Indochina War Research Articles

Ethnicity, Violence, and Khmer-Vietnamese Relations: The Significance of the Lower Mekong Delta, 1757–1954

This essay argues that to understand twentieth-century Khmer-Vietnamese ethnic antagonism, the contest for the lower Mekong Delta (in today's Vietnam) since the mid-eighteenth century has been key. It argues, however, that while this pre-1945 background can explain antagonism, it cannot sufficiently explain the violence between Khmer and Vietnamese that occurred after 1945. For that, the First Indochina War (1945–54) and decolonization marked a turning point. This period saw the creation of a dynamic of violence between Khmer and Vietnamese that hardened ethnic antagonisms, shaped the character of the war, and affected arguments over sovereignty. This dynamic of violence also contributed, in the long run, to a common Cambodian antagonism to the Vietnamese, including that of the Khmer Rouge.

The Lao Động Party, Culture and the Campaign against “Modern Revisionism”

The article tries to make a contribution to the reassessment of the Second Indochina War and of the significance of culture in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam before and during the conflict. By making use of as-yet untapped sources from the German Democratic Republic archives, DRV periodicals and interviews with Vietnamese informants, I highlight the cultural dimension of the campaign against modern revisionism in 1964, and thus present the Lao Động leadership as an actor on the cultural front of the Vietnam conflict. Moreover, I show that even after the beginning of the war an anti-revisionist undercurrent in cultural policy persisted and that the anti-revisionist campaign in 1964 was closely related to the Anti-Party Revisionist Affair in 1967. The article also sheds light on the impact of the Sino-Soviet conflict on North Vietnam.

Se souvenir de l’Indochine L’écriture des femmes engagées dans l’armée française, entre mémoire de guerre et récit de voyage

From 1945 to 1954, France was at war in Vietnam. Many women who enlisted in the French armed forces after 1940 joined the French Far Eastern Expedition Corps and served well beyond Europe. In 1954, the French-Vietnam war ended in a double loss for French soldiers—a personal as well as a military defeat. With more women serving in and with the military after World War II, women’s memories of military service also included the testimony of veterans of the war in Indochina. Many of these women recalled their personal war experiences, sometimes immediately afterward, sometimes many years after the conflict. These memories of women at war are a previously unexplored set of sources of historical memories of the French-Vietnam war, which up to now have been produced mainly, if not exclusively, by men. This study thus shows how feminine authors in the French military expressed their views, between memories of war and travel accounts.

Ferdinand Oyono in Vietnamese: Translation after Socialism and Colonialism

Of the fourteen translations of Ferdinand Oyono's une vie de boy published to date, the Vietnamese translation, Đới Làm bồi, dates last, despite Vietnam and Cameroon's shared past under French colonialism. Nguyễn Như đat, the novel's Vietnamese translator, had anticipated that his version, published in 1997, would not find much of a market. The translator's pessimism was warranted, since the Vietnam of the late 1990s drastically differed from the two Vietnams of 1956, when Oyono's novel was originally published. Partitioned after the 1954 Geneva Accords and fighting against each other in the Second Indochina War, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the Republic of Vietnam in the south were unified at the war's end, in 1975, under a socialist government. But since 1986 Vietnam has been engaged in the capitalist world market, albeit under the banner of socialism. Given this context of market socialism, the Vietnamese translation of Oyono's anticolonial novel seems to have lagged temporally: it was published at a time when literary translations in Vietnam began trending away from anticolonialism and toward, for example, Raymond Carver's minimalism, Haruki Murakami's surreal handling of alienation, and, more recently, Vladimir Nabokov's perversely defamiliarizing style.

