Fall term, 2006
Prof. Edwin E. Moise
Office: Hardin 102
Office phones: 656-5369, 656-3153
Home phone: 654-7087
e-mail: eemoise@clemson.edu
Messages can be left in my mailbox in Hardin 124, or in the box on my office door.
Office Hours
Monday 10:10-11:00, 2:30-3:20
Tuesday 11:00-12:00
Wednesday 10:10-11:00, 2:30-3:20
Thursday 11:00-12:00
Friday 10:10-11:00
I do not emphasize trivial factual details in this course. On tests and quizzes I will NOT ask you to tell me the date of the Battle of "Hamburger Hill", or to name the American units that fought in it. There are some facts you need to know, but they are more important things than dates. On the other hand, I will expect you to get an idea of the sequence of events, what came first and what came later.
The most important single part of your grade will be the course paper. You can write it on whatever topic you please, within the limit of the subject matter of this course. The actual text of your paper, not counting title page, bibliography, maps, and illustrations, should be about ten pages long typed double spaced (if you are signed up for History 636, fifteen to twenty pages). Longer papers are acceptable.
When you are trying to decide what sources to use for your term paper, or if you are just curious about something that has come up in the course, I suggest you consult Bibliography of the Vietnam War on the Web. But bear in mind that when you see a book listed in this bibliography, this does not necessarily mean you will actually be able to find a copy of that book, in or near Clemson.
A lot of things that have been written about the Vietnam War are not true. As you do your research, you should be thinking actively about whether you believe the things your sources are saying. I will not flunk you for guessing wrong, but you should make an effort to judge who is telling the truth and who is not; don't just take things on faith. Don't dodge the problem by sticking to questions on which you believe everything you read, either. Explaining why you think a particular source was wrong about a particular fact will tend to have a good influence on your grade.
For more detailed guidelines on the term paper, see Writing a Term Paper in Military History.
The paper is due Wednesday, December 6. It is late if I have not gotten it before I go home that day, which will be no earlier than 6:45 p.m. There will be a five point penalty if I get it on December 7 or 8. The penalty will be fifteen points if it is not turned in by the time I go home (late afternoon, probably not before 5:00 p.m.) on Friday, December 8.
You can have a pretty free choice of topics for this paper, within the limits of the subject matter of this course. You must come in and talk to me about your paper, and discuss the sources you will be using. It is not enough to say to me as we are walking out of the classroom one morning "Professor Moise, is it OK if I write about the U.S. bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos?" You will need to talk things over with me for fifteen minutes or maybe half an hour, not just a few seconds. After we have talked, you must give me a written statement of your topic, with a list of the main sources you plan to use. There will be a five point penalty if you have not given this to me by October 9, and an additional five points if it is not in by October 16. If it still is not in by October 23, I will either give you yet another five-point penalty, or else simply hand you a sheet of paper telling you what topic you must write on, and what sources you must use.
If you bring in a preliminary draft of your paper ten days or so before it is due, I will read it and then tell you what needs changing. You can then go home and re-write it. This will almost certainly improve the grades of the few students who bother to take advantage of this offer, so don't be one of the lazy majority who don't start work on the paper until a week before it is due, and then have no time for re-writing.
The paper is worth 150 points. The other written work will be:
--Two
short papers on assigned topics (three for History 636), worth 40 points each.
--One essay quiz (20 points).
--The midterm test (70 points)
and the final exam (120 points),
which will be mostly essay questions.
This adds up to 440 points for undergraduates, 480 for graduate students.
The basic grade scale is that 90% (396 points for undergraduates) is the bottom of the
A range, 80% (352 points for undergraduates) is the bottom of the B range, and so on. Sometimes
I alter the scale in the students' favor, never against them.
Thus 396 points (90% of 440) is a guaranteed A for an
undergraduate; 394 or 390 points might be an A, depending on how the rest of the class does.
Academic integrity requires that we not try to pass other people's work off as our own. The ways students have gotten into problems of academic dishonesty in this course, in past years, have been:
Large portions of a term paper copied from a few books or web sites, or even just one, without any indication that the material was copied. Typically this involves both large amounts of material quoted word-for-word, without quotation marks, and also a serious shortage of source notes pointing to the book from which the material came. Often there are misleading source notes claiming the material came from sources other than the ones from which it was actually copied word-for-word. These false source notes are especially strong evidence of academic dishonesty.
