The Vietnamese War

This is a history of the Vietnam war in a single province of the Mekong Delta over the period 1930-1975, focusing on the revolutionary movement that became popularly known as the "Viet Cong". It drawns on documents captured by U.S. and South Vietnamese military forces.

Autorentext

David Elliott

Zusammenfassung
A monumental work of research and analysis, this is a history of the Vietnam War in a single province of the Mekong Delta over the period 1930-1975. More precisely, it is a study of the Vietnamese dimension of the "Vietnam War, " focusing on the revolutionary movement that became popularly known as the "Viet Cong." There are several distinctive features to this study: (1) it provides an explanation for the paradox of why the revolutionary movement was so successful during the war, but unable to meet the challenges of postwar developments; (2) it challenges the dominant theme of contemporary political analysis which assumes that people are "rational" actors responding to events with careful calculations of self-interest; (3) it closely examines province-level documentation that casts light on a number of important historical controversies about the war. No other history of the Vietnam War has drawn on such a depth of documentation, especially firsthand accounts that allow the Vietnamese participants to spea directly to us.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments, A Reader's Guide to The Vietnamese War, 1. The Vietnamese War: Introduction, 2. Postlude, 3. Prelude, 4. Revolution, 5. Resistance, 6. Six Years of Peace: 1954-59, 7. The Tiger Wakes, 8. Forged by the Hammer of the Party, 9. Creating an Armed Strike Force: Military Expansion, 1961-63, 10. Going for Broke, 11. Year of the Big Change: 1965, 12. Winning Hearts and Minds, 13. Stalemate, 14. Tet: the Untold Story of the "General Offensive and General Uprising", 15. Tragic Farewell, 16. Holding On, 17. Civil War, 18. The Final Chapter, Notes, Appendix A: The Human Cost, Appendix B: Reflections, Bibliography, Index