What Should We Teach Our Children?: The Vietnam War In Vietnamese History Textbooks, 1975-2000

Abstract

"The massive body of literature devoted to the Vietnam War testifies to its pivotal status in American and Vietnamese histories. Yet, it faces a historiographical dilemma. Documentation on the conflict continues to be mostly dominated by American scholars, who utilize American and South Vietnamese perspectives. Even as growing segments of these scholars attempt to introduce mainland Vietnamese perspectives into the conversation, these works continue to downplay how the contemporary Vietnamese communist regime understands the conflict. Simultaneously, the lack of Vietnamese language sources readily available in English and general distrust towards these sources exacerbated the one-sidedness of the conflict’s historiography. Such a distorted view does not help to advance scholarly understanding of the country and its ties with the conflict. At the same time, it disregards the complexities of Vietnam’s relationship with communism and the dynamics of everyday communist experiences..."