Soldered states: nation-building in Germany and Vietnam 9781526135278

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Soldered Soldered states states Nation-building Nation-buildinginin Germany Germanyand andVietnam Vietnam

Claire ClaireSutherland Sutherland

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Soldered states: nation-building in Germany and Vietnam

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Soldered states: nationbuilding in Germany and Vietnam Claire Sutherland

Manchester University Press Manchester

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Copyright Copyright © © Claire Claire Sutherland Sutherland 2010 2010 The The right right of ofClaire ClaireSutherland Sutherlandtotobe beidentified identifiedasasthe theauthor of this work has been asserted herwork in accordance with the by Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. author ofbythis has been asserted her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Published by Manchester University Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA,Press UK Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in Canada exclusively by and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z2is available from the British Library A catalogue BC, record for this book Distributed in the United States exclusively by Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Palgrave Macmillan, 175book FifthisAvenue, New York, A catalog record for this available from the the Library of Congress A catalogue record for this book is available from British Library NY 10010, USA ISBN 978 7190 7931 3 hardback Library of 0Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 9122 3 paperback ISBN 978 0 7190 7931 3 hardback First published by Manchester University Press 2010 First published 2010 First digital paperback edition published 2014 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10

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The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or any third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset in Minion by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, UK

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From Bách Khoa to Berlin

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Contents

Note on sources List of maps and figures List of abbreviations Introduction

page viii ix x 1

1

Spatialising states

13

2

Nation and region

36

3

Iconic cities

79

4

Museum myths

99

5

Textbook heroes

130

Conclusion

160

References Index

171 189

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Note on sources

Vietnamese diacritics are used throughout the text except for names commonly used in English, such as Ho Chi Minh, Viet Minh and Hanoi, or names of Vietnamese authors writing or being cited without diacritics. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the author’s own. Parts of the manuscript draw on the following published articles: © ‘Repression and resistance? French colonialism as seen through Vietnamese museums’ in Museum and Society (2005) Vol. 3 (3), pp. 153–66; ‘Conceptual combat: twentieth-century Vietnamese nationalism’ in Burszta, W., Kamusella, T. & Wojciechowski, S. (eds) (2006) Nationalisms Across the Globe, School of Humanities and Journalism, Poznan, pp. 125–45; ‘Reconciling nation and region: Vietnamese nation-building and ASEAN regionalism’ in Political Studies (2009) Vol. 57 (2), pp. 313–36; ‘Europe and post-Cold War nationalism’ in Larres, K. (ed.) (2009) A Companion to Europe since 1945, Blackwell.

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Maps and figures

Maps 1 2 3 4

Map of two Germanies, 1949–90 Map of two Vietnams, 1954–76 Map of Germany in the European Union Map of Vietnam in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

page xi xii xiii xiv

Figures 3.1 3.2

3.3 4.1 4.2 5.1

Monument to Ernst Thälmann, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, December 2007 page 91 Reconstructed section of wall seen from the Berlin Wall Documentation Centre, Bernauer Straße, Berlin, December 2007 92 Hotel advertisement highlighting two facets of Berlin’s cityscape, December 2007 95 Decorative frieze in the grounds of Hanoi’s B52 Museum, August 2007 119 Hanoi street scene with a poster depicting the ‘≠iên Biên Phu’ ˙ of the skies’, August 2007 120 VCP billboard, Gia Lâm District, Hanoi, c. 2005. Photograph courtesy of J. R. Friederichsen 145

All photographs by the author.

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Abbreviations

AFTA ASEAN DHM DRV EFEO EU FAZ FRG GDR HCMC MdG PDS PRC RVN SED SPD SRV VCP

ASEAN Free Trade Area Association of Southeast Asian Nations Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) Democratic Republic of Vietnam Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient (French School of Asian Studies) European Union Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Federal Republic of Germany German Democratic Republic Ho Chi Minh City Museum für deutsche Geschichte (Museum of German History) Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Party of Democratic Socialism) People’s Republic of China Republic of Vietnam Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social Democratic Party) Socialist Republic of Vietnam Vietnamese Communist Party

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Map 1 Map of two Germanies, 1949–90

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Map 2 Map of two Vietnams, 1954–76

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Map 3 Map of Germany in the European Union

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Map 4 Map of Vietnam in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

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Introduction1

City and state Stacks of merchandise spill out onto Hanoi’s pavements. An electricity pylon doubles as a stall, draped with wares like a Christmas tree. Smokers and tea drinkers congregate around refreshment stands, a cluster of low stools surrounding a tray of drinks and sweets. Women traders weave through traffic, swinging shoulder baskets piled with flowers and fruit, artfully stacked underwear or kitchenware. Others sit between their baskets, choosing a spot of tarmac at a crossroads rather than the already crowded pavement. Space is at such a premium in Hanoi’s old quarter that people take turns to ply their trade at different times of day; a breakfast soup seller is relayed by a lunchtime purveyor of barbecued pork, followed by a beer and dried squid stand in the evening. Everything from stuffed toys to spare parts is packed away under the rafters at night. Sudden police raids swooping on street traders and other irregular activities sometimes interrupt this daily rhythm. Hanoi’s People’s Committee regularly threatens to ban street trading altogether, which it justifies in terms of easing traffic congestion and improving the city’s image, especially to tourists (Agence France Presse 2008). These ‘clean-up operations’ are particularly rigorous when Hanoi plays host to an international event, such as political summits or sporting competitions (Jensen & Peppard 2007, 232–3). At other times, arrangements may possibly be made with local administrators, although their tolerance does not guarantee that of a higher-level authority (Koh 2006, 12). The street can be taken as a metaphor for the fluidity of Vietnam’s state–society relations; international, state, city and local actors forming a pulsating network of daily activity. This dynamism is one theme of this book. There is a striking contrast between Hanoi and the use of city space in Europe, Germany in particular. One German researcher has observed how Hanoian pavements are far more than a Gehsteig, or footpath, but also a place for squatting, sitting, buying, cooking, eating, working and parking (Körte 2001, 142). In Vietnam, pedestrians themselves are often relegated to the road edge, which they share with gutters and small mounds of rubbish. The nightly

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refuse collection adds dustcarts to the already crowded scene. Even the wide pavements of Hanoi’s colonial quarter are largely taken up by rows of parked motorcycles, café terraces, fruit stalls and street hawkers, leaving only a narrow passage for pedestrians. In general, the limits and boundaries of road usage familiar to Germans – pavements for pedestrians, roads for vehicles – are illadapted to Vietnam. The very concept of jay-walking, frowned upon in Germany, makes little sense in the Vietnamese context, where crossing the road in the middle of oncoming traffic is an art in itself. Instead, participants in the street scene are constantly confronted with a multitude of competing claims on public space. All kinds of trades are carried out directly on the pavement rather than in the narrow confines of a property, which may at once serve for eating, sleeping, storage and display. On any street, for instance, welders crouch around an ornamental gate, machines are repaired on the spot, and a signmaker’s offcuts soon litter the ground. Every street corner is occupied by xe ôm, or motorbike taxis, whose drivers lounge on their vehicles watching for clients. The pavement is thus full of obstacles, but in constant flux too, as traders and wares, clients and passers-by come and go throughout the day. The kerbside is also a fluid space. Motorbike drivers may mount it to park, or view goods, or manoeuvre merchandise into place. Again, the multifaceted and shifting cityscape can be seen as a microcosm of all but the most authoritarian states, whose governments pursue economic development, regional integration and popular legitimacy through a continuous nationbuilding project. Individuals accommodate themselves with city and state authorities, which in turn aim to acquit themselves of international obligations. The way in which governments reconcile such national and international commitments ideologically is a second theme of this book. Hanoi’s streets appear chaotic and cacophonous, and clashes between drivers regularly take place. However, they are also a product of accommodation between manifold actors and activities. In the realm of traffic law, for instance, rights of way are not always respected, and random checks may well involve paying bribes to traffic police. That is not to say that segregation and regulation do not occur. Vietnamese drivers reluctantly started to wear helmets after safety legislation came into force in late 2007, for instance. Parking on pavements is often fee-paying and some public spaces are cordoned off. The vast majority of Vietnamese residences are also delimited by a front fence which remains locked in the daytime, or if the house abuts the street, a sliding gate across the doorway. Guards stand in front of embassy compounds and at the gates to Hanoi’s former citadel, now army property. The government buildings around Ba ≠ình square, where Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence in 1945 and his embalmed body is now officially revered, are also patrolled. Such officially controlled spaces provide a focus for Vietnamese nation-building in the capital city, a place awash with architectural and monumental symbols of state power