Whole term paper obtained from some source (a commercial term paper service, or the Internet, or the collection of term papers that one of the fraternities used to have, and may still have).
One student copies another student's 40-point research exercise, maybe changing a few words and substituting synonyms, but leaving the two papers still so similar that it is obvious the resemblance could not be coincidence. I would be likely to bring charges both against the student who copied and the student who allowed his or her paper to be copied.
There are some ways in which it is perfectly all right for students to help each other. If two students want to study together getting ready for a test, great. Only after I have handed out the questions does help on a test become improper. But if two people work together on a research exercise, and turn in papers that are very similar because each has been getting a lot of help from the other in writing it, both will be in deep trouble. If one of your fellow students asks to look at your paper, to get a better idea of how the assignment was to be done, please say no. They should come to me to ask for further explanations of the assignment, rather than looking at a completed paper to give them their clues. If two papers are so similar it is obvious the author of one must have seen the other, I will file charges.
There will also be reading assignments that I will make available online.
The following course outline is tentative. It may be modified slightly by class request or as a result of shifts in what I find practical to place online, or as a result of unforseen events. Each day, items marked >>> are required reading; items marked --- are optional reading. Most optional items are simply books that you can look for in the library.
August 23: Introduction to the course.
August 25: Background to Vietnam.
Vietnamese civilization began in
the Red River Delta of what is today northern Vietnam, slightly
more than 2,000 years ago. It spread southward gradually.
The French conquered Vietnam, in chunks, in the late 19th century.
Vietnamese could not effectively defy French power.
>>> Read Moise, The
Vietnam Wars all the way through, to give you an idea of the overall pattern of
events we will be seeing in this course, and to allow you to get started thinking of
what topic you might want to choose for your term paper.
August 28, 30: Ho Chi Minh founded the Vietnamese Communist movement, and
the Second World War gave the Communists
their chance to try to make Vietnam an independent country.
In 1945 the Communists established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
>>> Sheehan, pp. 144-166.
>>> Herring, pp. 3-11.
>>> Truong Chinh,
The August Revolution. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1958. 76 pp. The story of the Viet Minh siezure of power in 1945. Truong Chinh was General
Secretary of the Indochinese Communist Party at that time; he published the Vietnamese original
of this work in Su That in 1946. By the time this translation was published in
Hanoi as a book, Truong Chinh had been demoted as punishment for his errors in the Land
Reform campaign of 1953-1956. The text has been placed on-line in
the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project
at Texas Tech University, in two parts:
pp. 1-40 and
pp. 41-76.
September 1: All-out war between Vietnam and France broke out in 1946.
September 4, 6, 8, 11: It was a classic guerrilla war.
By 1954 the Viet Minh were winning.
>>> Sheehan, pp. 166-172
>>> Herring, pp. 11-33.
>>> The Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel Edition,
Chapter 1. "Background
to the Conflict, 1940-1950." pp. 42-52. U.S. views of the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh.
>>> The Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel Edition,
Chapter 2. "U.S.
Involvement in the Franco-Viet Minh War, 1950-1954." pp. 53-75.
September 13: In 1954, The United States didn't quite jump
openly into the war when France got in bad trouble in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
>>> Herring pp. 33-45
>>> Bernard Fall,
"Indochina--The
Last Year of the War", Military Review, XXXVI:7 (October 1956), pp. 3-11.
>>> John Prados,
"Mechanics at the Edge of War:
U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam in 1954", in
The VVA Veteran, 22:8 (August 2002), pp. 19-21.
September 15, 18: Vietnam was split in half in 1954, and for a couple of years
there was comparative peace. Ngo Dinh Diem became president of the Republic of
Vietnam, in South Vietnam.
>>> Herring pp. 45-80
>>> Sheehan pp. 127-144, 172-200
--- You also might like to look at my book
Land Reform in China and North Vietnam
Quiz September 18
September 20: The war began again in 1959-60, both in South Vietnam and in Laos
The guerrillas did pretty well. War also started in Laos.
>>> Herring, pp. 80-87
September 22, 25: The guerrillas gained strength, despite increasing U.S. aid to Diem.
>>> Herring, pp. 89-111
>>> Sheehan 3-125
September 27, 29: By 1963, Diem was in bad trouble.
>>> Herring, pp. 111-114
>>> Sheehan 200-277
October 2: The Aftermath of Ap Bac
>>> Sheehan 277-334
October 6: The U.S. encouraged a coup that overthrew Diem
>>> Sheehan 334-371
>>> Herring, pp. 114-129
Due date for term paper topic sheets: October 9
October 9, 11: The war contined to escalate, and the U.S. sent in ground troops.
