Vietnam and the world outside : The case of Vietnamese communist advisers in Laos (1948–62)
Vietnam and the world outside
The case of Vietnamese communist advisers in Laos (1948–62),
by Christopher E. Goscha
This paper, concerned with Hanoi’s relationship with Laos in the period 1948–62, explores some of the long-term ideological, cultural and strategic factors that shaped how the communist Vietnamese saw the world outside, and what, in turn, this can tell us about these same Vietnamese. After an opening historical overview, the paper examines how Vietnamese communist proselytizing in Laos in the years of war between 1945 and 1954 marked a change in the ways in which the Vietnamese viewed the world outside, and how this view picked up on earlier civilizing impulses. The final section focuses more on security, and how it led the Vietnamese communists to play a potent role in Lao affairs through to the signing of the Geneva Accords in 1962. The paper argues that while national interest and security concerns most certainly counted in communist Vietnam’s perception of, and deep involvement in Laos, at the same time Vietnam saw itself as being on the South East Asian cutting edge of a wider, modern revolutionary civilization.
Click on the link below to read the whole article:
http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r26645/documents/articles/world_outside_viet_laos.pdf