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and ideology. Their regimented, sometimes solemn feel contrasts with many of the lively street scenes described above, but in the evening this boundary is also breached. As Hanoians congregate for sport and relaxation, state ceremonial gives way to popular recreation. The way in which nation-building ideology is expressed in cityscapes, together with city-dwellers’ response to that message, is a third theme of this book. Alongside Vietnam, it focuses on another case of an apparently divided nation and now ‘soldered state’, namely Germany. The rebranding of Berlin from a divided, Cold War ‘frontier town’ to the capital of unified Germany plays a key role in government-led nation-building. Berlin has been described as ‘the city where, more than any other city, German nationalism and modernity have been staged and restaged, represented and contested’ (Till 2005, 5). Rebuilding post-wall Berlin as a modern capital and a symbol of the unified German state has been marketed in terms of the city’s cosmopolitanism. This has gone hand in hand with a certain architectural eclecticism, which purports to express a sense of Berlin’s colourful past and its future potential, while preserving the traditional character of its neighbourhoods (Till 2005, 46). The building boom is supposed to indicate social renewal while ensuring that both East and West Berliners can – literally and figuratively – find themselves in their transformed city. Buildings and monuments are important points of orientation to the past and its commemoration. For instance, years of controversy surrounded the eventual decision to tear down the Palast der Republik, the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) flagship cultural centre. It stood as an incongruous reminder of communism among the neo-classical buildings lining Unter den Linden, now reinstated as the city’s central boulevard after having ended abruptly at the Berlin Wall. The debate surrounding appropriate visitor behaviour at the Holocaust memorial, inaugurated in 2005, is another case in which the meaning of symbolic space is negotiated between individuals, communities and the state (Grassman 2005). Further examples of Berlin’s symbolic importance are the tourist attractions commemorating Checkpoint Charlie, which was the erstwhile border crossing between American and Soviet zones of occupation, and the site of fatal shootings. Some of these have attracted criticism as crass commodifications of a painful past, which do little to honour the memory of those who died (Hawley 2005; Sälter 2007, 41). These examples show how the memories embedded in Berlin’s cityscape continue to be evocative – and divisive. The way in which nation-building ideology has sought to overcome division in two cases of ‘soldered states’ is the final, core theme of this book. Nation and state Nationalist ideology has shaped the way in which today’s world is organised. Political maps are divided into differently coloured states, often called ‘nation-

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states’. This term suggests that the nation is intimately linked to the state as a territorial entity and a reservoir of power. However, the concept of nation refers to the cognitive, legitimating basis of authority, whereas the state embodies its territorial and institutional dimension. As the primary focus of nationalist ideology, the nation is a way of justifying where borders are drawn and a means of contesting those borders. In other words, it serves both to underpin the legitimacy of modern states and the conflicting claims of substate nationalists. State governments and the parties from which they are formed are defined here as the agents of ideology. They are key actors in the present analysis, and must be distinguished from a wider range of state structures and institutions. Nevertheless, the nation-building ideology they propound serves to maintain state legitimacy and, by extension, their own sphere of authority. Nation-building ideology thereby goes beyond nationalist party ideologies, examined elsewhere (Sutherland 2006), in its aim of legitimating the state itself. The present study takes the conceptual triad of nation, state and legitimacy as its starting point, with governments understood as agents of a nation-building ideology seeking to link all three. It therefore pays little heed to inter-party rivalry or strategy, except where this serves to explain an ideological shift by a given government. According to Michael Freeden (1998, 750), nationalism is a thin-centred ideology, as it has few immutable characteristics beyond prioritising the nation. A world organised into nation-states testifies to the all-pervasiveness of ‘thin’ nationalism. This does not lead to the analytical redundancy of the concept, however. That the existence of a given nation-state should be so well established as to constitute undisputed ‘common sense’ does not make it unproblematic or somehow exempt from study in nationalist terms. On the contrary, it permits a clearer and more dispassionate categorisation of possible nationalist variants. Indeed, case studies of states are particularly illuminating, as they embody successful nationalist mobilisation. Nationalist symbols, institutions and rhetoric have been internalised to such an extent that they are taken for granted, the ultimate goal of any nation-building project; ‘It is perhaps not too surprising that nationalism should come to mean identification with the state rather than loyalty to the nation . . . Contrary to the nomenclature, the “nation-building” school has in fact been dedicated to building viable states’ (Connor 1984, 40–1, emphasis in original). The core principles of nationalism – the prioritisation of the nation, its positive valorisation, its institutional expression, its embodiment of territory and tradition and the emotional attachment it engenders – legitimate and perpetuate the current political division of the globe into states (Freeden 1998, 751–2). Accordingly, the common sense understanding of the nation-state is rarely revolutionised with a change of government. All political parties use ideology in an attempt to legitimate and consolidate their bids for power, but

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their political project is often less ambitious than a complete redefinition of the nation. Most parties will support and work within accepted parameters of the status quo, thus distinguishing them from nationalist parties in the strict sense, which seek to set aside the prevailing notion of nation-state in favour of their alternative national discourse (Sutherland 2005b, 145). Theirs is a revolutionary project in that its core aim is to create a new nation-state rather than implement reforms within existing boundaries. Nation-building, on the other hand, describes the nationalist project of governments, the aspiration to equate nation and state: ‘Because in modernity national legitimation is the most prestigious form of relating people to the state, once the nationalist principle was unfurled, states had no alternative but to pursue policies of nation-building’ (Llobera 1994, 106). This book examines these questions in the case of two ‘soldered states’, which face the additional challenge of overcoming apparent national division. The concept of the nation is notoriously nebulous. It has been described as ‘one of the most puzzling and tendentious items in the political lexicon’ (Tilly 1975, 6). One definition which has proved extremely popular is the nation as an ‘imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’ (Anderson 1991, 6). According to Benedict Anderson, it is imagined in the sense that the nation is too large for all its members ever to meet in person, but yet they still share a sense of belonging. This may be due to a belief in common ancestry, or cultural markers such as heritage, history, language and religion. Some national communities emphasise these ethnic or cultural markers over civic ones, such as shared rights, obligations and democratic values. In turn, this will affect the ease with which one can become a member of a nation, or whether birth is the only passport to entry. The actual existence of commonalities – and these can rarely be enumerated objectively – is less important than the ‘psychological bond’ (Connor 1978, 379) uniting members of the community. This may well be articulated negatively in terms of common opposition to an ‘Other’, often perceived as hostile, oppressive or inferior. Definitions of the nation are articulated and contested by nationalist movements, states and political parties alike, all of which try to mobilise national identity for a variety of political ends. At a more abstract level, definitions of nationalism are linked to theoretical approaches. These can be divided into ‘three conceptual languages, which see nationalism as, respectively, an instinct (primordialism), an interest (situationalism) and an ideology (constructivism)’ (Brown 2000, 5). The first focuses on the belief in common origins, the second sees the nation as a strategic means of pursuing group interests, whereas the third considers it a tool used by elites to legitimate political projects, notably states. In principle and practice, most manifestations of nationalism draw on all three aspects. That is, they profess to speak for a long-standing community as part of a political

