Vietnam: A History
Being about to teach a class of Year 11s some Vietnamese history, I thought I should know a bit about it. Thankfully, we went to visit my family, and they may well have one of the world’s largest personal collections of books on Vietnam (Dad was a Vietnam veteran, and had a great interest in it). Well, that’s what it feels like, anyway. So I got Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, since what I really wanted was an overview of everything leading up to US involvement – I’m going to be teaching the French war, basically, up to the Geneva Conference in 1954. I’m not sure where to start; I’d like to do at least one lesson on China’s 1000-year occupation of Vietnam, as very relevant background…
Anyway, the book: it’s very good. I learnt an enormous amount just reading the first 4-5 chapters. I reallised I knew basically nothing about this area, and what it had gone through. For starters, I always just assumed that Ho Chi Minh was this scary Communist guy – and maybe later on he got really nasty, I’m not sure, I haven’t read that far – but from what I have read, I have the impression that he was far more of a nationalist than a Communist: no matter that he really did believe in the Communist ideas he was far more interested in getting Vietnam free of French rule, and avoiding American overlordship as well. He did, in fact, approach the US for help, but they didn’t want to get involved in Indochina – and they wanted to keep the French happy. Plus I guess they were already worried about the ‘domino effect’ of Communism…
As an historian I am fully aware of the impossibility of writing objective history, but Karnow seems to have had a good stab at it. He’s certainly not out to lionise the US, but neither does he paint a portrait of the poor suffering Vietnamese who only want to be left in peace. He seems quite fair to both sides, and seems to have gone to great lengths to be so – being a journo helped, of course, since as a reporter he got access to important people and has included many of their comments on various aspects of the history he’s writing.
This is a very good book, as an overview of Vietnam’s colonisation history. I think I might be able to use bits of it when I teach – maybe not this time, because I’m not sure what my supervisor will think about me not using the textbook – but when I’m out by myself (ack).
The Plato Papers
This book spins me out.
I read it all in one sitting, this afternoon (it is only 139 pages), and I’m glad I did – it had a greater impact because of that, I think. It’s a bit weird, and I am left with a number of questions unanswered: what are these ‘people’ like – would they be recognisably human? How do they classify themselves if not by such systems as we deem fundamental, such as gender? Who are they? But it has also given me questions to ask about history as we tell it. If they can make the logical assumption that “Charles D”, author of The Origin of Species is Charles Dickens, and that it is “a comic masterpiece”, what sort of erroneous assumptions may we have made in our reconstructions? This is something that has always caused me some grief – in particular I’ve never really known whether or not to be suspicious of the ‘argument from silence’ line, since who knows what we may have lost between now and ‘then’? And then there’s the whole point of cultural context, let alone oral history…
It is a good book, for all that, and I think it should probably appear on the reading list for some history courses – like the prereq subject for honours at Melbourne – just to make people think.
Warriors of God #2 – who does he think he’s kidding??
Describing James d’Avesnes: “who apart from Richard was the most gallant and chivalrous warrior of the entire European army.” Sorry? What’s your definition of chivalrous here?? I don’t think that your discussion of Richard so far allows for him to be called the most chivalrous warrior in the army by any stretch of the imagination!
I don’t think he can make up his mind whether Saladin was a wonderful person or not; sometimes he is the oh-so-holy Defender of the Faith, and sometimes he is “cruelly” beheading Christians – how do you do that cruelly, anyway? I guess he doesn’t have to make up his mind, but in these sections it seems like he has, and then he changes it…
I’m about 2/3 through, and I’m glad to have read it for a look at the period and people but, obviously, I have some issues with the portrayals.
Warriors of God
It’s not as academic as I had hoped. The author, James Reston, has probably set out to write a very approachable books – and it is, which is great. However, it rankles when he says ‘one chronicle remarks…’ and doesn’t tell you which chronicle that is. And, probably the most annoying thing, he does not give much reason for wholeheartedly accepting the theory that Richard and Phillip Augustus were lovers… and that annoys me. I don’t care if they were, I just object to the unscholarly way he approaches it – like he’s sensationalising it, and making Richard seem more modern, or something.
He also seems to have a love of Saladin and rather ambiguous feelings towards Richard. Which is fine, and I don’t mind authors saying that, but I do think they should make an effort to present balanced evidence, however much that is possible when you’re writing history.
It is a good book, though, and I think it is a good introduction to the period and people. I even like that it has me annoyed and asking questions, because that gets me doing my own research.
