Vietnam S Lost Revolution

Vietnam's Lost Revolution employs archival material from Vietnam to examine the First Republic of Vietnam's Civic Action program, designed to recast the newly independent state as a modern, anticommunist nation. This book engages with topics like nationalism, post-colonialism, and development in its examination of events that led to the Vietnam War.

1. A temporary expedient : the origins of civic action in Vietnam -- 2. Nationalism and welfare improvement in the Republic of Vietnam -- 3. Revolution, community development, and the construction of Diem's Vietnam -- 4. "Bettering the people's conditions of existence" : civic action and community development, 1957-9 -- 5. Civic action and insurgency -- 6. The strategic Hamlet program and civic action in retreat -- Conclusion: Vietnam's lost revolution

The author uses released Rand interviews with 'Viet Cong' defectors and prisoners of war and past work involving the province of M? Tho to create a more up-to-date social framework for the Vietnam War at the village level.

At the heart of the continuing controversy in Viet Nam is a revolutionary struggle for political order and unity which remains incomplete and has consumed the vitality of the Vietnamese for more than two decades. The fundamental changes in the structure of politics which have developed in Viet Nam over the past forty years are the essence of revolution. How and why this revolution occurred and the significance of the Vietnamese experience is germane to a more perceptive understanding of revolution in general. The historical analysis is carried only through the final years of World War 2.

On the same day the Japanese surrender ended World War II, Vietnamese nationalists declared independence from France. Within weeks, France sought to reestablish colonial rule. American merchant seamen arriving in French ports to ship GIs back to the U.S. were dismayed when French troops bound for Vietnam came aboard instead. Many of these seamen objected because American veterans awaited transport home and because they flew in the face of Allied war aims of national self-determination. Later, with the Vietnam War effort dependent on Merchant Marine logistical support, seamen were among the first to protest U.S. involvement. With firsthand recollections, this book tells the story, from deadly encounters with mines, rockets and gunfire to evacuations of refugees and to rescues of "boat people" in the South China Sea.

This work looks at the influence of radicalism on a crucial point in Vietnamese history. It reveals an era of student strikes, debates on women's emancipation, revolt against the patriarchal family and intellectual explorations of French and Chinese politics and thought.

"Marr's previous book, Vietnam 1945, ends on 2 September when big crowds gathered in Hanoi and Saigon to celebrate Vietnamese independence. This book focuses on the next sixteen months, when Vietnam's future course was determined. It recreates in vivid detail what it was like to be there in these dramatic postcolonial moments as the Japanese, British and Americans faded from view, the DRV began to function and establish an army, the French maneuvered to restore colonialism, but the beginnings of the Cold War swept Vietnam into its orbit with the Chinese Red Army victories and Chinese arms on the border. As with his other books Marr pioneers the history of war from the Vietnamese perspective"--Provided by publisher.