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ideology, which either aims to achieve greater autonomy or lend authority to state power, as a ‘limited and sovereign’ territorial entity. This last element of Benedict Anderson’s above-quoted definition is what distinguishes a nation from ethnic groups, which also claim to have ‘distinctive attributes’ (Brown 2000, 6) but do not necessarily express these as a political ideology or demands for self-determination linked to territory. The theoretical debate is relevant today in that many nationalists claim to represent an ancient nation, and demand recognition on that basis. This device is also used in official nationbuilding, as we will go on to see in the case of Vietnam. Nation-building in soldered states This book examines nation-building ideology in the soldered states of Vietnam and Germany. Nation-building is defined as ‘the official attempt to create a homogenous national culture . . . as well as the officially directed mobilization of national consciousness’ (A. D. Smith 1995, 8). Nation-building thus focuses on the official ideology propagated within established nation-states. The nation as an ideological construct and the state as an institutional reservoir of power are carefully distinguished. That is, the nation is taken to mean a creation of nationalist ideology designed to foster state legitimacy, and is placed within a regional, understood as supranational, context. Regional structures, here the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), are not characterised as being superimposed on the nation-state system, as some discussions of ‘multi-level governance’ would have it. This conception of layered, or ‘nested’ (Marks, cited in Bache and Flinders 2005, 3) territorial authorities is judged too inflexible to capture the complexity and dynamism of contemporary power relations. The power cables lining the streets of the Vietnamese capital, wrapping around pylons and bundling into outdoor meters, both legal and illegal, are a more apt metaphor here; ‘No single control panel or synoptic board brings all these flows together in a single place at any one time . . . Skeins of coloured lines reflect the scattered activities of millions’ (LaTour, no date, no page). In what follows, the empirical analysis of cityscapes and museums will illustrate how ‘nation buildings’, taken literally this time, cement the dominance of a given nationalist ideology by representing a particular interpretation of a nation and its history. Although these seek to fix an official discourse of the nation, this can always be subverted, reinforced or questioned by individuals’ responses, however. The study of cityscapes and museums is complemented by an investigation into selected history textbooks as examples of national narratives in two nation-states chosen for both their unexpected similarities and substantial differences. The concept of the nation in Germany and Vietnam has weathered many changes since 1945, including national division, the ideological challenge of

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Introduction

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communism and the demands of regional integration. This book compares these three, shared features, in order to explore their effect on nation-building in these soldered states. How did governments seek to legitimise their truncated states when these no longer corresponded to the ‘common sense’ nation, and what were the implications for nation-building after unification? How did the governments of the GDR and Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) reconcile communist and nationalist ideologies, and how did this subsequently affect nation-building in united Germany and Vietnam? Finally, how does the added dimension of regional integration interact with nation-building in each case? In short, how do governments in these soldered states go about overcoming division and (re)building the nation? Insights into these questions will help to gain a clearer picture of the factors influencing government-led nationalism, or nation-building. There is no assumption of homogeneity across cases, nor of any single, unifying discourse. On the contrary, variations must be accounted for before any common trends can be identified. Vietnam and Germany are both soldered states and, according to their dominant nation-building ideologies, reunited nations. The period after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 coincided with the early years of đổi mới, or renovation, a process of limited economic opening and ‘renewal’ in Vietnam. Governments had to respond to a rapidly regionalising and globalising world, while working to legitimise their soldered states domestically through nationbuilding. This post-Cold War climate contrasts with the combination of communism and nation-building propounded in the GDR and the DRV. Vietnam was unified shortly after the fall of Saigon, on 30 April 1975, which signalled the end of the Vietnam–American war and the extension of Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) control to what had been the southern Republic of Vietnam (RVN). The VCP’s subsequent rule can be divided into two broad phases. After ten more years of ‘socialist revolution’ directed from Hanoi, the gradual introduction of economic and political liberalisation from 1986 onwards was partly a means of limiting the impact of Soviet reforms on Vietnam’s communist system (Gainsborough 1996). In Europe, however, President Gorbachev’s policies helped to precipitate the rapid demise of the GDR, leading to German unification in 1990. Since then, Germany has been led by the conservative, so-called ‘chancellor of German unity’, Helmut Kohl, the social democratic proponent of post-war normalisation, Gerhard Schröder, and the head of an uneasy alliance between the main parties of left and right, Angela Merkel. As will be shown below, there has nevertheless been some continuity in attitudes towards German unity. Official nation-building can be grasped through the symbolism of the post1990 ‘Berlin republic’, as conveyed by its capital city and its national museum. Furthermore, a co-authored Franco-German textbook gives some insight into how contemporary historiography interprets the German nation within its

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European context. This is important because an explicit goal of West German leaders was to anchor the country within a regional integration project, in stark opposition to the Soviet sphere of influence so central to the GDR’s raison d’être. In the Vietnamese case, VCP ideology can be linked even more clearly to officially sanctioned commemoration and education, given pervasive government influence in these policy areas. Parallels between the soldered states are accompanied by a great many differences, such as Vietnam’s experience of colonialism, Germany’s Nazi legacy and respective stages of economic development. These aspects form an integral part of the analysis offered, as any comparison must incorporate contextual factors. The problem of accounting for difference, a major pitfall in comparative politics, has been usefully theorised in terms of ‘conceptual stretching’ and ‘conceptual travelling’ (Sartori, 1970). Conceptual stretching is defined as the inappropriate use of a concept, whereas conceptual travelling can be understood as applying a concept to a new case. Nationalism’s wide range of connotations highlights the problems inherent in conceptual travelling, which always runs the risk of treating quite different phenomena as equivalent: ‘The task of the comparativist, at this level, is to pinpoint real functional equivalences in order to control and master distortions raised by inevitable contextual differences’ (Dogan & Pelassy 1984, 60). Awareness of conceptual travelling is thus built into the present analysis, which focuses on the tensions inherent in regional integration, national unification and ideological orientation. In sum, official nation-building ideology is understood here as the government-led construction of national identity, memory and history in order to promote an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991). This ideology aims to maintain legitimacy within territorial limits, those of the state, and defines the limits of national belonging accordingly. The direct effects on would-be immigrants and citizens are not necessarily fixed, coherent, or impervious to challenge, however (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). Transnational migrant flows, for instance, continually take place across more or less porous borders, which are created and regulated by a range of national and supranational actors. If the nation-state construct is indeed ‘diversifying, developing, not dying’ (Mann 1993), then, how does nation-building ideology in soldered states incorporate regional integration? The German and Vietnamese experiences are similar in using regional integration not only to improve their international standing, but also their domestic legitimacy. However, regionalism has had a more limited impact on Vietnamese nation-building than in Germany, due to the very different nature of the respective integration projects. For historical reasons, positive identification with the nation has also been promoted much more consistently in Vietnam. Neither German nor Vietnamese governments have succeeded in effacing national division, for a host of historical, economic, psychological, sociological

