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