Understanding Vietnam

by Jamieson, Neil L.

• ISBN13: 9780520201576
• ISBN10: 0520201574
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

The American experience in Vietnam divided us as a nation and eroded our confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of our foreign policy. Yet our understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, we have never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. Neil L. Jamieson, after many years of living and working in Vietnam, has written the book that provides this understanding. Jamieson paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, he takes us through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout his analysis, he allows the Vietnamese--both our friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither--to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting our old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, Jamieson provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from our involvement in Vietnam. As the United States and Vietnam appear poised to embark on a new phase in their relationship, Jamieson's book is particularly timely.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
1. HOW THE VIETNAMESE SEE THE WORLD	1	(41)
The Land of Vietnam: Ecology as History	3	(3)
The People of Vietnam	6	(5)
The Traditional Vietnamese View of the World	11	(1)
Vietnamese Society as a System of Yin and Yang	12	(3)
Traditional Vietnamese Values and Institutions	15	(25)
The Success and Failure of the Traditional System	40	(2)
2. CONFRONTATION WITH THE WEST, 1858-1930	42	(58)
The West Overwhelms Vietnam	42	(23)
The Fermentation of Vietnamese Culture, 1908-1932	65	(35)
3. THE YIN OF EARLY MODERN VIETNAMESE CULTURE CHALLENGES THE YANG OF TRADITION, 1932-1939	100	(76)
Literature Challenges the "Real World"	104	(4)
The New Poetry	108	(3)
A New Paradigm: Individualism	111	(6)
The Battle of the Novels	117	(37)
The Paradigmatic Battle Continues	154	(5)
The Psychic Costs of Colonialism and Failed Individualism: A Desperate Generation	159	(10)
The Darkening of the 1930s	169	(7)
4. THE END OF COLONIALISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF TWO COMPETING MODELS FOR BUILDING A MODERN NATION, 1940-1954	176	(58)
From Polemics to Politics, 1939-1945	176	(6)
Returning to the Roots: Literature and Society, 1940-1944	182	(9)
A Fateful Summer, 1945	191	(2)
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam, August-October 1945	193	(4)
Things Fall Apart in Saigon, 1945	197	(2)
From Politics to War, November 1945-December 1946	199	(6)
The Resistance and the Intellectuals, 1946-1947	205	(5)
The Anticommunist Factions, 1947-1950	210	(3)
The "Supervillages" of Vietnam	213	(7)
The Bao Dai Government and the French, 1948-1954	220	(1)
The New Yang of the Resistance	221	(4)
Dien Bien Phu, 1954	225	(3)
The Nationalist Dilemma	228	(4)
The Polarization into Two Vietnamese States, 1954	232	(2)
5. YIN AND YANG IN MODERN GUISE, 1955-1970	234	(73)
The Return of Ngo Dinh Diem	234	(7)
A Coalescence of Yin Forces	241	(5)
Anxious Souls in the Republic of Vietnam	246	(8)
The Supervillage of Insurgency	254	(3)
Setting the Thermostat in the North, 1955-1958	257	(14)
The Ideological Foundations in the North, 1958-1968	271	(13)
The North and the South: Inverted Images, 1959-1968	284	(8)
The War, the Americans, and Vietnamese Society	292	(4)
Continuity and Change in Values in the South	296	(7)
Patterns in Chaos	303	(4)
6. CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN VIETNAMESE CULTURE AND SOCIETY, 1968-1975	307	(50)
A Frustrated Vision	307	(11)
The Development of Urban Yin Subsystems	318	(20)
Estrangement and Farewell	338	(19)
7. ANOTHER CYCLE UNFOLDS	357	(20)
The Road to Victory	357	(3)
Resetting the Social Thermostat in the South	360	(11)
A New Yin Reaction	371	(4)
A Concluding Thought	375	(2)
Notes	377	(20)
Glossary	397	(4)
Bibliography	401	(12)
Index	413