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and even climatic reasons. A more nuanced national identity may offer one way of overcoming ongoing ‘walls in the head’, although ideological constructs are still likely to diverge from many people’s lived experience. Comparison of Vietnam and Germany shows that despite contextual disparities, common trends emerge in governments’ handling of advantages and obstacles to nationbuilding. Both soldered states face the same challenge of post-unification state legitimation. Their governments also use both nationalist and regionalist narratives in pursuit of that goal, offering insights into the ideological construction of communities in the context of past, divergent development. In sum, the German and Vietnamese cases have been chosen for their shared experience of national division, communism and participation in regional integration projects, namely the EU and ASEAN. These themes are examined through empirical examples of nation-building ideology – namely selected cityscapes, museums and textbooks – with an analytical focus on national icons, heroes and myths as nodal points of nation-building. Structure of the book Chapter 1 sets out from the premise that within the ‘nation-state’ construct, the hyphen linking nation and state represents legitimacy. The state needs the nation to legitimate its authority, through the legal fiction of popular sovereignty in a democracy, or via representatives of a national community, such as a single political party or an authoritarian leader. Contemporary phenomena including globalisation, immigration and regionalisation have led to claims of a so-called ‘crisis of the hyphen’ (Anderson, cited in McCrone 1998, 173), where the link between the state and its legitimating nation is weakened by a dilution of community identity and/or state authority. State sovereignty is variously described as being pooled, transferred or lost through international treaties or the intervention of market forces in a ‘zero-sum game’ (Geddes 2004, 40; Sutherland 2005b). These dynamics are difficult to grasp, let alone measure in the case of abstract, theoretical concepts, the meaning of which may vary according to political culture and expediency. Chapter 1 proposes ways of thinking about contemporary nation-building in the context of national reunification and regional integration. Chapter 2 puts the cases in context, tracing the discourse of national unity propounded by the two rival Vietnams and Germanies during the Cold War, and their impact on the nation-building ideologies of both unified states. As agents of nation-building, the Vietnamese and German governments both complement this legitimating agenda with a regionalist ideology. Governments not only have to consider the imagined worlds beyond their state’s territorial frontiers, but also how these very frontiers are being increasingly shot through by technological and financial flows, as well as migrants, various media and

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environmental pressures (Appadurai 1990). The chapter discusses how ASEAN has united to protect its members from relative global insignificance, with Vietnam showing commitment to the intergovernmental organisation since its accession in 1995. On the other hand, Germany has always been a linchpin of European integration, due to post-war peacemaking, but its pro-European discourse has come under attack since German unification. Chapter 3 looks at how nation-building in unified Germany and Vietnam set about overcoming decades of division by ‘forgetting’ one-half of that experience. The capital cities of Hanoi and Berlin are both highly representative of a nation-building project. Berlin’s erstwhile division is a particularly poignant example of a soldered city within a soldered state. The discussion highlights iconic reminders of that division, such as the snaking scar of the Berlin Wall, and its place within the cityscape. The city’s streets and parks are also privileged sites for negotiating nation-building. Similarly, Hanoi is the gathering point for a host of national symbols, both historical and mythological, built and dynamic. In contrast to daily street life, for instance, the monumentality of Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, the presidential palace and the central war memorial on Ba ≠ình square officially represent the nation for both foreign and domestic consumption. Communism provides a pivotal marker of nation-building as the accepted state ideology in Vietnam and the vilified ‘Other’ in Germany. The following chapter continues this theme, with specific reference to history museums as purveyors of national narratives. Chapter 4 examines the interplay of nationalism and communism. National history museums are used to explore the compatibility, or not, of these ideologies and the influence of communism on nation-building today. It looks first at the German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM)) which opened as a national museum for a united Germany in 2006, incorporating the historic building and collections of the GDR’s former national museum. The way in which links to the former communist regime are variously depicted and downplayed shows the interplay of nationalism and communism in the German case. In turn, Hanoi’s National History Museum leads the visitor through a linear account of Vietnamese history, culminating in a huge painting of Ho Chi Minh’s 1945 declaration of independence on Ba ≠ình square. Not only does the square provide a monumental centre for Hanoi as a capital city today, but the events of 1945 also symbolise a defining theme of official nation-building, namely a struggle for independence lasting over two millennia. In the Vietnamese case, the VCP is seamlessly integrated into a chronological legitimating narrative, which largely omits competing discourses of conflict and division. Chapter 5 uses history textbooks to examine the construction of national heroes and anti-heroes as a nation-building tool. This takes up the theme of national myths addressed in chapter 4. Hostile invasion is a constantly

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Introduction

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recurring theme in the history of Vietnam. Although it is undoubtedly the case that feudal armies repeatedly repelled incursions by Chinese and Mongol dynasties, enduring a millennium of Chinese domination, a century of French colonialism and thirty years of war against French and US armies, the myth of Vietnamese victimhood is only a partial story. Official history textbooks, which highlight much the same heroic events and figures as Hanoi’s History Museum, downplay or omit episodes where the Vietnamese could be cast as invaders, such as the southward expansion of imperial dynasties into Cham and Khmer lands. At the same time, official narratives posit the overriding national unity of Vietnam and its many ethnic groups. A select band of national heroes are held up as symbols of national solidarity, pride and resistance. Vietnamese nation-building is very much constructed around the imported Westphalian principle of bordered, sovereign nation-states, despite everpresent and increasing transnational flows. Vietnam’s membership of ASEAN since 1995 has been a strategic means of bolstering national sovereignty and legitimacy closely bound up with securing international status on a postcolonial, post-socialist world stage. Germany resembles Vietnam in so far as it saw regional integration as a means of escaping its post-war pariah status and becoming a respected international actor once more. Whereas Vietnam’s communist nationalism and its influence over Laos and Cambodia were considered a security threat by its ASEAN neighbours well into the 1980s, Germany’s legacy of fascism still resonated with its European partners on unification in 1990. This theme is reflected in a joint Franco-German history book published in 2006, which is significant for offering an interpretation of history sanctioned both by Germany and its most important European foe, then friend. Germany’s unification saw the end of its ‘semi-sovereign’ status (Katzenstein 1987). With the election of Gerhard Schröder in 1998 came a generation of post-war politicians who were less wary of being assertive on the world stage. Despite being a founding member of the European Communities in 1957 and developing a solid Franco-German partnership for peace, the end of Cold War divisions in Europe created a strong impetus for locking Germany into a supranational political, economic and security framework, leading to the 1992 Treaty on European Union (also known as the Treaty of Maastricht). The treatment of European integration in the textbook offers insights into an officially sanctioned, bilateral interpretation of contemporary history directed at a young audience. Whatever changes the macro-level forces of globalisation and regionalisation may bring about, the regionalist ideologies of Vietnamese and German governments are subordinate to their nation-building project. Although dynamic transnational flows such as migration and diaspora communities may reconfigure national self-understanding to a limited extent, governments continue to pursue state legitimation through nation-building. This common

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trend is particularly striking in the case of two nation-states which are seeking to overcome national division, but otherwise differ in myriad ways. As soldered states, they have contributed to building regional blocs, but this has ultimately been in order to bolster their own legitimacy rather than pursue a regional project for its own sake. The potentially corrosive effects of globalisation and regionalisation on soldered states are a separate subject of debate, but the ideology underpinning the nation-state construct remains resilient there. Note 1. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for his or her invaluable comments and suggestions.

