Southeast Asia

Organized Panel Session

Regional Interpretations of Vietnam's Revolution

Vietnam studies, like Vietnam itself, is familiar with diversity and regionalism but has yet to reconcile them fully with an outward image of unity. Arguing against nationalist simplifications, scholars often highlight the country’s cultural, environmental, and ethnic diversity. Likewise, their regional approaches have amply demonstrated the distinct but entangled trajectories of its north, center, and south, particularly during the early modern and colonial eras. Yet sustained analyses of such social and geographic difference are curiously rare in studies of Vietnam’s revolution and the subsequent Indochina wars. Compounding this problem, Vietnam studies tends to view this crucial period from the perspective of central leaders, whether French, American, or Vietnamese. In contrast, Indonesian studies has benefited from critical inquiries that unpack its “national” revolution to examine how it unfolded variously across space and society, whether in Sumatra, Java, Sumba, or elsewhere.

Sponsored by the Vietnam Studies Group (VSG), this panel analyzes the regional tensions and cultural differences that were alternately expressed or sublimated in the making of postcolonial Vietnam. Focused on the formative decades after the August Revolution, it discusses how diverse peoples grappled with decolonization, Cold War conflict, and civil strife as they became—or were made to become—Vietnamese. Drawing on original archival research, each paper explores a distinct region, from the mountainous Black River region and imperial center of Hue to the Mekong Delta’s fringes. Together, they trace the ways in which diverse peoples and far-flung places endured, enabled, or accommodated radical social change and a new nation rising.

Organizer(s)

• CL

  Christian Lentz

  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Chair(s)

• PA

  Pierre Asselin

  San Diego State University

Paper Presenter(s)

• JC

  Jessica Chapman

  Williams College
• CL

  Christian Lentz

  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• ND

  Nguyen Diu-Huong

  Haverford College

Discussant(s)

• LN

  Lien-Hang Nguyen

  Columbia University

Papers:

• 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

  Southern Vietnam’s Postcolonial Frontier: Local vs. Central Power
• 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

  Vast Area, Sparse People: Tai Spaces in Revolutionary Vietnam
• 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

  Better than the Rest: The World According to Huế, 1954-1975