Bringing in the "Other Side": New Scholarship on the Vietnam Wars

The literature on the Vietnam War is large and getting larger. Much of it is extraordinarily valuable to students of the conflict. Until recently, however, the literature suffered from a U.S.-centric focus and a tendency to look solely at decision making in Washington. Too few studies have placed U.S. decision making into its wider international context; fewer still have given a voice to the "other side," the Vietnamese who fought so long and hard to defeat first the French and then the South Vietnamese government and its American allies. The picture is beginning to change, however, and this article examines several new books that illuminate the Vietnamese side. Although many of the most important findings in these works come not from Vietnamese documentary sources but from Western archives and publications, the authors appear to have made effective use of what Vietnamese material is available. The volumes are worthy entries in the international history of the Indochina wars, and they help set the agenda for future research.