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Actualités Viêt-Nam, Débat / Questions d'histoire, Histoire et sociétés d'Indochine

Saigon show uncovers century of conflict and political turmoil [VnExpress]

[ndlr] Exposition sur la période de la Première République du Sud Viêt-Nam à lire sur l’édition internationale en ligne de VnExpress (article de Manh Tung).

The Independence Palace has witnessed countless events unfold and shape the course of Vietnamese history.

Ho Chi Minh City will open an exhibition on Friday telling the story of its Independence Palace, one of the country’s most famous landmarks.

The “From Norodom Palace to Independence Palace 1868-1966″ exhibition will feature a collection of over 500 documents, pictures and artifacts showcasing the history of the Independence Palace, especially from the lesser-known time period between 1868 and 1966, said Tran Thi Ngoc Diep, director of the Independence Palace.

This exhibition is the most comprehensive ever about the palace, said Diep.

The exhibition will display how the palace was constructed and how its left-wing was destroyed by bombs during the war, and depict the rise and fall of former President of the Republic of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem. It will also show the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc in protest of the persecutions of Buddhists under Diem’s regime.

A central part of the exhibition is its colossal reserve of valuable historical documents, collected by historians from around the world. Many of them came from archives centers in Vietnam, the United States and France.

“We want to provide viewers with an interpretation of history itself, not just its recreation,” said Edward Miller, a professor of history and author of the book “Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam”, who is one of the organizers.

“You must understand history in its particular context, not in isolated, separate time periods,” he said.

Lire la suite : VnExpress International, 07/03/2018

Pour en savoir plus :

Illustration “à la une” : l’historien Edward Miller présentant un panneau de l’exposition sur Ngo Dinh Diem © VnExpress/Manh Tung

 

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Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam – Edward Miller

Miller_MisallianceNgoDinhDiem&US_2013[ndlr] Nous avions annoncé dans un court billet sur le renouveau historiographique dans les recherches sur le régime de Ngo Dinh Diem, la parution prochaine de l’ouvrage de l’historien américain Edward Miller. L’ouvrage est désormais paru chez Harvard University Press et, selon les premiers avis, se présente déjà comme une étude incontournable sur l’homme d’État, son projet de construction nationale et la Première République du Viêt-Nam (1955-1963). Présentation de l’éditeur ci-dessous.

In the annals of Vietnam War history, no figure has been more controversial than Ngo Dinh Diem. During the 1950s, U.S. leaders hailed Diem as “the miracle man of Southeast Asia” and funneled huge amounts of aid to his South Vietnamese government. But in 1963 Diem was ousted and assassinated in a coup endorsed by President John F. Kennedy. Diem’s alliance with Washington has long been seen as a Cold War relationship gone bad, undone either by American arrogance or by Diem’s stubbornness. In Misalliance, Edward Miller provides a convincing new explanation for Diem’s downfall and the larger tragedy of South Vietnam.

For Diem and U.S. leaders, Miller argues, the alliance was more than just a joint effort to contain communism. It was also a means for each side to pursue its plans for nation building in South Vietnam. Miller’s definitive portrait of Diem—based on extensive research in Vietnamese, French, and American archives—demonstrates that the South Vietnamese leader was neither Washington’s pawn nor a tradition-bound mandarin. Rather, he was a shrewd and ruthless operator with his own vision for Vietnam’s modernization. In 1963, allied clashes over development and reform, combined with rising internal resistance to Diem’s nation building programs, fractured the alliance and changed the course of the Vietnam War.

In depicting the rise and fall of the U.S.–Diem partnership, Misalliance shows how America’s fate in Vietnam was written not only on the battlefield but also in Washington’s dealings with its Vietnamese allies.

Edward Miller is Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College.

Reviews:

“A monumental contribution to our understanding of America’s misguided intervention in Vietnam. Great books advance knowledge as well as historical debate, and this is exactly what Miller achieves. Misalliance could easily be the best new book of the year.”—Larry Berman, author of Zumwalt: The Life and Times of Admiral Elmo Russell “Bud” Zumwalt, Jr.

“An extraordinary book, brilliantly conceived and cogently argued. Miller transcends the scholarly and political polemics of Vietnam War literature, presenting readers with a fresh and original take on Ngo Dinh Diem and South Vietnam’s relationship with the U.S. Misalliance is sure to be greeted with widespread acclaim.”—Andrew Preston, author of The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam

“Miller rejects the simplistic and partisan interpretations that have dominated earlier accounts of America’s partnership with Vietnam. Misalliance will be not only a major advance in our understanding of Ngo Dinh Diem and U.S.–Vietnamese relations, it will fundamentally alter the direction of scholarship on the Vietnam War.”—Keith Weller Taylor, author of The Birth of Vietnam

