What do you think?
Rate this book
The United States in the World
Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam
In 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem organized an election to depose chief-of-state Bao Dai, after which he proclaimed himself the first president of the newly created Republic of Vietnam. The United States sanctioned the results of this election, which was widely condemned as fraudulent, and provided substantial economic aid and advice to the RVN. Because of this, Diem is often viewed as a mere puppet of the United States, in service of its Cold War geopolitical strategy. That narrative, Jessica M. Chapman contends in Cauldron of Resistance, grossly oversimplifies the complexity of South Vietnam's domestic politics and, indeed, Diem's own political savvy.Based on extensive work in Vietnamese, French, and American archives, Chapman offers a detailed account of three crucial years, 1953-1956, during which a new Vietnamese political order was established in the south. It is, in large part, a history of Diem's political ascent as he managed to subdue the former Emperor Bao Dai, the armed Hoa Hao and Cao Dai religious organizations, and the Binh Xuyen crime organization. It is also an unparalleled account of these same outcast political powers, forces that would reemerge as destabilizing political and military actors in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Chapman shows Diem to be an engaged leader whose personalist ideology influenced his vision for the new South Vietnamese state, but also shaped the policies that would spell his demise. Washington's support for Diem because of his staunch anticommunism encouraged him to employ oppressive measures to suppress dissent, thereby contributing to the alienation of his constituency, and helped inspire the organized opposition to his government that would emerge by the late 1950s and eventually lead to the Vietnam War.
Chapman shows Diem to be an engaged leader whose personalist ideology influenced his vision for the new South Vietnamese state, but also shaped the policies that would spell his demise. Washington's support for Diem because of his staunch anticommunism encouraged him to employ oppressive measures to suppress dissent, thereby contributing to the alienation of his constituency, and helped inspire the organized opposition to his government that would emerge by the late 1950s and eventually lead to the Vietnam War.
- GenresHistory
294 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 2, 2021
Jessica M. Chapman's study analyzes Ngo Dinh Diem's failure to establish his political legitimacy.
A chaotic competition for post-colonial control occurred in Southern Vietnam between the Second World War and the creation of the Communist-supported National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) in 1960. It contributed to the rise of three powerful politico-religious organizations: the Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and Binh Xuyen. By the end of the First Indochina War in 1954, these non-Communist nationalist groups controlled roughly one-third of the territory and population below the seventeenth parallel. All three were aided financially by the French in exchange for defense against Viet Minh forces. All three had their own administrative structures, which were sometimes referred to as “states within a state,” collected their own taxes, and sustained their own armies. As the war with the French neared its end, they wielded great power in Southern Vietnam, while the newly appointed prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem controlled little beyond his palace gates.
As the author explains, while the Cold War was central to American involvement in Vietnam, American intervention on Cold War grounds collided with Vietnamese domestic affairs that had more to do with nationalism, decolonization, and religion and were only peripherally related to the struggle between Communism and capitalist democracy.
The Americans worried about the politico-religious groups' potential to undermine Diem's regime, but after he defeated them in the “sect” crisis in the spring of 1955, the Americans quickly forgot about them, considering them merely a passing problem. They were, however, much more than fleeting obstacles, argues Chapman. They were key players in Vietnamese nationalist politics long before Ngo Dinh Diem took power, and they remained vital to South Vietnam's politics even after their alleged eradication. By the end of the 1950s, Diem would be faced with organized opposition that would stem from the methods Diem, with American support, used to combat them. The Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen vying for power with Diem during his first two years in office had considerable power and influence. Although Diem and the Americans dismissed their leaders as "immoral, feudalistic, politically immature warlords," the violent manner in which Diem’s administration set out to eradicate them significantly affected the future of South Vietnam.
As Chapman points out, one of the mistakes the American government made was to call those influential politico-religious organizations "sects." This inadequate term associated them with everything parochial, not modern, and incapable and morally unworthy of participating in a nationalist government. With that picture in mind, Americans chose to recognize Diem and due to their own ideas about the Cold War, religion, and progress, which had nothing to do with Vietnam's reality, allowed the brutal eradication of Diem's adversaries. This made Washington directly responsible for the establishment of the Saigon government that provoked widespread discontent because it was oppressive, dictatorial, and a puppet of America. Chapman also asserts that Diem built his totalitarian government with unpopular institutions and practices predominantly to eliminate the threat posed by the politico-religious organizations that plagued him during his first two years in office.
