"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year" Christopher Goscha is professor of international relations in the History Department at the Université du Québec à Montréal and a leading expert on the Cold War in Asia and the wars in Vietnam. His books include Vietnam: A New History. He lives in Montréal.
A multifaceted history of Ho Chi Minh's climactic victory over French colonial might that foreshadowed America's experience in Vietnam
On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After nearly a decade of struggle, a nation forged in the crucible of war had achieved a victory undreamed of by any other national liberation movement. The Road to Dien Bien Phu tells the story of how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army.
Taking readers from the outbreak of fighting in 1945 to the epic battle at Dien Bien Phu, Christopher Goscha shows how Ho transformed Vietnam from a decentralized guerrilla state based in the countryside to a single-party communist state shaped by a specific form of "War Communism." Goscha discusses how the Vietnamese operated both states through economics, trade, policing, information gathering, and communications technology. He challenges the wisdom of counterinsurgency methods developed by the French and still used by the Americans today, and explains why the First Indochina War was arguably the most brutal war of decolonization in the twentieth century, killing a million Vietnamese, most of them civilians.
Panoramic in scope, The Road to Dien Bien Phu transforms our understanding of this conflict and the one the United States would later enter, and sheds new light on communist warfare and statecraft in East Asia today. "A thought-provoking reexamination of the recipe for Vietnam's back-to-back victories against Western powers." "[A] zestfully granular history of the Vietminh war against the French."---Andrew J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs "In this important book, Christopher Goscha . . . offers new insight into a post-colonial struggle that emerged from the Second World War. . . . Goscha's command of French, English, and Vietnamese sources is a great strength in drawing out this neglected history."---Tim Cook, Literary Review of Canada "In The Road to Dien Bien Phu, Goscha tries to answer the question posed by Frantz Fanon, the Martiniquais psychiatrist who supported anti-colonial revolutions in Algeria and other parts of the world. 'What must we do to realize a Dien Bien Phu? How do we go about doing it?' Goscha details the recipe in a book of more than 500 pages-a recipe not duplicated in North Africa or any anti-colonial struggle outside Asia. . . . Like any great work of history, Christopher Goscha's book resonates with connections to the present."---Thomas A. Bass, Mekong Review "Eye-opening. . . . It is the best work in English, French, or Vietnamese on the First Indochina War as a whole."---Shawn F. McHale, American Historical Review "The greatest merit of Christopher Goscha's splendid history of the First Indochina War . . . is his unsparing devotion to letting facts inform his assessments and conclusions."---Francis P. Sempa, Asian Review of Books "[A] thrillingly acute and serious piece of work."---Rana Mitter, Literary Review "[A] magisterial account."---David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express "The Road to Dien Bien Phu showcases the ingenuity and resourcefulness of ideologically driven authorities obstinately struggling to overcome technological, economic and other deficits with a view to satisfying aspirations that were, in the final analysis, as narrow as they were unshakable."---Pierre Asselin, History Today "
The Road to Dien Bien Phu will become a classic volume in the history of the Indochinese Wars standing alongside Bernard B. Fall's Street With
