Vietnam War Bibliography:

In the Villages: Pacification

Thomas L. Ahern, Jr., CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam. Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2001. xvi, 430 pp. Originally classified "Secret." A sanitized copy, obtained by historian John Prados through the Freedom of Information Act, has been placed online by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The book has also been reprinted as Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009.

An Giang: Revolutionary Development in a Pacified Province. Ministry of Information of the Republic of Viet-Nam, (1966?). 23 pp. A illustrated pamphlet on An Giang (a province with a lot of Hoa Hao, in the western part of the Mekong Delta). The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Anatomy of a Pacified Province... An Giang. (Ministry of Information of the Republic of Vietnam, 1968?). 21 pp. A illustrated pamphlet on An Giang (a province with a lot of Hoa Hao, in the western part of the Mekong Delta), with a lot of discussion of agriculture, including the introduction of miracle rice. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Dale Andrade and Lt. Col. James H. Willbanks, USA, Ret., "CORDS/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future." Military Review, 86:2 (March/April 2006), pp. 9-23.

Ba Canh: A Story of Revolutionary Development. Ministry of Information of the Republic of Vietnam, 1966(?). 21 pp. Ba Canh is about 15 kilometers northwest of Qui Nhon, in Binh Dinh. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Thomas J. Barnes, "Provincial and Regional Pacification in Vietnam." Memorandum for the Vietnam Archives, Vietnam Center, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, 12 January 2005. 28 pp. Barnes was province senior advisor, Binh Long, 1967-68, and Deputy for CORDS, Military Region II, 1970-71. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Eric M. Bergerud, The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991.  xiii, 383 pp. The full text is available online to paid subscribers of Questia.

Kevin M. Boylan, "The Red Queen's Race: The 173d Airborne Brigade and Pacification in Binh Dinh Province, 1969-1970." Ph.D. Dissertation, History, Temple University, 1994. xiv, 808 pp. (last pages of bibliography apparently missing) DA9512807.

Kevin M. Boylan, Losing Binh Dinh: The Failure of Pacification and Vietnamization, 1969-1971. Lawrence: Univerity Press of Kansas, 2016 (forthcoming).

Pierre Brocheux, The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy, and Revolution, 1860-1960. Madison: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, 1995. xix, 269 pp.

Martin G. Clemis, The Control War: The Struggle for South Vietnam, 1968-1975. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018. xix, 372 pp.

Martin G. Clemis, "The Control War: Communist Revolutionary Warfare, Pacification, and the Struggle for South Vietnam, 1968-1975," Ph.D. dissertation, Temple University, 2015. DA 3702975.

Major Ross Coffey, USA, "Revisiting CORDS: The Need for Unity of Effort to Secure Victory in Iraq." 86:2 (March/April 2006), pp. 24-34.

COMUSMACV 021225Z Apr 69, "1969 Pacification Planning." 8 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

Pamela Ann Conn, "Losing Hearts and Minds: United States Pacification Efforts in Vietnam during the Johnson Years." Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of Houston, 2001. 333 pp. AAT 3032336. The full text is available online if you are browsing the Internet from an institution, such as Clemson University, that has a subscription to ProQuest "Dissertations and Theses: Full Text."

Chester L. Cooper, et. al., The American Experience with Pacification in Vietnam. Report R-185. Arlington, Virginia: Institute for Defense Analyses, International and Social Studies Division, March 1972. The text is available on the CD-ROM collection Vietnam Pacification Studies #1, listed below. It also has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in three parts, two of them large and a bit slow to download:

CORDS monthly province reports. Reports by province senior advisors for a number of provinces, mostly for the months of March and April 1972, have been placed online in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University. These might be extremely interesting to anyone looking into the Easter Offensive of 1972.

CORDS: other documents. A number of documents have been placed online in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University. These include:

Col. William R. Corson, The Betrayal. New York: Norton, 1968.  pb New York: Ace.  317 pp.

Randy Craig Cummings, "Vietnamese Villages in the Mekong Delta: Their Articulation with the Wider Society and the Implications for Local Social Organization." Ph.D. dissertation, Anthropology, SUNY at Binghamton, 1977. 301 pp. 76-28864.

Peter M. Dawkins, "The United States Army and the 'Other' War in Vietnam: A Study of the Complexity of Implementing Organizational Change." Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton, 1979. AAT 7918556. xiii, 469 pp. A study of U.S. Army province and district advisors between 1962 and 1970. Dawkins, an Army Major, did a lot of the work on this while at the Woodrow Wilson School 1969-70, then returned to active duty, then finally finished the dissertation during academic year 1978-79.

