Author: Nicholas Tarling
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9814722235
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 463
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Book Description
During the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, the British government sought to avoid escalation of the war in Vietnam and to help bring about peace. The thinking that lay behind these endeavours was often insightful and it is hard to argue that the attempt was not worth making, but the British government was able to exert little, if any, influence on a power with which it believed it had, and needed, a special relationship. Drawing on little-used papers in the British archives, Nicholas Tarling describes the making of Britain’s Vietnam policy during a period when any compromise proposed by London was likely to be seen in Washington as suggestive of defeat, and attempts to involve Moscow in the process over-estimated the USSR’s influence on a Hanoi determined on reunification.
Author: Dixee Bartholomew-Feis
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700616527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 446
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Book Description
Some will be shocked to find out that the United States and Ho Chi Minh, our nemesis for much of the Vietnam War, were once allies. Indeed, during the last year of World War II, American spies in Indochina found themselves working closely with Ho Chi Minh and other anti-colonial factions-compelled by circumstances to fight together against the Japanese. Dixee Bartholomew-Feis reveals how this relationship emerged and operated and how it impacted Vietnam's struggle for independence. The men of General William Donovan's newly-formed Office of Strategic Services closely collaborated with communist groups in both Europe and Asia against the Axis enemies. In Vietnam, this meant that OSS officers worked with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, whose ultimate aim was to rid the region of all imperialist powers, not just the Japanese. Ho, for his part, did whatever he could to encourage the OSS's negative view of the French, who were desperate to regain their colony. Revealing details not previously known about their covert operations, Bartholomew-Feis chronicles the exploits of these allies as they developed their network of informants, sabotaged the Japanese occupation's infrastructure, conducted guerrilla operations, and searched for downed American fliers and Allied POWs. Although the OSS did not bring Ho Chi Minh to power, Bartholomew-Feis shows that its apparent support for the Viet Minh played a significant symbolic role in helping them fill the power vacuum left in the wake of Japan's surrender. Her study also hints that, had America continued to champion the anti-colonials and their quest for independence, rather than caving in to the French, we might have been spared our long and very lethal war in Vietnam. Based partly on interviews with surviving OSS agents who served in Vietnam, Bartholomew-Feis's engaging narrative and compelling insights speak to the yearnings of an oppressed people-and remind us that history does indeed make strange bedfellows.
Author: Sylvia Ellis
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
This work presents an examination of the impact of the Vietnam War on the Anglo-American 'special relationship' during the years of the Johnson presidency.
Author: T. Smith
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230591663
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
British foreign policy towards Vietnam illustrates the evolution of Britain's position within world geopolitics, 1943-1950. It reflects the change of the Anglo-US relationship from equality to dependence, and demonstrates Britain's changing association with its colonies and with the other European imperial spheres within Southeast Asia.
Author: Pablo de Orellana
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1788317289
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam? What led US policy makers to become convinced that Vietnam posed a threat to American interests? In The Road to Vietnam, Pablo de Orellana traces the origins of the US-Vietnam War back to 1945-1948 and the diplomatic relations fostered in this period between the US, France and Vietnam, during the First Vietnam War that pitted imperial France against the anti-colonial Vietminh rebel alliance. With specific focus on the representation of the parties involved through the processes of diplomatic production, the book examines how the groundwork was laid for the US-Vietnam War of the 60's and 70's. Examining the France-Vietminh conflict through poststructuralist and postcolonial lenses, de Orellana reveals the processes by which the US and France built up the perception of Vietnam as a communist threat. Drawing on archival diplomatic texts, the representation of political identity between diplomatic actors is examined as a cause leading up to American involvement in the First Vietnam War, and will be sure to interest scholars in the fields of fields of diplomatic studies, international relations, diplomatic history and Cold War history.
Author: David G. Marr
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520212282
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 635
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Book Description
The year 1945 was the most significant in the modern history of Vietnam. One thousand years of dynastic politics and monarchist ideology came to an end. Drawing on extensive archival research, interviews, and an examination of published memoirs and documents, David G. Marr has written a richly detailed and descriptive analysis of this crucial moment in Vietnamese history. 18 illustrations.
