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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Contested Identities: Nationalism in the Republic of Vietnam (1954-1963) Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4407j6sj Author Tran, Nu-Anh Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Contested Identities: Nationalism in the Republic of Vietnam (1954-1963) By Nu-Anh Tran A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Peter Zinoman, Chair Professor Penny Edwards Professor Kerwin Klein Spring 2013 Contested Identities: Nationalism in the Republic of Vietnam (1954-1963) Copyrighted 2013 by Nu-Anh Tran Abstract Contested Identities: Nationalism in the Republic of Vietnam (1954-1963) by Nu-Anh Tran Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Peter Zinoman, Chair This dissertation presents the first full-length study of anticommunist nationalism in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, 1954-1975, or South Vietnam). Specifically, it focuses on state nationalism during the rule of Ngô Đình Diệm (1954-1963). Conventional research depicts the Vietnam War (1954-1975) as a conflict between foreign intervention and indigenous nationalism, but this interpretation conflates Vietnamese communism with Vietnamese nationalism and dismisses the possibility of nationalism in the southern Republic. Using archival and published sources from the RVN, this study demonstrates that the southern regime possessed a dynamic nationalist culture and argues that the war was part of a much longer struggle between communist and anticommunist nationalists. To emphasize the plural and factional character of nationalism in partitioned Vietnam, the study proposes the concept of contested nationalism as an alternative framework for understanding the war. The dissertation examines four elements of nationalism in the Republic: anticommunism, anticolonialism, antifeudalism, and Vietnamese ethnic identity. The first chapter argues that the government and northern émigré intellectuals established anticommunism as the central tenet of Republican nationalism during the Denounce the Communists Campaign, launched in 1955. They popularized an anticommunist vocabulary, especially the term Việt cộng, and developed a historical narrative centered on the communist betrayal of the nationalists in northern Vietnam during the resistance war (1945-1954). The second chapter examines anticolonialism and antifeudalism in relation to Ngô Đình Diệm’s consolidation of power in 1954-1956. Ngô Đình Diệm sidelined groups and individuals that had dominated anticommunist politics during the previous decade in favor of his loyal followers. He shunted aside Bảo Đại, Francophile southern elites, and the sects, all of whom he dismissed as “feudalists.” He also secured the withdrawal of French troops, whom he called “colonialists.” Following his lead, propagandists attacked the legitimacy of these groups with accusations of feudal, colonial, and communist collusion. But few independent intellectuals showed much interest in anticolonialism and antifeudalism. The official discourse on the French and the so- called feudalists never developed a coherent narrative or a consistent political vocabulary, but it did marginalize the south’s most prominent anticommunists. 1 Anticommunist nationalism also had an international dimension, and the third chapter examines the RVN’s engagement with the world through the framework of the Cold War and the Third World. Anticommunists described themselves as contributing members of the Free World alliance and linked their war against Vietnamese communists to antigovernment movements in Hungary and Tibet. In the early 1960s, to justify the fight against the communist-led insurgency, government officials selectively appropriated aspects of dependency theory and modernization theory – both formulated to explain weak economic development in the Third World – to blame the growth of communism on the French and on economic and social conditions. Much of this international engagement was ultimately self-serving, as anticommunists used foreign recognition to bolster the regime’s domestic legitimacy. The last chapter examines how contested nationalism underpinned the government’s embrace of Vietnamese ethnic identity. The cultural projects of the Ministry of Education presented the Saigon government as the sole legitimate inheritor and custodian of Vietnamese culture and history, and geography textbooks and the revision of toponyms south of the 17th parallel created the illusion of a single, national space untroubled by the partition or ethnic differences. Through regulations on foreign research institutions, state-sponsored research projects, and international exhibitions, cultural policies implicitly exalted the cultural superiority of the Vietnamese people and marginalized non-Vietnamese minorities, French colonial scholars, and Vietnamese communists. The evidence presented in this dissertation shows that the politics of the RVN fell squarely within the historical development of Vietnamese nationalism. The development of anticommunist nationalism from the 1940s to the early RVN, the wartime competition between communist and anticommunist nationalists, and the postwar animosity between the communist government and diasporic Vietnamese all suggest a changing but continuous struggle within Vietnamese nationalism spanning the resistance war, the Vietnam War, and the postwar era. This ongoing conflict necessitates a new approach to the Vietnam War that accounts for internal Vietnamese struggles. At the same time, contested nationalism was not unique to Vietnam. Strong resemblances between divided Korea, China, Vietnam, and, to a lesser extent, Germany suggest the need for comparative analysis across partitioned states during the Cold War. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii List of Abbreviations v Translations of Vietnamese Institutions, Organizations, and Meetings vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Denouncing Communists: The Creation of an Anticommunist 23 Narrative, 1954-1960 Chapter 2. Eliminate the Feudalists and Strike Down the Colonialists: 52 The Eclipse of Southern Anticommunism, 1954-1960 Chapter 3. Anticommunist Internationalism and the Third World 91 Chapter 4. Ethnic Identity, State Power, and Cultural Policy 124 Conclusion 150 Bibliography 164 List of Maps Map 1. Colonial Indochina 21 Map 2. Partitioned Vietnam 22 Map 3. Physical Map of Vietnam 148 Map 4. Transportation Map of Vietnam 149 i Acknowledgements Graduate studies and the completion of this dissertation took many, many years, and I have incurred countless debts in the process. My adviser, Peter Zinoman, shepherded me through the graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley, with his savvy advice and critical feedback. His comments on earlier drafts helped me revise the overarching argument and reorganize the dissertation several times. I also thank my other committee members, Penny Edwards and Kerwin Klein, for their patient encouragement and helpful comments. Special thanks are due to Edward Miller. Although not a faculty member in my graduate program, he has been an informal mentor throughout my studies. He answered queries, sent relevant primary sources my way, and shared his deep knowledge of American foreign relations and Ngô Đình Diệm’s First Republic Many other professors, researchers, and colleagues have contributed to my training at Berkeley. Jeffrey Hadler’s seminars deepened my understanding of Southeast Asia, and Nguyễn Nguyệt Cầm’s class on the Vietnamese literature of the Vietnam War introduced me to entirely different dimensions of the conflict. Conversations and correspondences with Lawrence Rosenthal and Tuong Vu provided a broader perspective for contextualizing anticommunist nationalism in Vietnam. At the Institute for the Study of Social Issues (ISSI), where I spent one year as a fellow in the Graduate Training Program, Christine Trost, Deborah Lustig, David Minkus, and my cohort of fellows read multiple drafts of what is now chapter four. Conversations with them helped me formulate and clarify the concept of contested nationalism. The members of the Vietnam Studies Reading Group and the Center for the Study of Right Wing Movements also heroically waded through various rough drafts of the dissertation. Colleagues away from Berkeley have been equally generous. Chapter three benefitted from a workshop at Harvard University with Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Edward Miller, Jessica Chapman, Geoff Stewart, and Matt Masur. Edward Miller and Martin Loicano introduced me to research facilities in Saigon, and Tuan Hoang offered his vast store of digitized primary sources from Cornell. Benedict Anderson and Keith Taylor generously discussed my ideas when I began researching at Cornell, and Lien-Hang Thi Nguyen was ever ready with professional support. I thank Truong Buu Khanh for sharing his knowledge of Việt Nam Thông Tấn Xã (Vietnam Press) from his days as the director of the agency. Peter Lavelle helped translate classical Sino- Vietnamese terms. Several other colleagues answered queries to specific questions and suggested helpful sources, and I credit them in the notes throughout the dissertation. Historical research would be impossible without libraries and archives, and I thank the many librarians and archivists who enabled my work.