Le défaut du ciel by Philippe Renonçay

on ne sait si on mangera ou non, “accomplir quelque chose, inventer un changement , contribuer à un mieux-être” (38)? Vue l’envergure de ces questions, il est difficile de ne pas regretter l’absence totale de réponses—fussent-elles hâtives ou soutenues—dans un roman qui se termine subitement sur l’effondrement et l’hébétude. Boise State University (ID) Jason Herbeck RENONÇAY, PHILIPPE. Le défaut du ciel. Paris: Libella, 2012. ISBN 978-2-7529-0594-9. Pp. 134. 15 a. In his fifth novel, Renonçay gives us a polar with an investigative journalist as the protagonist. In search of a former acquaintance who has disappeared, Clovis Bietel sometimes speaks in the first person and sometimes is the subject of an omniscient narrator. Thomas Heller is the object of the search begun by his mother who had read Bietel’s investigative writing and thought that his friendship with her son would provide clues to his whereabouts. The plot of this masterful tale centers on Heller’s link with a former paratrooper in the Indochina war. The veteran, Peter Damian, was Heller’s neighbor and leads Bietel to discover the crime behind the torture and assassination of Damian. In the process, Clovis finds that Damian’s military identity in the Resistance and then in Indochina was associated with the pseudonym Roland Sasre. Both Heller and Clovis return to Vietnam for clues about what Sasre did there. Heller’s mother pays Clovis to find the truth about the strange connection of her son with his neighbor’s fate. Heller traveled to Vietnam and then could not be found after his return. Clovis follows. Heller and Clovis resemble each other to the point where they are even called Siamese twins. As the story proceeds, they in fact become opposite sides of the same coin, that is, a Janus-like pair of acquaintances looking in opposite directions . While Clovis is trying to tie the past to the present, Heller was focused on rewriting the past. As Clovis follows Heller to Vietnam, readers encounter the ambiance of the remnants of colonization, existing without recognition of the American conflict there. Instead, what we have is the French influence, one might even say hegemony , in Indochina. Sasre was not only a soldier in Indochina but a proponent of indigenous self-rule in the face of the invasions by the Vietminh. Clovis tries to find out why Sasre was so committed to this rule. Sasre had many loyal friends who would give eyewitness accounts about his support. These accounts help Clovis explain the mystery of why Sasre changed his identity, effectively partly erasing what he did in Indochina. This change also fascinated Heller who sought to establish the links between Damian and Sasre. The reader becomes involved in interpreting the palimpsest constituted by various documents that are laid out within the narrative, as if they could explain the mystery by themselves. The truths of Heller’s location and the reasons for Damian’s murder are of course intertwined. Along the way, the reader learns that Clovis had a difficult friendship with Heller. Letters from Heller’s mother to Clovis, police records of phone conversations, news reports, eyewitness records all become proofs of what happened , without giving away the deceptiveness of appearances. Clovis probes, and makes errors to be corrected, as his assumptions are either verified or discounted throughout. The zigzag process of trying to make the pieces of the puzzle fit is an Reviews 1301 intriguing method for storytelling and for detective work. There is no linear progression of the plot. Rather the reader moves along as if looking over Clovis’s shoulder at photos, documentary films, and other apparent evidence to piece together the past. There is talent in Renonçay’s writing style. Trinity University (TX) Roland A. Champagne SÉVIGNY, MARIE-ÈVE. Intimité et autres objets fragiles. Montréal: Triptyque, 2012. ISBN 978-2-89031-744-4. Pp. 100. $18 Can. Sévigny’s Intimité may be slight in size, but its short stories are not without a certain moral weight. As the publisher’s insert announces, the stories explore “la frontière entre la vie privée et...

Just Memory: War and the Ethics of Remembrance

“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” This sentence begins one of my articles and will likely begin my book, “Just Memory: War and the Ethics of Remembrance.” Its major concern is the often irresolvable conflict over remembering particularly troubling events, with the war in question being what Americans call the Vietnam War, what Vietnamese call the American War, and what historians sometimes call the Second Indochina War (1960–1975).1 Ranging across literary and visual cultures from the 1960s until the present, I examine how this war remains important by weaving American and Vietnamese memories together within multicultural and international contexts. While earlier works on the war have narrower cultural, national, or disciplinary concerns, I consider how both Vietnam and the US fashion war memories through art, literature, cinema, photography, memorials, and museums. What ultimately concerns me is the question of ethical memory, which I define as memory work that recalls both one's own as well as others. Considering memory (and forgetting) in this dual fashion, the book also challenges the borders and assumptions of American studies, Asian American studies, and Asian studies.

