Contesting Indochina: French Remembrance between Decolonization and Cold War

by M. Kathryn Edwards

Overview

How does a nation come to terms with losing a war—especially an overseas war whose purpose is fervently contested? In the years after the war, how does such a nation construct and reconstruct its identity and values? For the French in Indochina, the stunning defeat at Dien Bien Phu ushered in the violent process of decolonization and a fraught reckoning with a colonial past. Contesting Indochina is the first in-depth study of the competing and intertwined narratives of the Indochina War. It analyzes the layers of French remembrance, focusing on state-sponsored commemoration, veterans’ associations, special-interest groups, intellectuals, films, and heated public disputes. These narratives constitute the ideological battleground for contesting the legacies of colonialism, decolonization, the Cold War, and France’s changing global status.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520288614
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	06/14/2016
Series:	From Indochina to Vietnam: Revolution and War in a Global Perspective , #8
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

M. Kathryn Edwards is assistant professor of modern French history at Tulane University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Institutional Acronyms xi

Acknowledgments xv

Map of France xviii

Introduction 1

1 French Indochina from Conquest to Commemoration 12

2 Remembrance and Rehabilitation: The ANAI and the Anticommunist Narrative 34

3 From Activism to Remembrance: The Anticolonial Narrative 54

4 Morts pour la France? Official Commemoration of the Indochina War 88

5 "The Forgotten of Vietnam-sur-Lot": Repatriate Camps as Sites of Colonial Memory 116

6 "La sale affaire": Collaboration, Resistance, and the Georges Boudarel Affair 145

7 Missing in Action: The Indochina War and French Film 167

Conclusion 208

Notes 215

Bibliography 277

Index 297

Editorial Reviews

"There is little to criticize in this well-researched and carefully worded monograph. . . an insightful and important addition to the growing field of history and memory."

H Net

"There is little to criticize in this well-researched and carefully worded monograph... an insightful and important addition to the growing field of history and memory."

H-Net