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Spatialising states1

Street hawkers are ubiquitous in Hanoi, from the illegal ambulant traders who rest their shoulder poles for the time of a sale, to the food stall owners who daily arrange their meagre paraphernalia of pots, bowls and plastic stools on a specific stretch of pavement. Regular customers are familiar with their trading times, after which they make way for the next scene in the shifting streetscape. David Koh (2006, 12) tells the story of Phương, a Hanoian soup seller whose precarious livelihood is caught in a web of patchily enforced state, city and local regulation. She finds her kerbside food stall regularly falling foul of state legislation against pavement hawkers, despite the ‘taxes’ she pays to the ward, the lowest level of administration. Phương’s insecure status is compounded by raids carried out on behalf of city authorities, which tend to happen whenever state-sponsored events like official visits by overseas dignitaries and political summits provoke a city-wide ‘clean-up operation’. She can recover her confiscated chairs and utensils by paying a fine to ward officials, who can do little to help except issue warnings to stay off the pavement at certain hours. When Phương tried to use a police contact to ease her situation, she was referred back to the ward, and only when a local newspaper highlighted her plight did the police instruct ward officials to exercise leniency in her case (Koh 2006, 12). Phương’s story shows that, far from the impression of ordered hierarchy that Vietnam’s one-party state might convey, the shifting constellation of events and authorities emerges as an unpredictable and, to some extent, arbitrary product of circumstance. Given this experience ‘on the ground’, how then do we understand the state system in soldered states, and how does this fit with wider-ranging theories of supranational governance? This chapter tackles these issues, in order to set the flexibility and pragmatism of contemporary nationbuilding within an appropriate conceptual framework. State-building has been defined as ‘the consolidation of national legal systems, national educational systems, national markets – in short, the reorganization of economy, society, and culture’ (Marks 1996, 20). The use of the adjective ‘national’ to describe state activities introduces the parallel process of nation-building, which seeks to make a legitimating link between the state

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and its allegedly coextensive nation. This represents the community-building which goes alongside institution-building. State institutions and national communities can be considered mutually supportive aspects of nation-state discourse; a sense of national belonging serves to legitimate state sovereignty, while state institutions help to define that sense of belonging through official commemoration, citizenship legislation, migration controls and a host of other measures, including warfare, in which sacrificing one’s own life becomes; ‘the extreme heroic form for this suturing together of the individual and the nation’ (Eley 2006, 270). Nation-building continues to be resilient and significant in an era of transnationalism and ‘fraying’ frontiers (Anderson & Bort 1998). Rather than follow Benedict Anderson’s advice to treat nationalism ‘as if it belonged with “kinship” and “religion”, rather than with “liberalism” or “fascism” ’ (Anderson 1991, 5), the present study explicitly classifies it as an ideology, albeit a ‘thin’ one (Freeden 1998). It traces nation-building narratives both in order to underline their enduring hold and to disrupt them. Within this broad theoretical approach, the key concepts of regionalism, sovereignty, legitimacy, discourse and ideology will be examined, as well as the possible methodological pitfalls of ‘conceptual travelling’ (Sartori 1970). How is nation-building ideology, then, adapting to meet the challenges of globalisation and regional integration? The chapter begins by exploring the ideology of regionalism, or the way in which governments conceptualise supranational governance. By way of illustration, it offers a critique of the multilevel governance framework derived from European integration studies, going on to propose an alternative better suited to the relational flows which characterise regional and global exchanges. While postmodern theorists, especially critical geographers, have been riding roughshod over the concept of borders for decades now (Carter 1987, Shields 1991, Law 1999, Whatmore 2002), governments still see the world in international, not cosmopolitan, terms. Borders are breached principally in the minds of analysts and in the actions of trading networks, migrant movements, diaspora communities, and so on. Yet the analysis of nation-building as an ideology is important precisely because it continues to be the lingua franca of world politics, and so cannot be dismissed as outdated. After all, nation-states remain the building blocks of regional blocs: ‘The point is not to erase borders as part of the ideology of a globalized, tricontinental or cosmopolitan world, but to examine how borders are constructed and resisted by both state and non-state actors’ (Callahan 2006, 12). Although today’s Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), to give it its full name, remains a one-party state, the terms ‘post-socialism’, ‘late socialism’ and ‘socialist market economy’ have variously been used to describe its opening up to foreign trade, aid and investment since the late 1980s. There has been little political democratisation to match these economic changes, however, although

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signs of liberalisation, understood as ‘an attempt to maintain the existing political configuration while accommodating new forces’ (Gainsborough 1996, 490) can be discerned. At the same time, the ‘party-state’ (Dixon 2004, 15) should not be understood simply as a static, monolithic, authoritarian construct. This has never been the case, as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) in its various post-Second World War incarnations sought to co-opt different sectors of society into supporting national reform and resistance alike. The authoritarianism of VCP initiatives such as agricultural collectivisation in the 1960s was also tempered by some scope to evade unpopular measures (Luong 2003, 7). As elsewhere, the boundaries between Vietnamese state and society, or the ‘actors and institutions of governance on the one side, and the subjects of governance on the other’ (Koh 2006, 21), are not clear but blurred. Martin Gainsborough (2002) identifies government officials in their role as landowners, a rapidly growing business elite, a salaried middle class as well as the peasantry and rural workers as potential actors in ‘late socialist Vietnam’ (Taylor 2003, 384). To this should be added foreign investors, international donors, non-government organisations, the Vietnamese diaspora, the media, certain religious groups and the more muscular presence of the National Assembly within the government itself. These all have limited input at different levels, from the local, ‘everyday politics’ (Kerkvliet 1995) of village affairs to the realm of high politics. A synthesis of the literature on Vietnamese state–society relations (Kerkvliet 2003, 30) distinguishes the ‘dominating state’ interpretation, which locates decision-making within the top party echelons, from ‘mobilisational corporatism’, which accords greater significance to the influence of mass organisations in managing people’s relations with authority. A third, ‘dialogic’ approach places less emphasis on state capacity and points to the gaps in state control enabling considerable local autonomy and indirect, bottom-up influence. Examples include building regulations (Koh 2006, 14), migration (Hardy 2003b) and religious observance (Malarney 2003). Each approach can illuminate different aspects of the sector under scrutiny; responses to corruption, for instance, have originated at both government and local levels. It can be concluded that the Vietnamese state is ‘multifaceted, multisegmented and multilayered, featuring significant local power structures and inconsistencies’ (Dixon 2004, 16). As Phương’s story highlighted at the beginning of this chapter, popular perceptions of legitimacy vary not just over time (Narine 2004, 428), but may also be ‘patchy’ due to experience of different state sectors. The anthropologists James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta identify two aspects of a phenomenon they call ‘state spatialization: verticality (the state is “above” society) and encompassment (the state “encompasses” its localities)’ (Ferguson & Gupta 2002, 981). They observe that, just as the nation is imagined, or constructed, there is also ‘a taken-for-granted spatial and scalar image of a state

