America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam rethinks the motivations behind one of the most ruinous foreign-policy decisions of the postwar era: America’s commitment to preserve an independent South Vietnam under the premiership of Ngo Dinh Diem. The so-called Diem experiment is usually ascribed to U.S. anticommunism and an absence of other candidates for South Vietnam’s highest office. Challenging those explanations; Seth Jacobs utilizes religion and race as categories of analysis to argue that the alliance with Diem cannot be understood apart from America’s mid-century religious revival and policymakers’ perceptions of Asians. Jacobs contends that Diem’s Catholicism and the extent to which he violated American notions of “Oriental†passivity and moral laxity made him a more attractive ally to Washington than many non-Christian South Vietnamese with greater administrative experience and popular support.A diplomatic and cultural history; America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam draws on government archives; presidential libraries; private papers; novels; newspapers; magazines; movies; and television and radio broadcasts. Jacobs shows in detail how; in the 1950s; U.S. policymakers conceived of Cold War anticommunism as a crusade in which Americans needed to combine with fellow Judeo-Christians against an adversary dangerous as much for its atheism as for its military might. He describes how racist assumptions that Asians were culturally unready for democratic self-government predisposed Americans to excuse Diem’s dictatorship as necessary in “the Orient.†By focusing attention on the role of American religious and racial ideologies; Jacobs makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the disastrous commitment of the United States to “sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem.â€
#1292203 in Books Ohio University Press 2000-12-31Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.26 x .96 x 6.25l; 1.46 #File Name: 0821413546377 pages
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful. GreatBy Mamadou Lamine NdiayeI am totally satisfied. Everything is as expected. And I am enjoying it. I wish all my purchases be like this one.Best!4 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Senegal Mauritania Muslim Socieities 1880-1920By William Garrison Jr.(From another's review): Between 1880 and 1920; Muslim Sufi orders became pillars of the colonial regimes and economies of Senegal and Mauritania. In this 361-page; 2000 paperback book; author David Robinson examines the ways in which the leaders of the orders negotiated relations with the Federation of French West Africa in order to preserve autonomy within the religious; social; and economic realms while abandoning the political sphere to their non-Muslim rulers. This was a striking development because the local inhabitants had a strong sense of belonging to the Dar al-Islam; the "world of Islam" in which Muslims ruled themselves. Drawing from a wide variety of archival; oral; and Arabic sources; Robinson describes the important roles played by Muslim merchants and the mulatto community of St. Louis; Senegal. He also examines the impact of the electoral institutions established by the Third Republic; and the French effort to develop a reputation as a "Muslim power"--a European imperial nation with a capacity for ruling over Islamic subjects. By charting the similarities and differences of the trajectories followed by leading groups within the region as they responded to the colonial regimes; Robinson provides an understanding of the relationship between knowledge and power; the concepts of civil society and hegemony; and the transferability of symbolic; economic; and social capital. Topics covered include: Part 1 - The Framework: Space; time; and structure. Part 2 - Bases of Accommodation: Sources; discourses; and mediators of knowledge; Conquest and colonial rule; France as a "Muslim Power"; Civil society: Saint-Louis in the French imperial sphere; The sons of Ndar: The Muslim merchants of Saint-Louis. Part 3 - Patterns of Accommodation; The obstacles to accommodation for the Umarians; Saad Buh and the Fadiliyya way; Sidiyya Baba: Co-architect of Colonial Mauritania; Malik Sy: Teacher in the New Colonial Order; Amadu Bamba: A complex path to accommodation.
