Publishing a book is a goal of many early-career scholars and mandatory for junior faculty on the tenure-track at research universities. Just like with applications, there is a great deal of advice on the internet about transforming the dissertation into a book. But the process of the first book still felt mysterious to me. I have always struggled to apply general professional advice to my specific situation in part because Vietnam studies is niche field, and the smallness of the field meant that there were relatively few scholars from whom to seek advice when I was in search of it. In this series, I share my experience as a first-time book author. This series is meant to supplement the general advice that is widely available.
The book proposal or book prospectus is probably the most important new document that a first-time author must produce other than the manuscript itself. An aspiring author send his or her proposals to book editors in hopes of persuading a reputable press of publishing the book. But most graduate programs provide little to no training on how to write a proposal, and most early career scholars must seek advice from their own mentors. There is abundant advice online, including this recent article, so I won’t repeat it here. My own experience is that I had a hard time conceptualizing what a proposal should look like until I read samples for books whose topics were close to mine. So I wanted to share my proposal for my monograph, Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam, to help other first-time authors in Vietnam studies.
Perhaps the most surprising advice I was given regarding the book proposal is how to talk about the novelty of my work. As a grad student, I always felt that I had to describe my research as something totally new compared to the existing research. But mentors told me that book editors thought about things differently. If no one’s ever published on a topic before, then that might indicate that the topic will not generate any interest or sell any books! So in my proposal, I tried to stress the newness of the interpretation as well as the similarity of my book to recently published ones.
Most first books are based on the dissertation, and most editors will want to know how the book advances beyond the dissertation, especially if the latter is no longer under embargo. My first book was unusual in that it was a brand-new project distinct from my dissertation, so I didn’t have to address that issue.
I wrote this proposal when I had drafted the first three chapters of the book, and careful readers may notice that the title, chapter outline, and even aspects of the argument do not match the final version of Disunion. That’s not unusual. Also, I make grandiose claims about reaching multiple audiences, though I think we all know that it is mostly researchers and students who choose to read academic books. This is also conventional. The proposal ends by offering the names of two possible peer reviewers for the manuscript. Fortunately, book editors do not expect proposals to be as polished as a search committee might expect cover letters to be, and my less-than-perfect proposal did the job. I eventually published the book with the University of Hawaii Press and as part of the Weatherhead Series at Columbia University.
For a long time, I hesitated to share my book proposal because I simply didn’t think it was very good. I tended to think of a book proposal as belonging to the same type of document as grant applications or job applications, but that’s actually not the case. Applications are by their nature a competitive process, and a grant proposal or cover letter must not merely demonstrate excellence but also that one is a better applicant than the rest of the pool. In contrast, piquing the interest of a book editor is not a competitive process in the same way. I was never trying to prove to the editor that my book was better than one else’s book. The book proposal – especially one’s first draft of it – should be good enough but doesn’t have to be better. Instead, the aim is to demonstrate that the book is compelling, exciting, and a good fit for the press. Below, I share my good-enough proposal. I have redacted names and a few sentences to protect the privacy of colleagues and my own privacy.
SAMPLE BOOK PROPOSAL
Rufus Phillips knew little about Vietnam when the Central Intelligence Agency sent him to Saigon in August 1954. The sprawling city was the capital of the State of Vietnam, and he arrived at a time of momentous change for the regime. Phillips was aware that the new prime minister Ngô Đình Diệm had taken up the reins of government just a month earlier. The young intelligence agent also knew that the Geneva Accords had just divided Vietnam into two zones, assigning the southern half to the Saigon government and stripping the regime of its territories farther north. But Phillips had no familiarity with the country beyond those generalities, even though he was there to join a covert mission to “save South Vietnam,” the moniker for the regime after the Geneva Accords. Phillips did not know any Vietnamese, and his French was only passable. He could not read most shop signs, and the cries of native street vendors were unintelligible to him. He found the Vietnamese to be polite but distant. Most importantly for his mission, he could not make sense of local politics. There were street demonstrations during his early weeks in country, and he could not understand a single word of the speeches or the slogans splayed across the banners that the demonstrators carried. Nor could he and the other American operatives determine who the demonstrators were or which groups they represented. In a memoir written decades, Phillips recalled, “The demonstrations, we soon learned, were against the Geneva Accords, particularly against dividing the country in two, but we still had no idea if they were led by nationalists unwilling to lose the North or communist sympathizers who felt the same about the South. There we were, working for the Agency, and we couldn’t decipher a street demonstration.”1
Phillips’ initial confusion was typical of Westerners who tried to understand Vietnamese politics during the tenure of Ngô Đình Diệm (1954-1963). Like him, the vast majority of American policymakers, diplomats, journalists, and scholars involved with Vietnam did not know the Vietnamese language and had no background in the country’s history or culture. They struggled to distinguish between the profusion of political groups and to tease out the relations among them. This lack of comprehension persisted in much of the scholarship about Diệm’s rule. Until recently, researchers lacked the language skills to study the anticommunist nationalists or neglected the regime in favor of studying Vietnamese communists and the American intervention.
My book, entitled Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam, 1954-1963, makes sense of the confusing domestic politics during Diệm’s rule. Diệm was the last premier of the State of Vietnam (1949-1955) and first president and founder of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, 1955-1975). I argue that the RVN was rooted in a long political tradition that I describe as anticommunist nationalism. Anticommunist nationalism first emerged as a trend within the revolutionary movement to overthrow the French. During the Resistance Against France (Kháng Chiến Chống Pháp, 1945-1954), many revolutionaries joined together to fight colonialism, but the alliances soon ruptured amidst a bloody schism between communist and noncommunist groups. The latter turned explicitly anticommunist, and the resulting schism became a permanent feature of Vietnamese politics. In 1953, these anticommunist nationalists articulated a distinct vision of independence based on a democratic government that was strong enough to defeat the communists and inclusive enough to unify the disparate revolutionary groups that opposed communism.
Most anticommunist nationalists hailed Diệm’s appointment to head the government as an opportunity to fulfill their shared vision, but they disagreed sharply on the meaning of democracy and unity. Specifically, the anticommunists debated the degree of democracy that was suitable given the communist threat and the range of parties and individuals that had a legitimate place in politics. These irreconcilable differences fueled the seemingly interminable factionalism that often bewildered foreign observers. The greatest fault line was between Ngô Đình Diệm’s faction and other groups. Diệm and his followers, known as the Diemists, defined democracy in philosophical rather than institutional terms, insisted on monopolizing power, and set up an authoritarian government dressed up in the institutional trappings of democracy. Other anticommunists were distinctly more liberal. They conceived of democracy institutionally and agitated for greater civil liberties, a multi-party state, and tolerance for a legal political opposition. Diệm’s refusal to share power and to liberalize the government triggered a second political schism between anticommunists nationalists. Every major anticommunist group broke with Diệm and engaged in some form of opposition in the latter half of the 1950s. The conflict peaked in 1960 when a handful of disaffected military officers launched an aborted coup, and some oppositionists spontaneously joined the putsch. Diệm retaliated with a brutal crackdown and drove an even deeper wedge between his faction and the opposition. The second schism continued to shape anticommunist politics long after Diệm’s demise.
Disunion will be the first full-length, English-language monograph on the RVN’s internal politics in several decades. The study contributes to the scholarship on Vietnam and the Vietnam War by charting an innovative “Vietnam-centered” approach to studying the Saigon-based regime – an approach that will serve as a potential model for future scholars interested in the RVN. My approach includes three important elements. First, the book contextualizes the RVN within the longer span of Vietnamese history by tracing the rise of various anticommunist groups back to the revolutionary movement. Since the 1970s, most researchers have depicted the struggle for national independence as the central theme of modern Vietnamese history. They argued that the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, or North Vietnam) was the direct outcome of the revolutionary movement while implicitly dismissing the RVN as an aberration from the anticolonial struggle. But in doing so, these scholars conflated communist nationalism with Vietnamese nationalism. Moreover, they relied exclusively on communist Vietnamese sources rather than materials produced by the RVN, the very sources that would shed light on the political character of the southern regime. To resolve these problems, I use the RVN’s own archives to argue that the Saigon-based state was an alternative outcome of the revolutionary struggle and an outgrowth of the anticommunist nationalist trend.
The second distinguishing feature of the book’s approach is that it emphasizes the importance of ideas to the RVN’s politics. During the war, Western political scientists assumed that the RVN’s factionalism reflected personality politics and rarely examined the specific programs of any given party. Such an approach merely labeled but did not explain the factionalism. By contrast, my book argues that differences in ideas were at the heart of anticommunist nationalism and political rivalries. The anticommunists drew on a body of political thought dating back to the early twentieth century, redefined these ideas in the 1940s to argue that only the anticommunists were genuine nationalists, and then reshaped the same ideas to form a shared political vision in 1953. After Diệm came to power, the anticommunists invoked the shared vision in their debates on political systems, executive supremacy, civil liberties, judicial independence, election laws, foreign policy, and political liberalization. The disagreement on these issues were the underlying cause of the second political schism between the Diemists and their rivals. In sum, the contest between communist and anticommunists and the factionalism in the RVN reflected a battle of ideas as much as a struggle for power.
Third, Disunion decisively shifts the focus of inquiry from American foreign relations to the RVN’s domestic politics. In recent years, US diplomatic historians developed new approaches for studying the anticommunist regime in the context of the Vietnam War. Their books focused on relations between Washington and Saigon and explored the RVN’s politics to a greater degree than past scholarship. However, the diplomatic historians mostly discussed Diệm and his followers while barely considering the other anticommunist groups. The resulting portrait unintentionally reduced the diversity of anticommunist politics and left many aspects of the regime unexplained. My book offers a novel approach that examines the evolving relations between the Diemists and their rivals to illuminate the competing Vietnamese agendas that shaped the internal politics of the RVN.
Beyond Vietnam studies, the book will also contribute to American diplomatic history. One of the truisms of this field is that the US knowingly propped up the dictatorial Ngô Đình Diệm in order to combat communism in Vietnam. My research refines that argument by showing that there was a wide range of anticommunists from which the US could choose as allies in its crusade against communism, but the Americans decided to back the most authoritarian faction at the expense of more liberal but equally anticommunist elements. At the outset, the US favored Diệm because he was the legally constituted head of government, and it is unclear whether US policymakers fully understood the differences between the various anticommunists. By the early 1960s, when Diệm’s rivals demanded that the government liberalize, the American embassy in Saigon clearly realized that the activists were more liberal than Diệm. Yet the ambassador and embassy officers defended the incumbent administration on the grounds that Vietnam was not ready for democracy. Thus, it was never the case that the Americans tolerated the dictatorial Diệm because there were no other available partners in the struggle against Vietnamese communism. On the contrary, US foreign policy favored him in part because his authoritarianism aligned with American perceptions of Vietnam.
The innovative approach of Disunion is rooted in its source base. The book draws on a much larger volume and wider range of Vietnamese-language materials than any other monograph on the RVN. The study relies on RVN government documents, such as position papers, internal memoranda, and intelligence reports, now housed at the National Archives Center II in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. These documents shed considerable light on the inner workings of Diệm’s administration and his relations with his rivals. The book also makes extensive use of historical newspapers and periodicals, memoirs by former politicians and their confidantes, and online compilations of political tracts and religious documents missing from the archives. Quite a few of these sources have not been incorporated into the scholarship, and several titles have never by cited by Western scholars before. These materials reflect a variety of perspectives ranging from steadfast Diemists to the regime’s most ardent anticommunist opponents. The book supplements these Vietnamese-language materials with reports and telegrams from the American embassy in Saigon found at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, as well as a handful of French- and English-language newspapers.
Audiences and Competitor Texts
Disunion will be at the forefront of a new wave of scholarship focusing on the RVN. The last few years have witnessed an increasing number of scholarly articles and memoirs about the anticommunist regime. The latter includes Nguyễn Công Luận’s Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars (2012), Olga Dror’s award-winning translation of Nhã Ca’s Mourning Headband for Hue (2014),and Voices from the Second Republic of South Vietnam, 1967-1975 (2014),an edited anthology of essays by former political and military leaders.2 Monograph-length publications on the RVN are also on the rise. Dror’s newly published Making Two Vietnams (2018)compares adult-youth relations in the DRV and RVN.3 Taken together, these publications attest to the resurgent interest in the southern republic.
The works that most closely resemble Disunion are studies of Ngô Đình Diệm’s tenure by American diplomatic historians, especially the books by Philip Catton (2002), Mark Moyar (2006), Jessica Chapman (2013), Edward Miller (2013), and Geoffrey Stewart (2017).4 However, as explained earlier, the “Vietnam-centered” approach of my book distinguishes it from these studies. [Redacted a one-sentence description of Moyar’s source base and argument]. [In contrast,] Disunion demonstrates that the RVN encompassed a wide spectrum of liberal and illiberal positions that cannot be reduced to mere authoritarianism. [Redacted a four-sentence description overview of the source base and scope of the works of the other authors]. In sharp contrast, Disunion discusses all of the major political groups in the RVN, their political visions, and their roles in the regime’s competitive political landscape.
This book will appeal to a wide variety of academic audiences in Vietnam studies, Southeast Asian studies, American diplomatic history, and Cold War studies. In addition, Disunion may also be of interest to readers in Asian-American studies because the book provides background on the origins of the politics of Vietnamese-American communities in the US. Most Vietnamese-Americans are former citizens of the anticommunist regime or their descendants, and the community’s politics is a legacy of the successive schisms within the revolutionary movement. Many community members still identify as anticommunist nationalists, debate whether Diệm should be revered or denounced, and argue over the advantages and disadvantages of democracy.
Disunion will also appeal to classroom adopters and general readers because it responds to the growing interest in the Vietnamese side of the Vietnam War. The war is a perennially popular topic for undergraduate classes, and the above discussion suggests that American diplomatic history is trending towards the incorporation of Vietnamese perspectives. Changes in teaching will surely follow the same direction as professors update their courses to include more reading materials about the Vietnamese belligerents. Even popular culture is following the same trend. Ken Burns’ critically acclaimed television series, The Vietnam War (2017),earned high praise for interviewing politically and socially diverse Vietnamese, an achievement that distinguished his work from previous documentaries. Feeding this interest, Disunion introduces readers to anticommunist voices that are little known to most Americans, such as the opposition politicians Phan Quang Đán and Nguyễn Văn Cẩn and the religious leader Phạm Công Tắc.
More generally, the book strives to be accessible to a wide audience by providing a strong, clear narrative. Each chapter begins with a specific disagreement and ends with the resolution to the conflict. The debate between Diệm and his rivals over the meaning and practice of democracy will especially interest readers. While aspects of the debate were specific to the historical RVN, political issues like the promises and pitfalls of representative government remain relevant throughout the world today. Disunion does not presume that its readers have a deep familiarity with Vietnamese history or the Vietnam War, and most historiographical discussion is confined to the introduction and conclusion.
Overview and Chapter Outline
Disunion includes an introduction, five chapters, a conclusion, and an appendix, totaling approximately 100,000 words (with endnotes). Additionally, the book will feature 2 maps and 8 black and white photographs. The book is not currently under review with any other publisher, and no portion of the book has been published. The book is a new project that is entirely different from my dissertation, “Contested Identities: Nationalism in the Republic of Vietnam, 1954-1963,” which examined Diệm’s anticommunist and nationalist policies rather than partisan politics. The thesis is no longer under embargo.
Rethinking the Republic of Vietnam
The introduction book begins with the brief anecdote about Rufus Phillips described at the beginning of the prospectus. I use this sketch to introduce readers to the seeming puzzle of the RVN’s domestic politics. I argue that the existing scholarship has not been able to make sense of this politics because scholars have not consulted Vietnamese-language sources or have used inappropriate frameworks for studying the regime. The remainder of the introduction lays out the main arguments of the book, defines anticommunist nationalism, and offers a brief overview of the chapters.
Chapter 1: The Birth of Anticommunist Nationalism, 1920s-1954
Chapter 1 surveys the development of anticommunist nationalism as a distinct trend within the revolutionary movement. The trend coalesced during the Resistance Against France (1945-1954), the almost decade-long struggle following the declaration of independence. The revolutionaries initially allied to fight colonialism, but a violent political schism split the movement between the communists and the anticommunists nationalists. The latter included seven main groups and numerous unaffiliated activists. The anticommunists were too divided to mount a unified challenge to the communists, and some activists even chose to ally with the French and to support the French-sponsored State of Vietnam in order to have a free hand in fighting the communists. In 1953, the anticommunists briefly came together at two political congresses and articulated a shared vision based on the ideas of independence, unity, and democracy. These three ideals henceforth became the basis for asserting and contesting political legitimacy in anticommunist politics. The chapter ends with Diệm’s appointment to the premiership of the State of Vietnam, the forerunner of the RVN, in spring 1954.
Chapter 2: The Quest for National Unity, 1954-1955
Chapter 2 examines the first ten months of Diệm’s tenure as prime minister of the State of Vietnam. This tumultuous period was punctuated by a civil-military crisis, armed rebellions by the political parties in central Vietnam, the sect crisis in the south, and the Battle of Saigon in spring 1955. Most scholars have analyzed this period in terms of Diệm’s consolidation of power, but this chapter reinterprets the successive crises as the result of a disagreement over the meaning of national unity. Diệm and his followers understood unity to mean that all anticommunists should submit to his leadership. The premier sidelined his rivals and demanded that they give up their territories and armies. Most other anticommunists believed unity meant cooperation between parties and coalition-building and insisted that the Diemists share power within the framework of a national union government. The disagreement erupted in violence and marked the beginning of a second schism that divided Diệm and rival anticommunists.