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that both sits above and contains its localities, regions, and communities’ (Ferguson & Gupta 2002, 982). Similarly, Michel Foucault (1991, 91) explicitly identified early treatises on the art of government as seeking ‘to establish a continuity, in both an upwards and a downwards direction’. James Scott (1998, 25), in turn, shows how modern statecraft has used all manner of measurements to render populations ‘legible’. In practice, this is entrenched in everything from organisational hierarchies, through the production of government statistics, to border patrols. For instance, Ferguson and Gupta (2002) highlight bureaucratic practices in India, such as inspection tours and registers, which serve to create a sense of geographical encompassment and vertical supervision. Within the institutional apparatus more generally, these are also key means of gathering the pervasive knowledge characteristic of Foucauldian ‘governmentality’, a concept discussed below (Foucault 1991, 96). Much the same role can be attributed to the census, map and museum, which served to classify colonised peoples for the purposes of imperial administration. The census, for example, in the context of colonial Malaya, reflected the ‘mentalités of the British colonial census-makers’ (Anderson 1991, 164), which left their mark post-independence. The racial and ethnic categories imposed a single classification which did not necessarily correspond to people’s often diffuse and multiple self-identification. Just as bureaucracy promotes state spatialisation, so mapping encourages a sense of boundedness and belonging. Thongchai Winichakul uses the concept of the ‘geo-body’ to show how the kingdom of Siam was constructed from the mid-nineteenth century onwards to conform to the Westphalian principle ‘that a nation exists in the global community of nations’ (Thongchai 1994, 1). The study of history thereby became ‘not so much a matter of discovering fragmented facts as a matter of how to re-member them’ (Thongchai 1994, 140; emphasis added). This evokes the idea of limbs being brought together to build a nation-state, or ‘geo-body.’ The discourse of nationhood developed by Thai monarchs and their British advisers, would later be perpetuated by scholars and through public perceptions of what it means to be Thai (Reynolds 2002). Benedict Anderson’s discussion of mapping is based on Thongchai’s contrast between two-dimensional, scalar representations of space and relational models (Anderson 1991, 171). Similarly, some Chinese maps are also relational in their depiction of the emperor, his capital city and Chinese civilisation as concentric circles floating in a sea of barbarism (Callahan 2006). Such indigenous Thai and Chinese maps reflected an alternative conception of space to the bordered, two-dimensional political maps so familiar in the West, a term used here to mean the ‘ideological systems’ (Ha 2000, 2) of ‘EuroAmerica’ (Callahan 2006, 8).

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The ‘geo-body’ also recalls Foucault’s later work on biopower and governmentality. He evoked a range of procedures used to exert power over a population, creating a ‘whole complex of savoirs’ (Foucault 1991, 103), or knowledge systems that would pervade the ‘governmentalised’ state. Foucault (1991, 93) contrasted this to a legalistic conception of sovereignty exercised primarily over territory, which was dominant in Europe until the sixteenth century. According to this view, the legal retention and management of territory was an end in itself (the central aim for Machiavelli’s Prince was to hold on to his principality). The art of government which began to emerge with the Enlightenment used a wider range of instruments in order to pursue a different goal, however, that of controlling populations. Foucault’s concept of sovereignty does not include the notion of legitimacy which, rather like the absence of ideology in his work, stems from a lack of concern for the agents of power (Sutherland 2005a). Nevertheless, his account of governmentality is useful for understanding a type of power not bounded by territory or vertical hierarchy. Following Benedict Anderson (1991, 163), subsequent chapters will examine selected museums, alongside cityscapes and school textbooks as two other tools of nation-building. This approach draws on the Foucauldian idea of governmentality, with three important provisos. First, it does not seek to ‘cut off the king’s head’ (Barrett 1991, 136), but instead examines how governments use the concept of the sovereign nation, which replaced the actual body of the feudal ruler, as an ideological tool to bolster state legitimacy. Second, far from avoiding the concept of ideology, it plays a central role in the analysis. Ideology is not understood in Marxist terms as the source of false consciousness and capitalist oppression. Instead, it is defined as a system of ideas organised around central, nodal concepts, such as the nation. Third, the analysis accepts that power–knowledge relationships can be diffuse and pervasive, but nevertheless focuses on government actors as agents of ideology. Governments use state institutions for their own ideological ends, but must also incorporate state legitimation into that ideology to ensure their own continued authority. The dominant form of nation-building will thus change with time and circumstance, parties, leaders and policies, but retains state legitimation at its core. Some nation-building methods can be likened to the ‘banal nationalism’ defined by Michael Billig (1995) as taken for granted national markers, which can be relied upon to trump local loyalties in times of crisis. For example, the limp flag can become a fluttering rallying point, the ‘national news’ a vehicle for jingoistic reporting, and the pledge of allegiance a focus of patriotic fervour in schools. Ferguson and Gupta (2002, 989) point to how such state practices are being challenged by a form of ‘transnational governmentality’, however, whereby responsibilities are devolved away from state governments to a variety

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of quangos, public–private partnerships, entrepreneurs and individuals, but also global organisations such as the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and myriad charities. Transnational governmentality characteristically bypasses state governments to create flexible networks of local, voluntary and international actors. This undermines the classic perception of the nation-state in terms of territorial encompassment and a hierarchical verticality starting at the ‘grass roots’. Ferguson and Gupta (2002) destabilise the spatial assumptions underlying Westphalian notions of state sovereignty. Globalisation should not be thought of as heralding or necessitating another, superordinate level of governance. The political implications of globalisation point less in the direction of supranational democratisation (Held 1995) and more towards flexible, transnational communities of interest, which may or may not include state institutions. As the following chapters show, contemporary nation-building co-opts elements from ‘grass roots’ and regional integration projects alike in order to bolster the nation-state construct. That is, it seeks to underpin national legitimacy and therefore state sovereignty by incorporating rival spheres of power into its nation-building rhetoric. This response to the transnational challenge seeks to absorb that challenge into an established model of state spatialisation, for to do otherwise would threaten the myth of nationhood from which state legitimacy derives. The present study investigates the continued impact of nation-building ideology on contemporary politics, both despite and because of the evolving global conjuncture. It focuses on the pervasive, enduring but protean power of nationalist ideology to create communities of belonging, and specifically its power to ‘solder states’. Building on Foucault’s notion of governmentality, the concept of state spatialisation offers a useful starting point, because it looks at the dominant framework within which nationbuilders seek to mobilise people’s loyalties. Regionalism If governance is defined as ‘the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a nation’s affairs’ (United Nations Development Programme, cited in Kerkvliet 2004, 1; emphasis added), then the present global conjuncture suggests it is in governments’ interest to engage in ‘projects like regionalism . . . to accelerate, to modify or occasionally to reverse the direction of social change which processes like globalization and regionalization represent’ (Gamble 2001, 27; see also Palmujoki 2001, 6). In the same way as globalism ‘makes normative claims about a set of social processes called “globalization” ’ (Steger 2005, 6; Hay & Rosamond 2002), regionalism operates at the analytical level of state ideology, rather than the macro-level of regionalisation. Regionalism is an order of discourse (Alvesson & Karremann

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2000) which might present regionalisation as either ‘rescuing’ (Milward 1994) or undermining the nation-state. It combines both the cognitive and policy features of ‘regional awareness and identity’ and ‘state-promoted regional integration’ (Hurrell 1995, 41–3). As a political project interpreting regionalisation processes for domestic consumption, then, the question as to whether actual transfers of sovereignty take place is less important than the symbolic roles played by the likes of the EU and ASEAN. In terms of regionalist ideology, these organisations represent one further instance of the ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983) so central to nation-building. It is important to emphasise the extent to which regionalism serves member state interests, especially in the case of ASEAN. In Shaun Narine’s analysis: [D]omestic political legitimacy in most Asia-Pacific states is the key variable explaining their reluctance to create strong regional institutions. This concern with legitimacy underpins the region’s determination to defend the traditional Westphalian principles of state sovereignty . . . This focus on sovereignty is a manifestation of a deeper concern: . . . creating national identities out of disparate ethnic, religious and linguistic communities. (Narine 2004, 424; emphasis in original)

