William J. Duiker

The agrarian question in North Vietnam, 1974-1979 : a study of cooperator resistance to state policy

This is a revealing look at the history of race relations in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century portrayed through the lives and times of the first two African-American heavyweight boxing champions, Jack Johnson and Joe Louis. Incorporating extensive research into the black press of the time, the author explores how the public careers and private lives of these two sports figures both define and explain vital national issues from the early 1900s to the late 1940s.

Phan Boi Chau: Asian Revolutionary in a Changing World

One of the most striking facts about the history of modern Vietnam has been the persistent strength of the communist movement. In part, of course, this strength must be attributed to the organizational abilities of the communists themselves. But it might also be said that it is a testament to the weakness of the more moderate elements within the nationalist movement. Resistance to French control has a long history in Vietnam, dating back to the original conquest in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet only after the Second World War, when the communist-dominated Vietnam Independence League (Vietminh) led resistance to French authority, did a movement of truly national proportions arise in the country. By their leadership of the Vietminh, the communists became the most potent political force within the nationalist movement. By contrast, non-Marxist parties were consistently plagued by political factionalism and lack of unity, a reality that has been a major contributing factor to the contemporary tragedy in that country today.

The Red Soviets of Nghe-Tinh: An Early Communist Rebellion in Vietnam

In the early months of 1930, a series of strikes broke out at various spots in French Indochina - at the Phu Rieng rubber plantation near Bien Hoa in Cochin China, at a match factory at Binh Thuy near Vinh in Central Vietnam, and at a textile plant at Nam Dinh in Tonkin. While not exceptionally important in themselves, these strikes can be seen in retrospect as the opening shots in a year of violence and rebellion. By midsummer the discontent had spread from outbreaks in the big industrial centers to the rural areas in Central and South Vietnam, where a series of major peasant revolts broke out against French colonial authority. As governmental authority in the Central provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh disintegrated, it was rapidly replaced by village peasant Soviets under communist party leadership. The French responded vigorously to these “Nghe-Tinh Soviets” but it was only several months later, in mid-1931, that order was restored over a battered, exhausted, and resentful peasantry.

Victory by Other Means

Why did the communists win the Vietnam War? That question has tor- mented many Americans—and undoubtedly many Vietnamese as well—for over a quarter of a century. As a general rule, the answer usually has focused on the alleged mistakes committed by U.S. policymakers in prosecuting the war, such as a lack of political will or a faulty military strategy. It is past time to recognize that, whatever the errors committed in Washington or Saigon, the communist victory in Vietnam was a stunning achievement and a testi- mony to the strategic and tactical genius of the war planners of the Hanoi regime (formally known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or DRV) as well as to the patience and self-sacrifice of millions of their followers throughout the country.

Racial Stereotyping: A Hidden Factor in the Vietnam War?

Book reviewed in this article: Mark Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950

U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina

Introduction 1. First encounters 2. The restoration of French sovereignty 3. Years of indecision 4. Indochina enters the Cold War 5. The road to Geneva 6. The end of the beginning 7. Experiment in nation building 8. Kennedy and counterinsurgency 9. Into the quagmire 10. The limits of containment Notes Bibliography Index.

The General Retires and Other Stories.

When it first appeared in 1987, the title story of this collection of stories by Nguyen Huy Thiep caused a sensation in Vietnam. Not since the Communist revolution had readers found as stark and compelling a view of their world as The General Retires offered them. Written in spare, succinct prose, it captures the despair of an old general who, after many years of devoted service to his country, is alienated by the emptiness of the society into which he retires and ultimately flees. Nguyen probes similar themes in the stories that follow, from Cun, the moving tale of a crippled beggar, to A Drop of Blood, a dark history of a family set against decades of war and revolution. With eight powerfully written stories--all available in English for the first time--and including an introduction by Greg Lockhart that traces the varied traditions of Vietnamese literature to the present day, this collection offers unprecedented insight into a society trying to overcome and understand years of pain and civil strife.

The Dynamics of Vietnam´s Foreign Policy

The communist victory in Saigon in April 1975 began a new era in Southeast Asian politics. For the first time in over a decade, the region was fundamentally at peace. Great power rivalries, which had seemed to be an almost permanent fixture of Southeast Asian polirics, now subsided. There was cautious optimism that the countries in the area could attempt to reach a degree of political accommodation and reduce cold war tensions. To many observers of the political situation in Southeast Asia, however, there were disquieting aspects in the new situation. For all projections of future conditions in Southeast Asia hinged on the answer to one crucial question: would the dynamic revolutionary forces which had propelled the communists to power in Vietnam now be turned to domestic pursuits ?to the peaceful construction of an advanced socialist economy? Or would the r?gime in Hanoi devote its legendary energy to expanding its influence in neighbouring regions in Southeast Asia? The question, of course, was of more than academic interest. As the heir to massive amounts of American military equipment left in South Vietnam, the new, unified Vietnam (renamed in 1976 the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, or SRV) has become militarily one of the strongest and best-equipped nations in the world. And, as recent events in Southern and Eastern Africa have demonstrated, the injection of considerable amounts of modern weapons in a politically unstable area can have a seriously unsettling effect and significantly alter the balance of power.

Book Reviews : Walter Vella (ed.), Aspects of Vietnamese History, Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii, 1974.

This is the fullest available bibliography of Cameroon, from &dquo;the beginning,&dquo; so to speak, and through the early 1970’s. The special problems the compilers had to contend with included not only the usual one of boundaries cutting across ethnic groups but also some shifts in frontiers and, not least, a succession of colonial regimes resulting in sources being scattered through German, French, and English publications and archives. The bibliography includes over 6,000 items books, articles, pamphlets, and some documents. Approximately half of the items are accompanied by brief annotations and, particularly valuable, when an abstract of the work has