Philippe Devillers (1920-2016)

Guillemot Francois francois.guillemot at ens-lyon.fr

Sat Feb 20 08:56:18 PST 2016

Dear all,

I have received the sad news of the decease of the French historian

Phillipe Devillers.

Deepest sympathies to his family.

See on Mémoires d'Indochine :

http://indomemoires.hypotheses.org/21651

Best,

F

---

François Guillemot

Historien, Ingénieur de Recherche au CNRS

françois.guillemot at ens-lyon.fr

Shawn McHale mchale at gwu.edu

Sat Feb 20 09:35:51 PST 2016

Sad news! Well, Devillers led a full life, and his works are essential to

an understanding of the end of French rule in Vietnam.

Shawn McHale

Nhu Miller trantnhu at gmail.com

Sat Feb 20 12:15:12 PST 2016

La fin d'une epoque.

Savez vous pourquoi il a change de nom

de Mullender a deVillers?

T.T. Nhu

Hoang t. Dieu-Hien dieuhien at uw.edu

Sat Feb 20 12:55:23 PST 2016

Ma question aussi.

William S Turley wturley at siu.edu

Sat Feb 20 13:07:08 PST 2016

À l’époque où il était toujours employé dans le section de presse de la Corps Expéditionnaire de General LeClerc. Quand il a commencé contribuer des dépêches à Le Monde, il a affiché le nom de plume « Devilliers » pour maintenir une distinction entre les deux rôles.

Bill Turley

Dien Nguyen nguyendien519 at gmail.com

Sat Feb 20 21:25:36 PST 2016

Non seulement Devillers, mais quelques principaux acteurs dans les

relations franco-vietnamiennes en 1945-46 portaient aussi des pseudonymes

ou noms de guerre, notamment Hô` Chi’ Minh, Leclerc et Sainteny.

Nguyễn Điền

Independent Researcher

Canberra

Nhu Miller trantnhu at gmail.com

Sun Feb 21 07:51:34 PST 2016

If you watch at the video enclosed in the obit about deVillers,

he talks about having to assume a nom de guerre.

What a loquacious gent!

Nhu

John Whitmore johnkw at umich.edu

Mon Feb 22 11:42:00 PST 2016

I remember him teaching at Cornell the summer of 1965 (George Kahin brought

him in), but I have no idea if any record exists of what he said. there

John Whitmore, U. of Michigan

Charles Keyes keyes at u.washington.edu

Mon Feb 22 12:27:34 PST 2016

I think he came to Cornell in the second semester of the 1964-65 academic year. I recall sitting in on his seminar in the spring of 1965 and learning much from the detailed critique of American involvement that Devilliers made. But like John, I cannot recall the specifics of what he said. George Kahin had by this time become a leading critic of the American war in Indochina.

Charles Biff Keyes

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and International Studies

University of Washington

Seattle, WA 98195

Dan Duffy vietnamlit at gmail.com

Mon Feb 22 14:19:29 PST 2016

I am thinking I sat with him at a public talk when he heckled the speaker,

an old friend, like a schoolboy. Marvelous.

I am certain I pulled his contemporary history off a shelf of an upscale

used book store on my rounds visiting the Orientalist and Vietnamese books

of Paris and fell right into it. He had that astonishing gift of getting it

right the first time while it was a going on.

Jayne Werner jaynewerner at gmail.com

Mon Feb 22 14:57:10 PST 2016

Philippe Devillers taught a course on the first Indochina War, as I remember it ( I took the course). His lectures closely followed his book, Histoire du Vietnam de 1940 a 1952. This book, crammed full of information and almost first-person reportage on the ground (although I believe he attended a number of conferences and he certainly had high-level contacts among the French), doesn’t have any footnotes. For years, scholars tried to pin him down on who his sources were, including, notably, Stein Tonnesson. At a conference I attended in Europe in the l990s someone raised the hypothesis that Ngo Dinh Nhu was one of his main informants for political developments among the Vietnamese contestants.

I would like to bring a 2015 publication to the attention of VSGers, the lead essay in Tam Ngo’s and Justine Quijada’s book:

Jayne S. Werner, “God and the Vietnamese Revolution: Religious Organizations in the Emergence of Today’s Vietnam”, in Tam T.T. Ngo and Justine B. Quijada, “ Atheist Secularism and its Discontents: A Comparative Study of Religion and Communism in Eurasia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Olga and Wayne may wish to add it to their bibliography. I notice that some book chapters are listed.

Jayne Werner

Professor Emeritus

Long Island University