Pierre Asselin
Professor
Dwight E. Stanford Chair in American Foreign Relations
Office: AL 568
Email: [email protected]
Curriculum vitae
Education
Ph.D., History, University of Hawaii (1997)
M.A., History, University of Toronto (1992)
B.A., History/Political Science, York University (1991)
Pierre Asselin is the Dwight E. Stanford Chair in American Foreign Relations in the Department of History. Originally from Quebec City in Canada, he holds a Bachelor’s degree from Glendon College (Canada), a Master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His area of primary expertise is the history of American foreign relations, with a focus on East and Southeast Asia and the larger Cold War context. He is a leading authority on the Vietnam War, a subject matter that has fascinated him ever since he watched Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo: First Blood Part II in high school. Asselin is particularly interested in the decision-making of Vietnamese communist authorities in the period 1945-75. He speaks Vietnamese and regularly travels to Vietnam for research. His interest in internationalism and transnationalism during the Vietnam War has taken him to various other document repositories, including the Algerian National Archives.
Asselin is the author of A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), which won the 2003 Kenneth W. Baldridge Prize, and Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (University of California Press, 2013), winner of the 2013 Arthur Goodzeit Book Award. His third book, Vietnam’s American War: A History, was released in 2018 by Cambridge University Press. It surveys the Vietnamese communist experience during the Vietnam War, with a focus on how Vietnamese communist leaders and their armies succeeded in defeating their South Vietnamese and American rivals. The book has become a staple, a core text, in both undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on the Vietnam War in the United States. A second, extensively revised and updated edition will be released by Cambridge in 2024. Asselin is editor of The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Volume III: Endings, also forthcoming in 2024.
Other notable, recent peer-reviewed publications include “The Indochinese Communist Party’s Unfinished Revolution of 1945 and the Origins of Vietnam’s 30-Year Civil War” in Journal of Cold War Studies (2023); “French Decolonisation and Civil War: The Dynamics of Violence in the Early Phases of Anti-colonial War in Vietnam and Algeria, 1940-56” (with Martin Thomas) in Journal of Modern European History (2022); “Forgotten Front: The NLF in Hanoi’s Diplomatic Struggle, 1965-67” in Diplomatic History (2021); and “Global Revolutionary Currents, the Vietnamese Revolution, and the Origins of the American War” in African Identities (2018). His latest article, “National Liberation by Other Means: US Visitor Diplomacy in the Vietnam War,” will be published in August 2024 in Past & Present, acknowledged as “the liveliest and most stimulating historical journal in the English-speaking world.”
Asselin has been a guest on several podcasts, including American History Hit. He frequently appears on C-SPAN programming. His talk as part of C-SPAN’s Lectures in History series ranks among the most viewed. Entitled “The Vietnam War, 1965-75,” it may be viewed at https://www.c-span.org/video/?442295-2/vietnam-war-1965-75.
Before moving to San Diego and joining the History Department at SDSU, Asselin lived, happily, in Honolulu for 26 years and taught at Kapiolani Community College, Chaminade University, and Hawaii Pacific University.
Books
Vietnam’s American War: A New History [2nd Edition] (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming [2024])
The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Volume III: Endings (editor) (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming [2024]).
Vietnam’s American War: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (University of California Press, 2013)
Nen hoa binh mong manh [A Fragile Peace {Vietnamese language version of A Bitter Peace}] (Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia [National Political Publisher], 2005)
A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (University of North Carolina Press, 2002)
Journal Articles
“National Liberation by Other Means: US Visitor Diplomacy in the Vietnam War” in Past & Present (forthcoming, August 2024).
“The Indochinese Communist Party’s Unfinished Revolution of 1945 and the Origins of Vietnam’s Thirty-Year Civil War” in Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 25, no. 1 (Winter 2023), 4-45.
“French Decolonisation and Civil War: The Dynamics of Violence in the Early Phases of Anti colonial War in Vietnam and Algeria, 1940-56” with Martin Thomas in Journal of Modern European History, Vol. 20, no. 4 (November 2022), 513-35.
