Abstract
Often in a civil war the regional divisions of the nation are so striking as to reveal immediately the source of the conflict and the cleavages in society. The American Civil War is an excellent example. It frequently happens, however, that the regional divisions are not so dramatic or well-defined, thus disclosing little about the nature of the struggle taking place. The Vietnamese war, especially prior to the substantial involvement of foreign troops, appears to be one of these situations. It seems as if both parties to the conflict are to be found almost everywhere in the country. There is not a province of South Vietnam in which the Government of Vietnam (GVN) and Viet Cong (VC) do not each exert some noticeable degree of influence. This piebald arrangement of governmentand rebel-held areas allows no easy interpretation. Perhaps the only obvious distinction between the two areas is a strong tendency for the government to control larger towns; beyond this, differences are less evident. One way of determining the important differences between rebel and government areas is to compare data on the extent of GVN control in a province with the social, economic, cultural and topographic characteristics of the province. This paper is a summary of such a quantitative analysis recently carried out by the author.' A linear multiple regression was run across 26 South Vietnamese provinces (highland provinces were excluded) with GVN control as the dependent variable and a large number of potentially important social, economic and other measurements as independent variables. GVN control is defined to be the percentage of hamlets in a province classified as government controlled according to a detailed map appearing in the Los Angeles Times, December 26, 1965. According to the Times, this map is derived from United States Government sources. It turns out that each of six independent variables possesses a statistically significant influence upon control. Together
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