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Vietnam: voyage à travers une victoire
448pages. poche. broché. Malraux a-t-il agi pour trouver dans l'action la source de son inspiration ? A-t-il écrit parce que l'action ne lui donnait ni la réponse à une certaine exigence d'absolu, ni l'accomplissement que cherchent les conquérants ? Sa vie et son oeuvre restent profondément lié vie construite comme une oeuvre, oeuvre pantelante comme une vie. Cette biographie retrace l'histoire d'un homme qui, à force de vouloir transformer en conscience la plus large expérience possible, a vécu plus totalement son temps qu'aucun de ses contemporains. Ainsi, cette vie dans le siècle peut-elle être vue comme une vie du siècle lui-même.
- GenresHistory
284 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
About the author
Jean Lacouture
160 books12 followersJean Lacouture is a journalist, historian and author. He is particularly famous for his biographies.y
Jean Lacouture began his career in journalism in 1950 in "Combat" as diplomatic redactor. He joined Le Monde in 1951. In 1953, he worked in Cairo for France Soir, before returning to Le Monde as director for the overseas services, and grand reporter (the highest title in French journalism) until 1975.
Politically engaged on the Left, Lacouture supported decolonisation, and Mitterrand from 1981. He worked for the Nouvel Observateur, and L'Histoire. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film about the Vietnam War entitled "In the Year of the Pig".
Lacouture was also director for publication at Seuil, one of the main French publishers, from 1961 to 1982, and professor at the IEP of Paris between 1969 and 1972.
He is mainly known to the public because of his biographies, including the lives of Ho Chi Minh, Nasser, Léon Blum, De Gaulle, François Mauriac, Pierre Mendès-France, Mitterrand, Montesquieu, Montaigne, Malraux, Germaine Tillion, Champollion, Rivière, Stendhal and Kennedy.
A dedicated music lover, Lacouture is also president of a society of devotees of Georges Bizet.
Jean Lacouture began his career in journalism in 1950 in "Combat" as diplomatic redactor. He joined Le Monde in 1951. In 1953, he worked in Cairo for France Soir, before returning to Le Monde as director for the overseas services, and grand reporter (the highest title in French journalism) until 1975.
Politically engaged on the Left, Lacouture supported decolonisation, and Mitterrand from 1981. He worked for the Nouvel Observateur, and L'Histoire. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film about the Vietnam War entitled "In the Year of the Pig".
Lacouture was also director for publication at Seuil, one of the main French publishers, from 1961 to 1982, and professor at the IEP of Paris between 1969 and 1972.
He is mainly known to the public because of his biographies, including the lives of Ho Chi Minh, Nasser, Léon Blum, De Gaulle, François Mauriac, Pierre Mendès-France, Mitterrand, Montesquieu, Montaigne, Malraux, Germaine Tillion, Champollion, Rivière, Stendhal and Kennedy.
A dedicated music lover, Lacouture is also president of a society of devotees of Georges Bizet.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 30, 2022
The official and journalistic accounts of the Vietnam conflict has shrouded it in mystery, in myths and legends. Objective, insightful political analyses of what happened in Vietnam in the critical period when Ngo Dinh Diem ruled are few and far between. Jean Lacouture has attempted to write such an analysis, and his study stays as far from mythology as possible. However, while he has all the facts as they are, the conclusions he draws from them are in many aspects wrong.
Lacouture's starting point is the Diem regime. I agree with him on that Diem was nothing more than a tool in Eisenhower and Dulles's decision to break with the policy of acting in accord with France and Britain make South Vietnam a bulwark against anti-Communist resistance. But I fundamentally disagree with the rest of his conclusions about Diem.
First, he accuses Diem of an "attachment to the ancient society of Annam – high aristocracy, closed castes, intellectual hierarchies." This is a huge, misleading exaggeration. It is true that Diem embraced Confucianism because he saw that it had many similarities with Catholicism, and his philosophy included both a Catholic faith and Confucian principles. However, he was not a reactionary. Catholicism and Confucianism both stress that the well-being of the family is the most important social responsibility of a people and their rulers. He wanted to revive the faith and the family life of his countrymen, which had diminished under French rule. Buddhism, for example, was in tragic decline, so Diem appropriated government funds for the restoration of Buddhist places of worship. He was a conservative: he wanted to conserve the traditional Vietnamese way of life. First and foremost, he wanted to restore the family to its Confucian status as the responsible entity within the village community. This emphasis on religious, familial, and social duties was hard for his American allies to understand. They considered him a Confucian reactionary, but he understood better than them that the Vietnamese people could not just plunge headfirst into modern Western values. They needed time to adjust. Diem was never against the modernization of South Vietnam, but he insisted, understandably, that the transition to modernity should be gradual.
Second, Lacouture accuses the Diem regime of lacking sympathy for pluralism. According to him, South Vietnam was collapsing because Diem could not deal with the diversity of political factions in peaceful times. This conclusion is part correct, part wrong. In the beginning of his rule, Diem indeed lacked sympathy for pluralism because he had to fight the politico-religious sects and the remaining French sympathizers to maintain control over the government in Saigon. Then, the Viet Minh guerrillas intensified their attacks on South Vietnam's countryside, and Diem had to centralize the power even more and focus on internal security. So what peaceful times is Lacouture talking about? When a country is at war, liberties are sacrificed. Diem's American allies were fast to accuse him of being undemocratic, but they seem to have forgotten what happened in the United States during the Second World War: the Roosevelt administration sent American citizens of Japanese origin to concentration camps for security reasons. And America was not being infiltrated by invisible guerrillas.
Otherwise, Lacouture is correct in his observation about the ARVN. The army of South Vietnam indeed proved to be its undoing. It was an army created in the image of the US Army. Just like its American counterpart, it was prepared for conventional warfare but not for guerrilla one. Just like its American counterpart, it had been persuaded that it could fight ideology with weapons. What's interesting, as Lacouture points out, the ARVN did not have the cultural base of the US Army, which made it even worse. It did not have a strong sense of discipline or a tradition that discourages meddling in political affairs. Military plotting against the Diem regime started as soon as the army was organized. Only by setting unit against unit, general against general, by planting spies and fake rumors everywhere was the Saigon government able to maintain control over its armed forces. As the saying goes, Divide and rule. What the country needed in those tough times was unity and security, but instead its main protector – the army – was torn by internal intrigue. The arrival of American military advisers only aggravated the problem, as the MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) was also a hot mess of conflicting interests, which affected the war effort negatively.
Generally, VIETNAM was neither impressively good, not especially bad. Everyone who is familiar with the modern scholarship on the Diem regime and the Vietnam conflict will discover nothing new. Whoever supports the theory that Ngo Dinh Diem was not a ruthless dictator will find a lot that is wrong. This book is outdated. I do not recommend it.
Lacouture's starting point is the Diem regime. I agree with him on that Diem was nothing more than a tool in Eisenhower and Dulles's decision to break with the policy of acting in accord with France and Britain make South Vietnam a bulwark against anti-Communist resistance. But I fundamentally disagree with the rest of his conclusions about Diem.
First, he accuses Diem of an "attachment to the ancient society of Annam – high aristocracy, closed castes, intellectual hierarchies." This is a huge, misleading exaggeration. It is true that Diem embraced Confucianism because he saw that it had many similarities with Catholicism, and his philosophy included both a Catholic faith and Confucian principles. However, he was not a reactionary. Catholicism and Confucianism both stress that the well-being of the family is the most important social responsibility of a people and their rulers. He wanted to revive the faith and the family life of his countrymen, which had diminished under French rule. Buddhism, for example, was in tragic decline, so Diem appropriated government funds for the restoration of Buddhist places of worship. He was a conservative: he wanted to conserve the traditional Vietnamese way of life. First and foremost, he wanted to restore the family to its Confucian status as the responsible entity within the village community. This emphasis on religious, familial, and social duties was hard for his American allies to understand. They considered him a Confucian reactionary, but he understood better than them that the Vietnamese people could not just plunge headfirst into modern Western values. They needed time to adjust. Diem was never against the modernization of South Vietnam, but he insisted, understandably, that the transition to modernity should be gradual.
Second, Lacouture accuses the Diem regime of lacking sympathy for pluralism. According to him, South Vietnam was collapsing because Diem could not deal with the diversity of political factions in peaceful times. This conclusion is part correct, part wrong. In the beginning of his rule, Diem indeed lacked sympathy for pluralism because he had to fight the politico-religious sects and the remaining French sympathizers to maintain control over the government in Saigon. Then, the Viet Minh guerrillas intensified their attacks on South Vietnam's countryside, and Diem had to centralize the power even more and focus on internal security. So what peaceful times is Lacouture talking about? When a country is at war, liberties are sacrificed. Diem's American allies were fast to accuse him of being undemocratic, but they seem to have forgotten what happened in the United States during the Second World War: the Roosevelt administration sent American citizens of Japanese origin to concentration camps for security reasons. And America was not being infiltrated by invisible guerrillas.
Otherwise, Lacouture is correct in his observation about the ARVN. The army of South Vietnam indeed proved to be its undoing. It was an army created in the image of the US Army. Just like its American counterpart, it was prepared for conventional warfare but not for guerrilla one. Just like its American counterpart, it had been persuaded that it could fight ideology with weapons. What's interesting, as Lacouture points out, the ARVN did not have the cultural base of the US Army, which made it even worse. It did not have a strong sense of discipline or a tradition that discourages meddling in political affairs. Military plotting against the Diem regime started as soon as the army was organized. Only by setting unit against unit, general against general, by planting spies and fake rumors everywhere was the Saigon government able to maintain control over its armed forces. As the saying goes, Divide and rule. What the country needed in those tough times was unity and security, but instead its main protector – the army – was torn by internal intrigue. The arrival of American military advisers only aggravated the problem, as the MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) was also a hot mess of conflicting interests, which affected the war effort negatively.
Generally, VIETNAM was neither impressively good, not especially bad. Everyone who is familiar with the modern scholarship on the Diem regime and the Vietnam conflict will discover nothing new. Whoever supports the theory that Ngo Dinh Diem was not a ruthless dictator will find a lot that is wrong. This book is outdated. I do not recommend it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review