But according to her, the politico-religious opposition offered Diem opportunities. At the start of his administration, the Communist Party in the South was weak, divided, underground, and pursuing its goal of re-united Vietnam by political rather than military means. The Communists gave Diem no particular reasons to target them, but he preferred to ignore this inconvenient fact by claiming that the Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen were connected not only to the French, but also to Hanoi. This allowed the Ngos to excuse their violent, oppressive, and indiscriminate "anti-terror" programs against the politico-religious movement by pretending that they were targeting Communists. Generally, Diem's administration went out of its way to present politico-religious activists as traitors to the Vietnamese nation.
Chapman accuses the United States of too readily agreeing with Diem that dictatorial rule was necessary to end the chaos in Vietnam and that a regime that oppressive would be able to rally the support of the people. "By no means was this surprising, as Washington by the 1950s had a long history of supporting authoritarian regimes around the world as a means of promoting stability and preventing the spread of anarchy and communism," adds she. Furthermore, for the American policy-makers, Diem was a "familiar" leader: he was a Catholic. When in the spring of 1955 he, contrary to expectations, defeated the politico-religious armies in the Battle of Saigon, Washington pronounced his victory a miracle and concluded that it had to continue supporting him. Afterwards, the Americans dismissed all concerns about his increasingly oppressive rule and ignored all complaints from South Vietnam’s nationalist dissidents, who insisted that he was driving his opponents into reluctant collaboration with the Communists.
The Americans were making a grave mistake. Diem proceeded to concentrate all power in the hands of his family and close friends, frustrating the country's post-colonial political activists, whose notion of democracy was that it should represent the interests of the majority. In addition, the violent and intimidating security and propaganda Diem and his brothers used to battle dissidents contrasted sharply with promises of ethical, democratic government and gave birth to widespread resentment among the rural population. The Ngos did force the opposition to go underground for some time, which gave their regime an air of legitimacy, but they never managed to quell the resistance movement entirely. It kept smothering just beneath the surface.
CAULDRON OF RESISTANCE is a book with an unusual approach to a seemingly trite subject. Concisely and persuasively, Jessica M. Chapman proves that it were the complex domestic affairs of South Vietnam that sealed President Diem's fate and that the United States, loyal to its Cold War assumptions, tragically misunderstood the situation on a local level. Its support for Ngo Dinh Diem and its eventual military intervention turned a post-colonial civil struggle for independence into a "large-scale proxy war," propelled by external funding, troops, and technology.
A chaotic competition for post-colonial control occurred in Southern Vietnam between the Second World War and the creation of the Communist-supported National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) in 1960. It contributed to the rise of three powerful politico-religious organizations: the Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and Binh Xuyen. By the end of the First Indochina War in 1954, these non-Communist nationalist groups controlled roughly one-third of the territory and population below the seventeenth parallel. All three were aided financially by the French in exchange for defense against Viet Minh forces. All three had their own administrative structures, which were sometimes referred to as “states within a state,” collected their own taxes, and sustained their own armies. As the war with the French neared its end, they wielded great power in Southern Vietnam, while the newly appointed prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem controlled little beyond his palace gates.
As the author explains, while the Cold War was central to American involvement in Vietnam, American intervention on Cold War grounds collided with Vietnamese domestic affairs that had more to do with nationalism, decolonization, and religion and were only peripherally related to the struggle between Communism and capitalist democracy.
The Americans worried about the politico-religious groups' potential to undermine Diem's regime, but after he defeated them in the “sect” crisis in the spring of 1955, the Americans quickly forgot about them, considering them merely a passing problem. They were, however, much more than fleeting obstacles, argues Chapman. They were key players in Vietnamese nationalist politics long before Ngo Dinh Diem took power, and they remained vital to South Vietnam's politics even after their alleged eradication. By the end of the 1950s, Diem would be faced with organized opposition that would stem from the methods Diem, with American support, used to combat them. The Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen vying for power with Diem during his first two years in office had considerable power and influence. Although Diem and the Americans dismissed their leaders as "immoral, feudalistic, politically immature warlords," the violent manner in which Diem’s administration set out to eradicate them significantly affected the future of South Vietnam.
As Chapman points out, one of the mistakes the American government made was to call those influential politico-religious organizations "sects." This inadequate term associated them with everything parochial, not modern, and incapable and morally unworthy of participating in a nationalist government. With that picture in mind, Americans chose to recognize Diem and due to their own ideas about the Cold War, religion, and progress, which had nothing to do with Vietnam's reality, allowed the brutal eradication of Diem's adversaries. This made Washington directly responsible for the establishment of the Saigon government that provoked widespread discontent because it was oppressive, dictatorial, and a puppet of America. Chapman also asserts that Diem built his totalitarian government with unpopular institutions and practices predominantly to eliminate the threat posed by the politico-religious organizations that plagued him during his first two years in office.
But according to her, the politico-religious opposition offered Diem opportunities. At the start of his administration, the Communist Party in the South was weak, divided, underground, and pursuing its goal of re-united Vietnam by political rather than military means. The Communists gave Diem no particular reasons to target them, but he preferred to ignore this inconvenient fact by claiming that the Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen were connected not only to the French, but also to Hanoi. This allowed the Ngos to excuse their violent, oppressive, and indiscriminate "anti-terror" programs against the politico-religious movement by pretending that they were targeting Communists. Generally, Diem's administration went out of its way to present politico-religious activists as traitors to the Vietnamese nation.
Chapman accuses the United States of too readily agreeing with Diem that dictatorial rule was necessary to end the chaos in Vietnam and that a regime that oppressive would be able to rally the support of the people. "By no means was this surprising, as Washington by the 1950s had a long history of supporting authoritarian regimes around the world as a means of promoting stability and preventing the spread of anarchy and communism," adds she. Furthermore, for the American policy-makers, Diem was a "familiar" leader: he was a Catholic. When in the spring of 1955 he, contrary to expectations, defeated the politico-religious armies in the Battle of Saigon, Washington pronounced his victory a miracle and concluded that it had to continue supporting him. Afterwards, the Americans dismissed all concerns about his increasingly oppressive rule and ignored all complaints from South Vietnam’s nationalist dissidents, who insisted that he was driving his opponents into reluctant collaboration with the Communists.
The Americans were making a grave mistake. Diem proceeded to concentrate all power in the hands of his family and close friends, frustrating the country's post-colonial political activists, whose notion of democracy was that it should represent the interests of the majority. In addition, the violent and intimidating security and propaganda Diem and his brothers used to battle dissidents contrasted sharply with promises of ethical, democratic government and gave birth to widespread resentment among the rural population. The Ngos did force the opposition to go underground for some time, which gave their regime an air of legitimacy, but they never managed to quell the resistance movement entirely. It kept smothering just beneath the surface.
CAULDRON OF RESISTANCE is a book with an unusual approach to a seemingly trite subject. Concisely and persuasively, Jessica M. Chapman proves that it were the complex domestic affairs of South Vietnam that sealed President Diem's fate and that the United States, loyal to its Cold War assumptions, tragically misunderstood the situation on a local level. Its support for Ngo Dinh Diem and its eventual military intervention turned a post-colonial civil struggle for independence into a "large-scale proxy war," propelled by external funding, troops, and technology.
October 3, 2021
Great book on Vietnam, the Cold War and modernization
It is a great book that traces the failure of the American foreign policy in securing South Vietnam as a pro-capitalist state due to their lack of understanding of the local complexities of the Southern Vietnamese politics. It is also a book about the forced modernization of South Vietnam after their independece from France, and how the local autonomy and power of religious and criminal political organizations was brutally contested by both personalist and communist centralizing leaders. This is also a book about how the US played a role in the development of South Vietnam independence and modernization, unwittingly, by supporting a dictator because in their eyes, that would help the American competition against the Soviets. Research done from French, American and Vietnamese archives, journals and other sources. A must read for those interested in the complexities of the Cold War, modernization, democracy, Vietnam, South East Asia and academic history.
It is a great book that traces the failure of the American foreign policy in securing South Vietnam as a pro-capitalist state due to their lack of understanding of the local complexities of the Southern Vietnamese politics. It is also a book about the forced modernization of South Vietnam after their independece from France, and how the local autonomy and power of religious and criminal political organizations was brutally contested by both personalist and communist centralizing leaders. This is also a book about how the US played a role in the development of South Vietnam independence and modernization, unwittingly, by supporting a dictator because in their eyes, that would help the American competition against the Soviets. Research done from French, American and Vietnamese archives, journals and other sources. A must read for those interested in the complexities of the Cold War, modernization, democracy, Vietnam, South East Asia and academic history.
January 7, 2015
This is an important book about the origins of the American War in Vietnam (1965-1972) that begins much further back at the conclusion of World War II. It's partly about how the United States made possible a broad insurgency through its support of Ngo Dinh Diem's totalitarian and repressive regime during the 1950s until his assassination in a military coup d'etat in 1963.
Chapman draws heavily on Vietnamese language sources to create a fairly standard diplomatic history of the Vietnamese civil war between 1945 and 1962 with a more particular focus on the years 1954 to 1956. While various U.S. officials like John Foster Dulles are important players in the narrative Chapman creates, most of her attention falls on three politico-religious organizations that played a decisive role in southern Vietnamese politics during the period: Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and the Binh Xuyen. Both the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao were predominately religious organizations with a strong military element. The Binh Xuyen, on the other hand, represented something akin to the mafia with little origin in millennial religious teachings. All three organizations resisted the Japanese occupation of Indochina during the Second World War, fought against the Viet Minh during the French-Indochinese War, and would later form key components of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in the 1960s.
The United States decided to "sink or swim" with Ngo Dinh Diem after Geneva in 1954—an action that Chapman says stemmed primarily from the State department fundamentally misreading the situation within Vietnam, placing too much faith in the Ngos, and misinterpreting the Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and Binh Xuyen as communist agitators or parochial parasites in southern Vietnam's nascent democracy. In effect, the United States supported a regime that turned the most adamant anti-communist segments of the population into the strongest allies of the communist NLF.
The biggest losers in 20th century Vietnamese history are the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao. The reigning powers in Vietnam never trusted either organization because their heterodox and diverse membership did not fit into any single political persuasion. Many Cao Dai and Hoa Hao members supported the French against the Viet Minh in the 1950s and then supported the NLF against Diem and the United States during the 1960s.
Chapman avoids going too far down the road of exploring counterfactual "what if" situations, but it becomes obvious that officials in Washington missed a crucial opportunity in 1954 to forge a coalition government in southern Vietnam that could represent the Vietnam's diverse population. By throwing its weight behind the parochial Diem—who populated his cabinet with nephews, relatives, and close friends and waged violent campaigns against all political dissidents—the United States alienated the political and religious segments of the population that could have thwarted the growth of the NLF and the support network that facilitated Hanoi's movement across the 17th parallel during the 1960s.
Fairly short at 200 pages and a great read for anyone interested in origins of the Vietnam War.
Chapman draws heavily on Vietnamese language sources to create a fairly standard diplomatic history of the Vietnamese civil war between 1945 and 1962 with a more particular focus on the years 1954 to 1956. While various U.S. officials like John Foster Dulles are important players in the narrative Chapman creates, most of her attention falls on three politico-religious organizations that played a decisive role in southern Vietnamese politics during the period: Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and the Binh Xuyen. Both the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao were predominately religious organizations with a strong military element. The Binh Xuyen, on the other hand, represented something akin to the mafia with little origin in millennial religious teachings. All three organizations resisted the Japanese occupation of Indochina during the Second World War, fought against the Viet Minh during the French-Indochinese War, and would later form key components of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in the 1960s.
The United States decided to "sink or swim" with Ngo Dinh Diem after Geneva in 1954—an action that Chapman says stemmed primarily from the State department fundamentally misreading the situation within Vietnam, placing too much faith in the Ngos, and misinterpreting the Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and Binh Xuyen as communist agitators or parochial parasites in southern Vietnam's nascent democracy. In effect, the United States supported a regime that turned the most adamant anti-communist segments of the population into the strongest allies of the communist NLF.
The biggest losers in 20th century Vietnamese history are the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao. The reigning powers in Vietnam never trusted either organization because their heterodox and diverse membership did not fit into any single political persuasion. Many Cao Dai and Hoa Hao members supported the French against the Viet Minh in the 1950s and then supported the NLF against Diem and the United States during the 1960s.
Chapman avoids going too far down the road of exploring counterfactual "what if" situations, but it becomes obvious that officials in Washington missed a crucial opportunity in 1954 to forge a coalition government in southern Vietnam that could represent the Vietnam's diverse population. By throwing its weight behind the parochial Diem—who populated his cabinet with nephews, relatives, and close friends and waged violent campaigns against all political dissidents—the United States alienated the political and religious segments of the population that could have thwarted the growth of the NLF and the support network that facilitated Hanoi's movement across the 17th parallel during the 1960s.
Fairly short at 200 pages and a great read for anyone interested in origins of the Vietnam War.
June 22, 2022
Cauldron Of Resistance offers a thorough examination of the main domestic Vietnamese forces at play in the relations between the United States under President Eisenhower and the 1st Republic of Vietnam. The Bình Xuyên syndicate and the Caodaist and Hoahaoist religious sects, familiar names to the student of Cold War era Vietnam, are subjected to reevaluation, offering fresh insight into the how-and-why behind the rise of Ngô Đình Diệm and foreshadowing the social and religious crises that would follow him throughout his tenure as absolute ruler.
August 7, 2022
An insightful, comprehensive and well-written history of the Diem’s confrontation with the sects (the Binh Xuyen, Cao Dai, and Hoa Hao)
Many histories of Diem’s rule cover this crisis, but Chapman goes into a lot more detail regarding the sects’ large followings, the wide reach of their power in South Vietnam, their eager willingness to lobby the US for support, their crass opportunism, and their impact on Diem’s rule, as well as why the US decided to tolerate his repression of them. She also covers the speed with which US policymakers accepted Diem’s legitimacy at the expense of other South Vietnamese factions. The book is mostly focused on South Vietnamese politics, but Chapman does a good job covering Cold War issues, America’s relationship with Diem, and France’s influence after its withdrawal. Her account of Diem’s rise to power is pretty good, and she does a great job showing how the sects, rather than the communists, at first drove the creation of Diem’s police state. She also shows how this repression forced the sects into uneasy alliances with the communists and how this helped lead to the founding of the NLF.
Sometimes Chapman refers to southern Vietnam as chaotic and on the brink of anarchy, but this could have been qualified a bit. The political situation was certainly chaotic in Saigon, but the actual state of the South Vietnamese villages could have been explained better. The Binh Xuyen are also called a religious group, but that label seems to fit the other two sects better. Chapman’s conclusion tries to draw some parallels between America’s war on terror, but these seemed clumsy, overdone, and not very sophisticated; she writes of America “invading and occupying Iraq to win the war on terror,” and refers to the war in South Vietnam as one between communists and “American-style liberal democratic capitalism,” even though her actual narrative is more nuanced than that. A few of the Vietnamese names seemed misspelled.
A rich and readable work.
Many histories of Diem’s rule cover this crisis, but Chapman goes into a lot more detail regarding the sects’ large followings, the wide reach of their power in South Vietnam, their eager willingness to lobby the US for support, their crass opportunism, and their impact on Diem’s rule, as well as why the US decided to tolerate his repression of them. She also covers the speed with which US policymakers accepted Diem’s legitimacy at the expense of other South Vietnamese factions. The book is mostly focused on South Vietnamese politics, but Chapman does a good job covering Cold War issues, America’s relationship with Diem, and France’s influence after its withdrawal. Her account of Diem’s rise to power is pretty good, and she does a great job showing how the sects, rather than the communists, at first drove the creation of Diem’s police state. She also shows how this repression forced the sects into uneasy alliances with the communists and how this helped lead to the founding of the NLF.
Sometimes Chapman refers to southern Vietnam as chaotic and on the brink of anarchy, but this could have been qualified a bit. The political situation was certainly chaotic in Saigon, but the actual state of the South Vietnamese villages could have been explained better. The Binh Xuyen are also called a religious group, but that label seems to fit the other two sects better. Chapman’s conclusion tries to draw some parallels between America’s war on terror, but these seemed clumsy, overdone, and not very sophisticated; she writes of America “invading and occupying Iraq to win the war on terror,” and refers to the war in South Vietnam as one between communists and “American-style liberal democratic capitalism,” even though her actual narrative is more nuanced than that. A few of the Vietnamese names seemed misspelled.
A rich and readable work.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews