Please include any in text cites and any references from web sites need to be quality sites.
The history and identity of the Vietnamese people reaches very far back. Their hopes and expectations for their own future do not just begin where our class textbook begins (at the end of World War II), nor do their often troubled relations with their neighbors in Southeast Asia.
For all the horrors of global warfare, World War II brought such disruption to world order that long-repressed hopes of colonized people found opportunity for new expression and leaders rose to the opportunities for change.
Our course is about the whole of 20th-century experience, with the Vietnam War being the centerpiece. For our discussion, let's start here with
How can we best understand how the agrarian Vietnamese people could come together during and after global warfare to restore their national identity and raise up leaders to meet their challenges?
Given the concept of a "revolution of rising expectations," demonstrate how that concept may be applied to the success of the Vietminh in establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and to the failure of the Saigon regime of South Vietnam.