Rejoinder to Adam Fforde

Abstract

The issue of scholarship regarding Asian socialist countries is by no means a new one. This has faced China scholars for a long time. The difficulties of gaining access to these countries, assessing information from elusive sources, and gathering data are common to all scholars of countries like China, Korea, and Vietnam. Of course, research conditions are less than ideal. Vietnam, Korea and China are to a large extent closed societies, even if we speak their languages. However, as I stated in the beginning of my article, my present purpose is to raise issues that I think should be discussed, and not to do an original piece based on anthropological fieldwork. But more than this, it seems to me that given the limited commentary on socialist states as Vietnam, any new issues that come up should be given wider currency. And this was another major purpose of my article—to bring to readers of the Bulletin new debates which have focused on Vietnam, specifically in French academic circles, among a number of Vietnamese economists and historians. It was in the context of these debates that I focus on selected issues and offer some judgments of my own.     

The National Liberation Front and the transformation of Vietnamese society

Abstract

Like vultures swarming over a dying carcass, American establishment intellectuals have been swift to dissect the agonizing war in Vietnam. Yet poring through the massive scholarly, journalistic and official works heralding American attempts to crush the Vietnamese resistance, one is struck by the void of information concerning the National Liberation Front. The enemy remains almost as elusive in the literature as in the swamps of Vietnam. After more than a decade of fighting, the NLF is virtually as ‘faceless,’ unknown, unfathomable as ever to the American people. Indeed a careful search reveals not a single significant scholarly work on the subject. In the absence of independent scholarship, the officially sanctioned work of Douglas Pike, an officer of the United States Information Service with long tenure in Vietnam, has gone virtually unchallenged. Consider Pike's conclusions about the NFL:     

Review essay: Conflicting interpretations of the Vietnam War, 1945–75

Abstract

Who owns the history of the Vietnam War? Whose vision or revision of the war will remain in the minds of Americans who were not there? These are questions that have certainly not been answered definitively in the flood of cogently argued, carefully researched books written over the past fifteen years. A striking feature of the writing on this topic has been the inability of scholars to move toward any overarching interpretive consensus that could assist in clarifying which questions have been more or less answered, and organizing which problems remain to be resolved.     

McAlister's Vietnam

Abstract

John McAlister's book is an ambitious attempt to apply current American social scientific theories of social mobilization and revolution to Vietnam. It is likely to be considered an important source since his analysis of the anti-French revolution is based on still secret and inaccessible French army files, used in conjunction with other French language sources available only in a few libraries in the U.S. It might well become popular as a college text, offering a theoretical model of revolution for those wishing to venture comparisons with other nations. It is, to my mind, a subtly and intelligently written book but an extremely biased one, and therefore worthy of careful analysis.     

David Marr's ‘Vietnamese anticolonialism’

Abstract

Because of its legendary resistance against the United States and its struggle for national salvation, Vietnam has entered into the consciousness of progressive mankind and has begun to attract the attention of foreign historians. In the United States, the war of aggression waged by the U.S. government has been costly in lives and property and has seriously weakened the country in all aspects, leading to the increasing opposition among the American people to the war. While protesting against the policy of the U.S. government of continuing and widening its aggression in Vietnam, for the purpose of defending America's honor and to fight for their democratic rights and economic livelihood, the American people from all walks of life have been building a friendly relationship with the Vietnamese people. Because of this reason, the American people would like to have a better understanding of the land and people of Vietnam, past and present. However, in the United States “the study of Vietnamese anti-colonial movements has been largely the preserve of the political scientist, the practicing journalist, and the intelligence specialist.” Since nearly all of these people have conducted their research according to strict political guidelines from the White House and the Pentagon, they have ignored the historical truth in an effort to justify present-day American neo-colonialism. Despite these limitations, Marr's Vietnamese Anticolonialism is one of the first historical studies published in the United States which makes a larger contribution to America's understanding of the Vietnamese struggle for freedom and independence, and thereby shows that the present U.S. war of aggression is doomed to failure.     