Chapter 3: The Debate on Democracy, 1955-1956
Chapter 3 explores the constitutional transition that took place between the Battle of Saigon and the promulgation of the constitution in October 1956. During the battle, some sect elements allied with Diệm and pressured him to implement democracy in accordance with the vision of 1953, and the issue dominated politics for the next year and a half. The anticommunists all favored some form of representative government but feared that popular elections and civil liberties would make the government vulnerable to communist infiltration. The logical solution was to institute partial democracy, though the apparent consensus on the solution concealed deep differences. The Diemists wanted to dominate the government, concentrate power in the executive, and create a weak, rubber-stamp legislature. Diệm’s sectarian allies and the independent northern activists Phan Quang Đán and Nguyễn Văn Cẩn were more liberal, though no anticommunist favored a full-fledged liberal democracy. Diệm ignored his critics and forcibly suppressed the sects. He renamed the regime the Republic of Vietnam, declared himself president, and promulgated a constitution that enshrined authoritarian power in the highest law of the land. Diệm emerged stronger after the constitutional process but at the cost of widening the schism between the anticommunists.
Chapter 4: Diversity and Fragmentation, 1956-1959
The late 1950s was a time of flourishing political diversity and severe fragmentation within anticommunist nationalism. Although leaders and activists continued to subscribe to the shared vision, the various groups worked separately, interpreted the vision differently, and developed competing programs. The result was a rich profusion of ideas and increased competition between the anticommunists. The chapter examines three opposition groups and the Diemists. Some oppositionists continued to call for a multi-party national union government and demanded a second constitutional transition. Others argued that the current regime should fully democratize and introduce civil liberties, and still others championed national reunification with the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and democratization throughout the country. But Diệm countered that genuine democracy started with economic reforms and insisted that political liberalization had to be postponed. He and his partisans continued to monopolize the government and repressed the other groups. The fissures between anticommunist nationalists played out most dramatically in the legislative elections of 1959, which pitted the Diemists and the oppositionists against each other as well as members of their own camp.
Chapter 5: Rupture or Reconciliation? 1960-1962
The growth of the communist insurgency frames the last chapter about the continued disagreements on democracy and national unity. All anticommunists wanted to halt the growth of the communist movement and to strengthen the RVN, but the Diemists and the oppositionists disagreed on whether political liberalization would help or hinder the cause. Many activists believed that the insurgency made it imperative for them to unite against the common enemy. Yet they clashed over the meaning of unity and struggled to develop a program that would be acceptable to all camps. The paratroopers’ coup of November 1960 revealed the depth of the schism between the Diemists and the opposition when some members of the latter endorsed the putsch. After the coup attempt collapsed, Diệm ordered the mass arrests of his rivals. The president resisted reforms because he believed the defeat of the coup amounted to an endorsement of his politics. In contrast, moderates on both sides of the schism interpreted the incident as an alarming symptom of disunity and they tried to breach the divide by proposing centrist programs of limited, gradual liberalization. The failure of these efforts ended the last hope of mending relations between the anticommunists.. The chapter ends with the decline of the anticommunist opposition and the Americans’ tacit endorsement of authoritarianism
The Ideals of 1953, the Revolution of 1963, and Beyond
The conclusion recapitulates the main arguments of the book and examines in the persistence of the shared vision in the political unrest and the overthrow of Diệm in 1963. The book ends by suggesting that the RVN is best studied as a part of Vietnamese history and within the comparative politics of Southeast Asia.
Possible Expert Readers:
Name and contact information:
[Name of full professor]
[Name of department]
[Address, phone number, and email]
Qualifications:
[List of the professor’s publications]
Name and contact information:
[Name of associate professor]
[Name of department]
[Address, phone number, and email]
Qualifications:
[List of the professor’s publications]
Previous Association with Possible Expert Readers:
I know both [full professor] and [associate professor], but I have never studied with them, written reviews of their work, or served on the same conference panel as them.
Notes
- 1. Rufus Philipps, Why Vietnam Matters (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2008),7-15, citation on 15. ↩︎
- 2. Olga Dror, trans., Mourning Headband for Hue by Nhã Ca (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014); Nguyễn Công Luận, Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012); Keith Taylor, ed., Voices from the Second Republic of South Vietnam, 1967-1975 (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2014). ↩︎
- 3. Olga Dror, Making Two Vietnams: War and Youth Identities, 1965-1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). ↩︎
- 4. Philip Catton, Diem’s Final Failure: Prelude to America’s War in Vietnam (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2002); Jessica Chapman, Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013); Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013); Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Geoffrey Stewart, Vietnam’s Lost Revolution: Ngô Đình Diệm’s Failure to Build an Independent Nation, 1955-1963 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). ↩︎