Delta Regional Assistance Command, Village Security Planning Guide for District and Mobile Advisory Teams, 1970. Foreword by John P. Vann. This document has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in two parts: front matter and pp. 1-29, and front matter and pp. 30-68.

John C. Donnell, "Pacification Reassessed," Asian Survey, August 1967.

Maynard Weston Dow, "Counterinsurgency and Nation-Building: A Comparative Study of Post World War II Antiguerrilla Resettlement Programs in Malaya, the Philippines and South Vietnam." Ph.D. dissertation, Geography, Syracuse, 1965. 288 pp. 65-07963.

Colonel Jerry F. Dunn (Ret), "A New Look at Pacification" Military Review, January 1970, pp. 84-87. Argues that the United States should be putting more of its conventional military forces into support of the pacification effort.

Andrew J. Gawthorpe, To Build as Well as Destroy: American Nation Building in South Vietnam. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. x, 245 pp. Argues that American nation building basically failed in Vietnam.

Lara Godbille, "Following the Money: The U.S. Navy Seabee Teams and Military Civic Action in South Vietnam, 1963-1972." Ph.D. dissertation, Claremont Graduate University, 2013. DA 3590481.

Lawrence E. Grinter, "The Pacification of South Vietnam: Dilemmas of Counterinsurgency and Development." Ph.D. dissertation, Political Science, 1972, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. xvi, 1156 pp. 73-04828. Pages 1036 to 1128 are appendices.

Thomas P. Hamilton, "Vietnamese and American Relationships in Pacification: The Problem of Authority." Ph.D. dissertation, Political Science, Claremont, 1971. 281 pp. 71-29,622. The author was an advisor in Phu Cat district, Binh Dinh province, from late 1968 to early 1970.

The Hamlet Evaluation System (HES) was the U.S. government's primary system for measuring progress in pacification. It produced a monthly report rating every hamlet in South Vietnam on a scale from A (fully under government control) through B, C, D, E, and V (fully under Communist control).

Handbook for Military Support of Pacification. Saigon: Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, February 1968. ii, 59 pp., plus distribution list and annexes. This document has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in two parts: front matter and pp. 1-45, and pp. 46-59, distribution list, and annexes.

Headquarters 29th Civil Affairs Company, "Standing Operating Procedures," 20 April 1971. This company was under XXIV Corps. It supported pacification, with primary emphasis on economic development and return to village programs, in all five provinces of I Corps. This document has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in two parts: front matter, Annex A (Operations), and Annex B (Administration) to p. B-3-1, remainder of Annex B, Annex C (Supply), Annex D (Maintenance) to p. D-1-4, and remainder of Annex D.

James B. Hendry, The Small World of Khanh Hau. Chicago: Aldine, 1964. A village in Long An province, on the northeast edge of the Mekong Delta.

James B. Hendry, "American Aid in Vietnam: The View from a Village." Pacific Affairs 33:4 (December 1960), pp. 387-91. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access the text directly or go through the JSTOR Pacific Affairs browse page.

Stuart Herrington, Silence was a Weapon: The Vietnam War in the Villages. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1982. Re-issued in 1997, same publisher, under the title Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix, a Personal Account. Herrington, then a captain in the US Army, was involved in trying to uproot the Communist organization in the villages of Hau Nghia province, a little northwest of Saigon, from February 1971 to August 1972.

Gerald C. Hickey, Village in Vietnam. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964. Detailed study of peasant life in the village of Khanh Hau, in the Mekong Delta southwest of Saigon.

Richard A. Hunt, Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam's Hearts and Minds. Boulder: Westview, 1995. xv, 352 pp. The full text is available online to paid subscribers of Questia.

Bruce Kinsey, Good Guys: The Quiet Americans Who Tried to Pacify Vietnam (tentative title; forthcoming). I believe Kinsey served in Long An province, III Corps.

Robert W. Komer, The Other War in Vietnam: A Progress Report. Washington: Agency for International Development, 1966. 54 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University. This version is illustrated. The report, without the illustrations, was also published in the Department of State Bulletin, October 10 and 17, 1966, and published by the Department of State as a pamphlet, 29 pp.

Robert Komer 140415Z Dec 67, "Pacification in South Vietnam During October 1967." 8 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

Eun Ho Lee and Yong Soon Yim, The Politics of Military Civic Action: The Case of South Korean and South Vietnamese Forces in the Vietnam War. Hong Kong: Asian Research Service, 1980. 112 pp.

William J.C. Logan, "How Deep is the Green Revolution in South Vietnam? The Story of the Agricultural Turn-Around in South Vietnam", Asian Survey, 11:4 (April 1971), pp. 321-330. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can go to the text directly or access the journal through the JSTOR Asian Survey browse page.

Mary McCarthy, "Report from Vietnam III: Intellectuals." New York Review of Books, 8:9 (May 18, 1967). Pacification and the chieu hoi program. There is a lot of attention to Nguyen Be at the school at Vung Tau that trained Revolutionary Development cadres, and some to Marine Colonel William Corson.

Col. Edward P. Metzner, More than a Soldier's War: Pacification in Vietnam. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995. The title is a bit misleading; this very valuable book is a memoir of Metzner's multiple tours in Vietnam (a total of about seven years between 1964 and 1974, mostly as a province-level advisor in the Mekong Delta). xiii, 201 pp.

William A. Nighswonger, Rural Pacification in Vietnam. New York: Praeger, 1966.  xvii, 320 pp. The doctoral dissertation from which this was derived (American University, 1966, AAT 6612813), is available on the CD-ROM collection Vietnam Pacification Studies #1, listed below.

LT CDR A. N. Olsen, "Teaming Up to Build a Nation," Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, October 1969, pp. 34-43. US Navy Seabee (construction) units worked in Vietnam under USAID from 1963 onward.

Robert E. O'Melia, "The Refugees of Duc Pho." Vietnam Magazine, October 2003. The peasants of Duc Pho district, on Highway 1 in Quang Ngai province, were the victims of an exceptionally heavy-handed and destructive pacification effort by Task Force Oregon. O'Melia, a USAID officer assigned to CORDS who was assigned to the district, tried without much success to alleviate their conditions. The text has been placed online at HistoryNet.com.

Milton Osborne, Strategic Hamlets in South Vietnam. Data Paper no. 55. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1965. ix, 66 pp.

Rufus Phillips, "Counterinsurgency in Vietnam—schizophrenia until too late," Small Wars & Insurgencies 30:1 (2019), pp. 81-100.

Project Takeoff, Volume II, Assessment of Pacification in South Vietnam as of 31 May 1967. Assistant Chief of Staff, CORDS, Headquarters, MACV, 17 June 1967. The text of this item, accompanied by the texts of a MAC JOIR Briefing on Project Takeoff and of a SACSA Briefing for the Joint Staff on the status of Revolutionary Development as of 31 August 1967 has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Phoenix/Phung Hoang: several documents written by or addressed to the Province Senior Advisor for Quang Nam province in November 1970, have been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

Samuel L. Popkin, "Pacification: Politics and the Village", Asian Survey, 10:8 (August 1970), pp. 662-671.

Jeffrey Race, "How They Won", Asian Survey, 10:8 (August 1970), pp. 628-650.

A. Terry Rambo and Neil L. Jamieson III, A Study of the Effects of Long-term Communist Control on the Social Structure, Attitudes, & Values of the Peasants of the Mekong Delta. Honolulu: Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii / McLean, Virginia: Human Sciences Research, Inc., 1970. x, 146 pp. Based on research in An Xuyen province in 1969. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in four parts: front matter and pp. 1-37;   pp. 38-88;   pp. 89-113;   pp. 114-146.

Rand Corporation (later, RAND Corporation). This "think tank" financed by the U.S. military conducted a great deal of research on the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Project was particularly important; it compiled a huge amount of information by in-depth interviewing of former members of Communist organizations in Vietnam (mostly defectors, but also some prisoners). Most Rand publications can be purchased in hard copy through the RAND Corporation online bookstore, but many also can be read online for free. Some Rand publications relevant to this section of my bibliography are listed below, but many others are in other sections, especially The Communists; Theories of Limited War and Counterinsurgency; and The Big War, 1964-1972.

