History 485A

Devine

Fall 2011

 

Study Questions: Week 1

 

Martin Loicano, “Vietnam Divided”

 

1.    Loicano takes issue with much of the conventional wisdom in “general accounts” of Vietnamese history.  What is the “conventional wisdom” and why does Loicano find it misleading?

 

 

2.    What evidence does Loicano offer that Vietnamese-Chinese relations have not simply been one thousand years of struggle and resistance on the part of the Vietnamese?  Why does he believe Vietnamese-Chinese relations have been portrayed this way?

 

 

3.    How did southern Vietnam differ from northern Vietnam economically, culturally, and ideologically? 

 

 

4.    What factors lead to the emergence of a “unique southern identity” in Saigon?  What traits did southern Vietnamese develop as part of this identity?  How did outside observes distinguish the southern Vietnamese from the northern Vietnamese?

 

5.    What evidence does Loicano offer to show that there was animosity between north and south Vietnam long before what we know as “the Vietnam War”?

 

 

6.    How did the presence of the French in the South make regional differences within Vietnam even more stark?

 

 

7.    Why were the communist Viet Minh not as popular in the South?

 

 

8.    How was Diem’s government in the South different than Ho’s Communist government in the North?  What evidence does Loicano cite in arguing that life in the South was relatively more humane?

 

 

 

Mark Philip Bradley, Imagining America and Vietnam

 

  1. How did different participants in the Vietnamese Reform Movement at the turn of the twentieth century (such as Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh) “imagine” the U.S.?  How did their descriptions and interpretations of American History reflect their own priorities for the further development of Vietnam?

 

 

  1. What role did traditional Confucian values play in influencing how the Vietnamese reformers “imagined” America?  Why did some Vietnamese elites embrace Social Darwinism?  How did their version of Social Darwinism differ from that articulated in the West?

 

 

  1. How did interwar Vietnamese intellectuals “imagine” America? How did they learn about America?  What factors helped shape their ideas about America and how the American experience might be useful in imagining post-colonial Vietnam?  Why did they speak so highly of America?

 

 

  1. How did receiving a French education shape Vietnamese students’ impressions of the United States and also help to further radicalize them during the 1920s?  How did the students begin to apply their knowledge of western values to challenge western (i.e. French) colonialism?

 

 

  1. What evidence does the author introduce in suggesting that during the pre-World War II period, Ho Chi Minh was not a “pawn” (or even an admirer) of Stalin and his approach to Communism? 

 

 

 

  1. How did their extended time in prison shape Vietnamese radicals’ ideas about Marxism-Leninism?  If this ideology encouraged them to think in internationalist terms, how did the prison experience also make these radicals more parochial and less worldly in their thinking?

 

 

 

  1. What factors shaped American observers’ impressions of the “Annamites”?  To what extent were their impressions driven by pre-existing (and long-held) racial and cultural prejudices?  What role did the French play in shaping such impressions?

 

 

 

  1. How did some Americans’ ideas about how the environment could shape people’s behavior of level of “culture” – i.e. the notion of the “heat belt” – influence their views of the “native” Vietnamese?

 

 

 

  1. What were some of the common (mis)perceptions Americans had of the Vietnamese people?

 

 

 

  1. Why did American officials sharply criticize the French colonial administration of Indochina? What would these Americans have done better?

 

 

 

 

  1. Bradley argues that the Americans’ attitudes toward colonization and colonial peoples were closer to those of the French than the Americans would have liked to admit. What evidence does he introduce to support this argument?

 

 

Anne Foster, “An Empire of the Mind”

 

1.    How did the American approach to imperialism differ from that of the Europeans?  Why did the Americans believe their way was better?  Why were the Europeans suspicious of the American approach?

 

 

2.    Why were the French hostile toward American missionaries in Southeast Asia? What “threatening” things were the missionaries teaching the “natives”?  Why were American ideas about education and its purpose particularly threatening?

 

 

3.    Why were the results of American missionaries’ efforts in Southeast Asia both “imperialistic” and “liberating”?

 

 

4.    How did American colonial policy in the Philippines and with regard to employing “natives” in industry differ from European policies?

 

 

5.    How did Southeast Asians’ lives change once they gained access to American consumer goods and foodstuffs?

 

 

6.    What did Americans mean when they said “trade follows the film”?

 

 

7.    What hopes did Americans have for films shown in Southeast Asia?  What fears did Europeans have about the same movies?

 

 

8.    To what extent were Southeast Asians receptive to American culture in the 1920s and 1930s?  What explains their reaction?

 

 

9.    Foster observes, “The cultural empire proved as unruly as the political ones.”  (109) What do you think she means by this?