In his book, Imagining Vietnam & America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, Mark Bradley departs from the conventional explanation of the catalysts of the Vietnam War as a product of Cold War tensions and fears. Instead, through his extraordinary and unprecedented use of Vietnamese primary sources, he draws attention to the popular perceptions that the Vietnamese and Americans held of one another following the end of World War II. This work is obviously thoroughly researched; nearly one-third of the book is dedicated just to his citations. His writing is dense conceptually, but written in a lexicon that could still be consumed by someone with only a cursory understanding to the conflict. It is in this style that he argues that it was the
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Vietnam represented at most a peripheral blip on the American radar of East Asia. Americans were uninterested in Vietnam, and largely viewed it through the discourse of French-Indochina, or with the same (mis)conceptions they held towards the East as a whole. These misguided understandings have their roots in the writings of interwar journalists reporting on Vietnam. One such journalist, Lelad L. Smith, recounted “that the ‘Annamites as a race are very lazy and not prone to be ambitious.’” This was a relatively mild description, yet it encompasses the larger sentiment of Vietnam as non-threatening and unable to organize meaningfully. This supported the French held belief that Vietnam was a child who needed a father to direct it. (At the time America was not interested in filling the role of father, however this would come to change). Because of this, Americans amalgamated Vietnam and other East Asian countries, into their perception of the colonial world as a whole. This understanding was not specific to Americans, and was the popular way of thinking among most of the Western powers. It was never largely contested in this period. During the ladder half of the century the American perception of many other Asian countries was reshaped due to conflict, however Vietnam was not among them. This was the time however, when the U.S. started to see itself as in the role of father to
Vietnam represented at most a peripheral blip on the American radar of East Asia. Americans were uninterested in Vietnam, and largely viewed it through the discourse of French-Indochina, or with the same (mis)conceptions they held towards the East as a whole. These misguided understandings have their roots in the writings of interwar journalists reporting on Vietnam. One such journalist, Lelad L. Smith, recounted “that the ‘Annamites as a race are very lazy and not prone to be ambitious.’” This was a relatively mild description, yet it encompasses the larger sentiment of Vietnam as non-threatening and unable to organize meaningfully. This supported the French held belief that Vietnam was a child who needed a father to direct it. (At the time America was not interested in filling the role of father, however this would come to change). Because of this, Americans amalgamated Vietnam and other East Asian countries, into their perception of the colonial world as a whole. This understanding was not specific to Americans, and was the popular way of thinking among most of the Western powers. It was never largely contested in this period. During the ladder half of the century the American perception of many other Asian countries was reshaped due to conflict, however Vietnam was not among them. This was the time however, when the U.S. started to see itself as in the role of father to