Archives par mot-clé : RDVN

Conference Call for Papers and Panels : “1968 and the Tet Offensive”

[ndlr] Annonce du Vietnam Center & Archive.

Conference Call for Papers and Panels

“1968 and the Tet Offensive”

April 27-28, 2018, Lubbock Texas

The Vietnam Center and Archive (VNCA) and the Institute for Peace & Conflict (IPAC) at Texas Tech University are pleased to announce a conference focused on the year 1968 and the Tet Offensive. We expect in this conference to approach these historical events in the broadest possible manner by hosting presenters who examine diplomatic, military, international regional, and domestic aspects of the Vietnam War during that year, as well as the strategic and tactical decision-making and actions that led up to and followed the Tet Offensive. This will include presentations that look at all participants to include the US, RVN, DRV, NLF, and the numerous allies and other nations involved. We will also strongly encourage presentations that examine the antiwar and peace movements at home and abroad, the efforts to support the war effort, and the efforts to end the conflict through international diplomacy, as well as military and diplomatic means in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

Recent and emerging scholarship on the Tet Offensive and on 1968, more broadly, is refocusing much needed attention on some of the pivotal events that took place during that fateful year. In late November 1967, General William Westmoreland publicly conveyed his optimism regarding eventual US victory in Vietnam, helping President Johnson to buoy flagging US popular and political support for the war effort. In the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, as fighting broke out in every major city throughout the entirety of South Vietnam, many started to doubt the veracity of those previous claims, including prominent politicians and members of the American media.

Attention within the US came to focus on some of the more brutal battles that emerged as US Marines fought to retake Vietnam’s ancient Imperial city in the Battle for Hue and they came under heavy fire during in the Siege of Khe Sanh. As the fighting intensified in Vietnam, so it did in the streets and on campuses across America, as critics of the war continued their calls for an immediate US withdrawal and an end to the war. So powerful was the effect of these events that on March 31, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection – adding to the leadership changes already in play with the departure of Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense in late February and the emergence of General Creighton Abrams and departure of General Westmoreland as commander of US forces in Vietnam in June. The violence that year included some of the most horrific wartime atrocities committed against civilians in Vietnam, including the Hue Massacre and the My Lai Massacre, while violence in the US claimed the lives of nationally prominent figures, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. The presidential election that year witnessed last-minute attempts by the Johnson administration to end the war in Vietnam sabotaged by the Nixon campaign.

By the end of 1968, approximately 550,000 Americans engaged in more than 200 major combat operations, dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs, and the overall financial costs of the war for that year alone totaled approximately $20 Billion. 1968 resulted in the highest numbers of casualties in a single year with more than 16,000 Americans and approximately 100,000 Vietnamese killed on all sides. All the while, the North Vietnamese and NLF fought on. With a new president and leadership team preparing to take over in January of 1969, innumerable questions remained as to whether a US victory could be achieved in Vietnam.

This two-day conference will be hosted at the MCM Elegante Hotel and Suites in Lubbock, Texas. Conference organizers welcome both individual presentation proposals as well as pre-organized panel proposals that include a moderator/commentator and three individual presentations. Conference sessions will follow the standard 90-minute format to include 60 minutes for presentations (20 minutes per presentation) followed by 30 minutes for questions and discussion. Presentations by veterans are especially encouraged as are presentations by graduate students. Graduate student travel grants will be made available to select students. All presentations will be video recorded and made publicly available after the conference via the Vietnam Center and Archive website. Select papers may also be published in a collection by the TTU Press.

Proposal submission deadline is February 15, 2018

Please submit a 250 word abstract and separate two-page CV/resume to 1968vietnamconference@gmail.com. The program committee of Ron Milam, Steve Maxner, Justin Hart, Dave Lewis, and Laura Calkins will evaluate all paper proposals and develop a program that reflects the many remarkable aspects of 1968. If submitting a panel proposal, please include separate abstracts for each proposed presentation and CVs/resumes for each speaker.

Thank you for your interest in participating in this conference.

 

Contact Email: justin.hart@ttu.edu

Source : https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/2018_Conference/

Illustration “à la une” : photo de couverture du magazine Life, 9 février 1968 : “A guerilla is taken alive during the Ambassy battle” © 1968 Life.

Pierre Asselin : Vietnam’s American War – A History

[ndlr] Parution le 11 janvier 2018 du nouvel ouvrage de Pierre Asselin portant sur la conduite de la guerre vue de Hanoi.

Communist forces in the Vietnam War lost most battles and suffered disproportionally higher casualties than the United States and its allies throughout the conflict. The ground war in South Vietnam and the air war in the North were certainly important in shaping the fates of the victors and losers, but they alone fail to explain why Hanoi bested Washington in the end. To make sense of the Vietnam War, we must look beyond the war itself. In his new work, Pierre Asselin explains the formative experiences and worldview of the men who devised communist strategies and tactics during the conflict, and analyzes their rationale and impact. Drawing on two decades of research in Vietnam’s own archives, including classified policy statements and reports, Asselin expertly and straightforwardly relates the Vietnamese communist experience – and the reasons the war turned out the way it did.

Continuer la lecture de Pierre Asselin : Vietnam’s American War – A History

George J. Veith & Merle Pribbenow : The Return to War: North Vietnamese Decision-Making, 1973-1975

[ndlr] Parution en ligne d’une étude de George J. Veith et Merle Pribbenow sur la reprise de la guerre après les Accords de Paris de 1973.

Edited and Annotated by George J. Veith
Translations by Merle L. Pribbenow

November 2017

In support of the Cold War International History Project’s efforts to facilitate the release of historical materials from governments on all sides of the Cold War, we have compiled 80 primary source documents dealing with North Vietnam’s decision-making from the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 until the end of the war, April 1975. The documents are appended to this Working Paper and accessible on DigitalArchive.org.

Much of this declassified information formed the basis for the book, Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-1975. This array of cables, memoranda, and directives provides a fascinating glimpse inside Hanoi’s choice in 1973 to return to war—despite having just signed the Paris Peace Accords. The files deliver insights into how the Politburo of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, and its major command in the southern half of South Vietnam known as COSVN, viewed the situation after the accords. These documents clarify, to some extent, Hanoi’s decision to resume armed conflict in the south. They further outline Hanoi’s preparations in 1974 for launching a new offensive and the goals the Politburo wished to achieve, as well as the detailed military planning aimed at defeating South Vietnam. In the 1975 time-frame, the documents provide unique insights into how Hanoi’s military commanders managed the campaign that led to the rapid collapse of South Vietnam.

While this collection is voluminous, the author of and translator for this Working Paper did not include every document released by the editors of the volumes cited in the bibliography. We reviewed each document in various Vietnamese Communist publications, but only chose to translate those directly related to the fall of South Vietnam or those which provided information of broader and significant historical interest. Thus, many documents from the volumes of the Van Kien Dang series (a massive collection of nearly 40,000 pages of mostly internal Vietnamese Communist Party documents) were not translated and included in this Working Paper simply because they dealt with mundane party or economic affairs.

Although this set of documents cannot be considered definitive, it does provide one of the most detailed views of Vietnamese Communist decision-making ever unveiled for a specific period. However, the materials included in this study are almost exclusively documentary, as we chose not to incorporate information from the numerous memoirs, battle studies, or unit histories. We did, though, feature some secondary materials from the 1973 time-frame solely to help illuminate the thin documentary record on the Politburo’s decision to resume armed conflict in the South. While these other sources do generally agree on the Politburo’s review and approval process to resume the war, we suspect that the decision was not as smooth or unanimous as the Party portrays, especially after achieving a spectacular military victory in 1975.

Lire la suite : Wilson Center

Ou cliquer sur l’image ci-dessous pour accéder au PDF en ligne :

George J. Veith is the author of three books on the Vietnam War, including Code Name Bright Light: The Untold Story of U.S. POW Rescue Efforts during the Vietnam War (1998) and Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-1975 (2013).

Merle Pribbenow is a former CIA officer who served in Vietnam from April 1970 to April 1975, and is the translator of Volume 2 of the history of the People’s Army of Vietnam, which was published by the University of Kansas Press as Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975 (2002).

Dang Nhat minh : Mémoires d’un cinéaste vietnamien

[ndlr] Parution de la traduction des mémoires du réalisateur Dang Nhat Minh.

Dang Nhât Minh est venu au cinéma par hasard. Après ses études secondaires, il est envoyé en URSS pour apprendre le russe. Revenu à Hanoi en 1957, il devient traducteur-interprète et travaille auprès du réalisateur soviétique Aida Abrahimov, venu à Hanoi pour apprendre l’art de la réalisation cinématographique aux jeunes professionnels vietnamiens. À travers son emploi d’interprète-traducteur Dang Nhât Minh apprend en autodidacte en écoutant les leçons du réalisateur et en lisant des revues cinématographiques russes. De 1981 à 2009, ses œuvres cinématographiques, documentaires et films de fiction, en font le cinéaste vietnamien le plus reconnu, non seulement dans son pays, mais aussi à l’étranger.

En 1995 il reçoit le Nikkei Asia Prize de Culture du journal Nihon Keizai Shimbum pour les raisons suivantes : ses films expriment les sentiments des Vietnamiens ainsi que de tous les Asiatiques du monde. En 2008 la chaîne de télévision américaine CNN place son film Quand viendra le dixième mois parmi les 18 meilleurs films asiatiques de tous les temps. En Septembre 2010, l’Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invite Dang Nhât Minh à Hollywood pour rendre hommage à ses qualités de réalisateur.

Source : Presses universitaires de AMU

 

Image “à la une” : l’actrice Lê Vân © DR

Séminaire « Mémoires d’Indochine » 2017 : séance 2

Année universitaire 2017-2018 / Master Asie Orientale Contemporaine (ASIOC) / Semestre 1

ENS de Lyon / Sciences Po Lyon

Mémoires d’Indochine :

Récits de vie, histoire et littérature : connexions et déconnexions

Une séance d’accusation publique (đấu tố) pendant la réforme agraire en RDVN © DR

★ ★ ★

La réforme agraire radicale (RDVN 1953-1956)

Séance 2 : mercredi 27 septembre 2017 – salle D4.070 (IAO)

La réforme agraire radicale, menée en RDVN à partir de 1953, a profondément marqué la société du Nord Viêt-Nam. Organisée sur un modèle maoïste, elle a pendant trois ans instituée la violence révolutionnaire dans la vie quotidienne des paysans. Visant à rendre la terre aux paysans, elle a été à l’origine de nombreux abus aux conséquences sanglantes. Si les chiffres officiels des exécutions publiques n’ont jamais été rendus, on estime à 50.000 morts le résultat de cette opération policière sous contrôle chinois. L’appareil d’État, conscient de la dérive, dut mettre sur pied une “campagne de rectification des erreurs” et Hô Chi Minh d’écarter, pendant un temps, le secrétaire général du Parti des Travailleurs du Viêt-Nam, premier responsable politique de la RDVN. Cette séance s’intéresse aux récits littéraires encore imprégnés aujourd’hui de cette fracture interne au communisme vietnamien.

Timbre émis en RDVN en 1954 sur lequel figure les portraits du triumvirat représentant l’union entre les trois Partis communistes du Viêt-Nam, de l’URSS et de la Chine populaire : Gueorgui Malenkov, dirigeant du PCUS, Ho Chi Minh, président de la RDVN et Mao Zedong, président de la RPC et du PCC.

Sources mobilisées :

  • Duong Thu Huong, Les paradis aveugles, Paris, Des Femmes, 1991, p. 24-49.
  • Hoang Minh Tuong, Le temps des génies invincibles, Paris, Editions de la Frémillerie, 2014, p. 153-179.
  • Ta Duy Anh, Passer outre, publié sur Mémoires d’Indochine : https://indomemoires.hypotheses.org/13304

Un regard extérieur :

  • Lise London, Le Printemps des camarades (L’écheveau du temps 2), Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1996, p. 187-194.

Une référence clé :

  • Tessier, Olivier, « Le ‘grand bouleversement’ (long trời lở đất) : regards croisés sur la réforme agraire en République démocratique du Việt Nam », Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, vol. 95-96 (2008-2009), 2012, pp. [73]-134. PDF en ligne.

 

Image “à la une” et illustration : photographies du journaliste Dimitri Baltermants (1912-1990) lors d’un séjour en RDVN en 1955 © The Dmitri Baltermants Collection/CORBIS. Les autres images connues de la réforme agraire sont de Franz Faber également prises en RDVN en 1955.

