'll write more later, but for now I have a question for you, Mark and George specifically, and others on the list generally.
Assuming as you and many others do that America's war in Vietnam was in fact both criminal and immoral, what should we then make of the (pretty sizable number of) Vietnamese who worked with and otherwise supported/abetted the anticommunist American military enterprise in Vietnam? Were those Vietnamese criminal and immoral as well? Or were they, too,victims of the United States? Fundamentally, on a day-to-day basis throughout the period of the American War, there were more Vietnamese fighting communist-led Vietnamese forces in the South than there were Americans doing the same (the casualty figures amply demonstrate that reality). By the aforementioned rationale, what should we make of those individuals?
Sincere thanks in advance.
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations
San Diego State University
History Department
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050
From: Mark Sidel via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2025 10:51 AM
To: George Dutton <dutton@humnet.ucla.edu>; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Thank you, George. Well said.
Mark
Mark Sidel | UW-Madison | sidel@wisc.edu
From: Dutton, George via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2025 10:47 AM
To: Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Pretty sure the criminality and immorality of the American involvement is beyond dispute at this point (irrespective of the immorality and criminality of other actors). My other views of the war’s complexity may have evolved over the year, but this is a reality I will continue to teach.
_______________________________________________
George Dutton (Pronouns: He/Him/His)
Professor
UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
tel: (310) 825-0523
fax: (310) 825-8808
http://www.alc.ucla.edu/person/george-e-dutton/
From: Hawk, Alan J CIV DHA DHA R&E ACTIVITY (USA) via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2025 6:03 AM
To: Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Growing up in the United States during that period, I recall hearing the United States government perspective through U.S. Government spokespeople talking to the press. I heard the Viet Cong / North Vietnamese perspective through protestors. I never heard a distinct South Vietnamese perspective; it was almost invisible. In contrast with the wars in Ukraine, where both Ukrainian and Russian perspective are being very aggressively promoted in the United States, and in Israel, where both Israeli, Hamas, and Hezbollah (less so) views are also aggressively promoted.
The communist forces placed an enormous effort in fighting in the information battlespace, which neither the United States nor the South Vietnamese apparently thought existed. Even during the Global War on Terrorism, the United States did not place the emphasis on the information battlespace, in hindsight, it should have.
V/r
Alan Hawk
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily representative of the Department of Defense, or the military services.
From: Hue-Tam Tai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2025 7:09 PM
To: liam@hawaii.edu; passelin@sdsu.edu
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Most of the scholars of the "orthodox" school did not read Vietnamese. I suspect that their views of Vietnam and Vietnamese history was significantly shaped by Etudes Vietnamiennes which Nguyen Khac Vien edited since 1953.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
From: Liam Kelley via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2025 6:08 PM
To: Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear Pierre and list,
I've wondered about this too. I once came across a magazine that was published in the late 1960s in English by the NLF and it had a lot of the key points that make up what we call the "orthodox narrative." I suspect that if we looked into the activities of the pro-North group of Vietnamese in France at that time, we'd probably find them saying/publishing the same ideas. How and when those ideas made it into the minds of people in North America, however, remains a mystery to me, but it would make sense that people were coming into contact with those ideas in English and French.
Liam Kelley
Future Governor of Northern Vermont (formerly known as "Canada")
From: Carlyle Thayer via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2025 7:01 PM
To: via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] The Vietnam War
Dear VSGs,
In response to Pierre Asselin, I have dredged up my course guide on The Vietnam War taught as a two-hour graduate seminar here in Australia in 1997. I couldn't find electronic versions of my course guide. I think the last time I taught this course was 1999.
For those who don't me I am a dual citizen, American by birth and Australian by naturalisation. I served in Vietnam with the International Voluntary Services from 1967-68.
Please see the attachment for a general overview. I tried to present four sides: US, DRV (North Vietnam), RVN (South Vietnam) and Australia.
