An Environmental History of Militarization in Central Vietnam, 16th-20th Centuries
FAIN: FA-57319-13
David Andrew Biggs
Regents of the University of California, Riverside (Riverside, CA 92521-0001)
This research considers how militarization shapes historic relationships between people and their environments by examining in detail the environmental history of one war-impacted area in central Vietnam. It combines archival sources with site-based research and an historical geographic information system to examine how changing cultural perspectives underlined different military operations and how legacies of military occupation challenged communities after the conflict. It draws from Vietnamese, French, and American sources as well as memoirs and locally published texts for examination of differing military views; and it relies on a wide variety of historic imagery (maps, air photos, and satellite images). This NEH proposal is for 12 months to write a book manuscript, an environmental history of militarization, and two essays: one studying land cover changes and the other the role of air photography in shaping military visions of Vietnamese landscapes.
Associated Products
Footprints of War: Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam (Book)Title: Footprints of War: Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam
Author: David Biggs
Abstract: "Weaving together environmental and social history, David Biggs offers an innovative history of the impact of war on central Vietnam in the long twentieth century, from the imposition of French colonial rule in 1885 to the end of American military involvement in 1973. The long history of conflict around the city of Hue^ยด produced belts of degraded lands and village societies deeply marred by the demands of war or periods of conflict. Once military units occupy a space, they change it in physical, legal, and cultural terms so that even long after the troopers leave, their footprints continue to shape patterns of land use and local memories of place. There are tombs, cemeteries, and war monuments; and there are the spaces in between, the subterrains of "wilderness" haunted by ghostlike presences of suspected chemical or munitions hazards. Digging below the surface, one risks being maimed by unexploded ordnance, getting ill from toxic chemical residues, or perhaps worst of all, being haunted by the ghosts of war dead who died violently or did not receive proper burials. Critical to this study are previously little used archives of maps and images created by technologies developed at the same time as the Indochinese wars, 1945 to 1975: aerial photography, high-altitude photography, satellite photography, and satellite-based, multi-band scanning. In this richly illustrated book, author David Biggs uses these new kinds of imagery to reveal the impact of war in the land"
Year: 2018
Primary URL:
https://www.worldcat.org/title/footprints-of-war-militarized-landscapes-in-vietnam/oclc/1022084500&referer=brief_resultsPublisher: University of Washington Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780295743868
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes