Continuing the success of last semester’s Speakers’ Series: The World Beyond a Book, Fulbright University Vietnam cordially invites you to a virtual chat with Prof. Christopher Goscha at 8 PM, October 27, 2022. Goscha will shed light on his most recent book “The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam”.
This is the second time Fulbright has the honor to welcome Prof. Goscha on another episode of the highly anticipated Speakers’ Series. Previously in June 2022, he shared with us his journal “Colonial Monarchy and Decolonization in the French Empire: Bao Dai, Norodom Sihanouk and Mohammed V”.
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, not like a ‘guerilla tiger’ but as a modern conventional army, a ‘war elephant’. 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.
In his famous critique of colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon asked how the Vietnamese had been able to generate such revolutionary violence to win. In the upcoming talk, Christopher Goscha will try to answer that question. Nationalism was important, but it was not the only ingredient that explains how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the French army, a feat no other war of decolonization has ever duplicated.
Join Fulbright in this thrilling talk with Prof. Christopher Goscha!
⏰Time: 8:00 – 9:30 PM on Thursday, October 27, 2022 (Vietnam time, GMT +7)
👉 Register now at: https://forms.office.com/r/GrY9wtTMYi
Fulbright Speakers’ Series is a quest for knowledge and understanding with diverse incisive viewpoints of prominent authors, both in Vietnam and globally, venturing into a myriad of topics ranging from development history and current Vietnam in the context of globalization, to the importance of mental health in being a compassionate community member.
About the speaker:
Christopher Goscha is Professor of International Relations and History at l’Université du Québec à Montréal. He published in 2022, The Road to Dien Bien Phu : A History of the First Vietnam War (Princeton University Press). His other books include Vietnam: A New History (Basic Books, 2016) and the Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach (University of Hawaii Press, 2012). He received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and his Ph.D. from L’École Pratique des Hautes Études, La Sorbonne.