It is submitted that constructs such as ‘the ASEAN way’ and assertions of regional identity (Sutherland 2006b) serve to underpin states’ external sovereignty and, by extension, their domestic legitimacy. In the ASEAN case, constructivist approaches in the international relations literature seek to complement or challenge (neo-)realist analyses of ASEAN by giving more weight to its ideational aspects (Acharya & Stubbs 2006, 126). Although this book is also concerned with ideology, its focus is different. The question here is not ‘Is ASEAN powerful?’ (Eaton & Stubbs 2006) but ‘How powerful a symbol is ASEAN in Vietnamese nation-building?’. It thereby complements contributions to the international relations literature (Narine 2002, 2004) with one rooted in nationalism studies. The actual course of regional integration may well run parallel to its rhetorical role in national discourse, but its presentation for domestic consumption as a component of nation-building is the primary concern here. Of the ‘three principal elements behind the political cooperation in Southeast Asia – namely external threat, internal stability and economic development’ (Palmujoki 2001, 7), the present analysis focuses on the ideational aspects of the second, or the manner in which governments promote domestic legitimacy. In contrasting the EU and ASEAN, Palmujoki (2001, 2) notes: ‘[O]ld regionalism is characterized by the tendency towards integration, federalism, and diminishing national sovereignty. On the other hand, two other tendencies drive new regionalism – nationalism and interdependence’. It remains to be seen whether this captures the interplay of nationalism and regionalism from the perspective of nation-building in Germany and Vietnam.

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Would-be citizens of a nation-state are naturalised into the national community if they fulfil legal requirements which help to protect and perpetuate the dominant interpretation of that community. Rather like the legal framework which forms the nation-state’s skeleton, theories of regional integration often lend a structural framework to the EU, giving rise to a heuristic model which is then fleshed out by empirical case studies. These range from the grand theories of liberal intergovernmentalism (Moravcsik 1998) and neofunctionalism (Haas 1968), purporting to explain the process of European integration across its lifespan, to mid-range approaches such as historical institutionalism, social constructivism and multilevel governance (Bache & George 2006), which seek to isolate elements in the pulsating inner workings of the EU’s daily decision-making. Furthermore, the EU is often perceived – not least in the self-interest of a discipline like EU studies – as an actor in itself. Walters and Haahr (2005) show how the EU has become a persona with which governments vie, negotiate and litigate. This is complemented by the growing scholarly interest in EU studies, which at once feeds off and fosters this personality. The EU can even be represented as a ‘geo-body’ (Thongchai 1994) anthropomorphised into a living, breathing organism with institutional ‘members’ for limbs, working to promote a shared set of core values and defend the European body politic against competing international forces. Both ‘Europe’ and ‘Southeast Asia’ are very much contested concepts, as evidenced by debates surrounding the cultural and geographical limits of EU enlargement, and the fact that the term ‘Southeast Asia’ was not commonly used before the mid-twentieth century (Tarling 2006, 35; Berger 2003). The personification of Europe and its ‘civilisation’ is nothing new, but the search for an essence uniting the European continent continues to find expression in EU statements of common values such as the Laeken (2001) and Berlin (2007) declarations. More specific European Commission policies have sought to harness ‘cities of culture’, national figures like Goethe and Cervantes and even a nebulous ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’ to the European bandwagon, thereby taking up the symbolism of cityscapes and heroes which is explored later in this book. The EU’s approach echoes the nineteenth-century nationbuilding, which moulded national identities so successfully that they are now taken for granted. Much like the nation-state, then, the EU is now often taken for granted as an existing entity to be studied, rather than questioned: A great deal of research done under the heading of EU studies assumes we know where and what Europe is. Europe is a space of transnational economic activity where flows of capital and people challenge the sovereignty of bounded nationstates and call for new forms of politics and regulation. Europe is the site of a multi-level polity, a space where complex processes of intergovernmental, interregional and supranational bargaining give rise to novel patterns of governance. (Walters & Haahr 2005, 2)

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Analyses may well convey the complexity of EU policy and decision-making as a patchy, ‘dappled world’ (Latour cited in Whatmore 2006, 603), but are often less strong on exploring the ‘governmentality’ of the EU. That is, they focus on the mechanics of policy creation and actor configurations, without analysing the terms in which debates are framed. As Walters and Haahr (2005, 6) point out, this is not an abstract, theoretical exercise, but serves instead to identify specific mentalities and their impact on policy evaluation. The assumptions inherent in political rhetoric have something to say about the construction of the EU as an encompassing, supranational entity. Multilevel governance is just one example of mid-range theory, which is typical of policy-centred accounts of EU integration. It conceptualises European governance as ‘a system of continuous negotiation among nested governments at several territorial tiers’ (Marks, cited in Bache & Flinders 2005, 3). By placing the state within this larger analytical framework, it is easier to undermine the myth that nation-states are somehow ‘natural’ repositories of sovereignty and privileged sources of legitimacy. Theorists of multilevel governance are right to point out that internal and external sovereignty, regardless of whether this was ever a useful dichotomy, are closely intertwined. The pursuit of one is inextricably tied up with the other (Bache & Flinders 2005, 1; Milward 1994). Indeed, ASEAN is a prime example of an international organisation which exists to shore up member states’ internal sovereignty, since the ‘ASEAN way’ ensures non-interference in member states’ domestic affairs as well as heightened international status through the principle of strength in numbers. Multilevel governance also has the advantage of explicitly linking sub-state, state and suprastate actors to show the interplay of domestic and foreign politics. It has moved beyond its origins in European integration theory to structure wider-ranging analyses, all sharing ‘a concern with explaining the dispersion of central government authority both vertically, to actors located at other territorial levels, and horizontally, to non-state actors’ (Bache & Flinders 2005, 4). Studies of multilevel governance can thus incorporate international organisations, multinational companies, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and other civil society actors lobbying at each tier of government, or bypassing these levels to create issue linkages and dynamic networks around a specific policy. To this extent, it resembles Ferguson and Gupta’s concept of transnational governmentality. However, some of the language used in multilevel governance analysis, as exemplified by Bache and Flinders quote above, simply extends the encompassment and verticality of state spatialisation to the supranational realm. In their overview of the literature in the field, Gary Marks and Liesbet Hooghe (2003) distinguish between type I and type II multilevel governance. The first is a ‘Russian Doll set of nested jurisdictions, where there is one and only one relevant jurisdiction at any particular territorial scale’ (Marks &