Carlyle A. Thayer
Emeritus Professor
UNSW Canberra
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
The University of New South Wales at the
Australian Defence Force Academy
Canberra, ACT 2610 Australia
From: Pierre Asselin via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2025 7:45 AM
To: Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear Ben/All:
Just to clarify, I'm not saying that Kahin's and others' scholarship was based on materials acquired during their time in Vietnam, but that their worldview was shaped and conditioned by the visits, and that worldview informed the nature/contours of their basic arguments about the American war in Vietnam. Hanoi always made a point to host individuals already embracing favorable positions and sympathies. The experiences created for those individuals, I'm suggesting, variously reinforced and validated their positions and sympathies, which in turn served to make their scholarship consonant with Hanoi's official narrative on the war.
I just find it hard to believe that the parallels between Hanoi's official narrative and the core arguments advanced by "orthodox" scholars are mere coincidence. The "Ho-as-nationalist" and "southerners-as-puppets" (or their total dismissal as legitimate political actors by orthodox scholars) constitute particularly strong evidence of this, I believe.
I really appreciate all the responses. You've given me much to think about.
By the way, I'm abandoning that project. I'm redirecting my efforts toward elucidating how Vietnamese communist revolutionary strategies and tactics could be recycled by Canada to defeat America in the current tariff war.....
Love you all, and thank you again. I plan on being in Hanoi in mid-May. Beer on me if you're around.
Ca-na-da muôn năm!
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations
San Diego State University
History Department
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050
Latest Publications: Vietnam's American War: A New History, 2nd Edition & "National Liberation by Other Means: US Visitor Diplomacy in the Vietnam War" in Past & Present (https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtad021)
To: Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Dear Pierre and List,
During Vietnam's Civil War, Zinn, Kahin, Fitzgerald and Kolko visited North Vietnam at different times: In early 1968, Summer 1971, late 1974-early 1975, and Spring 1975 respectively. Fitzgerald also visited the NLF-controlled area in 1973. Regardless of when their books were published, I think it was their experiences, in Vietnam and elsewhere, not those visits, that shaped their view about the war.
Pierre wrote, "... the US had no business being in Vietnam and their war was immoral/criminal; the war was not a civil war but a national resistance against US imperialism; the Vietnamese who fought the US were heirs to a millennia-old tradition of resisting foreign aggression; Ho was a nationalist first and foremost; etc".
These arguments are what I heard in my history class at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in the early 1980s, shortly after my family's arrival from Pulau Bidong refugee camp to the States. In retrospect, my instructor had no other options to choose then.
Calvin Thai
Independent
From: Benedict Kerkvliet via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2025 12:11 AM
To: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>; vsg@uw.edu; Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
9 Mar 2025, Honolulu
Dear Pierre and all VSG folks,
Thank you, Pierre, for your query, which prompted me to look again at books published by Kahin, Kahin and Lewis, Kolko, Zinn, and a few others alluded to in your message. The sources cited in their publications have little if anything to do with visits to northern Vietnam prior to 1975. I seriously doubt their analyses were based on, or were validated by readers because of, such visits.
Pierre's posting also pushed me to recall why, on what evidence, did I begin, in the mid 1960s, to question and then oppose US government politics regarding Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The overwhelming evidence for me in 1964-1969 came from US news reports in US newspapers that I read in Montana, Washington, and Wisconsin while a student there. Also influencing me were my readings about nationalism, colonialism, and related topics regarding the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Korea, Japan, China, and parts of Africa and South America. Such readings and courses I took at Whitman College as an undergraduate and the U of Wisconsin-Madison as a graduate student strongly indicated that a desire for national independence was a major factor in movements opposed to foreign domination, whether or not such movements had communist and/or socialist elements.
I specifically remember being dumbfounded by Henry Kissinger when he met with a small group of professors and grad students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1967 or 1968 (I can't now recall exactly). Kissinger was then an advisor to president Johnson. Myself and a few other grad students in the room asked if he thought nationalism was an important aspect of why/how Vietnamese and Laotians were opposing the US efforts there and the governments there backed by the US. He argued, vigorously, that communists were not and never would be nationalists, that communist party leaders cared little or nothing about nations, etc. So, for him, any movement connected to communism was antithetical to the US, to nationalism, and to democracy.
