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

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