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Strategic and Defence Studies Centre · ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
War dominates the history of Vietnam and its neighbours in the period 1941-1991. During this era the region was wracked by conflicts that reflected the multiple currents and tensions stemming from nationalism, the desire for self-determination, de-colonisation, schemes of national unification, imperialism, post-colonial nation building, regional power rivalries, global ideological tensions and the Cold War. From the war of decolonisation against the French to the US intervention from the early 1960s, Vietnam became one of the Cold War’s ‘hot wars’ and a symbol of the American desire to ‘contain’ communism. Yet the communist victory in 1975 did not mean the end of war in mainland Southeast Asia. The Vietnam War’s linked conflicts in Cambodia and Laos who had their own causes and consequences and the emergence of a unified Vietnam as a regional power meant it was soon embroiled in an invasion of Kampuchea and then border clashes with China. This course seeks to understanding the impact of the Vietnam wars by exploring issues around their relationship to the nature and character of war, decolonisation and imperialism, the geo-politics of Asia, the Cold War, US policies of containment, military strategy and the popular memory/interpretation of war in literature and film.
A weekly 2-hour lecture a weekly 1-hour tutorial. Students will be expected to to spend an average of 10 hours per week on the course, with three being made up of the contact hours and the remainder preparing for lectures and tutorials, and completing assessment.
Preliminary Reading G Kolko, Vietnam: Anatomy of War, Unwin, London, 1987 G. Kolko,Vietnam: Anatomy of a Peace , Routledge, London, 1997 M. Young, The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990, HarperCollins, New York, 1991 P. G. Edwards, Australia and the Vietnam War NewSouth, Sydney, 2014 R L. Miller & D. Wainstock, Indochina and Vietnam: the thirty-five-year war, 1940-1975, Enigma Books, 2013 W.S.Turley, The second Indochina War : a concise political and military history, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009 M.P. Bradley & M Young, Making sense of the Vietnam wars: local, national, and transnational perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2008 M.A. Lawrence, The Vietnam War: a concise international history Oxford University Press, 2008 M. Shipway, The road to war : France and Vietnam, 1944-1947, Providence: Berghahn Books, 1996 S.P. Armstrong, The causes and implications of the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Kampuchea, California State University, Long Beach, 1985 Vo Nguyen Giap, “Peoples War, People’s Army”, Hanoi, 1961 Bao Ninh “The Sorrow of War”, Secker & Warburg, London, 1991 Troung Nhu Tang “A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath”, Vintage, 1986 Lien-Hang T. Nguyen “Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam” , University of North Carolina Press, 2012