Ben
Ben Kerkvliet
Emeritus Professor
Australian National University
From: David Marr via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 7, 2025 10:19 PM
To: Vietnam Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
I don’t think it will prove accurate to equate early 1970s visits to northern Vietnam with parroting the Hanoi line. Frances FitzGerald, Fred Branfman, Gareth Porter and I travelled around the north for three weeks in late 1974, going to Nghe An in particular. Each of us published essays following our return. Our different backgrounds insured that content varied. In my case, as a former Marine captain in intelligence I had looked in particular for military activity, not noting anything remarkable. So I was stunned to hear of major operations four weeks later. Clearly most of the movement from the north had occurred before December.
David Marr
ANU
From: Shawn McHale via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 7, 2025 2:15 PM
To: Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Perhaps because I went to Cornell, and indeed had an office my last year next to George Kahin, I think you need to separate what George Kahin thought compared Frances Fitzgerald, Kolko, or many others in the so-called orthodox school thought. Kahin actually had extensive Southeast Asia experience, spoke Indonesian, and so on. I don't think the experience of being in the North is what shaped his scholarship. Rather, his experience in Indonesia during its war for independence, and there in the 1950s, and his knowledge of how Suharto came to power in 1965, shaped the way that he saw Vietnam.
Shawn McHale
From: Pierre Asselin via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 7, 2025 10:08 AM
To: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>; vsg@uw.edu
Subject: [Vsg] VN War Historiography
Beloved Comrades:
I was recently asked to write a piece addressing the evolution of scholarship on the American war in Vietnam. In putting it together, I was struck by the parallels/resonance between Hanoi’s own narrative on it (which has essentially remained the same since wartime) and that peddled by so-called orthodox scholars whose scholarship continues to shape Western thinking on the war, especially in American colleges and universities (the US had no business being in Vietnam and their war was immoral/criminal; the war was not a civil war but a national resistance against US imperialism; the Vietnamese who fought the US were heirs to a millennia-old tradition of resisting foreign aggression; Ho was a nationalist first and foremost; etc.).
Yeah, it only took me 30 years to notice this….
Anyway, in looking at the texts upon which this orthodox school of Vietnam War studies is built, I noticed that several prominent authors were actually in North Vietnam and in “liberated” zones of the South during the war. That includes journalist Frances Fitzgerald, whose Fire in the Lake became a holy text of sorts for many US-based “orthodox” academics.
My questions for you, distinguished List members, are the following:
· Seeing as wartime guests of Hanoi and the NLF were invariably fed a steady dose of propaganda during their visits, it is fair/sensible to cast such scholars as George McT. Kahin, Howard Zinn, and Gabriel Kolko as unwitting – because I think they genuinely believed they uncovered important “truths” on their visits – tools of Hanoi? In other words, did these scholars drink the proverbial Kool-Aid/Vinamilk while there, came back convinced of the veracity and accuracy of the narrative they learned and observed, and then proceed to repeat/recycle that narrative in their writings?
· Is it fair/sensible to argue that being “there” became an important source of validation and legitimation of their scholarship, and that made it challenging for peers to question their conclusions (at least until others started going to Vietnam and mine archives there in the early 1990s)?
· By extension, is it fair/sensible to consider the way we think about and teach the war in US colleges and universities as evidence of the efficacy of Hanoi’s wartime propaganda efforts and its visitor diplomacy in particular?
I’m currently working on a paper addressing this and related issues, and would certainly appreciate any input from anyone kind enough to volunteer it, to me directly or through the List.
Việt Nam học muôn năm!
D/c Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations
San Diego State University
History Department
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050
Latest Publications: Vietnam's American War: A New History, 2nd Edition & "National Liberation by Other Means: US Visitor Diplomacy in the Vietnam War" in Past & Present (https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtad021)
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