Conflict in Indochina Essay Questions & Historiography (1 Viewer)

[braindrainedAsh]

This is the thread to post your essay topics and practice essay questions for the Indochina module.

Here are some to get the party started:

Examine the impact of the US policy of anti-communism from 1954-75

Account for the success of communism in Indochina by 1975

Account for the failure of democracy in Vietnam

To what extent was the Vietnam war a war of Imperialism?

Assess the reasons for the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975

Assess the impact of two nationalist leaders on the Conflict in Indochina

-How significant was the popular protest in the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam?
-Assess the impact of the US bombing on Cambodia and Laos
-Explain how th eUS became involved in Indochina in the period 1954-63
-Why did the US fail to contain and defeat the VietCOng and N Vietnamese forces up to 1975
-To what extent was the US policy of hearts and minds effective in helping the casue of S Vietnam
-Evaluate the regime of Pol Pot in the period 1975-79
-Explain why Viet Cong and N Vietnamese forces succeeded against the USA
-Assess the impact of the war in Indochina on the American public in the period 1965-75
-Why did the Republiic of S Vietnam fall to communist forces in 1975
-examine th erole played by the superpowers in the Indochina conflict in the period 1954-75
-Account for the failure of the S Vietnamese Gov't to achive victory by 1975

Keep the thread going by adding any assessment questions or essay topics you get for this module.

 

[bowman]

Asses the impact of the Pol Pot reigime on Kampuchea ( cambodia) by 1979. 2000-2500 words

 

[Dalsta]

Indochina Research assessment Essay

Account for the success of North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front(Viet Cong) in defeating the United States and its allies in the Vietnam war, 1965-1975

 

[Skillo]

I am in the middle of doing my summaries and I was wondering,
Has there ever been a question on The Media's role in Indochina? It's just, its listed as one of the groups to study in relation to key features (3.1) in the syllabus. The only thing I've done on the media is watching the 'Killing Fields'. Bloody good movie by the way...lol.

So, anyone got any relating to the media's role?? I think if one was to be asked it would focus on the Cambodian conflict.

 

[braindrainedAsh]

They have asked the media's role, I think it was in the 2001 HSC. Basically, you could talk about stuff like the "five o'clock follies", which were the media conferences held by the army. You could talk about the impact the media had on getting the troops out. Media played a key role in making Tet the turning point in the conflict because negative media coverage after tet fuelled the anti-war movement and the turnaround of US public opinion from support of the war, to wanting the troops out. Vietnam was the first television war also. Examples such as photos of the girl running naked burnt with napalm, the photo of the guy being shot in the streets of saigon are good to back up your discussion. You could also talk about how the wide availability of video made the war more immediate, bringing it in to people's living rooms etc.

As for the media and cambodia, that would be hard. There isn't much about it. I thought it was difficult for the western media to get news about what was going on in cambodia because they went all rural and peasant on them...

I hope this rambling makes sense. I am pretty sure there are some sections on the media in Sutho's book and Cantwell's

 

[craz]

As I seem to remember, last year's one wasn't too bad (the exam HSC i mean!) IndoChina I think it was closer to the end of 1960's and 1970's and there was question on Cambodia (which I didn't do) and another on Southern Vietnam collapse in 1975. Media is touched but every now and then.

 

[mervvyn]

my trial q's:

explain the role played by anti-war movements in the US decision to withdraw troops from Vietnam by 1973

explain how the US responded to the tactics and strategies adopted by the North Vietnamese army in the war in Vietnam between 1960 and 1973

and a cambodia one:

assess the aims, nature and impact of pol pot's regime on democratic kampuchea

 

[Skillo]

Is it safe to say that there will always be a Cambodia question??

 

[Sarah168]

No. There have been years where there is no Cambodia question.

 

[Candypants]

I am in the middle of doing my summaries and I was wondering,
Has there ever been a question on The Media's role in Indochina? It's just, its listed as one of the groups to study in relation to key features (3.1) in the syllabus. The only thing I've done on the media is watching the 'Killing Fields'. Bloody good movie by the way...lol.

So, anyone got any relating to the media's role?? I think if one was to be asked it would focus on the Cambodian conflict.

Yep They did ask that in 2001. The main section where the media is concerned is igniting the anti-war movements that eventually saw US withdrawal. Our teacher taught us media for weeks (at the expense of other things; we ran out of time to do Cambodia) and all the resources came from the internet mainly because there's hardly anything on it in the texbooks.

