VIETNAM IN THE COLD WAR: NEW PERSPECTIVES AND SOURCES
4-5 April 2011, Hawaii Pacific University, Honolulu, HI
First Hawaiian (FH) Building, 1132 Bishop Street
Conference Room 306
WORKSHOP PROGRAM
MONDAY, 4 APRIL 2011
Registration (8:30-9:00)
Welcome Remarks (9:00-9:15): Russell Hart, History Department Chair, Hawaii Pacific University
and Pierre Asselin, Hawaii Pacific University
Keynote Address (9:15-10:30): Hoang Anh Tuan, Vietnam National University (Hanoi), “Vietnam
in the Cold War: A Global Perspective”
Break (10:30-10:45)
Session 1 (10:45-12:00): FROM COLONIALISM TO COLD WAR chaired by Craig Lockard,
University of Wisconsin at Green Bay
 Tobias Rettig, Singapore Management University, “In the Capillaries of a French
Imperial Nation-State in Crisis: Vietnamese Workers and Soldiers in Shanghai and
France, 1940-46: Microcosms of Things to Come?”: The history of Vietnamese in
overseas French colonial service in France, Shanghai, and Southern China during and
immediately after WWII provides us with insights into unique microcosms. In these
luminal social spaces of the French imperial nation-state, the relationship with the
imperial power, inter-Vietnamese dynamics, individual life plans, and relations with
other overseas Vietnamese and local actors were played out against the backdrop of a
rapidly changing and increasingly bipolar configuration of the international states
system. The experiences of the workers and soldiers of the 1940-1946 period arguably
were not only different from earlier “camp diasporas” due to France’s early defeat, but
also different from their contemporaries in French Indochina because of Japan’s
maintenance of the Decoux administration until early March 1945. In fact, they are
arguably even representative of the dynamics and fissures to unfold in Vietnam after
the surrender of Japan: a desire for independence coupled with disagreement on how
post-independence should look like. This presentation will primarily look – through the
eyes of the French military intelligence service – at the Vietnamese serving France in
Japanese-occupied Shanghai and how they negotiated imperial service, loyalty and
discipline with the desire for independence and a return home. I will then compare this
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with the experiences of their counterparts in various encampments in France, and a
French unwillingness to see this as a sign of things to come.
Marc Jason Gilbert, Hawaii Pacific University, “Saigon, 1945 Revisited: Measuring
Communist Strength in the South on the Eve of the Cold War”: This presentation
measures the views of many officers attached to the Allied Commission in Saigon and of
some recent scholars on the immediate post-war situation in southern Vietnam, who
offered/offer low estimates of communist organizational capabilities in the period
September-October 1945, against evidence provided by the communists’ disciplined
propaganda campaign directed at manipulating the activities Allied Commission in the
South which suggests a degree of communist command and control worthy of
consideration in the on-going attempt to create an accurate picture of their early postwar strength. This evidence indicates that, despite all the considerable local and
international rivalry and resultant political chaos surrounding the arrival of the Britishled Commission and its eventual handover of authority to the French in Indochina,
Northern party leaders and local cadre were able to remain on the same page
ideologically and operationally in ways which suggest their future triumph in the
struggle for control of the Vietnamese revolution.
Lunch & Optional Chinatown Walking Tour (12:00-1:30)
Session 2 (1:30-3:00): TWO VIETNAMS chaired by Mariam Lam, University of California at
Riverside
 Nu-Anh Tran, University of California at Berkeley, “Nationalism and Internationalism:
The Cold War and New Definitions of the Nation in the Republic of Vietnam, 19541963”: During the early Cold War, newly decolonized countries emerged throughout
Asia and Africa and were forced to navigate the international pressures of the Cold War
while nurturing their own domestic nationalism. In the case of the Republic of Vietnam
(RVN, or South Vietnam), the regime had to negotiate its own desire for political
sovereignty with its need for foreign allies. This presentation suggests that the southern
regime embraced both internationalism and nationalism by adopting a peculiarly
internationalist conception of the nation. The political expression of nationalism
promoted an autonomous foreign policy, egalitarian membership in a global
community, and beneficial foreign relations. The cultural expression depicted
interaction with other countries as a cosmopolitan exchange of art and ideas. Through
education and cultural programs, the state encouraged a sense of international
awareness that facilitated the integration of the RVN into the Free World alliance,
justified reliance on American assistance, and strengthened popular opposition to
communism. The presentation suggests that Saigon’s attempt to redefine nationalism
illuminates the mid-20th century shift from the anti-colonial model of nationalism to a
Cold War model of nationalism. Sources include official speeches, government
documents, public school textbooks, curriculum guides.
 Jessica M. Chapman, Williams College, “Building an Anticommunist State: Ngo Dinh
Diem and the Justification for South Vietnam”: As Ngo Dinh Diem struggled to defeat
his challengers and consolidate his power in South Vietnam in the years just following
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the Geneva Agreements, he declared that anticommunism was the highest form of
patriotism. He further claimed that communists, colonialists, and feudalists were coconspirators bent on selling Vietnam to foreign powers. Among the co-conspirators he
targeted were the Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen politico-religious organizations,
chief-of-state Bao Dai, and stay behind Viet Minh cadres, all of whom Diem insisted
should be eliminated to halt the deleterious effects of their perfidy and immorality on
Vietnamese society. He used this logic to justify all of the most important early South
Vietnamese government initiatives, including the Denounce the Communists Campaign
and the related activities of his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu’s clandestine security apparatus,
the referendum to depose Bao Dai, the very formation of the Republic of Vietnam, the
timetable for a complete French military withdrawal, and even the decision to evade the
reunification elections. This presentation will focus especially on the links between the
the Denounce the Communists Campaign and Diem’s propaganda campaigns against
Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen leaders.
Ben Kerkvliet, Australian National University, “How America’s War Boosted Vietnam’s
Collective Farming”: As the United States government expanded its war in Vietnam in
the early and mid 1960s, the Communist Party government in the north was pushing
forward with socialist programs and policies. One major policy was collective farming.
Getting farming households to pool their land, labor, and other resources to farm
collectively was not an easy task by any means. Ironically, the United States
government’s war helped the Communist Party to complete that task. This presentation
draws on archival materials, news accounts, and interviews with villagers in the Red
River delta.
Break (3:00-3:30)
Session 3 (3:30-5:00): INSIDE THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM chaired by Michel
Fournier, National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO), Paris
 Pierre Asselin, Hawaii Pacific University, “Hanoi’s Diplomatic Strategy at the Onset of
the Vietnam War”: This presentation explores Hanoi’s diplomatic strategy during the
early stages of the “American War.” It offers evidence from an assortment of
Vietnamese, Western, and other materials to elucidate the meanings and usages Hanoi
attached to diplomacy in those years, to describe the related maneuverings of North
Vietnamese leaders, and to identify the forces shaping those maneuvers. The focus
here is on not actual initiatives but the reasoning behind them. Following the onset of
war Hanoi rejected negotiations with Washington, but that did not mean that
“diplomatic struggle” was non-existent, or that it was ever tertiary to other “modes of
struggle,” including the military mode. From that time State and Party organs used
diplomacy to mobilize world opinion, to solidify bonds with socialist and non-aligned
states, and to navigate the Sino-Soviet dispute through stratagems that amounted to
much more than “playing the Chinese and Soviets off against one another” to satisfy
Vietnamese war aims. Admittedly, diplomatic priorities changed over time, but
diplomatic struggle itself remained at the heart of the Anti-American Resistance.
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Ultimately, that struggle proved no less important than the military and political ones in
contouring the outcome of the Vietnamese-American war.
