101 Research Essay

30%

2,500 words

DUE 26.04

- Music include ?

- Use cultural product to discuss question (by analysing ?)

1. To what extent did anticolonial nationalism in Algeria and Vietnam have an international or global
dimension ?
2. What role did conceptions of gender and sexuality have in the Algerian and Vietnamese conflicts ?
3. To what extent did domestic and global opposition to the Algerian and Vietnamese wars impact their
course ?
4. ‘The Algerian and Vietnam wars remained politically contested even after their end.’ Discuss.

- Essay should be comparative and draw on examples/sources from BOTH case studies covered in the
second semester.

- These contexts might yield differences as well as similarities, so you are invited to compare and contrast
without assuming any consistent pattern of explanation.

- Use case studies to reflect on the wider theoretical issues explored during the first semester.

- You do not have to provide an extremely general or exhaustive answer to your chosen question. Instead,
you should try to narrow, and focus on a few relevant examples of interest to you – enough to give yourself
sufficient range to construct an argument but not so many that they cannot be analysed in any depth.

- Explicit in your introduction about how you have decided to approach the question.

- Set and suggested readings, as well as the supplementary bibliographies (available on QMPlus).

- May also refer to high-quality journalistic sources as secondary sources if you need to back up a claim
about more recent/contemporary events.

- Also refer to opinion pieces from non-academic reviews (e.g. Foreign Policy, London Review of Books),
Q5: ‘The Algerian and Vietnam wars remained politically contested even after their end.’ Discuss.

Intro (250)

It is without question that the Algerian and Vietnam wars remained politically contested even after their end,
both domestically and globally. This essay shall explore how the two wars were, and still are, politically
contested within both America and France. The focus shall be on the relationships between Algeria and
France, and the US and Vietnam and how the Western countries remember, and reconcile with their violent
pasts. Firstly, I shall discuss how the Algerian War fits into; French collective memory and/or amnesia, the
context of anti-colonial movements and memorialisation. Following this I shall investigate the aftershock of
the Vietnam War in America via a cultural lens, memorials, and through parallels to the US invasion of Iraq
in 2003.

- Brief summary of Algeria and then Vietnam War.

Algeria and France (1000)

- Memorial

Gérard Collin-Thiébaut (GCT)

The site overlooking the Seine that was chosen for the Memorial to the Algerian War and the fighting in
Morocco and Tunisia recalls the quayside from which French service personnel set sail for Algiers. The
memorial consists of a line of three pillars, each two metres apart, with an obstacle-free open space before
them, which passers-by can walk across. On the front of each pillar is an LED display. The first, in blue, and
third, in red, present a rolling list of names of the approximately 26 000 French servicemen and civilians
who were killed in the conflicts, in alphabetical order and by year. The middle pillar, in white, displays
nearly 1 700 names of civilian victims, including 1 597 disappeared and 49 victims of the Rue d’Isly
massacre, together with the names of the 101 people who were abducted and whose bodies were buried. The
alignment of the pillars and the fence in the background permanently evoke the tricolour flag.

- Collective memory/amnesia
Within contemp soc ?

- How this feeds into current anti-col movements/debates inc Palestine for example.

Vietnam and the US (1000)

- Watergate scandal

- CUL in US (Vietnam Syndrome)

‘For Americans, the war left not only physical scars but also deep social cleavages and pervasive anxiety
about national decline.’ (Atwood Lawrence, 2008: 162)
2.6 million veterans – many injured, suffering from PTSD, or drug addiction
In the immediate, lack of public debate about Vietnam, desire to forget difficult memories and controversy
of war – but by late 1970s Vietnam re-emerges within American public consciousness
Liberals looked back on war as moral and political error; more radical critics viewed it as symptom of
America’s neo-imperialism; conservatives blamed defeat on anti-war movement and restraint in US military
strategy
These divisions reflected in cultural representations of the war, notably in cinema: films like The Deer
Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986), and Full Metal Jacket (1987) portrayed the futility
and immorality of war, while macho action films like Rambo series of 1980s ‘showed burly American
veterans, betrayed by a spineless and corrupt U.S. government, returning to Indochina to rescue abandoned
comrades from communist prison camps and to exact revenge for earlier humiliations. ‘ (Atwood Lawrence,
2008: 177)
End of the 1970s: Communist takeover in Nicaragua, Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and Islamic
revolution in Iran pressure US to reconsider its post-Vietnam foreign policy stance
Republican Ronald Reagan elected US President by landslide in 1980: calls for US to overcome ‘Vietnam
syndrome,’ embrace its global leadership role, and step up fight against communism – ‘It’s time we
recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause.’
‘For too long, Reagan contended, Americans had dishonored the memory of those who were killed in the
war by viewing the nation’s cause in Vietnam as anything but noble. Through invoking the perceived
“lessons” of the war in more unequivocal terms than his predecessors, Reagan’s campaign rhetoric tapped
into public disquiet about America’s perceived decline in the world in the aftermath of Vietnam.’ (Nguyen,
2010: 163)
‘Ronald Reagan jettisoned Carter’s human rights policy and set out on a more direct and less expensive
approach to healing spiritual wounds: he renamed them. The United States invasion of Vietnam was a “noble
cause,” the American-paid mercenaries in Nicaragua were “freedom fighters.” In one press conference, he
rewrote the history of Vietnam itself, informing reporters that it had always been two countries that France
had liberated after World War II and whose possible reunification was disrupted by Ho Chi Minh’s refusal to
participate in elections.’ (Young, 1991: 315)
‘By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.’ US President George H. W. Bush following
successful conclusion of First Gulf War, 1991

- Veterans of Vietnam Memorial

in Washington DC inaugurated in 1982 – inscribed with names of 58,249 Americans killed in Vietnam
- Critiqued by conservatives; black walls seen to victimise rather heroize the soldiers deaths – against
Kennedy’s stance post war

- Vietnam Women’s Memorial

Located just north of the Reflecting Pool. The memorial was dedicated in 1993 and portrays three women
caring for a fallen soldier.
During the Vietnam War, women served in many different roles. Many women served as nurses and
physicians while others acted as air traffic controllers, communication specialists, and intelligence officers.
The Vietnam Women’s Memorial was established to honor the women who risked their lives to serve their
country. The names of the eight women who died in Vietnam are included on the list of over 58,000 names
on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Ask a ranger to find a name on the wall and learn more about the people
who served our country.

- Repetition seen in Iraq 2003

‘The initial US invasion was a great success, toppling the Baghdad government in about three weeks. A few
months later, however, American occupation troops found themselves embroiled in a counterinsurgency war
that reminded many observers of Vietnam. Critics of US policy charged that a duplicitous government was
once again asking American troops to fight on behalf of a faraway government with little legitimacy among
its own people. Bush and his supporters saw a different parallel between Iraq and Vietnam. They contended
that anti-war critics, just as in the 1960s and 1970s, were sapping the nation’s determination and
emboldening its enemies. The United States must not, they insisted, repeat its earlier mistake by
withdrawing from Iraq before achieving its objectives.’ (Atwood Lawrence, 2008: 182)
‘Conservatives viewed the US defeat in Vietnam as a warning about the risks of permissiveness and social
fragmentation they associated with the 1960s. Liberals saw the defeat, meanwhile, as evidence of the
dangers flowing from hubris among government leaders and excessive deference to authority among the
general population.’ (Atwood Lawrence, 2008: 183)

Conc (250)

- readdress initial qu