Contested Nationalism: Towards a New Understanding of the Vietnamese Wars, 1945-1975

• In Event: Empire, Nation, and Sovereignty: New Theoretical Approaches to Vietnamese Political History

Abstract

This paper offers a new perspective on Vietnamese nationalism during the Resistance War (1945-1954, alternatively known as the First Indochina War) and the Vietnam War (1954-1975, alternatively known as the Second Indochina War). The wars have typically been portrayed as confrontations between communist nationalism and foreign imperialism, but I focus on a different dimension of the conflicts: the political competition between different Vietnamese nationalists. To capture the plural and factional character of nationalism in Vietnam, this paper proposes the concept of “contested nationalism,” based on the theoretical literature on nationalism and partitioned states. I argue that the Vietnamese conflicts were simultaneously civil wars and wars of national liberation. During the early days of the Resistance War, various nationalist groups joined together to fight French colonialism, but the fragile alliance collapsed due to violent conflicts between the Indochinese Communist Party and anticommunists. The Vietnam War deepened the schism by transforming it into a struggle between competing states. Both the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the anticommunist Republic of Vietnam claimed exclusive rights over the Vietnamese nation while accusing its rival of being a puppet of imperial powers. By reinterpreting the Vietnamese wars through the lens of contested nationalism, this paper challenges the conventional conflation of Vietnamese nationalism with Vietnamese communism and offers a richer understanding of the nationalist movement.

Author

• Nu-Anh Tran, University of Connecticut