Report of Inter-Agency "Roles and Missions" Study Group, US Mission, Vietnam, 24 August 1966. The study group, chaired by Col. George D. Jacobson and including Daniel Ellsberg, had been assigned to study the ways various organizations contributed to Revolutionary Development, and make recommendations. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in three parts: Front matter; Part I (Summary of Major Conclusions and Recommendations); Part II (Revolutionary Development); Part III (Elements Charged with Specific Revolutionary Development Roles); Part IV (Additional Recommendations Requiring US/GVN Agreements; Part V (Additional Recommendations Concerning US Advisory Effort, pp. 1-14); Part V (Additional Recommendations Concerning US Advisory Effort, pp. 15-26); Appendices.

Republic of Vietnam. A number of RVN documents on pacification have been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Thomas Richardson, Destroy and Build: Pacification in Phuoc Tuy, 1966-1972. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xvii, 280 pp.

Maj. Terry E. Rowe, "Grim Reaper: A New Concept of Rice Denial in RVN." Article about a program by which rice was denied to enemy forces in the Que Son area of Quang Nam province. When rice in a communist-controlled village was ready for harvest, troops would land by helicopter and establish a perimeter. Then a harvesting crew of Vietnamese would be landed, who would harvest the crop. The rice would be flown out to friendly territory by helicopter. This was written with the intent that it be published in Military Review. The text of the article, and a letter of July 24, 1970 from the Security Review office under the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, explaining that publication in the Military Review was being forbidden, have been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Robert L. Sansom, The Economics of Insurgency in the Mekong Delta. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970. xviii, 283 pp.

Jonathan Schell, The Village of Ben Suc. New York: Knopf, 1967. 132 pp. A good account of how the U.S. totally destroyed a village about 30 miles from Saigon early in 1967, moving out the whole population, to make operations against a Communist base area easier.

Frank Scotton, Uphill Battle: Reflections on Viet Nam Counterinsurgency. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2014. xiii, 464 pp. Scotton was significantly involved in Vietnam counterinsurgency from 1962 to 1967, and continued to visit the country at intervals up to 1975. Looks like an important book.

Larry Siegel, Tears of the Dragon: The Other Vietnam War. AuthorHouse, 2009. 184 pp. Siegel arrived in Vietnam in June 1969, and was assigned to the 2d Civil Affairs Company, operating in III Corps.

Major Lewis S. Sorley III, USA, "The Quiet War: Revolutionary Development." Military Review, November 1967 (vol. XLVII, no. 11), pp. 13-19.

Strategic Hamlet Program: See under Temporary Peace and Renewed War, 1954-1964.

Major Paul E. Suplizio, "A Study of the Military Support of Pacification in South Vietnam, April 1964-April 1965." Master's thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1966. ix, 391 pp. This study of the Chien Thang pacification plan is based on some impressive-looking primary source research. The author had served in Vietnam, May 1964 to May 1965, on the staff of the Combat Operations Center, MACV, working on the briefings for the Daily Staff conference. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

George K. Tanham, with W. Robert Warne, Earl J. Young, and William A. Nighswonger, War Without Guns: American Civilians in Rural Vietnam. New York: Praeger, 1966. xiii, 141 pp. All four authors had worked for AID in Vietnam: Tanham as director of provincial operations, Warne in Vinh Binh province, Young in Phu Bon province, and Nighswonger in Quang Nam province.

Robert J. Thompson III, Clear, Hold, and Destroy: Pacification in Phú Yên and the American War in Vietnam. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. xvii, 330 pp. Argues that pacification in Phu Yen, the next province south of Binh Dinh on the coast of II Corps, was generally unsuccessful.

Michael E. Tolle, A Spear-Carrier in Vietnam: Memoir of an American Civilian in Country, 1970-1972. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. vii, 193 pp. Tolle was in Vietnam for a few months in 1967 with a Protestant missionary organization, and then from 1970 to 1972 as a low-ranking member of AID. Most persons in the book are given pseudonyms (Tolle gives the impression in his preface that he thinks this was legally obligatory).

Brig. Gen. Tran Dinh Tho, Pacification.  McLean, VA: General Research Corporation [on a contract with the U.S. Army], 1977. vi, 219 pp. General Tho had been the Assistant Chief of Staff, J3, to the RVN Joint General Staff. Most of the text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in four parts: front matter and pp. 1-12, pp. 46-104, pp. 105-161, and pp. 162-219.

James Trullinger, Village at War: An Account of Revolution in Vietnam. New York: Longman, 1980.  xix, 235 pp.   Paperback Village at War: An Account of Conflict in Vietnam. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. xv, 235 pp. A very useful study of a village in central Vietnam a little southeast of Hue, from the French period up to 1975. Includes discussion of the early Communist presence in the village, before 1945.

