History 498

Devine

Midterm Study Guide

The midterm will consist of two parts: SEVEN short essay questions and ONE long essay question.  I will give you ten short essay questions; you will choose seven to answer.  I will give you three long essay questions; you will answer one.  The exam questions will be taken from the questions below.  There will be no questions on the exam that do not appear below.

1. How does Mark Bradley’s approach to studying U.S.-Vietnamese relations – particularly his focus on a longer period of time and his downplaying of the Cold War – differ from that of previous historians who have done work in this area?  What new insights does Bradley’s approach provide that other accounts are missing?
2. 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?
3. Why did some Vietnamese elites embrace Social Darwinism?  How did their version of Social Darwinism differ from that articulated in the West?
4. What evidence does Mark Bradley introduce in Imagining Vietnam & America 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?  Why did Ho find the Chinese model more attractive?
5. 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?
6. Why did American officials have a hard time accepting 1) the existence of Vietnamese nationalism and 2) the prospects of Vietnamese self-governance or independence?
7. What did FDR think of the Vietnamese?  According to Bradley, how did FDR’s plans for postwar Vietnam reveal his own prejudices and uninformed assumptions about the Vietnamese?
8. Why did Vietnamese communists pursue a strategy of “more friends and fewer enemies” during World War II?  What was their primary focus during the war and how did this strategy address their goals and priorities?
9. How did U.S. officials’ positive impressions of Ho Chi Minh depart from the generally negative preconceptions Americans held of the Vietnamese?  How, according to Bradley, was the reaction to Ho also in keeping with long-held anti-Vietnamese stereotypes?
10. How did concerns about France and China affect the Truman administration’s willingness to engage the DRV’s diplomatic initiatives?  Why, ultimately, did Washington reject the DRV’s attempts to improve relations?
11. According to William Duiker, how did French policies in colonial Vietnam distort the economy and produce sharp inequalities and widespread suffering?  Why did the “economic advances” that the French touted often prove to be less than beneficial to the majority of Vietnamese?
12. What were the short- and long-term goals of the Vietminh?  Why did there have to be two strategies which, arguably, were in conflict?
13. Why was Ho’s Revolutionary Youth League (RYL) so successful?  How did Soviet interference undermine the RYL during the early 1930s?  What differences over strategy did Ho have with the Comintern?
14. Why were U.S. officials in Vietnam and Washington so dissatisfied with the way the French were waging the war against the Vietminh?

15. Why didn’t the French heed the advice of the Americans regarding their fight against the Vietminh?  What were their complaints against the Americans?
16. According to Duiker, how did the Vietminh adopt Mao’s “people’s war” tactics to the conditions in Vietnam?  Why did they have to make changes?
17. Why was the Vietminh victory at Dien Bien Phu both significant and timely?
18. Why, according to Duiker, were the results of the 1954 Geneva accords “bittersweet” (92) for the Vietminh leaders and their followers?
19. According to Mark Lawrence, there are five lines interpretation that explain why the United States came to support the French against the Vietminh in 1950. Identify and briefly summarize those five interpretations, then make a case for which one(s) you find most persuasive.
20. According to Mark Lawrence, why did Eisenhower’s refusal to intervene militarily at Dien Bien Phu mark only a “momentary flash of understanding” and not a fundamental shift from the Vietnam policies of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations?
21. According to The Ugly American, why were Soviet diplomats more effective in Asia than American diplomats?
22. Identify one good example recounted in The Ugly American of an American (or Americans) succeeding in winning over Asian “hearts and minds”?  Explain why the attempt was successful.
23.  According to Lederer and Burdick, why were ambitious and costly public works projects not especially helpful in winning over native Asian populations?
24. After reading the anecdotes recounted in The Ugly American, why might one conclude that many American foreign service personnel in Asia were more naïve and innocent than malicious or ill-willed?
25. Why did the Americans “love Joe Bing” while the Asian natives hated him?
26. In The Ugly American, why was Gilbert MacWhite a more effective ambassador than Louis “Lucky” Sears?
27. Though both were well-intentioned, why did the engineer Homer Atkins end up achieving more success in his venture in Sarkhan than did the powdered milk salesman John Colvin?
28. Why doe Father Finian succeed at undermining the Communists while many U.S. officials in The Ugly American seem to be completed outplayed by them?
29.  How did McCarthyism, NSC-68, and the outbreak of the Korean War help to insure that Diem would get attention and a positive review when he visited the United States in 1950?
30. Explain why U.S. policymakers decided Diem was “the kind of Asian we can live with.”
31. Why does Jacobs argue that the American public did not get a “complete picture” of Operation Passage to Freedom?  What aspects were left out?  What unintended consequences resulted?
32. Why was Lawton Collins so critical of Ngo Dien Diem?
33. Though his brutal tactics proved effective in subduing both the Communists and his noncommunist rivals in South Vietnam initially, how did Diem’s hard line policies undermine his regime in the long run?  In what ways did his attempts to increase the regime’s security end up making him more enemies that friends?
34. Explain the ideas behind “Personalism,” the Nhu brothers’ political philosophy. In practice, how did Diem and his brother implement “Personalism” in South Vietnam?
35. Why does Jacobs say the story of South Vietnam during the Eisenhower years was really two stories?  Why were there two stories?
36. Provide what you consider the most telling examples that Diem’s regime was a dictatorship rather than a democracy and justify your choices.
37. Why does the author maintain that Diem was just as responsible as the Communists in Hanoi for the formation of the NLF?  What part did each play in energizing the NLF?
38. Why did Diem’s handling of the Buddhist crisis convince many U.S. officials that Washington had to cut ties with him?
39. Drawing on the evidence in Jacobs book, explain why support for Diem was so devastating to American interests and credibility.  Why did support of Diem pull the U.S. inextricably into the Vietnam war?
40. According to those in the “liberal-realist” school, why did the U.S. become involved in Vietnam?
41. Some historians call the Vietnam war a “quagmire”; some call it a “stalemate.”  What is the difference?
42. Why does Gareth Porter suggest that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson did not have as much power to determine their own Vietnam policies as some historians have claimed?  What kept them from having such power?
43. Pick one of the three “central assumptions” of the dominant “Cold War consensus” paradigm and explain how Porter challenges the validity of this assumption.
44. Why did Lyndon Johnson’s advisors believe that bombing North Vietnam was a “low cost, low risk” strategy that might prevent the U.S. from having to send ground troops to Vietnam?
45. How do the articles by Logevall and Porter revise early historians’ arguments that Lyndon Johnson was eager to expand U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war and used the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an excuse for doing so?
46. What arguments did Hubert Humphrey make in encouraging Johnson to avoid escalation in Vietnam?
47. Some historians have argued that Johnson’s decision to escalate the U.S. commitment in Vietnam was “inevitable” or “unavoidable.”  Why does Logevall disagree and even argue that, given what Johnson knew at the time, that it is actually surprising he chose to escalate the war?
48. Identify what you believe are the strongest and weakest aspects of Sandra Taylor’s argument that Johnson’s racism played a crucial role in his Vietnamese policies and justify your choices.