You will really need to scrounge... it's not very straightforward. Look over all your syllabus points and identify where the media could be related.

 

[rantman]

well, the US media found out that nixon was secretly bombing cambodia and that really added fuel to the anti-war fire

 

[JoeI]

well i understand why the media doesn't got enough coverage in Kampuchea.
me, i'm Khmer. i know what happened over there.
it's amazing that years later, american press just got the information that Nixon is bombing Kampuchea geez....man, we Khmers have been trying to escaped the bombing by the Americans, the killings of Khmer Rouge, and the Viets as well. Most of us escaped via Khao I Dang though. Some go to Vietnam border.
At that time, we dont even know Khmer Rouge. We think of it as Angkar.

 

[Buffy 97-03]

Is it safe to say there will definately be a question (in some shape or form) on why the communists won?
Would it be stupid for me to focus my studies on the factors of NV victory?

 

[HayleeKate]

Yes, that would be not the best.
Last year didnt have that: It was failure of Geneva Peace accords, or VC and withdrawal of US
2003: Significance of Gulf of Tonkin in growing US intervention or, Impact of Diem & Ho Chi Minh's policies.
So, theres definately no guarrantee it will be about DRV victory.

 

[HayleeKate]

Indochinese Historiography. Bucketloads of it.

Ok. Shitloads of Indochina Historiography. I'll do it in installments of who/what the quotes are about.

Diem:
 “anti communist bastion” (Karnow)
 “Authentic nationalist” (Issacs)
 “He is a true patriot, dedicated to independence and to the enjoyment by his people of political and religious freedoms” (US Secretary of State, Dulles)
 “Because we knew of no one better” (Dulles)
 “A puppet who pulled his own strings” (American official in Saigon)
 ”Diem never succeeded in winning the peasants and tenant farmers over to his side” (Devillers)
 “Diem was opposed by virtually all elements of South Vietnamese society… what he did have was complete support of Colonel Lansdale and…the political savvy in the CIA’s covert-action war chest” (McGhee)
 “The Diem Government was opposed…despised...rejected...hated...and totally lacking in mass support” (Buttinger)
 “there was no doubt that these suicides by fire were what did the most to turn US opinion against Diem” (Higgins)
 “Us goals in that region could not be served without Diem” (Karnow)
 “Diem could not exist without US backing” (Karnow)
 “Diem would tolerate no potentially independent sources of authority” (Sheehan)
 “ruler whose overriding interest was power…[with] utter disregard for the welfare of the people” (Trang)
 “Diem had many faults; remoteness, inflexibility, and an authoritarian belief that he alone knew what was best for his country and had no need to listen to any critical voices.” (Issacs)
 “He had no means, no troops, no police, no government, and no means of enforcing his rule” (NcGhee)
 Nhu: “Ran South Vietnam like a gangland leader. His rackets included lotteries, opium, the Saigon waterfront…Most of the money went to the Can Lao Party’s funds.” (Warner)

 

[HayleeKate]

DRV:
 “North Vietnam had been transformed from a primarily agricultural to semi-industrial society.” (Kolko)
 “The North is the foundation, the root of the struggle for complete national liberation and the reunification of the country” (Ho Chi Minh)
 “gave special priority to the training of technical personnel and skilled workers, and the number of industrial workers more than doubled [by 1960]” (Kolko)
 “ well-fed population, politically educated state with an industrial base suitable for a war economy” (Kolko)
 “The Vietnamese women have had to accept an enormous burden on their slim shoulders” (Burchett)
 “The DRV’s industrial growth during the eight years after 1957 was the highest in South and Southeast Asia” (Kolko)
 “20 Viet-Cong surrounded the village…several hundred were kidnapped, tortured, starved and indoctrinated” (Warner)
 “NLF soldiers are very nice to us, very polite.” (Doyon)
 “We lived like hunted animals, an existence that demanded constant physical and mental alertness.” (Trang)
 “a nutritional intake that left us all in a state of semi-starvation.” (Trang)
 Guerilla tactics “the principal of using a small number of troops to defeat a large number of troops who possess modern equipment.” (Giap)
 “no people in the world have been so continuously at war as these small people of Vietnam.” (Cameron)
 “they are merely unsophisticated villagers or peasants who have been conscripted by terror or treachery.” (Ball)
 “frustrate the enemy, wear them out, bog them down in the quagmire, make victory elusive, make for the Americans the only symbol of the war their own casualty lists.” (Halberstam)
 "không có gì quý hơn độc lẪp vê tự do"-“nothing is more precious than independence and freedom” (Ho Chi Minh)
 “I have a secret weapon, it is call nationalism....” (Ho Chi Minh)

