Violence, Liberation, and the Frontiers of Belief: the Mekong Delta in the First Indonchina War

Shawn McHale,History and International Affairs; Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University

This talk begins with the premise that we have often misunderstood the First Indochina War (1946-54) by slotting it into narratives of the Cold War or of anticolonial nationalism without thinking through the limits of such approaches. To explore this problem, the talk will go in two directions. First, it will attempt to accentuate the complexity of the war in the Mekong delta, and note how weak state power shaped the particular configuration of violence in the region. Second, it will attempt to link this discussion to the core issues of credibility and belief. What were the frontiers -- the outer limits -- of belief in the delta? Why did such an astonishing range of omens, prophecies, and propaganda circulate in this area, and not in other parts of Vietnam? How does the historian deal with rumors that stated, for example, that the French cooked Vietnamese to transform them into blacks? This talk will attempt to grapple with the issue of how, in times of violence and upheaval, the frontiers of accepted belief seem to shift, and perhaps will suggest some broader implications of this change.

Shawn McHale is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs and Associate Director, Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. A graduate in Sociology and Anthropology (Honors) from Swarthmore College, he completed his doctorate in Southeast Asian history at Cornell (1995). His main research and teaching interests are in the comparative study of colonialism and its legacy, religion and politics,
print culture, Southeast Asian history, and modern Vietnamese history.
Recent publications include Print and Power: Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the Making of Modern Vietnam, 1920-1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004); "Violence, Freedom, and the Transformation of the Public Realm in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945-1958," in Christopher oscha and Benoit de Treglode eds., Naissance d'un Etat-parti. Le Viet Nam depuis 1945. Etat, contestations et constructions d'une nation ( Paris: Les Indes
Savantes, 2004); "Torture in Iraq: Lessons From Algeria," op-ed,
History News Service, June 2004; "Vietnamese Marxism, Dissent, and the
Politics of Postcolonial Memory: Tran Duc Thao, 1946-1993, " Journal of
Asian Studies (February 2002): 7-37.

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