>>> Herring, pp. 131-169
>>> Sheehan 371-86, 501-535
October 13: Air War.
>>> Herring, pp. 171-179
Newspaper research exercise due October 13: Go to the library, and check to see what one or two newspapers and/or newsmagazines were saying in December 1967 and/or January 1968 about U.S. air operations in North Vietnam or South Vietnam or or Laos. Use at least four articles (six for graduate students); please have all your articles about U.S. air operations in one of the three areas. Write an essay of about two pages (typed double spaced), or more, about what you found. Say what there was in the articles that you found interesting or surprising. I want to see one essay based on several articles, not a string of essentially separate mini-essays, each based on a single article. Try to select articles that will allow you to have some unifying themes in your essay.
Evaluate the attitudes
of the authors. Is there anything that leads you to distrust them, or to think that the facts may
be being distorted to fit the author's viewpoint? Notice
the source; did the reporter say that something was true, or only that somebody else had
said it was true? If you say there is bias, please make it clear exactly what was said,
that you consider biased. What kind of bias was it (false statements, or use of emotionally
loaded language, or just careful selection of facts so that only
facts favorable to one side get mentioned)? Notice what you are reading:
--A news article is not supposed to have too much of the reporter's own opinions in it, but
there is nothing inherently wrong with the reporter quoting the opinions of other people. If a reporter is
quoting some very opinionated person, try to judge whether the reporter agrees with the person's opinions.
--An editorial is supposed to present the opinions of the newspaper; there is
nothing inherently wrong about it being opinionated. But you can still complain about bias if the
editorial is illogical or deceptive in the way it pushes that opinion.
--The same applies to an opinion piece written by someone who does not represent the newspaper.
Please give source notes. I want to be able to tell in each section of your paper which article or articles you are discussing in that section. It is not enough to have a list at the end, if I can’t tell as I read the paper which article you are discussing where. Source notes must give page numbers. I don’t care about the format of source notes as long as they tell me what I need to know. Any format that allows me easily to discern the name of the author if it was given, the title of the article, the title of the publication, and the date and page, is OK. If you found the articles on the Internet, say so, and say where.
October 16, 18, 20: The war was complex and messy
>>> Herring, pp. 179-223
>>> Sheehan, 535-580
>>> Downs, Section 1
Optional on Tuesday, October 17: You are invited, but not required, to attend my talk "Iraq and Vietnam Compared," in the Globalization Seminars series. This is scheduled to be in Brackett Hall Room 120.
October 23: One infantry unit around the end of 1967.
>>> Downs, section 2.
October 25, 27: One infantry unit around the end of 1967.
>>> Downs, section 3.
October 30, November 1, 3: As the war grew larger and bloodier,
without producing any decisive results, there was increasing
discontent about the course of US policy.
>>> Sheehan, 580-693
No Class November 6 (Fall Break)
November 8, 10: The Tet Offensive of 1968: a major Communist
offensive, that attained partial surprise. Militarily it cost the
Communists a lot of men, but it produced important political benefits
for them by shaking American confidence that the war could be won.
>>> Herring, pp. 225-268
>>> Sheehan, 693-729
November 13: Laos and Cambodia
November 15, 17, 20, 27: In 1969, the U.S. began to pull out of Vietnam. This went on until
U.S. participation in ground combat ceased in 1972. But Laos continued to be a battleground, and
Cambodia became one. U.S. bombing declined in 1971, but increased again in 1972, especially after the
Communists' Easter Offenive began.
>>> Herring, pp. 271-310
>>> Sheehan, 729-790
Thanksgiving: No Class November 22, 24
November 29: The Paris Agreement
>>> Herring, pp. 310-320
December 1, 4: The End, 1973-1975
>>> Herring, pp. 323-340
--- Isaacs, Without Honor
--- Snepp, Decent Interval
December 6: Hand in Term Papers
December 6, 8: Aftermath and Legacies of the War; Review
>>> Herring, pp. 340-368
>>> Moise, "Limited War"
Final exam: Monday, December 11, 8:00 a.m.
Other Links
Web site of the Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas
Military History Map Library: Vietnam War (U.S. Military Academy, West Point)
Clemson University Academic Support Center, which provides help and tutoring for students encountering academic problems. It does not, however, have tutors specifically for History courses.
Revised August 28, 2006.