 

[HayleeKate]

RV:
 Agroville: “denunciation, encirclement of villagers, searches and raids, arrest of suspects, plundering, interrogation and deported..” (Devillers)
 “If Mickey Mouse took power in Saigon, no one would have noticed” (Fall)
 “Communism was spreading because democracies had failed” (Dallek)
 “By 1962, according to official statistics, almost 50% of the potential workers in South Vietnam were unemployed” (Greene)
 Coup: “The streets of Saigon were filled with joy and vengeance…mob of soldiers joined by thousands of citizens, sacked the palace with a thoroughness rarely seen” (Gart)
 “We could almost feel the internal stresses and conflicts.” (Shaplen)
 “South Vietnam is fighting for its life against a brutal campaign of terror and armed attack inspired, directed, supplied, and controlled by the Communist regime in Hanoi.” (Department of State Publication, 1967)
 The peasants “sympathised with neither Diem nor the Vietcong, only leaning to the side that harassed them less.” (Karnow)
 “burned, blasted and weary land” (Cronkite)
 “unbelievable squalor” (Cronkite)

 

[HayleeKate]

US:
 President Kennedy claimed “action must be strengthened and accelerated” (Public Papers, 1961)
 “nothing could be worse than …being responsible for America losing a war to the Communists.” (President Johnson)
 “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war…” (Walter Cronkite)
 1956 reunification elections: “an election obviously stacked and subverted in advance, urged apon us by those who have already broken their own pledges under the agreement they now seek to enforce” (Kennedy)
 “If you let a bully come into your front yard one day, the next day he’ll be up on your porch, and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.” (President Johnson)
 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: “all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” (Johnson)
 “Withdrawal of public support proved the undoing of an Executive that believed it could conduct limited war without engaging the national will of a democracy” (Tuchman)
 “Above all, the White House claimed it had been provoked when in reality it was the provoker.” (Kolko)
 “The North Vietnamese had deliberately and flagrantly struck at our men and installations, and we felt it necessary to respond.” (Johnson)
 “we are not about to send American boys nine of ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” (Johnson)
 “If they weren’t pro-Viet Cong before we got there, they sure as hell were by the time we left.” (Karnow)
 “I shall never forget the look of hatred in his eyes – or lose my own feelings of guilt by association.” (Shaw)
 “70% - to avoid a humiliating United States defeat (to our reputation as guarantor); 20% - to keep SVN territory from Chinese hands; 10% - to permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.” (Barnes)
 “You don’t want a prostitute. You’ve got an M-16. What do you need to pay for a lady for? You go down to the village and you take what you want…” (Baker)
 “I went out and killed one VC and liberated a prisoner. Next day the major called me in and told me that I’d killed fourteen VC and liberated six prisoners.” (Herr)
 “because the army did in fact lower its standards it must share in the guilt and culpability for the My Lai affair.” (Maclear)
 “Television brought the brutality of the war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America – not on the battlefields of Vietnam.” (McLuhan)
 “They’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.” (Curtis LeMay – US Air Force General)
 “When you've got them by the balls the hearts and minds will follow” (Johnson)
 “I didn't just screw HCM I cut off his pecker” (Johnson)
 “I left the woman I really loved - the Great Society - to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world” (Johnson)
 "Quitters never win and winners never quit" (General Westmoreland)
 "I dont want to be the first President to lose a war" (Johnson)
 “The watershed of Tet, however, was not in South Vietnam but in the United States, where the American people …had lost their stomach for an inconclusive bloodletting without any measure of success.” (Hannah)
 “You can't put a Western mask on an Eastern face, the more you try, the more you fail” (Cao Ky)

 

[HayleeKate]

These are all quotes by Major Jake O’Donnell – Military Cross
 “A war that really wasn’t our business.”
 “unwinnable war.”
 “If I had a father who was Vietnamese, I’d be a VC”
 “If you can get him to hospital, we’ll save his life.”
 [Australian, US forces] “Necessary evil”
 “We never had the impression they [South Vietnamese citizens] were against us.”
 Viet Cong were “prepared to hang on.”
 “We had a lot of respect for them, immensely impressed, admired, there was mutual respect.” [Aust & VC]
 “We didn’t work with the South Vietnamese as much as we should have, I thought at the time, and still think today, it was a mistake.”