“An exemplary work of research and scholarship. Miller dispels in definitive fashion the myth that Ngo Dinh Diem owed his appointment as prime minister of a nascent South Vietnam to American intercession or that he was ever a ‘tool’ of the Americans.”—Rufus Phillips, author of Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned

Table of Contents:

  • Map 1. Indochina after the Geneva Conference of 1954
  • Map 2. The headquarters of militia commanders in southern Vietnam, 1954–1955
  • Introduction
  • 1. Man of Faith
  • 2. New Beginnings
  • 3. The Making of an Alliance
  • 4. Revolutions and Republics
  • 5. Settlers and Engineers
  • 6. Countering Insurgents
  • 7. Limited Partners
  • 8. Mixed Signals
  • 9. The Unmaking of an Alliance
  • Conclusion
  • Abbreviations
  • Published Collections of Government Documents
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgments
  • Index

Réf. : Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam, Harvard, Harvard University Press, 2013, 432 p.

Source : Harvard University Press

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Débat / Questions d'histoire, Histoire et sociétés d'Indochine, Recensions d'ouvrages

La nouvelle historiographie sur Ngô Đình Diệm et la Première République du Viêt-Nam

Depuis une dizaine d’années, les recherches sur la Première République du Viêt-Nam (1955-1963) de Ngo Dinh Diem se sont considérablement développées. Les études américaines cherchent à comprendre l’engagement américain et le départ de la guerre au Viêt-Nam. Elles réexaminent également le fonctionnement du régime et la personnalité du Président de la Première République. Elles s’intéressent aux conséquences de la chute de Diem (assassiné avec son frère Nhu le 2 novembre 1963) et au rôle des services américains auprès du régime sudiste.

De leur côté, les récentes études vietnamiennes ou témoignages de personnalités proches de Diem tendent à revaloriser le rôle de ce leader et de son régime auparavant fortement critiqués dans les mémoires du général Do Mau (1986), lui-même impliqué dans le coup d’Etat de novembre 1963.

Notons que deux nouvelle études américaines sont à paraitre en 2013 (Chapman et Miller).

  • Chapman, Jessica M., Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2013 (à paraître).
  • Catton, Phillip E., Diem’s final failure. Prelude to America’s war in Vietnam, Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, Modern War Studies, 2003, 312 p. See presentation ; book review by Edward Miller

Often portrayed as an inept and stubborn tyrant, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem has long been the subject of much derision but little understanding. Philip Catton’s penetrating study provides a much more complex portrait of Diem as both a devout patriot and a failed architect of modernization. In doing so, it sheds new light on a controversial regime.

Catton treats the Diem government on its own terms rather than as an appendage of American policy. Focusing on the decade from Dien Bien Phu to Diem’s assassination in 1963, he examines the Vietnamese leader’s nation-building and reform efforts—particularly his Strategic Hamlet Program, which sought to separate guerrilla insurgents from the peasantry and build grassroots support for his regime. Catton’s evaluation of the collapse of that program offers fresh insights into both Diem’s limitations as a leader and the ideological and organizational weaknesses of his government, while his assessment of the evolution of Washington’s relations with Saigon provides new insight into America’s growing involvement in the Vietnamese civil war.

Focusing on the Strategic Hamlet Program in Binh Duong province as an exemplar of Diem’s efforts, Catton paints the Vietnamese leader as a progressive thinker trying to simultaneously defeat the communists and modernize his nation. He draws on a wealth of Vietnamese language sources to argue that Diem possessed a firm vision of nation-building and sought to overcome the debilitating dependence that reliance on American support threatened to foster. As Catton shows, however, Diem’s plans for South Vietnam clashed with those of the United States and proved no match for the Vietnamese communists.

Catton analyzes the mutually frustrating interactions between Diem and the administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy, and reveals patterns in this uneasy alliance that have eluded other observers. He also clarifies many of the problems, setbacks, and miscalculations experienced by the communist movement during that era.

Neither an American puppet, as communist propaganda claimed, nor a backward-looking mandarin, according to Western accounts, Catton’s Diem is a tragic figure who finally ran out of time, just a few weeks before JFK’s assassination and at a moment when it still seemed possible for America to avoid war.

  • Hoang Ngoc Thanh & Than Thi Nhan Duc, Why the Vietnam war? President Ngo Dinh Diem and the US: His Overthrow and Assassination, Tuan-Yen & Quan-Viet Mai-Nam Publishers, 2001, 562 p.
  • Jacobs, Seth, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, Durham, Duke University Press Books, 2005, 392 p. See the book presentation ; see the Roundtable on H-Diplo (pdf) ; and the book review by Nick Cullather (pdf). For other articles by the same author, see its own page at Boston College.

