Reported by Zhenan Xie, class of 2026
During the mini-term session, on March 11st, the DKU Humanities Research Center invited Professor Edward Miller as the guest speaker of an insightful discussion focusing on his research topic about the first Indochina war. The lecture invited and guided nearly 40 participants to examine the ignored facts of this war usually defined as decolonization or part of the Global Cold War, revealing its essence as a civil war instead. Prof. Miller also used this case to help participants learn about the conclusional features existed in civil warfare.
Prof. Miller first introduced and summarized a few commons often applicable to sovereignty in civil wars, featuring divisible, fragmented, and layered. It was also pointed out that the behavior of claiming legitimacy often played significant role shaping such circumstance of sovereignty in civil wars as multi-level conflicts, including Civil wars: multi-level conflicts consisting of conflicts between warring parties, warring parties and civilian populations, and within local populations and communities. Then Prof. Miller led participants to go through the life experience of Colonel Jean Leroy, founder of UMDC, who was born in and excluded by Ben Tre Province. The story of Leroy helped prove that these existed phenomenon of Vietnamese-led army under command of French imperial governance, proving Prof. Miller’s view about The First Indochina War as a civil warfare. By this lecture an insightful topic was proposed that different understandings might be applied to a same historical event or period, depending on the aspects focused on and interpretations implemented from different perspectives. While exploring and unveiling the untold stories behind common view can help historians and the public have a more complete cognition of history.
The second stage of Q&A session involved enthusiastic participation by both students and professors in attendance. Various questions about the class topic and suggestions regarding the research content were put forward and Prof. Miller answered each of them in detail with extensive supplement of presentation to help participants better understand this complex chapter of history.
We’d like to express our sincere appreciation to Prof. Miller’s impressive presentation and engagement by every participant in attendance. With the loosened COVID policy, this lecture would be an exciting start of continuous activities held in person coming up in 2024. This discussion and insights shared in it is believed to contribute to laying the foundation of a series of lectures. We look forward to holding more activities on humanities research and engaging more students and faculties in the future.