 

[HayleeKate]

Cambodia
 “for Cambodian people, arbitrary justice, sudden violent death, political oppression, exploitative use of religion and anti-religious reaction, both violent and quiescent, were common facts of life… The creations of Pol Pot-ism were all there in embryo” (Vickery)
 “Sihanouk’s portrait was everywhere around town…in every classroom.. shops and offices” (May)
 “I learnt geography at the lycee (High school), but I never knew until now how the peasants really lived” (Pym)
 “American military intervention cannot be justified on any grounds.. peaceful conditions will only be restored to that country when the military intervention in question will have finally come to an end.” (Sihanouk)
 “The people of South Vietnam (whether they be communists or non-communist) must be left completely free to do as they think fit…without foreign intervention of any sort…and regardless of the political regime they desire to set up” (Sihanouk)
 “We have persistently advocated a return to the Geneva Agreements of 1954, which the failure on the part of the USA to respect was the direct cause of the present Vietnamese conflict” (Sihanouk)
 “Despite the deep cracks appearing in the Sangkum system, Sihanouk remained a legitimate figure in the eyes of many Khmer peasants.” (Kieran)
 “Lon Nol was an echo before he was a voice” (Harben)
 “Hanoi used Cambodia’s ‘parrots beak’ increasingly boldly as a haven and springboard for its troops” (Sydney Morning Herald, 1975)
 “They [the Khmer Rouge] would say that we should attack right away no matter how many got killed, as long as we won, not to worry about how many got killed because it didn’t matter” (Hem Samin)
 The Khmer Rouge were “devoted to achieving an objective at whatever the cost, devising drastic strategies, willing to use people as expendable commodities” (Becker)
 “We have waged our revolutionary struggle basically on the principals of independence, sovereignty and self-reliance” (Pol Pot, victory address)
 “Ours will rapidly become a prosperous country with an advanced agriculture and industry so that our people’s standard of living will be rapidly improved.”(Pol Pot, victory address)
 “the victors [Khmer Rouge] won control of a country in a state of chaos” (Kiljunen)
 “Had 1.5-2 million people been allowed to remain there could well have been more starvation and epidemics than really occurred in 1975-76” (Vickery)
 “Angkar was everywhere, a pervasive presence that none could escape.” (Stuart-Fox)
 “Angkar has more eyes than a pineapple” (Stuart-Fox)”Danger was ever-present; at no time did one know whether the spies of Angkar were listening” (Stuart-Fox)
 “Our lessons subject is real work…The important point is to solve the food problem first. When we have the food, we will expand simultaneously into the learning of reading, writing and arithmetic” (KCP ‘Revolutionary Flags’)
 “I do not believe it is possible to determine with any precision the number of people who died of starvation, illness or execution” (Vickery)
 [some, not all] Security Regulations of Tuol Sleng Prison: 3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution. 6.While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
 “We are building socialism without a model. We do not wish to copy anyone; we shall use the experience gained in the course of the liberation struggle” (Pol Pot)
 “The definition of enemy shifted constantly as the party failed to win power and failed to achieve the desired economic miracles.” (Becker)
 “Anka [sic] was on a path of complete self-destruction, complete atomization of society” (Becker)
 “So far we have attained our target: thirty Vietnamese killed for every fallen Kampuchean.. so we could sacrifice two million Kampucheans in order to exterminate the fifty million Vietnamese- and we shall still be six million” (Pol Pot)
 “Assisted and encouraged by the imperialists and international reactionaries, Kampucheans have turned friends in foes and pointed their guns at their old comrades-in-arms who helped them win victory” (Hanoi Radio)
 “the philosophy of the government to build this perfect agrarian society where there are no crimes, no deceit, no trickery, and no western influences…only by becoming self-reliant will the country be master of its own fate” (Luong Ung)
 “Soldiers are all-powerful. They have the power of judge, jury, police and army. They have the rifles” (Luong Ung)



Pol Pot’s 8 points apon liberation:
1. Evacuate people from all towns
2. Abolish all markets
3. Abolish Lon Nol regime currency and withhold the revolutionary currency that had been printed.
4. Defrock all Buddhist monks, and put them to work growing rice.
5. Execute all leaders of the Lon Nol regime beginning with the top leaders.
6. Establish high-level co-operatives throughout the country, with communal eating.
7. Expel the entire Vietnamese minority population.
8. Dispatch troops to the borders, particularly Vietnamese border.