America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam rethinks the motivations behind one of the most ruinous foreign-policy decisions of the postwar era: America’s commitment to preserve an independent South Vietnam under the premiership of Ngo Dinh Diem. The so-called Diem experiment is usually ascribed to U.S. anticommunism and an absence of other candidates for South Vietnam’s highest office. Challenging those explanations, Seth Jacobs utilizes religion and race as categories of analysis to argue that the alliance with Diem cannot be understood apart from America’s mid-century religious revival and policymakers’ perceptions of Asians. Jacobs contends that Diem’s Catholicism and the extent to which he violated American notions of “Oriental” passivity and moral laxity made him a more attractive ally to Washington than many non-Christian South Vietnamese with greater administrative experience and popular support.

A diplomatic and cultural history, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam draws on government archives, presidential libraries, private papers, novels, newspapers, magazines, movies, and television and radio broadcasts. Jacobs shows in detail how, in the 1950s, U.S. policymakers conceived of Cold War anticommunism as a crusade in which Americans needed to combine with fellow Judeo-Christians against an adversary dangerous as much for its atheism as for its military might. He describes how racist assumptions that Asians were culturally unready for democratic self-government predisposed Americans to excuse Diem’s dictatorship as necessary in “the Orient.” By focusing attention on the role of American religious and racial ideologies, Jacobs makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the disastrous commitment of the United States to “sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem.”

  • Jacobs, Seth, Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam, 1950-1963, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006, 220 p.

For almost a decade, the tyrannical Ngo Dinh Diem governed South Vietnam as a one-party police state while the U.S. financed his tyranny. In this new book, Seth Jacobs traces the history of American support for Diem from his first appearance in Washington as a penniless expatriate in 1950 to his murder by South Vietnamese soldiers on the outskirts of Saigon in 1963.

Drawing on recent scholarship and newly available primary sources, Cold War Mandarin explores how Diem became America’s bastion against a communist South Vietnam, and why the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations kept his regime afloat. Finally, Jacobs examines the brilliantly organized public-relations campaign by Saigon’s Buddhists that persuaded Washington to collude in the overthrow–and assassination–of its longtime ally.

In this clear and succinct analysis, Jacobs details the “Diem experiment,” and makes it clear how America’s policy of “sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem” ultimately drew the country into the longest war in its history.

  • Miller, Edward, “Vision, Power, and Agency: The Ascent of Ngo Dinh Diem, 1945-54”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2004, pp. Pdf online at Viet Studies.
  • Miller, Edward, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam, Harvard University Press, 2013 (à paraître).
  • Moyar, Mark, Triumph forsaken. The Vietnam war, 1954-1965, Cambridge – New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 512 p.
  • Nashel, Jonathan, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War, University of Massachusetts Press, 2005, 278 p. (sur le conseiller de Diem à son arrivée au pouvoir)
  • Shidler, Derek, “Vietnam’s changing historiography: Ngo Dinh Diem and the America’s leadership”. This paper was written for Dr. Shelton’s History 5000, Historiography, in the fall of 2008: online article

 

Quelques études ou témoignages récents en langue vietnamienne :

  • Minh Võ, Ngô Đình Diệm và Chính Nghĩa Dân Tộc, California, Hồng Đức, 2008, 450 tr.
  • Minh Võ, Hồ Chí Minh, Ngô Đình Diệm và cuộc chiến Quốc – Cộng (Tâm Sự Nước Non 2), Diễn Đàn Giáo Dân/ Tiếng Quê Hương, 2011, 430 tr.
  • Ngô Đình Châu, Chính biến 1-11-1963 và Tổng Thống Ngô Đình Diệm, California, Thằng Mõ, 2009, 330 tr.
  • Nguyễn Hữu Duệ, Nhớ lại những ngày ở cạnh Tổng Thống Ngô Đình Diệm, San Diego, cA, 2003, 270 tr.
  • Nguyễn Văn Lục, Một thời để nhớ. Những sự thật về cố Tổng Thống Ngô Đình Diệm và nền Ðệ Nhất Cộng Hòa, California, Nguyệt San Diễn Đàn Giáo Dân, 2011, 396 tr.
  • Nguyễn Văn Minh, Dòng họ Ngô Đình ước mơ chưa đạt, Garden Grove, Hoàng Nguyên xuất bản, tái bản lần thứ ba, 2-2004.
  • Phạm Văn Lưu & Nguyễn Ngọc Tấn, Ðệ Nhất Cộng Hòa Việt Nam, 1954-1963: Một cuộc cách mạng, Melbourne – Los Angeles – Paris, Center for Vietnamese Studies, 2005, 229 tr.
  • Văn Bia, Đời một phóng viên và những ngày chung sống với Chí Sĩ Ngô Đình Diệm. Hồi Ký của Ký Giả Văn Bia, Lê Hồng XB, 2001, 360 tr.
  • Vĩnh Phúc, Những Huyền Thoại và sự thật về chế độ Ngô Đình Diệm, California, Văn Nghệ, 1998, 482 tr. [réédité en 2006].

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