Vietnam

January 30, 2017
Goscha (Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954), associate professor of history at the Université du Quebec à Montréal, prioritizes the Vietnamese perspective in this sterling history of the Southeast Asian nation. This is a substantial and accessible volume that starts in ancient times and runs to the 21st century. Combining trustworthy secondary sources with documents, letters, and other recently discovered or released primary sources, Goscha succeeds in emphasizing “Vietnam’s own role in shaping its history” and highlighting “the country’s extraordinary diversity and complexity.” He positions Vietnam as a multiplicity rather than a political entity unified over time, and addresses the effects of imperialism and colonialism. Goscha devotes just two chapters (of 14) to the Second Indochina War (known to his fellow Americans as the Vietnam War), and his relatively short but illuminating narrative of the war foregrounds Vietnamese history, society, culture, and politics. Refreshingly, he barely mentions American presidents, politicians, generals, and war-policy makers. The latter parts of the book, addressing modern Vietnam, are replete with references and comparisons to what came before in Vietnamese history, primarily events related to the roles of the Chinese and French conquerors of Indochina. After reading this book, even dyed-in-the-wool American exceptionalists will surely think of Vietnam as a country, not a war. Maps & illus.

July 15, 2016
America was not the first world power to meet defeat in far-distant Vietnam. The reasons for that loss emerge from this welcome overview of that nation's history.Sometimes, as with Richard Grant's book on the Mississippi Delta, Dispatches from Pluto (2015), it helps to have American events explained by a non-American. Here the explainer is Goscha (The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam, 2016, etc.), a historian at the Universite du Quebec, the thing being explained a decadelong war in a country whose history reaches back millennia. The author's survey gathers force when he enters the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the establishment of French Indochina, which set up the events that would culminate in war. The French government in Indochina enjoyed a great deal of local autonomy, for good or ill. Among those ills, the author notes in a fascinating aside, was forcing a Romanized alphabet on the country in the place of the classical Chinese ideograms, which "distanced Vietnamese from the East Asian civilizations in which they had moved for centuries." They may have been unmoored, but nationalists still arose to claim independence, led by the "educated young" who had been schooled on the French model. Enter the Americans, who aimed to suppress this movement after the French failed to do so. Goscha poses a number of counterfactual questions: what might have happened if the cease-fire of 1954 held? What would have ensued if the Americans had not made the French war their own--and, as he points out, had not shouldered 80 percent of the cost of the French war to begin with? The devastation visited on the country in the "hugely assymetrical" American war remains shocking to contemplate; one Viet Cong leader characterizes it as an "experience of undiluted psychological terror." Goscha closes by noting recent trends that might fulfill the planks of the republican movement of a century ago--and threaten the communist government accordingly. A vigorous, eye-opening account of a country of great importance to the world, past and future.

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September 1, 2016

When Americans think of Vietnam, they might think mostly of the Vietnam War. Goscha (history, Univ. of Quebec at Montreal; Going Indochinese) certainly covers the conflict in great detail; however, this work is much broader in scope, beginning in 3000 BCE and concluding in the early 21st century. The author paints a vivid picture of a complex country that has been both victim (by China and France) and soldiers of colonialism (the Cham and others). It conveys the historical separations and competing forces (religions, ethnicities, ideologies, etc.) that continue to shape the region. Readers will see a cyclical pattern to the history of Vietnam. For example, the division between north and south in the mid-20th century is only the most recent example of rival politics vying for dominance. Gosha adroitly illustrates the experiences and contributions of both Viet and non-Viet ethnicities. Readers will come away with a better appreciation for the complexity of Vietnam's history and the diversity of its peoples. VERDICT Essential for readers with an interest in Southeast Asian history. See also Robert Miller and Dennis Wainstock's Indochina and Vietnam for a more exclusive focus on the war years.--Joshua Wallace, Tarleton State Univ. Lib. Stephenville, TX

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