Author: Stein Tonnesson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520269934
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
"Vietnam 1946 is a masterful narrative of the immediate origins of the first Vietnam War. It is, by turns, vivid and shocking; it is always immensely revealing. Tønnesson brings forensic clarity to crucial events about which, even now, some sixty years later, fundamental misapprehensions exist. An outstanding work of scholarship of major international importance."—Martin Thomas, author of Empires of Intelligence "Tønnesson captures brilliantly the 1946 confrontation between two republics: France determined to redeem itself from Axis humiliation by regaining Indochina; Vietnam equally determined to retake independence after eighty years of colonial servitude. Tønnesson also demonstrates, however, that some leaders on each side really wanted a peaceful, mutually beneficial outcome. Descent into full-scale war was not inevitable. This is a carefully researched, clearly written analysis of a vital moment in the 20th century history of both countries. It is also a meditation on the elusive boundary between free will and determinism in human affairs."—David Marr, author of Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945 “Stein Tønnesson's Vietnam 1946 answers the fundamental question about the first of Vietnam's 20th century wars, the one fought against the French: how did it happen? He has written a meticulously researched account which restores their contingency to the events. The first Indochina war, like those that succeeded it, was not inevitable and Tønnesson explains why and how it happened anyway.”—Marilyn Young, author of The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990
Author: Eugenie M. Blang
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442209232
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
Allies at Odds examines America's Vietnam policy from 1961 to 1968 in an international context by focusing on the United States' relationship with its European partners France, West Germany, and Great Britain. The European response to America's Vietnam policy provides a framework to assess this important chapter in recent American history within the wider perspective of international relations. Equally significant, the respective approaches to the "Vietnam question" by the Europeans and Americans reveal the ongoing challenge for nation-states of transcending narrowly defined state-centered policies for a global perspective pursuant of common goals among the trans-Atlantic allies. Blang explores the failure of France, West Germany, and Great Britain to significantly influence American policy-making.
Author: John Nagl
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313077037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
Armies are invariably accused of preparing to fight the last war. Nagl examines how armies learn during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared in organization, training, and mindset. He compares the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan Emergency from 1948-1960 with that developed in the Vietnam Conflict from 1950-1975, through use of archival sources and interviews with participants in both conflicts. In examining these two events, he argues that organizational culture is the key variable in determining the success or failure of attempts to adapt to changing circumstances. Differences in organizational culture is the primary reason why the British Army learned to conduct counterinsurgency in Malaya while the American Army failed to learn in Vietnam. The American Army resisted any true attempt to learn how to fight an insurgency during the course of the Vietnam Conflict, preferring to treat the war as a conventional conflict in the tradition of the Korean War or World War II. The British Army, because of its traditional role as a colonial police force and the organizational characteristics that its history and the national culture created, was better able to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency during the course of the Malayan Emergency. This is the first study to apply organizational learning theory to cases in which armies were engaged in actual combat.
Author: Mark Philip Bradley
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
In this study of the encounter between Vietnam and the United States from 1919 to 1950, Mark Bradley fundamentally reconceptualizes the origins of the Cold War in Vietnam and the place of postcolonial Vietnam in the history of the twentieth century. Among the first Americans granted a visa to undertake research in Vietnam since the war, Bradley draws on newly available Vietnamese-language primary sources and interviews as well as archival materials from France, Great Britain, and the United States. Bradley uses these sources to reveal an imagined America that occupied a central place in Vietnamese political discourse, symbolizing the qualities that revolutionaries believed were critical for reshaping their society. American policymakers, he argues, articulated their own imagined Vietnam, a deprecating vision informed by the conviction that the country should be remade in America's image. Contrary to other historians, who focus on the Soviet-American rivalry and ignore the policies and perceptions of Vietnamese actors, Bradley contends that the global discourse and practices of colonialism, race, modernism, and postcolonial state-making were profoundly implicated in--and ultimately transcended--the dynamics of the Cold War in shaping Vietnamese-American relations.
