Title: Vietnam After the War | Asia Pacific Curriculum
Headings: Vietnam After the War
Vietnam After the War
Overview
Prologue: The End of the “American War”
Introduction: The Challenges of Reconciliation
Background: The Road to War and Partition
Consolidating Political Control
Building a Socialist Economy
Resistance and Escape
Putting Post-War Vietnam in Context
Doi Moi and the “New” New Vietnam
Vietnamese Youth: Writing the Next Chapter
Acknowledgement

Content: The war’s toll was immense. The country’s infrastructure was ravaged by bombing and landmines, and parts of its otherwise lush landscape had been stripped by toxic chemicals like Agent Orange. As many as two million civilians died in the conflict, along with 1.3 million Vietnamese soldiers. Most of these soldiers died fighting for or alongside North Vietnam. 2 But for all the losses North Vietnam had to absorb, its government and its allies in the south had reason to feel triumphant. They had “prevailed against all odds,” says historian Christopher Goscha, first beating the French in a violent war of de-colonization, then beating the Americans in one of the most brutal conflicts of the Cold War. 3
Introduction: The Challenges of Reconciliation
Civil wars result from, and sometimes deepen, divisions within societies. As Goscha observes, those divisions do not simply disappear once the fighting stops. 4 This was the case in Vietnam.