Vietnam and the West: New Approaches

by WynnWilcox (Contributor)

New
Paperback
2010
$51.08

This sound interpretation of Vietnamese cultural attitudes contends that a major reason for American difficulties in Viet-Nam has been the failure to appreciate how wide the gulf is between Viet-Nam and the West. Professor Smith first describes Vietnamese political and social traditions and shows how they were challenged by the West after 1858. He examines Viet-Nam's search for independence and modernization in the first half of this century, contrasts the two governments of the partitioned country during the years 1954-1963, and stresses the critical need to reassess attitudes toward Viet-Nam. His sophisticated, ambitious survey of Viet-Nam history will have a lasting value that sets it apart from the scores of ephemeral books on this country.

Synopsis

This sound interpretation of Vietnamese cultural attitudes contends that a major reason for American difficulties in Viet-Nam has been the failure to appreciate how wide the gulf is between Viet-Nam and the West. Professor Smith first describes Vietnamese political and social traditions and shows how they were challenged by the West after 1858. He examines Viet-Nam's search for independence and modernization in the first half of this century, contrasts the two governments of the partitioned country during the years 1954-1963, and stresses the critical need to reassess attitudes toward Viet-Nam. His sophisticated, ambitious survey of Viet-Nam history will have a lasting value that sets it apart from the scores of ephemeral books on this country.

$51.08

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Publisher: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University
Published: 15 Nov 2010
ISBN 10: 0877277524
ISBN 13: 9780877277521

Media Reviews

Vietnam and the West is a smart, ambitious... collection.... [that] manages to unearth nuanced historical nuggets complicating the internal/external binaries and domestic/foreign relationship perceptions of nearly all previous Vietnamese historical scholarship.

-- Miriam B. Lam * South East Asian Research *

The rich interdisciplinary essays that make up this important volume fundamentally rethink the place of 'the West' as an imagined and real presence in the Vietnamese past and present. Their expansive chronological and topical range-from sixteenth-century Vietnamese Catholic literati to contemporary victims of Agent Orange-reveals the complex processes through which myriad translocal vernaculars have emerged in Vietnam over the last five hundred years. A splendid achievement.

-- Mark Philip Bradley, University of Chicago, author of Vietnam at War

Author Bio

Wynn Wilcox is Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Department of History and Non-Western Cultures at Western Connecticut State University.