Vietnam Pacification Studies #1. Published as a CD-ROM by Carr's Compendiums in the series Carr's Compendium of the Vietnam War. Three major studies of pacification, adding up to more than 2,000 pages. These are:

The Vietnamese Village 1970: Handbook for Advisors. Rural Development Division, Community Development Directorate, CORDS, May 1970. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in two parts: front matter and pp. 1-44, and pp. 45-91. A revised edition dated 24 June 1971 is also available: front matter and pp. 1-28; pp. 29-58; pp. 57-90.

"Village/Hamlet Reorganization and Elections". Headquarters, MACV, 31 January 1967. Translations of four RVN decrees and executive circulars, all dated 24 December 1966. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Alan Douglas Weathers, "Western Nam Bo: The War in the Lower Mekong Delta." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maine, History, 2000. viii, 268 pp. The best sources used appear to be documents from U.S. archives. AAT 9986554. Covers the period 1968-1975. The full text is available online if you are browsing the Internet from an institution, such as Clemson University, that has a subscription to ProQuest "Dissertations and Theses: Full Text."

MG Wetherill ASST DEPCORDS MACV, MAC 4032 "eyes only" to MG Freund OJCS SACSA, 30 March 1969, reporting recent pacification activities. Mentions civilian casualties. 5 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

Stephen B. Young, The Theory and Practive of Associative Power: CORDS in the Villages of South Vietnam, 1967–1972. Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2017. xii, 401 pp.

Joseph J. Zasloff, Rural Resettlement in Vietnam: An Agroville in Development.  Saigon: Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group, 1961.  viii, 40 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Joseph J. Zasloff, "Rural Resettlement in South Viet Nam: The Agroville Program." Pacific Affairs 35:4 (Winter 1962-63), pp. 327-340. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access the text directly or go through the JSTOR Pacific Affairs browse page.

The Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, has placed online some documents on pacification in I Corps, most of them in a collection titled "US Marine Corps History and Museum Division Vietnam War Documents Collection". You can check on what is available by entering that collection title, without quotes, in the "collection title" field in their search engine. A sample of what has been put up so far:

A huge collection of miscellaneous documents relating to pacificiation (433 pp.) and another huge collection of miscellaneous documents relating to pacificiation (439 pp.) and another large collection (278 pp.) have been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University. I believe these were found in Marine Corps archives, but they are not by any means all Marine Corps documents. I believe that these documents (and many others listed above) were gathered for a Vietnam Pacification Project carried out at the Institute for Defense Analyses (see above, under Chester Cooper), in which General Donald M. Weller was involved, and were transferred by General Weller to the Marine Corps Historical Division in 1972, when that project was concluded.

 

See also Marine Corps Pacification: CAP, etc.

Works on rural policies in the era of Ngo Dinh Diem can be found in the section Temporary Peace and Renewed War, 1954-1964, and within that there is a subsection specifically on the Strategic Hamlet Program.

See also Theories of Limited War and Counterinsurgency.

 

Land Reform in South Vietnam

Michael Arnsten and Nathan Leites, Land Reform and the Quality of Propaganda in Rural Vietnam.  Santa Monica: Rand, 1970.  RM-5764-ARPA.  vii, 105 pp.  Includes a refutation of the work of Edward J. Mitchell (see below), which had been used as an argument against land reform.

Asian Survey, 10:8 (August 1970), ran a special issue "Vietnam: Politics, Land Reform and Development in the Countryside." If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access this issue as a whole online. Some individual articles are listed separately by author in this bibliography.

William Bredo, et. al., Land Reform in Vietnam: Working Papers.  4 vols.  Menlo Park, CA: Stanford Research Institute, 1968.  v. 1: Legal Framework and Program Status.  v. 2: Administration of Land Affairs.  v. 3: The Viet Cong. ix, Front matter and pp. 1-51, pp. 52-95.   v. 4: Surveys and Analyses Related to Land Tenure Issues.

William Bredo (ed.?), Land Reform in Vietnam.  Menlo Park, CA: Stanford Research Institute, 1968.  xxiv, 225 pp.  Summary volume for the preceding item.

William Bredo, "Agrarian Reform in Vietnam: Vietcong and Government of Vietnam Strategies in Conflict", Asian Survey, 10:8 (August 1970), pp. 738-750.

