Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War

by Wiest; Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780415800211
• ISBN10: 0415800218
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781136974229
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2010-04-19
• Publisher: Routledge
• More Book Details

Summary

The Vietnam War stands today as one of the most controversial sets of conflicts and decisions in the history of the United States, and is referenced more day by day as parallels are drawn to the US conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. With these divisive lines in play, Mark Moyar's self proclaimed "Revisionist" history in Triumph Forsaken has created a heated debate over who "owns" the history of America's war in Vietnam.Triumph Revisited collects critiques of the book from both sides of this debate, written by an array of Vietnam scholars, cataloguing arguments about how the war will be remembered, how history may be reconstructed, and by whom. Each essay in Triumph Revisited is framed by editors Andrew Wiest and Michael Doidge to provide context, balance, and historiographic lessons for the reader.Objective and instructive, Triumph Revisited provides an excellent resource for those interested in the nature of historiography, and the way in which America will remember the Vietnam War.

Author Biography

Andrew Wiest is Professor of History and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the author of Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN and co-editor of America and the Vietnam War: Re-examining the Culture and History of a Generation (Routledge). Michael J. Doidge is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is currently writing his dissertation, An Army Worth Fighting For: Doctrinal, Strategic, and Bureaucratic Transformation in the U.S. Army from 1946-1964.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction: Historians and the Vietnam War	p. 1
The Vietnam War in an Asian Perspective	p. 15
The Vietnamese Civil War of 1955-1975 in Historical Perspective	p. 17
Ngo Dinh Diem and South Vietnam Reconsidered	p. 29
What we Still do not know: Moyar's Treatment of Global Communism	p. 39
A One-sided Picture of Chinese-Vietnamese Ties during the Vietnam War	p. 48
Section I Response	p. 54
Debating Triumph Forsaken as History	p. 73
Triumph Impossible	p. 75
Fighting Stories	p. 79
Imperial Revanchism: Attempting to Recover a Post-war "Noble Cause"	p. 90
Triumph Forsaken as a Path to Setting the Record Straight	p. 98
Governing the Vietnamese "Masses": The United States, Ngo Dinh Diem, and the Notion of Triumph Forsaken	p. 109
Triumph Forsaken as Military History	p. 120
Section II Response	p. 136
Orthodoxy and Revisionism	p. 165
Orthodoxy and Revisionism: The Domino Theory as a Case Study	p. 167
Caricature for Caricature? The Vietnamese Context in	p. 171
Familiar Territory: Mark Moyar's Call to Revisionism and the Counterfactual	p. 182
Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Triumph Forsaken and the Revisionist Challenge	p. 187
Ngo Dinh Diem and Vietnam War Revisionism in Mark Moyar's Triumph Forsaken	p. 195
Section III Response	p. 204
Conclusion	p. 220
Contributors	p. 229
Index	p. 235
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