The G.I. movement in Asia

Abstract

The War against Vietnam has done much to America. It has weakened the economy. It has aggravated social tensions. And it has opened the way for large numbers of Americans to see the racism, the imperialism and the genocide that is so pervasive and yet so deeply buried in American history. By fighting so successfully, the Vietnamese people have helped Americans make a space for revolutionary thought and revolutionary politics in America. While it is true that the American left has been largely unable to take advantage of the widespread discontent that the War has created, there has been a significant erosion in the effectiveness of many American institutions. Central among these institutions is the military. When the values and interests of a ruling class are seriously challenged, its political power does come out of the barrel of a gun; and so the fading effectiveness of the American military is of the deepest concern to America’s “leaders.”     

What happened in Korea? Rethinking Korean history 1945–1953

Abstract

The Pueblo incident was a stunning reminder of the hysteria and racism associated with the word Korea in the U.S. In spite of Vietnam and the great changes that have taken place within American society, the U.S. government and the military had little trouble in resuscitating the spectre of “brainwashing” and torture. The most diabolical cunning was attributed to the Koreans, who had legally captured the Pueblo and its crew. But as though at the touch of a switch, the American media and much of the nation again began to call for blood as they had done in the years 1950 to 1953. It would be a mistake to underestimate the success of America's campaign of vilification against the Korean people and the Korean revolutionary movement. At times the phobia reaches absurd proportions.     

Yale

Abstract

During the summer, Yale CCAS will sponsor a series of 5 public lectures on Asian studies as well as a number of informal open seminars on the nature of Asian studies in the U.S., American foreign policy in Asia, comparative study of China and Vietnam, and other topics to be decided by planners and participants. All suggestions are welcomed. Plans are being made to show several films, including “Remember Vietnam” and “In the Year of the Pig.”     

America and the Peace Talks

Abstract

During the ‘cleaning house’ period of a new administration, we are usually barraged with predictions of how all the changes will affect policy. New appointees and their past records are carefully scrutinized by the prognosticators. Such is the case with the newly chosen implementers of American Vietnam strategy. Henry Cabot Lodge is noted for his unbending anti-Communism. Henry Kissinger comes through as the hard-nosed intellectual with new, realistic solutions for the Vietnam dilemma. Ellsworth Bunker is the behind-the-scenes diplomat deferring punctiliously to Saigon's grievances. And yet what is most striking after two months of transition and new faces added to or replacing the old, is that the political climate in Washington and Paris and the traditionally defined objectives of American policy in Asia are basically unchanged. Looking at the resumption of the Peace Talks in Paris, it is already clear that basic American assumptions — and not personalities — will determine the American position in the months ahead.     

A note on Beheiren

Abstract

It might be useful for Concerned Asian Scholars to be aware of what is probably the most active independent peace group in Japan — a country of peace groups. Like National Mobilization in this country, which it resembles in style and outlook, Beheiren (Japan “Peace for Vietnam!” Committee) emerged as a direct response to the American bombing of North Vietnam. Since its foundation on April 24, 1965, it has remained the only major group in Japan to focus its main energies on opposing the Vietnam War. This has meant publications (books, articles, newsletters — mostly in Japanese, but two fine booklets of translations of an Asahi series: Vietnam — A Voice from the Villages and The National Liberation Front by Honda Katsuichi), demonstrations, teachins, emissaries to Vietnam, international gatherings in Japan (among its guests have been David Dellinger, Ralph Featherstone, Jean-Paul Sartre, Howard Zinn, Joan Baez), anti-war ads in American newspapers, medicine to Hanoi, and, attracting the most international attention, assistance to American military men in Japan desiring to desert.     

Marxist scholarship on Thailand the work of E. Thadeus flood (1932–1977)

Abstract

Thadeus Flood died of cancer on December 11, 1977. The last ten years of his life were devoted to promoting revolutionary change and resisting American imperialism in Thailand. His life and work reveal the contradictions of American education and imperialist policy. This is not only because of what he wrote about, but because his life and scholarship transcended his conservative and “apolitical” education, moving him from academic scholarship to political commitment, forcing him beyond the functions within the university for which he had been intended. American imperialism in Southeast Asia gave him a political awareness which his education had consistently denied him. In this brief article I would like to indicate the important lessons which Asian scholars and others can learn from his transformation, and to attempt to assess his seminal contribution to the study of Thailand. I seek to draw, from his life and work, political lessons which can further our common struggles.     

A response to Steven Feierman’s ‘writing history: flow and blockage in the circulation of knowledge’

ABSTRACT

This paper responds to Steven Feierman’s ‘Writing history: flow and blockage in the circulation of knowledge.’ Feierman has noted that most of the publications produced in Tanzania, and in Africa more generally, do not circulate to America. As a result, American scholars do not have access to such publications. The consequence of this phenomenon is that American scholars have difficulty producing African historical knowledge that is rich in context. While agreeing with Feierman’s thought-provoking intervention, this paper makes three main propositions. First, while acknowledging the problem of knowledge circulation between Africa and America, the paper renders visible an equally serious and disturbing reality: that the circulation of knowledge between African institutions is far more limited than it is between Africa and America or Europe. Many Africans consume knowledge that is largely produced in America and Europe. Secondly, while agreeing with Feierman that many scholars in America have difficulty producing historical knowledge about Africa that is rich in context, the paper argues that it is still possible for historians to produce contextually-rich knowledge. To do so, it is proposed, such historians need to craft locally-based methodological strategies that are sensitive to Africans’ perspectives on their changing cultural and physical world. Finally, while recognising that the limited circulation of knowledge is an important reason for some American scholars to produce historical knowledge about Africa which is rich in context, the paper offers four additional explanations on this problem, namely the failure of some scholars to conduct sustained primary field research in Africa; lack of personal sacrifice, a proper attitude and commitment to do long-term research in Africa; the tendency of some scholars from America to make no effort to find works produced in African institutions of higher learning when they visit Africa; and the growing over-reliance on digitised sources of information for producing histories, sources which can hardly capture such things as emotions, feelings, thoughts, silences, or cosmologies that are inevitable in the production of contextually-rich historical knowledge.     

US Foreign Policy and the Korean War

Abstract

Sometimes called the “Forgotten War” because Americans pay so little attention to it, the Korean War was nevertheless a pivotal event in US foreign policy. Three themes will be integrated into this article as it analyzes Korean War policy. First, the Korean War heightened the debates and divisions among US foreign policymakers. If Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor helped to silence these divisions, then President Truman’s handling of North Korea’s 1950 invasion of South Korea helped resurrect them. Second, while foreign policy goals are generally assumed to drive the objectives of war in the classic Clausewitzian sense, the opposite frequently occurred in Korea as changes on the battlefield drove policy objectives of officials in Washington. Third, although the Americans, Chinese and Soviets all worked assiduously to keep the Korean War limited to the Korean Peninsula, the war had repercussions far beyond the Korean battlefield. Its ramifications were felt in Taiwan, Vietnam, Europe and in US defense expenditures as well.     

Pan Am makes the going great

Abstract

The great Boeing 707/321C cargo jet rolled off the runway toward the unloading ramp of Travis Air Force Base. Turned and stopped by the white-overalled technician waving a long, orange-coned flashlight, its doors rolled open to reveal the lightweight load it had brought on its return from the distant battlefield: one hundred and sixty-eight plastic-wrapped, aluminum-boxed bundles, the bodies of American soldiers killed in Vietnam. Another Pan American World Airways all-cargo charter was ready for unloading.     

Reflections on the implications of the Vietnam Caucus

Abstract

It is revealing that a Vietnam Caucus held in March 1968 should end its meeting by beginning an evaluation of the professional “conscience” of Asian scholars. That it took this war to raise the latent problems in the profession is itself a depressing commentary on the state of the field. But the desire on the part of some individuals to create a nationwide inter-university student-faculty Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars to pose and then seek to resolve these problems fulfills one of the organizers' hopes.     

Melby: the mandate of heaven

Abstract

Until recently young scholars have been content to study China in a vacuum while ignoring the background and the climate in which the whole study of modern China grew up in this country. China was just another dusty attic available for scholarly rummaging. There was data for all. Few stopped to examine the people who were doing the rummaging, by whom they were being educated, and the ends to which their work was put. Even fewer cared to remind their classes, or themselves, that the work being done and the ideas being set forth were largely the products of men who had either survived or missed a purge. With rare exceptions several kinds of “China specialists” survived; the cold warriors who believed in the international communist conspiracy, and those who retreated into a kind of academic senility or liberal limbo land where value-free truth was found equidistant between any two current extremes.     

Douglas Pike and the NLF

Abstract

Our tragically mistaken policy in Vietnam is in part at least the result of scholarly misapprehension of Vietnamese reality. Experts have not been totally lacking; but too many of these experts have distorted, consciously or unconsciously, the Vietnamese reality they report. Douglas Pike, our “most careful student of the Viet Cong” (Schlesinger, The Bitter Heritage, 36), is a case in point. His book, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (M.I.T. Press, 1966), received broad praise when it was issued. Bernard Fall called it “excellent” (Two Vietnams, 357); the APSR reviewer described it as “among the very, best (books) on any aspect of contemporary Vietnam” (American Political Science Review, LXI.2.495 (June 1967)). In this brief review of Viet Cong I shall indicate Pike's general bias, specific points in his argument, and objections to his framework.     

Work and Family Life among Migrant Factory Workers in China and Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Through on-site interviewing, a comparative study has been carried out about migrant factory workers in industrialised parts of China’s Guangdong province and in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. Even though China and Vietnam possess similar legacies of socialist transformation and have household registration regulations that restrict rural migrants’ access to urban social services and impede their settlement in cities, there exist marked differences in Guangdong and Ho Chi Minh City in migration patterns, factory work conditions and migrant worker family livelihoods. In particular, migrant families in Ho Chi Minh City largely stay intact and tend to settle there permanently, while married migrant workers in Guangdong normally need to split up their families and remain trapped in circular rural–urban migration. As shall be seen, the national and local governments play important roles in determining the inclusion or exclusion of migrants from urban life, the wages they are paid and their standard of living and, most important of all, their children’s access to education. Each of the two countries’ differences in implementing policies is examined and comparatively analysed.     

DIALOGUE WITH THE WEST

Abstract

This portrayal of China by one of the most respected intellectuals ever to emerge from the shadowy labyrinth of the American diplomatic establishment mirrors twenty years of concentrated work by American China scholars. Not every China expert would accept all of Kennan's assumptions or express them in such strident form. Yet over the last two decades the China profession has evolved a style of thought, a mode of asking questions, which has largely substantiated such views in both the public and scholarly worlds. The majority of China watchers have pleaded for “tolerance” and “patience” towards the People's Republic as she gradually learns, aided by a flexible American containment policy, to “adjust” to the “international community of nations” and the “rationalizing” qualities implicit in the “modernization” process. While protesting against certain aspects of America's foreign policy toward China, however, their thought and work has reinforced, at times deepened, the ideological justifications that support America's role in Asia and her attitudes towards China.     

Expanding the Story of Japanese American Internment

Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. 322 pp. Eric L. Muller, Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001; paper, 2003. 229 pp. Since the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the story of the Japanese Americans interned during World War II has spawned a cottage industry of popular histories, museum exhibits, public memorials, biographies, novels, memoirs, children's fiction and non-fiction, documentary and feature films, and, of course, scholarly studies. The Redress legislation, which required the U.S. government to pay $20,000 in reparations to each living survivor of America's concentration camps, ushered in a new era of legitimacy and popularity to the internment story. An Internet check on “Books in Print” lists 101 titles with the keywords “Japanese American internment.” Professional historians sit at the intellectual helm of this internment boom, and, accordingly, the amount of their output too has expanded. While the production of monographs and dissertations has increased in the recent past, more interesting to observe are the changing ways in which scholars have approached the internment. Since the 1940s, historical researchers focused on the most obvious architects of the decision to remove 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast; three decades later the innocent victims of this wartime policy took center stage. Now the spotlight of innovation shines on those who have long been considered minor players in the internment drama. Two recent and highly notable monographs, Greg Robinson's By Order of the President and Eric L. Muller's Free To Die for Their Country, epitomize this historiographical trend. In focusing on the shadows of the internment story, these books compel a reconsideration of some of the basic elements to the internment narrative.