Four Decades On: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War

Four Decades On: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War

Vietnam. A story of Việt Nam. By Trương Bửu Lâm. Denver, CO: Outskirts Press, 2010. Pp. 372. Index.

A story of Viet Nam By TRU'O'NG BU'U LAM Denver, CO: Outskirts Press, 2010. Pp. 372. Index. A well-known peculiarity of the field of Vietnamese history is that there are very few English-language histories of the country which provide any kind of detailed treatment of the pre-colonial period, and the number of these written by scholars who know the Vietnamese language is even smaller. (In fact, the most comprehensive Western-language history of Vietnam before French colonisation remains Le Thanh Khoi's Histoire du Wet Nam: des origines a 1858 [Paris: Sudestasie, 1981]). Tru'o'ng Bu'u Lam, best-known for his collected translations of key source materials for Vietnamese history, has helped to fill this gap with his Story of Viet Nam. Roughly one-third of the book covers the period before 1858; more than half of the remaining material focuses on colonialism and anti-colonialism, and the remainder covers the decades since 1954. The author has consciously chosen an informal narrative style, interspersed with proverbs, snippets of folk songs and literary texts, and--for the period of his own lifetime--memories and anecdotes. This makes for a highly readable and accessible text, although academic readers may frequently find themselves wishing for a more comprehensive discussion of complex issues, such as the origins of the Vietnamese people or the relationship between Confucianism and Buddhism in pre-modern Vietnam. (Nor are generalities such as the statement that 'as far as culture was concerned, Vietnam had become a little China or ... a smaller dragon' [p. 42] particularly helpful.) The treatment of Vietnam's relations with its neighbours tends to be superficial, and the very brief observations on the Cham in particular reflect a rather incomplete and outdated understanding of their history. To be fair, however, the book's focus is the Vietnamese themselves, and the reader does come away with a reasonably coherent picture of how Vietnam evolved over the centuries. Moreover, there is no attempt to squeeze all of Vietnamese history into a single constructed narrative such as 'resistance to foreign aggression' or 'struggle for the nation'. The chapters on the colonial period and the First Indochina War (1946-54) are particularly useful since English-language works often rush through these decades in order to focus on the Second Indochina War (1954-75). Ironically, although the author is not particularly sympathetic to the French and their Vietnamese allies, he spends more time discussing them, and we learn much more about the political twists and turns of former Emperor Bao Dai's State of Vietnam than about Ho Chi Minh and his Democratic Republic of Vietnam resistance government. …

« Hors les lois de la guerre ». À propos du traumatisme psychique chez quatre soldats auteurs de meurtres en situation opérationnelle

ObjectivesFollowing an aggressive situation, can the aggressors, as for the victims, suffer from a traumatic breakdown. As Military Psychiatrists, we have met veteran military murderers. All these patients present with a state of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with either severe alcoholism or severe depression (melancholy). We also compared the effects of treatment within the two groups, i.e. murders, and victims. PatientsWe chose four patient observations murderers. Their acts were committed “Except for the laws of war”, that is to say, forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. The alcoholic patients: Guillaume is a 45-year-old veteran from the wars in Indochina and Algeria. He has undergone several unsuccessful detoxification programs. One day, he finally tells the most significant episode of his history. While in Algeria, his lieutenant asked him to execute a prisoner. Since then, he has nightmares where he sees the scene, and calms his anxiety with alcohol. He was hospitalized and commenced psychotherapeutic treatment during which he relived his childhood, adolescence and his military career. Two months later, he is cured from his post-traumatic stress condition and alcoholism. Another veteran from Algeria, who was also a severe alcoholic: whilst there, he was ordered by his chief to execute three prisoners. A few years later, by chance he meets his former boss who tells him that the three victims were brothers. He is very shocked because he comes from a region of “vendettas” where it is said that one does not eliminate a family. These nightmares and his alcoholic career started there. Treatment will prove ineffective. The melancholic patients: Andre is a former veteran of Indochina. There, he participated in the massacre of villagers who had hidden enemies. He returned to France after his time engagement, married, had five children, and resumed his profession as industrial painter. After 5 years, he is assailed by nightmares and cannot stop to tell of the horrors to those around him. His wife eventually threw him out and he became a hobo (tramp) in his small town. Gradually during the night, he has hallucinations: he hears his Vietnamese enemies lurking around him waiting for a day to take revenge. He was hospitalized and fairly gradually, the nightmares disappear and then, slowly, his depressive state. Yanis is a 40-year-old veteran of the French Foreign Legion. He lives in Paris and gradually felt he was the center of a complot by Arab youths in the capital. He became aware of surprised looks and conversations, which indicated that they want to kill him. He took refuge in the Military Hospital, where he recounted the circumstances in which, in Africa, he killed a teenager. This act was the result of a misunderstanding, but he saw himself as a murderer of children. Again, the psychotherapeutic treatment resulted in healing. ResultsIn three of our patients, the disappearance of the syndrome of repetition (repetition syndrome) and the alcohol and the melancholic state was achieved quickly. Probably because the “enjoyment” attached to traumatic images when the patient is a victim, here is outweighed by the horror of an act that the person has committed itself. Thus, the patient is willing much faster than when a victim, to get rid of the repetition syndrome. ConclusionPatient murderers feel themselves as guilty, which turn them to alcohol and ideas of persecution. Despite the severity of the conditions of post-traumatic stress presented by criminal murderers, do not hesitate to commence psychotherapeutic therapy.

‘So What Did You Learn from War?’ Violent Decolonization and Paul Mus's Search for Humanity

This article examines how and why the French Orientalist, Paul Mus, became one of the leading critics of the Indochina War and an advocate of French decolonization. Most studies of Western Orientalism tend to adopt Saidian approaches to demonstrate the degree to which Western scholars operated from within the confines of the wider colonial project and were influenced by it. Mus does not escape from this critique. However, like Jacques Berque in North Africa, Mus was one of a handful of French Orientalists who not only grew up and pursued their research in the Empire, but also became deeply involved in trying to understand the rising tide of colonial nationalism, the nature of French colonialism and the meaning of decolonization in new ways for the time. This article considers how war, and in particular the experience of violence in the colonial context, shaped Mus's understanding of colonialism, his conception of humanity, and influenced his post-war writings in ways that distinguished him from colonial humanists in charge of the Republican Empire and Orientalists who continued to operate within the colonial power structure. In late 1949, Paul Mus left his position at the head of the French Colonial Academy to renew his pre-war academic career. However, unlike scores of social scientists who had also experienced war, Mus placed that very experience at the centre of his post-war scholarship.

Wiring Decolonization: Turning Technology against the Colonizer during the Indochina War, 1945–1954

AbstractTwentieth-century wars of decolonization were more than simple diplomatic and military affairs. This article examines how the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) relied upon technology to drive state-making and to make war during the struggle against the French (1945–1954). Wireless radios, in particular, provided embattled nationalists a means by which they could communicate orders and information across wide expanses of contested space in real time. Printing presses, newspapers, stationary, and stamps not only circulated information, but they also served as the bureaucratic markers of national sovereignty. Radios and telephones were essential to the DRV's ability to develop, field, and run a professional army engaged in modern—not guerilla—battles. The Vietnamese were victorious at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 in part because they successfully executed a highly complex battle via the airwaves. Neither the Front de libération nationale (FLN) fighting the French for Algeria nor the Republicans battling the Dutch for Indonesia ever used communications so intensely to drive state-making or take the fight to the colonizer on the battlefield. Scholars of Western states and warfare have long recognized the importance of information gathering for understanding such matters. This article argues that it is time to consider how postcolonial states gathered and used information, even in times of war.

Living Without Quê

In existing scholarship, the formation of the Vietnamese Diaspora is often described as a result of the Second Indochina War. In this essay I examine other national and international historical events, such as the Vietnamese government's persecution of ethnic Chinese, the Cold War and French colonization of Vietnam, that contributed to the internal multiplicity and diversity of the Vietnamese Diaspora. Reading Thuận's novel Chinatown within the theoretical framework of freedom, I argue that a centuries-long history of political negotiation between Vietnam and international actors such as China and France has resulted in the oppression, internal exile and displacement of not only Vietnamese people, but also ethnic Chinese. Through an analysis of the relationship between the Vietnamese narrator and her ethnic Chinese husband, I reflect on the difficulties and potential of diasporic subjects to imagine a different kind of freedom that can challenge the different power dynamics regulating their life in both Vietnam and in the diaspora.

A ‘Total War’ of Decolonization? Social Mobilization and State-Building in Communist Vietnam (1949–54)

By choosing to transition to modern, set-piece battle during the second half of the Indochina War, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) created one of the most socially totalizing wars in order to meet that ambitious goal. This article argues that, while the DRV did indeed create a remarkably modern army of six divisions, the lack of a mechanized logistical system meant that it had to mobilize hundreds of thousands of civilian porters to supply its troops moving across Indochina. To do this, the communist party undertook a massive mobilization drive and simultaneously expanded its efforts to take the state in hand. The DRV made war, but war also directly shaped the nature of this state. This article also shows why this transition to modern war rapidly collapsed the line between civilians and combatants in ways more ‘totalizing’ than many have previously thought.

Historical dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): an international and interdisciplinary approach

This first historical dictionary in English of the Indochina War (1945–54) provides the most comprehensive account to date of one of the most important conflicts of the twentieth century. Using ove ...

‘Be men!’: Fighting and Dying for the State of Vietnam (1951–54)

From its creation with the strong support of General de Lattre until the end of the Indochina War in 1954, the National Army of Vietnam (‘Quan doi quoc gia Viet Nam’) underwent impressive development. This ‘new unified army’ (entitled Forces Armées du Viet Nam, FAVN) was present in all the battles from 1951, especially in the North in operations against the main Viet-Minh divisions. Its five Vietnamese paratrooper battalions, known as the ‘Bawouan’, distinguished themselves in major military operations in the Red River delta as well as the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu. Other military formations, such as the capital battalions in the North or the local armies in the South (Binh Xuyen, Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and UMDC) played important roles in the pacification of the two deltas. This article explores the emergence, development, and transformation of this defeated army and considers what the experience of war might have been from the point of view of its soldiers, offering a glimpse into a neglected social dimension of this conflict for the decolonization of Vietnam.

Losing the Waterways: The Displacement of Khmer Communities from the Freshwater Rivers of the Mekong Delta, 1945–2010

AbstractIn the latter half of the twentieth century thousands of Khmer people were displaced from their homes along the freshwater rivers of Vietnam's Mekong delta. Their pattern of settlement along freshwater tidal rivers was an ecological adaptation unique in the Khmer-speaking world, of which only vestiges remain. Drawing upon oral histories and ethnographic observations of O Mon, a district in the central Mekong delta, this paper reconstructs a picture of the traditional river-based livelihoods, social structure and religious life of Khmers in this region in the 1940s. It describes how these Khmers were driven from their villages early in the First Indochina War. Experiencing ongoing dislocations in subsequent periods of war and peace, most have been prevented from returning to their former homes or reclaiming their land. Relying on testimony by elderly Khmers, who witnessed the disintegration of their riverside communities, the account challenges existing depictions of the ecology and history of the Mekong delta, offering new insights into the complexity of the Indochina wars and the severity of their consequences.

