Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War

From the French to the Americans

185 From the ­ French to the ­ Americans kath­ ryn c. stat­ ler For most teach­ ers and stu­ dents, the story of ­ American in­ volve­ ment in Viet­ nam be­ gins in the 1960s, with a brief over­ view of ear­ lier US ac­ tions there. Usu­ ally miss­ ing from this nar­ ra­ tive is the ­ French ex­ pe­ ri­ ence. ­ France had con­ sol­ i­ dated con­ trol in Viet­ nam, Cam­ bo­ dia, and Laos by the 1880s and re­ fused to re­ lin­ quish its grasp as the post–World War II pro­ cess of de­ col­ o­ ni­ za­ tion began. The ­ Franco-Vietnamese con­ flict that en­ sued from 1946 to 1954 ­ brought the ­ United ­ States into the fray and had im­ por­ tant les­ sons for ­ Americans ar­ riv­ ing in Sai­ gon in the 1960s, les­ sons that were, for the most part, ig­ nored at the time, as they have been since. This essay of­ fers up some of those les­ sons (and ideas for as­ so­ ciated les­ son plans) while pro­ vid­ ing at least part of the an­ swer to a major ques­ tion in the historiog­ ra­ phy: why the ­ United ­ States inter­ vened in Viet­ nam. It does so by high­ light­ ing how the ­ Americans first aided the­ French war ef­ fort and then ul­ ti­ mately re­ placed ­ France as the most im­ por­ tant west­ ern power in South Viet­ nam in the mid-1950s. More­ over, many of the major ­ American de­ ci­ sions made in Viet­ nam ­ stemmed from how suc­ ces­ sive US ad­ min­ is­ tra­ tions under­ stood, or ­ thought they under­ stood, ear­ lier ­ French mis­ takes. Teach­ ing the tran­ si­ tion from the ­ French to the ­ Americans in Viet­ nam can be ­ tricky for a num­ ber of rea­ sons. First, stu­ dents want to get to the 1960s, where the “real ac­ tion” is—the mo­ men­ tous Gulf of Ton­ kin Res­ o­ lu­ tion, Pres­ i­ dent ­ Johnson’s sub­ se­ quent de­ ci­ sions to begin a sus­ tained bomb­ ing cam­ paign and send in ­ ground ­ troops, and the var­ ied pro­ tests that made up the anti­ war move­ ment, to name a few. Sec­ ond, it is just 186 part three: understanding and teaching specific content too easy to blame the ­ French and ig­ nore what their ex­ ten­ sive ex­ pe­ ri­ ence in Viet­ nam might have to offer. A typ­ i­ cal re­ sponse by ­ American pol­ icy mak­ ers at the time, when dis­ cuss­ ing ­ French re­ sis­ tance to Viet­ na­ mese in­ de­ pen­ dence or the ­ French mil­ i­ tary de­ feat at the re­ mote gar­ ri­ son of Dien Bien Phu in North Viet­ nam, often goes some­ thing like “of ­ course the ­ French ­ messed up in Viet­ nam. ­ They’re the ­ French.” Fi­ nally, al­ though there is quite a bit of lit­ er­ a­ ture on the pe­ riod be­ fore ­ American inter­ ven­ tion, a lot of it is in ­ French. The ­ American ex­ pe­ ri­ ence in Viet­ nam, how­ ever, can only be under­ stood ­ within the con­ text of the First In­ do­ china War (also known as the­ Franco–Viet Minh War by west­ ern­ ers and the Re­ sis­ tance Strug­ gle­ against Co­ lo­ nial ­ France or ­ French War by the Viet­ na­ mese) and its after­ math. The fol­ low­ ing pages out­ line ex­ actly why this is so and offer some ef­ fec­ tiveteach­ ingprac­ ticestohelpstu­ dentscon­ tex­ tu­ al­ izeearly­ American in­ volve­ ment in Viet­ nam. There­ fore, the pri­ mary ­ events dis­ cussed in­ clude a brief over­ view; the 1946–54 First Viet­ nam War, cul­ mi­ nat­ ing in the bat­ tle of Dien Bien Phu (which al­ ways guar­ an­ tees ac­ tive stu­ dent par­ tic­ i­ pa­ tion); and the tran­ si­ tion from ­ French to ­ American lead­ er­ ship in Viet­ nam that began with the 1954 Ge­ neva Con­ fer­ ence. The chap­ ter also dis­ cusses lit­ er­ a­ ture, doc­ u­ men­ tar­ ies, and films that high­ light the­ French ex­ pe­ ri­ ence and its en­ dur­ ing in­ flu­ ence on the Viet­ na­ mese and­ Americans. It con­ cludes with sam­ ple as­ sign­ ments and sug­ ges­ tions for...