Jewett Millard Burr, "Land to the Tiller: Land Redistribution in South Vietnam, 1970-1973." Ph.D. dissertation, Geography, University of Oregon, 1976. xxiv, 375 pp. 77-11437. Compares implementation of the land reform in the Mekong Delta and the lowlands of central Vietnam.

Charles S. Callison, Land-to-the-Tiller in the Mekong Delta: Economic, Social and Political effects of Land Reform in Four Villages of South Vietnam. University Press of America, 1983.  xxv, 391 pp.

David A. Conrad, "'Before It Is Too Late': Land Reform in South Vietnam, 1956–1968," Journal of American-East Asian Relations 21:1 (2014), pp. 34-57.

Andrew J. Gawthorpe "Modernization, Agricultural Economics, and U.S. Policy towards Land Reform in South Vietnam," nternational History Review, Vol. 44, No. 2 (2022), 282-299.

Edward J. Mitchell, an economist writing for the Rand Corporation, produced highly controversial work arguing against the utility of land reform. For reactions to his work, see Arnsten (above); Paige (below); Paranzino (below); and Mai Elliott (above in main Pacification section under Rand Corporation).

Jeffery M. Paige, "Inequality and Insurgency in Vietnam: A Re-analysis." World Politics XXIII:1 (October 1970), pp. 24-37. A rebuttal to Edward Mitchell's study (above). The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Dennis Paranzino, "Inequality and Insurgency in Vietnam: A Further Re-analysis." World Politics 24:4 (July 1972), pp. 565-78. Further comments on Mitchell. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access the text online.

Robert Michael Pearce, "Land Tenure and Political Authority: The Processes of Change in Land Relations and Land Attitudes in Vietnamese Villages in the Mekong Delta since 1945." Ph.D. dissertation, Geography, University of Washington, 1968. 229 pp. 68-12710.

Jeffrey G. Peterson, "The Political and Military Uses of Land Reform in Wartime Vietnam: Precedences, 1960-1968." Ph.D. dissertation, Political Science(?), University of Miami, 1975. 342 pp. 76-4705.

Roy L. Prosterman, "Land Reform in Vietnam." Paper presented at a meeting of the Council on Vietnamese Studies, Southeast Asia Development Advisory Group (SEADAG), April 24-25, 1970. Written while the new land reform law was still being debated in the RVN National Assembly. Quite interesting. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Roy L. Prosterman, "Land-to-the-Tiller in South Vietnam: The Tables Turn", Asian Survey, 10:8 (August 1970), pp. 751-764.

"Regulations and Laws Concerning Land Reform in South Viet-Nam". This collection of documents dated between March 1964 and October 1965 is pp. 68-92 of the AID Public Administration Bulletin, no. 44. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

MacDonald Salter, "The Broadening Base of Land Reform in South Vietnam", Asian Survey, 10:8 (August 1970), pp. 724-37.

William J. Tater, "Impact of Land Reform on Pacification: A Quantitative Appraisal of Land Reform in Vietnam." Ph.D. dissertation, Agricultural Economics, University of Southern California, 1970. 192 pp. 71-12,419. I have been told by Dr. Tater that the dissertation was based on several years of field work in Vietnam. He strongly endorses the utility of land reform, which some were questioning at the time he wrote.

James L. Tyson, "Land Reform in Vietnam: A Progress Report." Asian Affairs, September-October 1973, pp. 32-41. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

The Vietnamese Land Reform Law. Introduction by Nguyen Ngoc Phach. Saigon: The Vietnam Council on Foreign Relations, 1970. 14 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Louis J. Walinsky, ed., Agrarian Reform as Unfinished Business: The Selected Papers of Wolf Ladejinsky. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. xi, 603 pp.

Nancy A. Wiegersma, "Land Tenure and Land Reform: A History of Property and Power in Vietnam." Ph.D. dissertation, Economics, University of Maryland, 1976. 238 pp. 77-13040. Emphasizes the role of market forces, from the late 19th century up to 1971.

Nancy Wiegersma, Vietnam--Peasant Land, Peasant Revolution: Patriarchy and Collectivity in the Rural Economy. New York: St. Martin's, 1988. xix, 281 pp.
 

See also The Land Reform of 1953-1956 in North Vietnam.
 

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Copyright © 1996, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, Edwin E. Moise. This document may be reproduced only by permission. Revised July 6, 2022.