The Vietnam war and the regional context
Publication Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
9-2024
Abstract
This essay situates the Vietnam War within its Southeast Asian context, demonstrating that the trajectory of the wider region tended in a pro-US direction despite American failures in Indochina. It examines how, over the 1950s and 1960s, conservative elites in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia defeated their local leftwing rivals, gained and maintained their power, usually with the support and assistance of the United States or Britain. Though communist factions would seize control of the Indochinese states, the majority of the region's peoples and resources fell within the authority of west-friendly, anticommunist regimes, containing the spread of revolutionary communism in Southeast Asia.
Keywords
Vietnam War, Southeast Asia, US empire, colonialism, decolonisation, Cold War, China, anticommunism, communism
Discipline
American Studies | History | International Relations
Research Areas
Humanities
Publication
Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Vol. 3
Volume
3
Editor
Lien-Hang T. Nguyen & Pierre Asselin
ISBN
9781316225288
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
City or Country
Cambridge
Citation
NGOEI, Wen-Qing (WEI Wenqing). (2024). The Vietnam war and the regional context. In Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Vol. 3 (pp. ). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3904