Book Review: The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam by Christopher Goscha

Abstract

the insularity of Irish revisionist debates, citing Ian McBride’s recent criticism of some historians of Irish history for failing to place their work within wider theoretical or comparative frameworks (p.169). However, a weakness of Morrison’s book is that it too suffers from insularity. The extensive reflections in the last two chapters on the entrenched, sometimes personalised, disputes between historians of Ireland risk losing the interest of the military historian or general reader (especially those coming to the topic for the first time). A promising discussion of Alistair Thomson’s work on the ANZAC myth is not developed, neither is a brief reference to the killing of prisoners during the First World War (pp.170, 127). The reader does not learn how the killing at Kilmichael resembles or deviates from other guerrilla campaigns or close combat experiences. The scholarship of Erella Grassiani and Anthony King on combat motivation, cohesion and close combat would have been a good starting point. Retrospective accounts of false surrenders have also characterised controversial killings during the NATO-led campaign in Afghanistan (and many other conflicts). Nonetheless, Morrison has provided an outstanding excavation of one of the most contested days in Ireland’s war for independence.