Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald. Published in 1972, Fire in the Lake was the first history of Vietnam written by an American. A journalist and historian Frances won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award as result of her reporting in Vietnam in 1966.
This is certainly a very worthy book to continue my education of the American war that lasted a generation. Approaching this book, 50 years after initial publication may appear ‘ancient’ by today’s internet-connected world. I can even recall assigned chapter readings of this book in college along with Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War and Michael Herr’s Dispatches among other powerful writers.
Frances has simply written her outstanding analysis in two parts. First, addressing Vietnam, the Vietnamese people, and their long history of foreign oppression. This includes a Chinese occupation which lasted over 1,000 years and concludes with the era of French colonization of Indochina.
The second part of this book is addressing the American War effort which began during World War II and expanded under French rule until the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. At the time of publication, President Nixon was ramping up strategic bombing while withdrawing American troops. The American effort would end three years after publication in 1975 with the fall of Saigon.
From Roosevelt to Nixon
It would surprise many young readers, now learning about the history of the American war in Vietnam to discover how Frances correctly illustrated how America could not win in Vietnam. If it was an issue of failure, then it would reveal itself in the string of American Presidents from Roosevelt to Nixon who did not understand the core of Vietnamese society had faced a long history of foreign armies on their land, only to drive them all away.
A Famine that created Ho Chi Minh?
Frances very accurately and painstakingly documents how French imperial rule drove a deep division with Vietnamese peasants. A horrific 1945 famine in Northern Vietnam under French and Japanese control would simply further not only Vietnam’s drive for independence, but also launch the rise of Ho Chi Minh. Ho was able to define as a key element, the drive to push out all colonizers, including America, who were presented as another western government’s entanglement in Vietnam’s internal politics.
In chapter 8 The Buddhist Crisis, Frances well illustrates the divide with the Government dominated by a Catholic family, and society’s Buddhist majority. This sets the stage for the horrific protests and self immolation by Buddhist Monks. These images would shock the world and further isolation the Diem family.
French imperial failures continue under US support
Frances reveals to a new generation of readers that America like France, held a post World War II colonial view that Vietnamese society was ancient or ‘backwards.’ As such, they could not understand how the new Domino Theory demanded their liberation from global communism. These efforts misfired under Diem including the Strategic Hamlet Program. However large rural peasant areas saw the South Vietnamese Government (Diem) simply stealing their land.
Look to the past to understand today
In conclusion, Frances has made an enormous contribution as Americans today confront how Roosevelt to Nixon mismanaged the war. I found this aligning with Fredrick Logevall’s Embers of War. Published before the fall of Saigon, Frances addresses Nixon’s escalation of bombing the North and how Vietnam would react to America’s withdrawl. Nevertheless this is a powerful evaluation of America’s failed war.