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 Visionlsj