Development, Space and Counterinsurgency in Vietnam's Ben Tre Province, 1954-1960 (Book Section)
Title: Development, Space and Counterinsurgency in Vietnam's Ben Tre Province, 1954-1960
Author: Edward Miller
Editor: Erez Manela
Editor: Stephen Macekura
Abstract: This chapter examines the phenomenon of counterinsurgency as a form of militarized development. It is particularly interested in the social and spatial dimensions of counterinsurgency, and in the ways in which counterinsurgency theorists and practitioners seek to construct, manipulate and control populations and spaces. It considers these practices in a particular historical context: the province of B?n Tre in South Vietnam, in the years leading up to a famous uprising organized by communist partisans in 1960. The evidence presented here—drawn from South Vietnamese government records and communist accounts—shows that the government’s initial apparent successes in pacification in B?n Tre and its subsequent failure to anticipate or prevent the 1960 uprising turned mainly on its development schemes, such as its ill-fated Agroville Program, launched in 1959. By analyzing space and spatial practices as foundational elements of counterinsurgency, historians can better understand the ways in which counterinsurgency wars often combine ever more ambitious development schemes with increasingly destructive uses of military force.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1316515885
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Title: The Development Century: A Global History
ISBN: 9781316515884

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