A Companion to the Vietnam War

A Companion to the Vietnam War contains twenty-four definitive essays on America's longest and most divisive foreign conflict. It represents the best current scholarship on this controversial and influential episode in modern American history.

• Highlights issues of nationalism, culture, gender, and race.
• Covers the breadth of Vietnam War history, including American war policies, the Vietnamese perspective, the antiwar movement, and the American home front.
• Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.
• Includes a select bibliography to guide further research.

About the Contributors viii

Introduction xi

1 Hanoi’s Long Century 1
Stein Tonnesson

PART 1 THE VIETNAMESE IN CONTEXT 17

2 In Search of Ho Chi Minh 19
William Duiker

3 Belated Asian Allies: The Technical and Military Contributions of Japanese Deserters (1945-50) 37
Christopher E. Goscha

4 The Realities and Consequences of War in a Northern Vietnamese Commune 65
Shaun Malarney

5 The My Tho Grapevine and the Sino-Soviet Split 79
David Hunt

6 “Vietnam” as a Women’s War 93
Karen G. Turner

PART 11 THE AMERICANS IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN CONTEXT 113

7 Before the War: Legacies from the Early Twentieth Century in United States-Vietnam Relations 115
Anne Foster

8 Franklin Roosevelt, Trusteeship, and US Exceptionalism: Reconsidering the American Vision of Postcolonial Vietnam 130
Mark Bradley

9 Dreaming Different Dreams: The United States and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam 146
Robert K. Bridham

10 JFK and the Myth of Withdrawal 162
Edwin E. Moise

11 The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam During the Johnson Years 174
Robert Buzzanco

12 A Casualty of War: The Break in American Relations with Cambodia, 1965 198
Kenton Clymer

13 The Last Casualty? Richard Nixon and the End of the Vietnam War, 1969-75 229
Lloyd Gardner

14 Remembering Nixon’s War 260
Carolyn Eisenberg

15 America’s Secret War in Laos, 1955-75 283
Alfred W McCoy

PART 111 AMERICANS AT HOME AND ABROAD 315

16 Missing in Action in the Twenty-First Century 317
Bruce Franklin

17 African Americans and the Vietnam War 333
James Westheider

18 Mexican Americans and the Viet Nam War 348
George Mariscal

19 “They’ll Forgive You for Anything Except Being Weak”: Gender and US Escalation in Vietnam 1961-65 367
Robert Dean

20 The Antiwar Movement 384
Barbara Tischler

21 The Veterans Antiwar Movement in Fact and Memory 403
John Prados

22 Sanctuary!: A Bridge Between Civilian and GI Protest Against the Vietnam War 416
Michael S. Foley

23 Knowledge at War: American Social Science and Vietnam 434
Michael E. Latham

24 The War on Television: TV News, the Johnson Administration, and Vietnam 450
Chester J Pach, Jr.

Select Bibliography 470
Compiled by Amy E. Blackwell

Index 491

“Overall, this collection will inform and challenge readers, who will discover stimulating perspectives that deliver on Young and Buzzanco’s claims, comprising a welcome addition to the literature.” History: Reviews of New Books

"The quality of the essays... make it an easy recommendation to those looking at the war."
Journal of American Studies

“This terrific collection of twenty-four original articles is as valuable for the teacher as for the student of the Vietnam War. The contributors, who universally rank among the foremost experts on both the War and Southeast Asian history, utilize diverse frameworks and diverse sources to produce diverse perspectives. Young and Buzzanco warrant praise and thanks for assembling a volume sure to become mandatory reading.” Richard Immerman, Temple University

“These stimulating essays on both the Southeast Asian and American sides of the war contribute valuable new insights into old debates, such as presidential decisions, and leading-edge investigations into new issues, such as ethnicity, gender, and memory.” David L. Anderson, University of Indianapolis

Marilyn B. Young is Professor of History at New York University. She is the author of Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy (1969) and The Vietnam Wars (1991), winner of the Berkshire Women’s History Prize. She is the co-author of Transforming Russia and China: Revolutionary Struggle in the 20th Century (with William Rosenberg, 1980), Promissory Notes: Women and the Transition to Socialism (with Rayna Rapp and Sonia Kruks, 1983), and Vietnam and America (with Marvin Gettleman, Jane Franklin, and Bruce Franklin, 1995), and is the co-editor of Human Rights and Revolutions (with Lynn Hunt and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, 2000).

Robert Buzzanco is Associate Professor of History at the University of Houston. He is the author of Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (1996), winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Prize, and Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life (Blackwell, 1999).

A Companion to the Vietnam War contains twenty-four definitive essays on America’s longest and most divisive foreign conflict. These historiographical and narrative essays by leading historians examine the war in its most important contexts. The broad thematic coverage of the book includes the political strategy of three American presidents, the American military tactics and their consequences, the adjoining wars in Laos and Cambodia, the American home front and antiwar movement, and the intersections of race, class, and gender in both America and Vietnam.

This volume represents the best current scholarship on one of the most controversial and influential episodes in modern American history. It also contains an expanded bibliography of hundreds of secondary sources to guide further research. For students, scholars, and general readers of Vietnam War studies, this Companion is a vital resource.