In "Tours of Vietnam," Scott Laderman demonstrates how tourist
literature has shaped Americans' understanding of Vietnam and
projections of United States power since the mid-twentieth century.
Laderman analyzes portrayals of Vietnam's land, history, culture,
economy, and people in travel narratives, U.S. military guides, and
tourist guidebooks, pamphlets, and brochures. Whether implying that
Vietnamese women were in need of saving by "manly" American
military power or celebrating the neoliberal reforms Vietnam
implemented in the 1980s, ostensibly neutral guides have repeatedly
represented events, particularly those related to the Vietnam War,
in ways that favor the global ambitions of the United States.
Tracing a history of ideological assertions embedded in travel
discourse, Laderman analyzes the use of tourism in the Republic of
Vietnam as a form of Cold War cultural diplomacy by a fledgling
state that, according to one pamphlet published by the Vietnamese
tourism authorities, was joining the "family of free nations." He
chronicles the evolution of the Defense Department pocket guides to
Vietnam, the first of which, published in 1963, promoted military
service in Southeast Asia by touting the exciting opportunities
offered by Vietnam to sightsee, swim, hunt, and water-ski. Laderman
points out that, despite historians' ongoing and well-documented
uncertainty about the facts of the 1968 "Hue Massacre" during the
National Liberation Front's occupation of the former imperial
capital, the incident often appears in English-language guidebooks
as a settled narrative of revolutionary Vietnamese atrocity. And
turning to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, he notes
that, while most contemporary accounts concede that the United
States perpetrated gruesome acts of violence in Vietnam, many
tourists and travel writers still dismiss the museum's display of
that record as little more than "propaganda."
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