Michael Anklin

This year student Michael Anklin was awarded a Chateaubriand Fellowship by the French government. This award will allow him to conduct nine months of research in France.

His dissertation will investigate how local French officials in Vietnam, French and Foreign Legion soldiers on the ground, and French civilians in Vietnam experienced the decolonization of French Indochina. How did the French local officials view the purpose of the French Empire and their role in defending it, and what role did various ideologies (i.e. nationalism, imperialism, militarism, French universalism, democracy, and communism) play during the decolonization? How did racism and cultural imperialism influence the construction and perpetuation of these ideologies? Besides addressing these issues, Anklin will examine how a particular "culture of warfare" developed during the decolonization of French Indochina and how this culture laid the groundwork for the French modus operandi in Algeria and the experience of the United States in Vietnam.

Anklin explains that his aim "is not to write military history but rather a cultural history of a colonial war." Thus, his dissertation aims to present a political, cultural, and intellectual history of the decolonization of French Indochina and will investigate the material, discursive, and symbolic manufacture of ideological justifications of violence.