Rimko van der Maar, In de ban van Vietnam: De Vietnamese onafhankelijkheidsstrijd en het Westen [Enthralled by Vietnam; The Vietnamese struggle for independence and the West]

Abstract

This recently published Dutch book is meant to reassess the ‘Vietnamese struggle for independence and the West,’ in the words of its subtitle. As such, the quote from journalist Neil Sheehan with which Rimko van der Maar precedes his work can be seen as a statement of intent: ‘There are some events that can be understood only with the perspective of time. The war in Vietnam is one’ (7). Exactly what the book hopes to understand better about, as Van der Maar readily admits, a war that is one of ‘the most researched and described military conflict[s] of the Twentieth Century,’ is then formulated clearly in the introduction, where the author writes that he wants to ‘present the war from a Vietnamese perspective’ (16). Not, to be clear, how the war was experienced by the Vietnamese, but rather how Vietnamese individuals and institutions sought to influence Western decision-making and public opinion. As such, this is very much a book on the ‘force and meaning of information, propaganda and diplomacy’ (16).