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Encountering Everyday Perspectives on the American War

The shooting ended forty years ago but American scholars still fight over how to interpret the Vietnam War. Historians, especially, continue to debate the meaning, significance, and experience of the Second Indochina War. Skirmishes in 2011 over a college textbook pitted conventional US-centric narratives emphasising American actors against Vietnam-centric narratives stressing the other side. In 2014, critical portrayals of US military conduct in Vietnam stirred old battle lines arraying hawks versus doves, many of whom have one eye trained on ongoing interventions in the Middle East. Such polarised debates often reproduce simplistic, binary representations of what was, in fact, a complex Cold War conflict unfolding through a hot civil war. They do so to the neglect of the everyday experience of people who lived through it. What relevance do historians’ debates have for geographers? The simple answer, according to Vietnamese historian Phan Huy Lê, is that, “Địa lý và lịch sử là một thôi,” or, “History and geography: they are one.” As he said this, he held his hands up, fingers interlocking. Although many Americans think of geography as concerned with space and history with time, the two disciplines share fundamental interests in place and context and problems of data and interpretation. Indeed, the context of Lê’s statement hints at problems in knowing Vietnam’s past. We met in May 2014 in Hanoi at a state conference commemorating the Battle of Dien Bien Phu where, sixty years earlier, Vietnam defeated France to end the First Indochina War. That the anniversary featured historical research and official celebrations of “Vietnam’s strength” demonstrates that the past, and how we as scholars interpret it, are both very much part of our present political world. In Vietnam and the US, history and geography remain inevitably involved in ideological problems and epistemological experience.