The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam

by Christopher Goscha

Overview

A multifaceted history of Ho Chi Minh’s climactic victory over French colonial might that foreshadowed America’s experience in Vietnam

On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After nearly a decade of struggle, a nation forged in the crucible of war had achieved a victory undreamed of by any other national liberation movement. The Road to Dien Bien Phu tells the story of how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army.

Taking readers from the outbreak of fighting in 1945 to the epic battle at Dien Bien Phu, Christopher Goscha shows how Ho transformed Vietnam from a decentralized guerrilla state based in the countryside to a single-party communist state shaped by a specific form of “War Communism.” Goscha discusses how the Vietnamese operated both states through economics, trade, policing, information gathering, and communications technology. He challenges the wisdom of counterinsurgency methods developed by the French and still used by the Americans today, and explains why the First Indochina War was arguably the most brutal war of decolonization in the twentieth century, killing a million Vietnamese, most of them civilians.

Panoramic in scope, The Road to Dien Bien Phu transforms our understanding of this conflict and the one the United States would later enter, and sheds new light on communist warfare and statecraft in East Asia today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691180168
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/29/2022
Pages:	568
Sales rank:	534,205
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Christopher Goscha is professor of international relations in the History Department at the Université du Québec à Montréal and a leading expert on the Cold War in Asia and the wars in Vietnam. His books include Vietnam: A New History. He lives in Montréal.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

A Word about Words ix

Maps xiii

Introduction: States of War 1

1 The Rise of the Archipelago State 15

2 Building Military Force 57

3 The Asian Routes of War 89

4 The City at War 121

5 Wiring War 159

6 Policing War 191

7 Trickle Economics 218

8 The Levee en masse and War Communism 248

9 Of Rice and War 281

10 The Road to Dien Bien Phu 320

11 Imperial Dust: Ho Chi Minha's Associated States of Indochina 347

12 Dien Bien Phu: The Changing of Heaven and Earth 389

Conclusion 427

Notes 439

Index 503

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“One of our foremost historians of modern Vietnam turns his attention to the First Indochina War. The result is a magnificent work: authoritative and lucid, attentive to all sides in the struggle, and above all deeply compelling.”—Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Embers of War

“The Road to Dien Bien Phu offers a compelling analysis of the intimate relationship between Ho Chi Minh’s communist state and the war it fought against France. With lucid prose and a rich trove of fresh sources, Goscha challenges popular myths about the exceptional power of Vietnamese nationalism and shows how victory came at a high price for the Vietnamese people. A must-read.”—Tuong Vu, author of Vietnam’s Communist Revolution

“A wonderful account by a first-rate historian of how modern Vietnam was created by communism and war. Goscha shows how important it is to understand Vietnamese history beyond the simple dichotomies fabricated by the US intervention.”—Odd Arne Westad, author of The Cold War: A World History

“In this magnificent book, Christopher Goscha draws on exhaustive research to offer a supple and entirely original conception of Vietnamese communism and the archipelago state, fundamentally recasting our understanding of revolutionary war, nationalism, and the processes of decolonization in the second half of the twentieth century.”—Mark Philip Bradley, author of Vietnam at War

“This deeply researched and brilliantly argued book will change how historians and other readers think about the First Indochina War. Overturning old narratives about Vietnam as a ‘nation in arms,’ Goscha shows that the road to Dien Bien Phu was a complex and brutal struggle over sovereignty, space, food, trade, and people.”—Edward Miller, author of Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam

Editorial Reviews

10/18/2021

University of Quebec history professor Goscha (Vietnam: A New History) analyzes in this comprehensive account the complex political, social, economic, and military developments behind the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s decisive 1954 victory against France at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Seeking to explain how the Vietnamese guerrilla army transformed itself into a professional fighting force capable of defeating France in a large-scale, pitched battle—and why anticolonialist forces in Algeria and Indonesia weren’t able to “engineer such a military revolution”—Goscha punctures the myth that nationalism was the primary force behind Vietnam’s victory. He documents how Chinese and Soviet support allowed Ho Chi Minh to simultaneously intensify the war against France and transform the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from a “republican-minded, national union government” into a single-party state. According to Goscha, North Vietnamese leaders employed a “communist toolkit,” including compulsory military service, the creation of a cult of personality around Ho Chi Minh, and land reforms, to “control and mobilize” the country’s majority peasant population against France and, later, the U.S. Goscha’s deep research impresses, though neophytes may get lost in the details. Still, this is a thought-provoking reexamination of the recipe for Vietnam’s back-to-back victories against Western powers. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

From the Publisher