The two readings encapsulate the difficulty facing Vietnam during the development of that nation. Vietnam went through upheaval, and like most countries torn by war, there was significant death and destruction. The high price paid for development and the dynasties that existed was the blood of the men who fought tirelessly because they had some belief in country. Both works bring this to bear in slightly different ways, and in doing so, they presented interesting themes to think about when considering how the development of Vietnam during this time might have been distinct from the development of the rest of the region all around it.
Goscha writes of the way in which the country came to acquire its vast, S-like shape. The country is unique in many ways. When one looks at it on the map, one sees that it seems to have been carved into the region in a way that is distinct. It is a territory right on the water, on some of the most hotly contested and desired land in the world. Still, it is also a place in which there has been much death and destruction. To become so vast, many lives had to be taken. There were civil wars, there were colonial times, and there was simply a period in which people struggled. Vietnam struggled as a part of China for a long while, and it eventually broke free of that in order to try to establish its own dynasty. As the author writes, though, Vietnam looked much like the other countries in the region even while it was striving to be its own land. Just as China had an imperial character during this time, Vietnam had its own imperial character, and it paid for this in blood. The author looks on Vietnam with some wonder as a place where people surely struggled for something that could be their own, but he also wonders what price had to be paid so that the people could have that S-shaped territory of land carved so nicely into the region. This came before any major civil war in the 1900s when the United States would get involved with the nation, as well. The point of his work is to show that even before Vietnam faced its most infamous and contentious period in modern history, the conflict had been building there for many hundreds of years. One should not have been surprised that things ended in this way.
The other is not so much literature, but rather, a poem that reflects the pain and devastation of the people there. It discusses the men who have fallen because of the war and the desire to have a distinct and free country. This is an interesting piece because it turns the struggle of Vietnam into art. It uses poetry to reflect on how the nation came to be, what sacrifices people made, and actual body count that because the high price that the Vietnamese ultimately paid for their freedom (498 words).
Question: One of the questions that I would ask of the guest speaker has to do with how the past of Vietnam has shaped the present, and at minimum, how the development of Vietnam left it ripe for war in the 1900s. The Vietnam War was quite obviously one of the most consequential wars in history. It was important, and the character of the place remains a mystery today. I would want to know how the history of Vietnam made it the sort of place that would be battled over with the US trying to contain communism as much as possible during the middle part of the 20th century (108 words).
- Goscha, C. (2016). Vietnam: A New History. Hachette UK.
- Huỳnh, S. T. (Ed.). (1996). An anthology of Vietnamese poems: from the eleventh through the twentieth centuries. Yale University Press.