Harish C. Mehta, Trent University, “Fighting, Negotiating, Laughing: The Use of Humor
by North Vietnam as a Strategy of Subversion, Resistance, and Morale-Building”: The
North Vietnamese used humor in order to build rapport with American peace
negotiators, demonstrate their resistance to American power, and raise Vietnamese
morale in two significant ways – during negotiations with the United States, and in
Vietnamese works of popular art. North and South Vietnamese artists and cartoonists
employed humor to satirize the American intervention in Vietnam. When American
bombs were falling over North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or the
DRV), Vietnamese officials were resisting the American intervention by making
humorous remarks during negotiations, and Vietnamese artists were representing U.S.
leaders and policies through caricatures that appeared in DRV newspapers and at art
exhibitions in museums in Hanoi. By using the papers of President Richard Nixon,
housed at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and Vietnamese language
sources at libraries in Hanoi, this presentation shows how the North Vietnamese used
humor as a tool to subvert established orthodoxies, authorities, and hierarchies, as well
as to boost morale and break the ice at peace talks. Studies of humor enable historians,
sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and cultural studies scholars to analyze
where humor has been instrumental in mobilizing sympathizers and support, and the
role of humor in helping release tension during prolonged struggle. The principal
contribution of this study is new evidence from the papers of President Nixon that
unveils a new account of history, showing U.S. and North Vietnamese diplomats
engaging each other with a great deal of wit and camaraderie. These important
encounters fill a gap in the scholarly understanding of the Paris peace talks. This
presentation also examines how North Vietnamese artists and cartoonists used humor
to satirize and denounce the efforts by the administrations of Presidents John Kennedy,
Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon to create and sustain a non-communist state in
South Vietnam.
Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, University of Kentucky, “‘The Comrades Le’: A Study of Vietnam’s
Revolutionary Leadership”: Even though Le Duan and Le Duc Tho were the driving force
behind Communist Vietnam’s pivotal half-century that witnessed revolution, war, and
reunification set against the backdrop of the Cold War, little is known about them.
Before the United States made Indochina a hot spot in the East-West confrontation,
there were driven leaders heading warring factions with local agendas in Vietnam that
shaped events in the region and eventually the world. Obscured by the impenetrable
“bamboo curtain” that surrounds decision-making in Hanoi during the Second Indochina
War, little is known about the dynamics of leadership and the hierarchy of power in
communist Vietnam. Although the VWP portrayed itself as a collective decision-making
body under the benevolent guiding hand of its most famous leader, Ho Chi Minh, the
reality was far more complex. As the primus inter pares, Le Duan managed to stymie
domestic opponents, undercut southern rivals, and temper powerful foreign allies in
order to wage the “Anti-American struggle for liberation and national salvation” in the
manner that he deemed fit. Although scholars have examined – often in excruciating
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detail – the Vietnam policies of Eisenhower and Dulles, Kennedy and Acheson, Johnson
and McNamara, Nixon and Kissinger, little is known about the policies of Le Duan, Le
Duc Tho and their Party. Based on archival materials as well as recently-published
biographies and memoirs, this presentation examines the early careers of the
“comrades Le” from colonial Indochina to postcolonial Vietnam, the Party they
constructed in North Vietnam by 1960, and the policies they held that led to war not
only with the Saigon regime but ultimately with the United States by 1965. In doing so,
this study renders a more complex picture of the communist leadership in North
Vietnam, one that perhaps leads to more questions than puts to rest any debates, but
nevertheless sheds new insight into inner workings of America’s most indomitable
enemy and the one it could not defeat.
Drinks/Social (5:30-8:00): Murphy’s Bar & Grill
TUESDAY, 5 APRIL 2011
Session 4 (9:00-11:00): INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS chaired by Grace Cheng, Hawaii Pacific
University
 Pierre Journoud, Institute for Strategic Research, Military Academy (IRSEM), Paris, “The
Relationship between France and the DRV during the Vietnam War (1954-1975): Two
Independent Voices in the Cold War”: Based on new French and American sources, this
presentation aims to show the building process of a relation of confidence between
Paris and Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Facing a similar need to reassert their
independence, these two countries endeavored to cope with and even escape Cold War
logics. In their quest for autonomy from powerful and yet essential allies, France and the
DRV became de facto allies during the escalation phase of the Vietnam War, and were in
fact perceived as such by the Johnson administration. Of course, both governments
sought to fulfill selfish interests through their rapprochement. Hanoi wanted to
contribute, in accordance with Marxist principles, to divide allied countries such as
France and the United States to weaken the capitalist camp. Paris, for its part, wanted
to facilitate the return of French influence in Indochina and, above all, to assume the
leadership of the international opposition to the American war effort, especially in the
name of the Third World. Nonetheless, the Franco-DRV rapprochement was not
artificial. Both Paris and Hanoi shared a strong desire to remain independent, despite
the many difficulties they encountered. De Gaulle understood quite well the NorthVietnamese position: no peace without any unification under Hanoi. The French foreign
ministry’s Asia director, Etienne Manac’h, built a close relationship with Mai Van Bo, the
DRV délégué general in France and one of the top Vietnamese diplomats in Europe. The
two men worked closely together in order to find a diplomatic solution to the war, with
some success. Franco-North-Vietnamese relation began to deteriorate only after de
Gaulle left power. The presentation will address three periods: 1954-1964, focusing on
Saigon’s relations with Hanoi and Paris; 1965-1969, a golden age in the relationship
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between Paris and Hanoi; and 1969-1975, marked by the slow deterioration of FrancoDRV relations.
Bradley C. Davis, Eastern Washington University, “‘These People Are Not Marxists!’:
Methodological Orthodoxy and the China-Vietnam Relationship in the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China”: In an attempt to forge a
proletarian internationalist version of an old historical relationship, Marxist historians in
both the DRV and PRC established the friendship of China and Vietnam as a bedrock
intellectual assumption in the 1950s. However, as political and ideological relations
between the respective leaderships of the DRV and PRC began to fray in the 1960s,
many of these same Marxist historians produced works of remarkable vitriol. This
transnational debate over historical materialism and historical methodology, which
reached across the PRC-DRV border and continued into the early 1990s, also reveals the
underappreciated sophistication of historical scholarship in these two Marxist-Leninist
States and the often surprising relationship between the Cold War and the study of the
distant past.
Kosal Path, University of Southern California, “Sino-Vietnamese Dispute Over Territorial
Claims, 1974-1978: Hanoi’s Counterbalancing Strategies and its Consequences”:
Relying on so far untapped Vietnamese archival sources, this presentation examines the
linkage between the escalated territorial dispute between Vietnam and China and the
mass exodus of Chinese residents and experts in northern Vietnam during the period
1974-1978. Specifically, it seeks to analyze the role of anti-China and irredentist
nationalism consciously articulated and perpetuated by the Vietnamese government as
a strategy to foment popular nationalistic sentiment, solidify popular loyalty to the state
and mobilize domestic resources to defend the Vietnamese homeland against the
perceived threat of Chinese territorial expansion in precipitating a climate of fear and
paranoia within the Chinese community in northern Vietnam during this period. In the
process of articulating and inculcating these two variants of nationalism, Hanoi’s shift
from voluntary assimilation to forced assimilation of Chinese residents in northern
Vietnam in 1976 and simultaneous adoption of tough policies of seeking to change the
status quo along the Sino-Vietnamese territorial boundary became justified and
legitimized, which consequently caused the flight of Chinese residents from northern
Vietnam in the late 1970s.
Balazs Szalontai, East China Normal University, Shanghai, “Dominoes or Billiard Balls?
Hanoi’s Relations with ASEAN and Burma in the Context of the Sino-Vietnamese and
Vietnamese-Cambodian Disputes, 1975-1979”: During the Vietnam War, nonCommunist Southeast Asian leaders frequently expressed the view that the withdrawal
of American troops from South Vietnam and the collapse of the Saigon regime would be
soon followed by a new phase of Communist attacks on the various ASEAN countries. To
be sure, in 1968 and afterwards some North Vietnamese leaders did regard Thailand as
the next domino. Nevertheless, Hanoi’s post-1975 policies toward the non-Communist
Southeast Asian states were by no means blindly expansionist. The usual modus
operandi of the Vietnamese leaders was to divide its potential opponents by
cooperating with certain states and isolating others. This approach rendered a
comprehensive regional reconciliation quite difficult, if not impossible, since
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rapprochement with one country was to be achieved at the expense of another, and
Hanoi’s priorities underwent frequent shifts. For instance, in 1976 Vietnamese-Burmese
cooperation was aimed against Thailand, whereas in 1977, the improvement of ThaiVietnamese relations was combined with efforts to isolate Indonesia, and it also
alienated Burma and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Each time Hanoi drew closer to a country or
adopted a tougher stance toward it, its move produced a positive or negative effect on
its relations with the others.
