Rethinking War and Revolution in Vietnam

Many myths about Vietnam and the Vietnam War that were created during the war are still widely taught in the US today. This talk presents findings based on fresh sources from Vietnam that force us to rethink the orthodox view of that event concerning the nature of the conflict from the perspective of Vietnamese revolutionaries.

Tuong Vu is Professor and Department Head of the Political Science Department at the University of Oregon and has held visiting appointments at Princeton University and National University of Singapore. His research has focused on the comparative politics of state formation, revolutions, nationalism, and communism in East and Southeast Asia, and more recently, on Vietnam’s modern history and politics. He is the author or co-editor of seven books and 30 journal articles and book chapters. Among his recent and forthcoming publications are “Bringing Empire Back in: The Imperial Origins of Nations in Indochina,” in Aviel Roshwald, Cathie Carmichael, and Matthew D’Auria, eds. Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism (Cambridge, forthcoming); The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation-Building (Cornell, 2020); and Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (Cambridge, 2017). He currently directs the US-Vietnam Research Center at the University of Oregon to promote research and education on contemporary Vietnam, US-Vietnam relations, and the Vietnamese American community.