Lien-Hang Nguyen : North Vietnam Had an Antiwar Movement, Too [Aug. 25, 2017]

[ndlr] Dans la série Vietnam ’67 du New York Times, un article de l’historienne Lien-Hang Nguyen sur la dissidence en RDVN pendant la guerre.

When we think back to the signal events of the antiwar movement in 1967, we recall the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful April 4 speech denouncing the war, the thousands of returned registration cards during the “Stop the Draft” week, and the March on the Pentagon that brought record numbers of demonstrators to the nation’s capital.

That year also witnessed global protests condemning the war, as demonstrations in European capitals and the International War Crimes Tribunal issued powerful rebukes against American intervention in Southeast Asia. News coverage of the war also shifted that year, including the first call by The New York Times for a halt to the bombing and the initiation of peace talks.

Less well known, but just as significant, was the antiwar “movement” in North Vietnam. Less a movement than a heterogenous array of voices, it included a wide swath of North Vietnamese society, within the government and among the general public.

Some had never wanted to go to war to liberate the South in the first place, and had sought instead to build the North and reunify the country through political means. Educated in the Soviet Union, some of these individuals even occupied prominent positions in the Vietnamese Communist Party. By 1967, these officials were calling on their government to begin negotiations to put an end to the devastating war. When one such party member, Hoang Minh Chinh, disseminated his political views in an essay he called “Dogmatism in Vietnam,” he became the ruling clique’s No. 1 enemy.

Lire la suite : New York Times

Lien-Hang Nguyen is a professor of history at Columbia and the author of the forthcoming “Tet 1968: The Battles That Changed the Vietnam War and the Global Cold War.”

Image “à la une” : The North Vietnamese Communist Party leader Le Duan strengthened the “counter counterrevolutionary” campaign to quell dissent against the war. © Nehon Denpa News/Associated Press

Nguyen Thuy Phuong : L’école française au Vietnam de 1945 à 1975 [parution]

[ndlr] Parution de l’ouvrage issu de la thèse de Nguyen Thuy Phuong. Présentation de l’éditeur, préface d’Eric Jennings, Professeur d’histoire contemporaine, Université de Toronto : “un travail rigoureux, nuancé et subtil”.

Nguyen Thuy Phuong
L’ ÉCOLE FRANÇAISE AU VIETNAM DE 1945 À 1975
DE LA MISSION CIVILISATRICE À LA DIPLOMATIE CULTURELLE
Un volume broché, 15,5 × 23 cm, 286 pages — mars 2017
ISBN 978-2-36058-077-4 — Prix public 29.00 €

Cet ouvrage fait revivre la saga de l’école française au Vietnam de 1945 à 1975, ouvrant une fenêtre sur une histoire encore largement méconnue. Pendant trois décennies, des milliers de jeunes vietnamiens suivent un enseignement en langue française au sein d’établissements toujours prestigieux malgré leur passé colonial, havres de savoirs et de paix qui offrent à leurs élèves un véritable avenir dans un pays plongé dans la guerre. Dans cette étude richement documentée à partir de nombreuses archives et témoignages recueillis en France et au Vietnam, Nguyen Thuy Phuong met en lumière les circonstances politiques et idéologiques qui ont façonné cet enseignement à une époque de mutations profondes. Elle trace avec finesse comment la « mission civilisatrice » française se mue en diplomatie culturelle face aux défis que représentent l’arrivée des communistes au pouvoir dans le Nord et celle des Américains dans le Sud du Vietnam. Cette histoire vue du haut est appréhendée aussi par le bas. Le livre décrit, de façon sensible, un univers multiculturel complexe et fragmenté qui a laissé, au-delà des salles de classe, une empreinte profonde sur plusieurs générations d’élèves qui se ressent encore dans les mémoires recueillis.

Ce livre d’une jeune chercheuse talentueuse montre à quel point l’éducation est au cœur des enjeux diplomatiques, culturels et identitaires dans un monde bouleversé par la décolonisation. Une histoire à découvrir et à méditer à l’ère de la mondialisation.

Rebecca Rogers

Premier Prix de l’Histoire de l’éducation Robert Mallet (2015)

Source : Encrage