Break (11:00-11:30)
Roundtable Discussion (11:30-12:15): THE STATE OF THE FIELD AND SOURCE MATERIAL
moderated by Pierre Asselin
Concluding Remarks (12:15-12:30): Russell Hart and Pierre Asselin
Lunch: (12:30-2:00)
Guided Visit: Iolani Palace (2:00-4:00)
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Pierre Asselin is associate professor of history at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu. He is
the author of A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (North
Carolina, 2002); “Choosing Peace: Hanoi and the Geneva Agreement on Vietnam, 1954-1955” in
Journal of Cold War Studies (2007); and “The Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the 1954
Geneva Conference: A Revisionist Critique” in Cold War History (2011). Forthcoming articles
include “‘We Don’t Want a Munich’: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Strategy, 1965-1968” in Diplomatic
History and “Revisionism Triumphant: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Strategy in the Nixon Era” in Journal
of Cold War Studies. His current book project examines Hanoi’s revolutionary strategy in the
period 1954 to 1965.
Jessica M. Chapman is assistant professor of history at Williams College. Her publications
include articles in Diplomatic History (2006) and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies (2010). She
is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled “From Disorder to Dictatorship: A
Domestic and International History of Ngo Dinh Diem’s Construction of South Vietnam, 19531956” to be published by Cornell University Press.
Bradley C. Davis received his PhD in History from the University of Washington in Seattle and
teaches history and international studies at Eastern Washington University. He is also the codesigner and advisor for the Yao Script Project in Lao Cai Province, Vietnam. Currently, Dr. Davis
is completing a book manuscript on the history of the Black Flag Army and the China-Vietnam
borderlands. He has recently co-edited, with Christian C. Lentz, a special issue of the Journal of
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Vietnam Studies (in review) that focuses on the Black River Region in Vietnam's northwest. His
ongoing projects include a history of Yao/Mien groups in Vietnam and a study of ethnographic
practices and map-making in Nguyen Vietnam (1802-1885).
Marc Jason Gilbert holds the NEH Endowed Chair in World History at Hawaii Pacific University.
He has edited or authored numerous books and journal articles on the place of Vietnam in
world history. He is the editor of and contributing author to The Vietnam War: Teaching
Approaches and Resources (Greenwood, 1991), The Vietnam War on Campus: Other Voices,
More Distant Drums (Praeger, 2000), and Why the North Won the Vietnam War (Palgrave,
2002). He is also co-editor, with William Head, of an anthology of scholarship on the decisive
event of the Second Indochina War, The Tet Offensive (Praeger, 1996). Dr. Gilbert is currently
working on the subject of the 20th Indian Division in Saigon in 1945, which is related to his most
recent publication, “Persuading the Enemy: Vietnamese Appeals to Non-white Forces of
Occupation, 1945-1975” in Wynn Wilcox (ed.), Vietnam and the West: New Approaches
(Cornell, 2010).
Hoang Anh Tuan earned his PhD in History from Leiden University, Netherlands, in 2006. He is
lecturer in the Department of History at Vietnam National University. In 2010 he became
deputy dean in charge of International and Graduate Affairs. He is the author of Silk for Silver:
Dutch-Vietnamese Relations, 1637-1700 (Brill, 2007). Other publications include “From Japan
to Manila and Back to Europe: The English Abortive Trade with Tonkin in the 1670s” in
Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction
(2005); “De Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie in Tonkin, 1637-1700” in Leeuw en Draak: Vier
eeuwen Nederland en Vietnam (2007); “The VOC Import of Monetary Metals into Tonkin and
Its Impact on the Seventeenth-Century Vietnamese Society” in Contingent Lives: Social Identity
and Material Culture in the VOC World (2007); and “Tonkin Rear for China Front: The Dutch East
India Company’s Strategy towards the North-Eastern Vietnamese Ports in the 1660s” in John
Kleinen and Manon Osseweijer (eds.), Pirates, Ports, and Coasts in Asia: Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives (2010). Dr. Tuan is coordinator of several international projects,
including: The Dutch East India Company in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam (supported by
Consulate General of the Netherlands in Ho Chi Minh City, 2006-2009); The Political and
Commercial Relations between Tonkin and Siam in the 1660s and 1670s (supported by SEASREP
Foundation, 2007-2008); Engineering Socio-Economic Transformation: The Impact of Japanese
Monetary Metals on Seventeenth-Century Northern Vietnam (supported by Sumitomo
Foundation, 2008-2009); From Cultural Commerce to Commercial Culture: Vietnamese–
Japanese Trade and Cultural Interactions in the Seventeenth Century (supported by Sumitomo
Foundation, 2010-2011). Dr. Hoang’s current main teaching and research interests include
early-modern Asian-European interactions, early-modern globalization and the integration of
Vietnam, and the history of Vietnamese culture and international relations.