Die Behandlung von Kim Phúc an der BG Unfallklinik Ludwigshafen

The Vietnam War was a military conflict in Vietnam during the Cold War that followed the First Indochina War. This war was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the USA and other anti-communist countries. Kim Phúc is the child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize winning photograph taken on June 8, 1972 by AP photographer Nick Út. The iconic photo shows her at about nine years of age running naked on a road amid the chaos after being severely burned by a napalm attack. After 14 months of hospital stay and 17 surgical procedures Kim Phúc was able to return home. Since then, she was used as a propaganda symbol by the communist government of Vietnam. To continue her studies, Kim was granted permission to move to Cuba where she met her future husband. However, the sequelae of her burn wounds affected her everyday life enormously. In 1984, with the support of the international aid organization "terre des hommes" and the German magazine "STERN", Kim Phúc got the opportunity to meet and get treated by Professor Zellner. Professor Peter Rudolph Zellner was the first chief of the Department of Hand, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Burn Center, BG Trauma Center Ludwigshafen, and one of the founder members of the German Society of Plastic Surgeons. The reconstructive surgeries provide Kim Phúc an almost normal life. Later on, she was involved in international aid organizations; she was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and she was awarded several honorary Doctorates of Law. Kim Phúc became a Canadian citizen. Today, she lives with her husband and two children in Ontario, Canada.

Changes tropical monsoon higt-stem forests in the Vietnam

Tropical ecosystems are the major component of the biosphere rendering global influence to atmospheric conditions on our Planet and determining it well-being. Tropical forest communities are the most difficultly organized and rich of animal and plant species biological systems with internal cyclic of metabolism and regenerative processes. On a background of growing human intensification of tropical forest resources using profound and deep researches, understanding, monitoring and prognostic of reactions of tropical primary forest ecosystems on external and internal impact and destruction are represented extremely urgent now. Vietnam monsoon tropical forests are very ancient and evolutionary vegetative formations. A species composition of the tropical forests includes not less than 7000 plant species, from which more than 3000 species - trees. The greatest variety of plant species and complex vertical structure are characterizing for high-stem tropical forests. Tropical forest ecosystems represents the climatic climax and ones are in dynamic balance. This balance is determined internal and external infringements, evolutionally characteristic for these plant communities. For monsoon primary forests, natural kinds of tree canopy destructions are different forest gaps, which form as a result of fall down whole trees, break tree trunks, crowns or branches. Such phenomena as a burning or fire is not characterize for these forests. Strong storms are quiet rare events too. Forests in mountain there is a gravitation movement of a soft soil substratum or a solyphluction (landslide) is adding to gaps. Inside forest gap there is a change of a microclimate in a direction increasing insulation, temperatures of air and soil. A reforestation on gaps goes due to realization of adaptive abilities of forest trees and lianas with the minimal participation of pioneer plants. A restoration of the primary forest structure and plant species composition may be named like a demutate succession. Uses by the man for agriculture a small forest area (up to 2-4 ha) can be considered as the external factor initiating demutate succession process. However, a Man also is carrying into a tropical nature life such global destructions as cutting down and clearing on forest areas for fields and plantations and apotheosis of human destruction - military destruction forests by herbicide spraying, napalm and fire bombs during The Second Indochina war. Our research in primary and human-transformed tropical forest ecosystems in Southern, Central and Northern Vietnam has shown that forest reactions to human intervention are very specific. Reactions are determined by a complex of factors, in particular the species composition of plants, spatial structure of the forest community, presence of the main forest species of trees, phenology and physiology of forest plants, features of forest microclimate, relief, structure of the soil and its hydrology. The district Linh Thuong in province Quang Tri (Central Vietnam) - is one of the most destroyed during the War. To the present time, after more than thirty years after War grasslands, which were appeared on the place primary forests, have not undergone changes in the party of change by their tree or bush communities. Our researches in this area are proved. That, the occurrence not forest open territories has resulted in change of a microclimate, hydrological regime, properties of soil and development of erosive processes. So, in July - a most hot month - the day time temperatures of air under the forests canopy (on a point 120 cm above a surface of the ground) reached 33oC, whereas on grasslands the maximal meaning was 43oC. The temperature of a ground surface under the forest canopy rose up to 28oC, whereas on grasslands maximum was 36oC. The humidity of air under the forests canopy changed from 85 up to 100%, on grasslands - from 55 up to 95%. So, in result of the military influence to primary forests have appeared atonal savanna-like grassy communities. The complex and multi-species forest communities were replaced for the simple and mono-species communities. The main forest tree species and pioneer trees, by virtue of their biological features and changes of microclimate, are not adapted to growth and development on these territories. The global human destructions are occurred a reason of interruption successions in the forest ecosystems. The existence of such grassy communities is uncertainly long, since there are no factors - except a human factor, - capable to change a trend of their development. Using of these grassy areas for agricultural cultivation or planting forest cultures will be demanded the special scientific knowledge for development of competent and ecologically responsible technological receptions on a background of an investment of significant financial means.

