Republican Vietnam, 1963-1975: War, Society, Diaspora

Republican Vietnam, 1963-1975: War, Society, Diaspora

Edited by Trinh Luu & Tuong Vu

Forthcoming in Fall 2023, Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute and University of Hawaii Press

Book Description:

Republican Vietnam is the first collection of scholarly essays on the Second Republic of Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War nearly half a century ago. The volume builds on what Peter Zinoman calls the “republican moment in the study of modern Vietnam,” and re-examines the history of modern Vietnam, the Vietnam War, and the Vietnamese diaspora from the perspective of republican ideas and politics. 

South Vietnam was America’s ally but has long been neglected in the scholarship because the Vietnam War is mistakenly viewed as primarily a conflict between US imperialism and Vietnamese patriotism. Such a view marginalizes the majority of South Vietnamese who strived not only to survive but also to build a democratic country and live meaningful lives in a war not of their own choice.

The twelve essays making up this volume together show how war, in tandem with external intervention, shaped South Vietnam’s society, economy, culture, and the life of every individual and family. Like all other societies, South Vietnam’s was complex but has appeared in popular media and American scholarship as a hopelessly dependent nation, full of thieves and prostitutes and led by corrupt dictators beholden to US interests. In contrast to such negative stereotypes, this volume situates South Vietnamese front and center as agents of their own histories. 

We seek to provide a fuller picture of an evolving South Vietnamese society in the 1960s and 1970s, showing how politicians, students, educators, publishers, journalists, musicians, religious leaders, businessmen, and ordinary people all had a hand in shaping a local republican tradition with enlightened religions, a vibrant civil society, an outspoken press, an entrepreneurial economy, and a globalized intellectual and artistic culture. 

This republican era, though short lived, has a resilient spirit which the Vietnamese refugees consciously cultivated wherever they settled. The trove of vernacular music and print media, not to mention the many associations the Vietnamese diasporas created, exemplify the republican values that once energized South Vietnamese society. Vietnamese American Studies scholars, failing to engage with area studies research or Vietnamese-language sources, have long ignored this important link. 

By featuring essays from Vietnamese and Vietnamese Diasporic Studies, this volume takes the important step of bridging the two fields, laying the groundwork for cross-disciplinary projects in the future.

Information about Editors: 

Trinh Luu is a research fellow at the University of Oregon’s US-Vietnam Research Center. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research spans much of 20th century Vietnam and the postwar diaspora in the United States and France. Her book manuscript, “Among the Divinities: Law, Literature, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” examines literary production and legal reform during Renovation (Đổi Mới).

Tuong Vu is professor and head of the Department of Political Science, University of Oregon. His research and teaching concern the comparative politics of state formation, development, nationalism, and revolutions, with a particular focus on East Asia. Vu is the author and co-editor of several books on Southeast Asian politics, the Cold War in Asia, the Republic of Vietnam (1955-1975), Vietnamese republicanism, contemporary Vietnamese politics and economy, and the Vietnamese American community.

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