BUTTINGER : Vietnam : a dragon embattled (előszó)
THIS IS MY SECOND BOOK dealing with the history of Vietnam. The first one, The Smaller Dragon, which appeared in February, 1958, covers the history of Vietnam from semilegendary beginnings centuries before the modern era up to about 1900. Developments then taking place make the turn of the century more than merely a convenient chronological division between two periods in the story of the Vietnamese people.
What happened in Vietnam around 1900 eventually was to change the character of Vietnamese life as radically as it almost immediately changed the character of Vietnamese history. The developments that brought about these changes can be summarized as follows: (1) The gradual collapse of the old Vietnamese resistance movements, which had arisen during the several decades of French conquest and had been led chiefly by scholars and administrators of the old regime; (2) The decline of the old ruling class of mandarins (together with the monarchy), either because direct French rule replaced its members, or because collaboration with the French discredited them; (3) The establishment, after fifteen years of fumbling, of a unified and strong administration for the whole of French Indochina, as a condition for social and economic measures that would put an end to Indochina's financial dependence on France; (4) The consequent rise of a small Vietnamese middle class, a Western-educated new intelligentsia, a class of landless peasants, and an industrial proletariat, which together provided the social basis for the nationalist and Communist movements opposing the colonial regime. The Vietnam in whose rice fields, jungles, and mountains a Comrnunist-led national resistance movement defeated the French in the Indochina War be tween 1946 and 1954 was born just before 1900.
Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled was conceived not as a mere sequel to The Smaller Dragon but as a distinctly separate study. Twentieth century Vietnam differs not only from ancient Vietnam, but also from nineteenth-century colonial Vietnam. This difference justifies the dividing line I have chosen between The Smaller Dragon and Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled, and it also explains the rather pronounced difference in the character of the two books. To be sure, both are essentially political histories, and the second one starts where the first one ends. The reader, therefore, may regard the second book simply as a sequel to the first. After all, both deal with the same country, and they offer a history from its origins to the present only if read as a whole. But the emphasis in both lies on politics, which in twentieth-cenrury Vietnam differ from politics in ancient Vietnam to such a degree that the subject matter of Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled has little in common with that of The Smaller Dragon. This volume, although also intended as a chronicle of events, is primarily an analysis and interpretation of the forces engaged in the great political struggles of our time. It is the book I wanted to write after my interest in the struggle for the political furure of this embattled country was aroused when I first visited Vietnam almost twelve years ago. The Smaller Dragon was originally conceived merely as an introduction to the present book. It became a separate entity not only because the project got out of hand, but also because I realized that there was a need for a comprehensive English-language history of Vietnam.
Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled starts with the introduction of drastic reforms by the French in Indochina after the completion of the conquest at the end of the nineteenth-cenrury, and it tells the story of colonial and contemporary Vietnam up to the fall of Ngo Dinh Diem. The subjects covered include: the achievements, positive and negative, of the colonial regime; a survey, the first ever attempted outside Vietnam, of the country's movements of national resistance during the entire colonial period; the economic and social roots of Vietnamese nationalism and Communism; the rise to prominence of the Communists in the anticolonial movement; the effect upon Indochina of the Japanese occupation during World War II; the true nature of the Vietminh and the reasons for its triumph in 1945; the political in solvency of anti-Communist nationalism under the regime of Bao Dai; the fatal reliance of the French on military means in fighting the Vietminh guerrillas; the gradual involvement over the last twenty years of the United States in Indochinese affairs; the significance of the Geneva agreements, and, Ngo Dinh Diem's tragic ruin of his chance to bring freedom and social justice to Vietnam.
In writing the present work I was fortunate enough to be granted personal interviews with Vietnamese leaders and to obtain primary source materials and documents in the course of visits to Vietnam. However, the book owes its scope and documentation chiefly to a study of most of the existing literature on Vietnam. No book of any significance that has appeared on the subject through 1965 has been neglected, as testified to by the numerous works listed, quoted, and discussed in the notes.
Concerning these notes, I have again proceeded as I did in The Smaller Dragon, whose method of offering a great deal of commentary and documentation outside the main narrative has been criticized by some and praised by others. I believe it to be a useful approach, both for the general reader who does not want to be burdened by an abundance of detail in the main text and for the student of history who, as I know from experience, is grateful to find quotes from and discussion of existing sources on a subject so little explored.
Of the many books I studied before I began writing The Smaller Dragon, the most valuable ones were D. G. E. Hall's History of South-east Asia; Le Thanh Khoi's Le Viet-Nam: Histoire et civilisation; and Georges Taboulet's La geste francaise en Indochine. The many books consulted for Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled were no longer chiefly older Works written by Frenchmen. I cannot begin to list all the authors whom I have consulted; I must refer the reader to the bibliography and especially to the notes in which I try to acknowledge my debt to others. But I want to mention those whose works aided me particularly in obtaining the facts and informing my own judgments: Virginia Thompson, Ellen Hammer, Paul Isoart, Donald Lancaster, Philippe Devillers, Pierre Dabezies, Jean Lacouture, Milton Sacks, Robert Scigliano, David Halberstam, Malcolm Browne, Robert Shaplen, and Bemard B. Fall, who, if not always the most objective, is undoubtedly the most prolific and in some areas the most knowledgeable writer on Vietnam in the United States.
I also cannot list and thank all the people who, either in discussing difficult problems with me or in supplying me with rare material, have helped me to complete this book. But three I must mention. One is my former secretary, Mrs. Cecile Akin. Originally engaged to give final form to my drafts of the notes, Mrs. Akin soon became a most valuable part-time research assistant. She added innumerable new data to my own and helped to make the notes, such an important part of the book, both richer and more accurate. Mrs. Akin also gathered most of the material, quite difficult to obtain, for Appendix III, which, for the first time to my knowledge, gives the main biographical data of all heads of the colonial administration in Indochina. She performed a similar service for Appendix VII, in which I have tried to list and evaluate all known Vietnamese parties and movements frorn 1905 to the present, something that has hever been done before. Most translations from the French in the Notes are also Mrs. Akin's.
The second person I want to mention gratefully is Mrs. Jean Steinberg, who edited the voluminous manuscript. Of her ability and perseverance in pursuing errors, ointing out deficiencies of the text, and generally improving it I can speak only with admiration.
Finally, I wish to mention my wife, who, like the good teacher she is, read every page carefully and not only helped me with my English but also induced me to eliminate obscurities, repetitions, and superfluous details. I lack adequate words to express my appreciation for the many hours and days of neglect, and the many silences and depressions she patiently endured whenever the work was going badly.
JOSEPH BUTTINGER
Pennington, New Jersey
October, 1966
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