Original images held by the Harvard-Yenching Library of the Harvard College Library, Harvard University

Summary written by Jesus Solis

Lịch Sử Quân Sự Việt Nam (A Military History of Vietnam) is a fourteen-volume series written and compiled by military historians affiliated with the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense. Each volume focuses on a major military conflict or warfare during a particular period in Vietnamese history from the ancient period to the end of the twentieth century. Volume 1 was published in 1999 and volumes 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12 were published in subsequent years. In 2014, the Ministry of Defense completed the series by publishing volumes 6, 7, 10, 13, and 14.

The fourteen volumes of A Military History of Vietnam. These books cover warfare in Vietnamese history from the ancient period to the twentieth century.

A notable book in this series which will be helpful for those interested in the Vietnam War is volume 11, The War of Resistance against America and Rescuing the Nation (1954-1975). This volume begins with the signing of the Geneva Accords in 1954 and ends with the Fall of Saigon in 1975, nearly two years after the United States withdrew its armed forces from the country. The authors describe this 21-year struggle as a fight against American imperialism and they argue that the U.S. military’s intervention in Vietnam was an American conspiracy to subjugate the people of South Vietnam. The War of Resistance against America divides the war into the following five stages and focuses on how the Vietnamese military defeated the U.S. military during each stage:

1. July 1954 – 1960: The Geneva Accords and military operations during the 1950s.
2. 1961 – 1965: America’s “special war” strategy to destroy the revolution and subjugate South Vietnam.
3. 1965 – 1968: The “local war” strategy and negotiations in Paris.
4. 1969 – 1973: America’s “Vietnamization” strategy and the signing of the Paris Accords.
5. 1973-1975: The end of the war and the Fall of Saigon

This volume gives a general overview of the major military events during each of those stages, including the Battle of Ấp Bắc, Operation Rolling Thunder, and the Têt Offensive. In addition to the descriptions of major battles during the Vietnam War, this volume also contains a number of battlefield photographs taken by North Vietnamese photographers. These images are significant because they provide a unique view of Vietnamese battles.

Two photographs from Chapter 2: Victory during an Escalating War. Above, Ho Chi Minh visits an artillery battery defending Hanoi in 1966; below, the Liberation Army of Vietnam (Viet Cong) attack the Khe Sanh Combat Base (Tà Cơn).

The War of Resistance Against America provides an excellent starting point for researchers interested in Vietnamese military history and the Vietnam War. The book is significant because it provides various Vietnamese perspectives on the American-Vietnamese War (1954-1975). The authors consulted a rich array of Vietnamese-languages sources while compiling this volume, and the list of references at the end of the book will be useful to students, teachers, and researchers who want to learn more about specific battles or military strategies.