Pierre Journoud earned his PhD from the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is
currently a research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Research, Military Academy (IRSEM,
French Ministry of Defence, Paris) where he is in charge of a research program on strategic
issues in Southeast Asia. He is also associate researcher at the Center for Contemporary History
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of Asia (CHAC, University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne). He teaches seminars on contemporary
international relations in general and on Vietnam especially. Dr. Journoud is the author of
several books and articles on the diplomatic and strategic history of the Indochina wars,
including: De Gaulle et le Vietnam (1945-1969). La réconciliation (Tallandier, 2011); Vietnam
1968-1976. La sortie de guerre (ed., to be published in 2011 by Peter Lang); “La CAT/Air
America pendant les guerres d’Indochine (1953-1975), ou le rôle d’une compagnie aérienne
privée secrètement détenue par la CIA” in Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, (2010);
“L’ASEAN et la sécurité en Asie du Sud-Est pendant la guerre froide. Entre diplomatie officielle
et diplomatie informelle” in Bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin (2010); “Diplomatie informelle
et réseaux transnationaux. Une contribution française à la fin de la guerre du Vietnam” in
Relations internationales (2009); “L’héritage du Vietnam dans la guerre en Afghanistan depuis
2001” in Études de l’IRSEM (2010); “The My Lai Massacre and Its Memory: The Long Path
Toward Reconciliation Between Vietnam and the USA” in Gilles Boquérat et Richard Asbeck
(eds.), The Indian-Pakistan Reconciliation and Other Experiences In Post-Conflict Management
(2009); and “1954-2004, La mémoire de Dien Bien Phu en France et au Vietnam : la
construction d’un mythe héroïque et ses limites” in Frédéric Rousseau et Jean-François Thomas
(eds.), La fabrique de l’événement (Michel Houdiard, 2008).
Ben Kerkvliet does research on state-society relations in Southeast Asia, especially the
Philippines and Vietnam. Among his publications are The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant
Revolt in the Philippines (University of California Press, 1977 and 1982; Boulder: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2002); From Marcos to Aquino: Local Perspectives on Political Transition in the
Philippines, co-edited with Resil Mojares (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1991, and
University of Hawai'i Press, 1992); Beyond Hanoi: Local Government in Vietnam, co-edited with
David G. Marr (ISEAS Publications and NIAS Press, 2004); and The Power of Everyday Politics:
How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy (Cornell University Press, 2005). Dr.
Kerkvliet taught at the University of Hawai'i from 1971 to 1991. From 1992 to 2008, he taught
at The Australian National University and is an Emeritus Professor there. He is currently
researching public political criticism in Vietnam and recently published “Workers’ Protests in
Contemporary Vietnam (with Some Comparisons to those in the Pre-1975 South), Journal of
Vietnamese Studies (2010).
Harish C. Mehta earned his PhD from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada in 2009. He
teaches World History and the history of the Vietnam wars at Trent University and McMaster.
He is the author of Warrior Prince: Norodom Ranariddh, Son of King Sihanouk of Cambodia
(Graham Brash, 2001); Hun Sen: Strongman of Cambodia (Graham Brash, 1999, with co-author
Julie Mehta); and Cambodia Silenced: The Press Under Six Regimes (White Lotus Press, 1997).
He has forthcoming articles in scholarly journals on North Vietnam’s economic diplomacy
with its communist allies, and Ho Chi Minh’s informal diplomacy with the British philosopher
Bertrand Russell. He is working on a book on North Vietnam’s “people’s diplomacy.” A former
Indochina correspondent for the Straits Times Group of Singapore, Dr. Mehta has been
travelling to Vietnam regularly since his first visit in 1990 when he reported on the early years
of Vietnam’s doi moi (economic renovation) policy.
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Lien-Hang T. Nguyen is assistant professor of History at the University of Kentucky. She is
currently working on her book manuscript tentatively entitled, “The Dark Side of Victory: The
War for Peace in Vietnam.” Nguyen has published numerous essays in edited volumes and
peer-reviewed journals on all three wars for Indochina as well as on United States foreign policy
toward Southeast Asia. Her next book project examines gender and the transnational networks
of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Kosal Path is lecturer in the School of International Relations, University of Southern California.
He teaches International Relations of the Asia-Pacific and Ethnicity, Nationalism in World
Politics. He was a researcher with Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Program between
1995 and 1997, and then served as Deputy Director of the Phnom Penh-based Documentation
Center of Cambodia between 1997 and 2000. In December 2008, he completed his doctoral
dissertation on Sino-Vietnamese relations, 1950-1978. His publications (forthcoming) include
“The Economic Factor in the Sino-Vietnamese Dispute, 1972-75” in Cold War History; “Hanoi’s
Response to Beijing’s Enthusiasm to Aid North Vietnam, 1970-72” in Journal of Vietnam Studies;
and “The Impact of China’s Cultural Revolution 1966-68 on Sino-Vietnamese relations” in
Journal of Asian History. His current research focuses on “social adaptation of former Khmer
Rouge cadres and survivors in Cambodia’s post-genocide society.”
Tobias Rettig is a assistant professor in Southeast Asian Studies at the School of Social Sciences,
Singapore Management University. Past publications include an article on the Yen Bay mutiny, a
co-edited book entitled Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2006, 2009), a book
chapter on the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence for Milestone Documents in History
(2010), three entries (“Nguyen Lords”; “Political Transformations in SEA” and “Indonesia during
1900-45”) to ABC-Clio’s World History Encyclopedia (2011), and a book chapter on French
imperial policing of Indochinese and Chinese workers in WWI France (CNRS Editions,
forthcoming). Dr. Rettig is pursuing collaborative projects entitled “Revisiting the Nghe Tinh
Soviets of 1930-31”; “Women Warriors in Southeast Asia” (with Vina Lanzona); and “Armies and
Societies in Southeast Asia, circa 1750 to 2000” (with Marie-Eve Blanc and Gilles de Gantès).
Current research interests, as indicated in the forthcoming conference presentations, include
“Commemorating the Vietnamese First World War Dead, 1915-2011” (AAS, Hawaii); “WWI and
the Structural-Institutional Causes of the Nghe-Tinh Soviets” (FCHS, Toronto), “The Rani of
Jhansi Regiment of the Indian National Army, 1943-45” (WHA, Beijing).
Balazs Szalontai is Guest Professor and Research Fellow at East China Normal University in
Shanghai, China. Having received a Ph.D. in Soviet and Korean history, he has done archival
research on the modern history of North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Mongolia,
India, the USSR, and Eastern Europe. His publications include Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era:
Soviet-DPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953-1964 (Stanford
University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2005), and book chapters on North Korean
and Southeast Asian economic and cultural policies. His current research projects are focused
on the Korean War, Indochinese-ASEAN relations, North Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam
War, DPRK-Middle Eastern relations, and nuclear proliferation.
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Nu-Anh Tran is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of California,
Berkeley. She is currently completing her dissertation entitled “Contested Identities:
Nationalism in the Republic of Vietnam, 1954-1963.” It explores state nationalism in South
Vietnam under Ngo Dinh Diem, especially its relationship to anticommunism. She has
published an article examining the representation of Americans in the South Vietnamese press
and has written reviews for H-Diplo and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies.
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