VICTORY IN HADES: THE FORGOTTEN WARS OF THE OMAN, 1957-1959 AND 1970-1976

Part II: The Dhofar Campaign 1970-1976 Section B Introduction:In section A of this paper, published in a preceding issue of Militaria , it was stated that a detailed analysis of the second Omani war required seperate treatment from a discussion of the Campaign itself, in view of the complex and multifaceted issues generated by the Dhofar Campaign. The Dhofar Campaign embodied both COIN (counter-insurgency) and conventional aspects of modern warfare, and there are important lessons for military theorists attached to both dimensions. With regard to the COIN dimensions, the Dhofar war has received comparatively little detailed study in relation to other COIN wars; the French Indo-China War of 1946-1954 and the Malroyan emergency of 1948-1960, for example, have been the subjects of extensive study, as has the Mau Mau emergency in Kenya in the early 1950s. However, although the wars in the Oman have suffered from comparative neglect, these conflicts in the Persian Gulf are worthy of detailed study, in terms of their relevance to contemporary situations in certain parts of the world (and especially in Southern Africa), to a greater extent than the other fore-mentioned conflicts. Although the wars in Malaya and Kenya are frequently cited as classic models of successful counter-insurgency campaigns, their degree of relevance to the contemporary situation in Southern Africa is extremely limited at best. The victory in Malaya was only secured by heavy expenditure in terms of personnel and finance extending over a period of 12 years. The maximum strength of the Security Forces in Malaya (in 1952) consisted of approximately 40 000 troops (comprising some 25 000 British, 10000 Gurkhas and 5 000 from other Commonwealth countries; in addition to a police force numbering some 40 000. Similarly, the Mau Mau emergency required, at the end of 1953, the expenditure of some 10 000 personnel (the maximum strength reached by the Security Forces), supported by 21 000 police.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life’s Work: Thailand’s Monarchy in Perspective

This is a fascinating and insightful biography of one of the world's longest reigning and most revered monarchs. King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand is the world's longest reigning living monarch - an achievement few would have predicted when the Thai king acceded the throne after the mysterious death of his brother in 1946. How did King Bhumibol revive the sinking fortunes of the Thai monarchy? Why has he become arguably the most revered king in Thai history? This illustrated biography tells that remarkable story. Beginning with an introduction explaining the unique history and traditions of the Thai monarchy, King Bhumibol Adulyadej offers a fresh and insightful account of his life, from his birth in America and education in Europe to his unexpected accession to the throne. Following him through the Cold War and Indochina War periods, the book shows how the king has used his position to help develop the country and its people while at the same time securing the status of the monarchy itself.