“Forgotten Front: The NLF in Hanoi’s Diplomatic Struggle, 1965-67” in Diplomatic History, Vol. 45, no. 2 (April 2021), 330-55.
“Global Revolutionary Currents, the Vietnamese Revolution, and the Origins of the American War” in African Identities, Vol. 16, no. 2 (2018), 191-204.
“‘We Don’t Want a Munich’: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Struggle during the American War, 1965-1968” in Diplomatic History, Vol. 36, no. 3 (2012), 547-81.
“Revisionism Triumphant: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Strategy in the Nixon Era” in Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 13, no. 4 (2011), 101-137.
“The Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the 1954 Geneva Conference: A Revisionist Critique” in Cold War History, Vol. 11, no. 2 (2011), 155-195.
“Choosing Peace: Hanoi and the Geneva Agreement on Vietnam, 1954-55” in Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 9, no. 2 (2007), 95-126.
“Le Duan, the American War, and the Creation of an Independent Vietnamese State” in
Journal of American East-Asian Relations, Vol. 10, no. 1-2 (2001; published 2006), 1-27.
Book Chapters
“The Politburo at War” in Pierre Asselin (ed.) Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Volume III: Endings (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming [2024]).
“Hanoi’s National Liberation Strategy, 1954-1975” in Martin Thomas and Gareth Curless (eds.), Oxford Handbook on Late Colonial Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023).
“Cracking Down on Revolutionary Zeal and Violence: Local Dynamics and Early Colonial Responses to the Independence Struggle in Indochina and the Indonesian Archipelago, 1945-1947” with Henk Schulte Nordholt in Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis (eds.), Empire’s Violent End: Comparing Dutch, British, and French Wars of Decolonization, 1945-1962 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022), 71-95.
“Fueling the World Revolution: Vietnamese Communist Internationalism, 1954-1975” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and R. Joseph Parrot (eds.), The Tricontinental Conference: Revolution, Radicalism, and Race in the Anti-Imperial Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 113-38.
“A Calculus of Defiance: Hanoi’s Revolutionary Strategy, 1954-1959” in Pierre Journoud (ed.), Un triangle stratégiques à l’épreuve: La Chine, les États-Unis et l’Asie du Sud-Est depuis 1947 (Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2022), 127-51.
“Les États Unis et l’Asie du Sud-Est” with Serge Granger in Serge Granger and Dominique Caouette (eds.), L’Asie du Sud-Est à la croisée des puissances (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2019), 133-48.
“Dien Bien Phu, Gionevo va su chuyen huong san ‘dau tranh hoa binh’” [Dien Bien Phu, Geneva, and the Shift to ‘Peaceful Struggle’” in Vien han lam khoa hoc xa hoi Viet Nam – Vien su hoc, Chien thang Dien Bien Phu: Suc manh Viet Nam va tam voc thoi dai [The Dien Bien Phu Victory: Strength of Vietnam and Symbol of an Era] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2014), 487-525.
“Chinh sach ngoai giao cua Ha Noi trong thoi ky Nichson” [Hanoi’s Diplomacy in the Nixon Era] in Hiep dinh Pari: 40 nam nhin lai [The Paris Agreement: A 40- Year Retrospective] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2013), 109-26.
“Hanoi’s Diplomatic Struggle during the American War” in Pierre Journoud and Cécile Menétrey-Monchau (eds.), Vietnam, 1968-1976: La sortie de guerre/Exiting a War (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2011), 99-114.
“The Vietnam War from the Other Side” in Mitchell Lerner (ed.), A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson (Oxford/Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 367-84.
“Hanoi between the Two Geneva Accords: The Evolution of Vietnamese Revolutionary Strategy, 1959-1962” in Christopher Goscha and Karine Laplante (eds.), The Failure of Peace, Indochina between the Two Geneva Conferences, 1954-1962 (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2010), 6-44.
“Hanoi’s Position on War and Negotiations during the American War” in Vien Viet Nam hoc va khoa hoc phat trien, 20 nam Viet Nam hoc: theo dinh huong lien nganh (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban The gio, 2008), 643-665.