10/06/2021 | The First Vietnam War featuring Shawn McHale

Why did the communist-led resistance in Vietnam win the anticolonial war against France everywhere except the south? Join us for a lecture.

In The First Vietnam War, Shawn McHale explores why the communist-led resistance in Vietnam won the anticolonial war against France (1945–54), except in the south. He shows how broad swaths of Vietnamese people were uneasily united in 1945 under the Viet Minh Resistance banner. The unstable union eventually shattered in 1947, and from this point on, the war in the south turned into an overt civil war wrapped up in a war against France. Based on extensive archival research in four countries and in three languages, this is the first substantive English-language book focused on southern Vietnam’s transition from colonialism to independence.

Author

Shawn McHale is an Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at the Elliott School. He has worked and taught extensively on issues surrounding Vietnam, Southeast Asian history, history and memory, and colonialism’s impact and legacy. His other research interests include Buddhism, Confucianism, communism, gender, memory, civil war and violence. He spent the 2007-08 academic year as a Fulbright-Hays fellow in Vietnam and France, and formerly directed the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian History from Cornell University.

Moderator

Alyssa Ayres is the Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. Before joining the Elliott School, she was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia under the Obama administration. She holds a Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago.