The Southern Countryside at War: Text

Text: The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta 1930-1975

David W.P. Elliott’s The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta 1930-1975 is a monumental work that traces the revolutionary movement from the late 1920s and 1930s to the end of the Vietnam War against the United States and the South.
Elliott helps to illustrate the vital importance of the province and village to the revolution. Many of the great revolutionaries in the south had their origins at the village level, which Elliott explains through his continual reference to early revolutionary Muoi Thap, a peasant woman in the My Tho province who helped mobilize the proletariat in her village. She was a seminal figure in the early history of the revolution according to Elliott and represented the poorer peasant classes who would end up being the key figures in the war against the United States and the South in the 60s. Elliott illustrates that the earlier struggles by these revolutionary groups in the south against the French helped to create a spirit of struggle and rebellion that would shape the Vietnamese’s attitudes for the upcoming wars against the French and the United States in the south. Specifically struggles such as the Nam Ky Uprising in October of 1940. Though the Nam Ky Uprising ended up being an extreme failure and wiped out most of the Communist power in the Souths, it quickly caught the attention of the French authorities who now realized that they were dealing with a restless and angry people. This opposition to imperialistic nations would carry over until 1975.
Elliott also uses Thap to help explain why certain groups in the early stages of the revolution worked together and later split ideologically after the expulsion of the Japanese in 1945 and the French in 1954. Thap as said before represented the poorer peasant class and the other figure at this early stage was Tran Van Giau who was a member and at one point leader of the Vanguard group in the south. His organization generally represented the educated middle classes from the cities, after the expulsion of the French tensions reached a high point between the group represented by Thap and the group represented by Giau, of course, as Elliott explains, it was only natural that tensions would arise between these groups since their was no longer a foreign power to expel and their views differed considerably.
Elliott also helps explain the importance of the isolation of the villages in the South that helped to conceal revolutionary tendencies. He uses this example to show the extreme importance of village life to the revolution. Even so important to the point villagers sympathetic to the revolution constructed mass organizations to inform the NLF and early liberation movements of authorities in the areas. They used night watchmen to investigate the areas and used loud noises such as percussions like drums to warn all those in the village. Elliott traces the use of villages in the struggles against the French and United States by showing how certain villages became more important over time. During the years of the struggles against the French and Japanese, the villages located near train stations and other communication devices were the most important because of their easy access to transportation and information. But as time progressed and the war with the United States was at its highest intensity, the importance of the village switched to the isolated villages in rural areas where they were cut off from communications networks and were out of the reach of southern officials and the US military.
What is most interesting is that Elliott helps explain the growing importance of terrorism used by the NLF forces in the South to influence villagers and scare Southern officials. One of the most striking uses of terrorism involved “communists had arrested people and stuffed their disemboweled corpses with straw.” This use of terrorism helped to shape the attitudes of the villagers, who were now fearful of reprisals by the communists if they committed any wrongs against them. The communists would also frequently display corpses of village officials, sending a message to passersby and other southern officials that this is what happens to traitors. He also points out the confusion many felt about supporting the communists’ after the Tet Offensive when they committed the Hue Massacre, in which communists forces killed government officials and civilians. In other words, the use of terrorism helped in some ways but in others it severely shook people’s confidence in the new communist government.
Elliott I also believe helps to reevaluate the way Americans and others view the end of the Vietnam War. He helps to illustrate that the Vietnam War was both won and loss by both sides. Initially the NLF and other revolutionaries helped to expel foreign powers but in the long run, its land reform policies greatly affected the rural societies in drastic ways unintended by the Communists. Also he writes that the casualties suffered in the South are something that the revolutionary groups never recovered from despite their ultimate victory. He illustrates this viewpoint by explaining that the Tet Offensive, though presented as a victory for the communists, ultimately ended up wiping out the power structure in the south and they were never fully capable of fight a large scale war again. The United States ended up capturing all of the cities that had been occupied for a short period by the NLF, except for Hue, which remained in communist control. Elliott also alludes to the fact that after the Tet Offensive in 1968, the burden of fighting in the south largely fell on the shoulders of the North Vietnamese Army, no longer with help and support from southern rebels.
Elliott also helps to illustrate the point made by John Tully in his article regarding the devastation in the countryside to the natural habitats and communities. “The war itself devastated a countryside and sent large numbers of refugees to towns and cities where, cut off from their roots…thinking mainly of survival day to day.
Elliott’s book is a comprehensive analysis of the revolutionary movement within the Mekong Delta and the provincial level. I wouldn’t recommend this book to just any person but I would recommend it to anyone who wishes to learn more about revolutionary movements in the south and for anyone who’s studying the history of Vietnam.
Other reviews that may be more useful:
Hunt, Richard A. The Journal of Military History Vol. 68 No. 2 (Society for Military History: April 2004) pp. 656-657
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3397541