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Hooghe 2003, 236). This maintains the sense of verticality and encompassment identified by Ferguson and Gupta (2002). It portrays the nation-state as caught between parallel processes of devolving power down to the subnational level or up to the supranational domain (Marks 1996, 20), thereby replicating the Westphalian idea ‘that the world takes the form of a flat surface which may then be broken up’ (Law 1999, 6) across several territorial levels. This approach to multilevel governance merely reproduces ‘the geometric habits that reiterate the world as a single grid-like surface open to the inscription of theoretical claims’ (Whatmore 2002, 6). As such, this understanding of multilevel governance does not move beyond a conception of authority organised into horizontal, territorial planes. It does seek to include additional layers of authority, but these can nonetheless be traced onto the traditional, twodimensional map of state power. In contrast to the relatively enduring and stable type I multilevel governance, type II is task-specific, flexible, and ‘not aligned on just a few levels but operat[ing] at numerous territorial scales’ (Marks & Hooghe 2003, 237). An example from within the EU is the increasing prevalence of ‘variable geometry’, whereby some member states cooperate in given policy areas while others opt out. More generally, the notion of task-specific, flexible and ‘polycentric’ power is helpful for grasping the complexity of contemporary power networks. It can also usefully characterise the state as experienced by Phương, the Vietnamese soup seller, whose story was told at the beginning of this chapter. Some normative implications of type II governance include the competing demands on legitimacy represented by sub-national and supranational organisations, and also the fragmentation of power across a diverse array of political, economic and social actors. Type II multilevel governance can be used to characterise the criss-crossing centres of authority and legitimacy of today’s global governance. Its spatial associations offer a three-dimensional framework which is less hierarchical and rigidly compartmentalised than type I. Overall, the multilevel governance framework presupposes a reconfiguration of the nation-builder’s realm, highlighting the importance of spatial metaphors in making sense of changing power configurations: ‘the use of spatial, strategic metaphors enables one to grasp precisely the points at which discourses are transformed in, through and on the basis of relations of power’ (Foucault 1980a, 70). Sovereignty Some anti-EU ‘Eurosceptics’ would have us believe that national sovereignty is incompatible with European integration (Geddes 2004, 194). However, the very process of nation-building is itself a form of integration premised on nested – rather than divided – loyalties:

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National integration, therefore, is a shift or sharing of sovereignties. Instead of looking upon his [sic ] kinship group, village or ethnic identity as being the ultimate source of status and highest form of loyalty, an individual begins to find possibilities of being loyal to a community called the nation without compromising his sense of loyalty to family or village. (McAlister 1973, 6)

This analysis links sovereignty to anthropology, which has recently seen a resurgence in study of the concept (Hansen & Stepputat 2006). However, the present focus is on political sovereignty as an abstract justification of authority rather than de facto sovereignty, or the power to act rooted in violence. Legitimacy is intimately linked to sovereignty in that recognition is crucial to both concepts. Internal political sovereignty, a state’s recognised authority to act within its own borders, is complemented by external sovereignty, or the international recognition of this authority by other states. Messina (2007) suggests two further forms of this eminently contested concept, namely interdependence sovereignty and Westphalian sovereignty. The former refers specifically to states’ influence over cross-border and transnational movements, key to controlling migrant flows and hence the national population, while the latter ‘focuses on the exclusion of external actors from domestic authority configurations’ (Messina 2007, 11). Westphalian sovereignty, an enhanced, exclusive form of domestic sovereignty, continues to be an ideal pursued by ASEAN member states, for instance. To the extent that it is an important rhetorical goal and justification for state action, this form of sovereignty remains a relevant conceptual category, regardless of whether or not it is being undermined or reconfigured in practice. Indeed, it goes hand in hand with nation-building ideologies which equate the unified, legitimating nation with the fully sovereign state. Some theorists use the term ‘post-sovereignty’ to indicate ‘that sovereignty in its traditional sense, in which it is identified exclusively with the independent state, is no more. Rather there are multiple sites of “sovereign”, in the sense of original, authority’ (Keating 2001b, 162). The emergence of sub-state enclaves such as export processing zones, the preferential freedom of movement across borders for investors and tourists, as well as the regional effects of development projects, mean that ‘sovereignty appears progressively more variegated and graduated’ (Sidaway 2007, 351) in cross-cutting configurations that do not respect state borders. State governments are faced with the challenge of responding to this in their continuing pursuit of national legitimacy. The predominantly intergovernmental nature of ASEAN compared to, say, the EU, and different patterns of popular accountability, suggest that nation-builders will do so differently depending on the regional and domestic context (Jáuregui 1999). Yet Michael Mann’s (1993, 115) assessment of states as ‘diversifying, developing, not dying’ is testament to their resilience. Their potential to command domestic legitimacy is affected, but not precluded, by their privileged

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position within international relations. It has been noted that ‘any attempt to break away from nationalist narrative is often criticized on the grounds that it would guarantee no stability, undermine the sense of a common identity and be accompanied by low levels of trust’ (Kostakopoulou 2006, 74). The implications for state legitimacy are clear, and governments increasingly seek to reconcile nationalist and regionalist discourse.

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Legitimacy According to Jenkins and Sofos (1996, 13), legitimacy is crucial to understanding nationalism. In seeking to measure the pulse of nation-building in two soldered states, the legitimising function of national unity comes to the fore. At the institutional level, legitimacy can be defined as ‘the moral authority or normative standing required by a public authority engaged in the production of binding rules’ (Beetham & Lord, cited in Bache & George 2006, 67; emphasis in original). A broader and more normative term than authority, the concept of legitimacy is linked to ideas of virtue, trust and righteousness. It should be distinguished from legality, which is more narrowly related to officially sanctioned systems, rules and principles, whatever their value. A further distinction can be drawn between propriety and validity, namely whether an individual believes something is right or simply acceptable (Johnson et al. 2006; Narine 2004, 427). For instance, it has been pointed out that ‘in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, a people have accepted the rule of a common administration without transferring their ultimate loyalty to it’ (McAlister 1973, 6). Regardless of whether an individual believes authority to be right and good or merely tolerable, there must also be a wider degree of collective consent for a leader or a regime to be considered legitimate. Without this, political stability is endangered. In a similar way to the customer loyalty courted by businesses, political leaders and systems must enjoy a certain level of legitimacy to avoid their collapse (Sutherland 2006a). In liberal democracies, this is sought through regular elections which represent the will of the people, otherwise known as the demos or nation. Alternative interpretations of the nation, such as those championed by sub-state nationalists, may challenge the existing legitimating link between nation and state, however (Keating 2001a, Sutherland 2005a). In their study of legitimacy as a social process, Johnson et al. (2006) discuss four stages of legitimation, namely innovation, local validation, diffusion and general validation. Sub-state nationalists must often build up legitimacy through each of these stages, and in opposition to the dominant state interpretation. Government nation-building on behalf of a state, in contrast, involves the general validation and maintenance of the myths of unity and common identity underpinning the existing nation-state construct.

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Theorists of nationalism – including those ‘ethno-symbolists’ who emphasise links to much older markers of belonging (Smith 1986) – tend to recognise nations as a modern, nineteenth-century innovation taking place in the context of European industrialisation (Gellner 1983) and burgeoning anti-colonialism elsewhere (Anderson 1991). In this sense, nation-building ‘is the creation of new and unified nations out of ancient societies having long histories of cultural fragmentation and political divisiveness’ (McAlister 1973, 4). It is emphatically not a return to a previous golden age of ‘natural’ unity, but the construction of a new form of political organisation. Far from the neat metaphor of laying bricks and mortar which the term might suggest, nation-building is a messy process of identity manipulation, bound up with the quest for legitimacy and sovereignty. It takes place through institutions such as schools, military conscription, taxation, political parties and representative bodies (Weber 1977). Museums, national holidays, heroic role models and official rhetoric also contribute to continuous nation-building efforts (Tai 2001). These ‘sedimented discourses’ (Howarth 1995, 132) can often be traced to attempts by governments and political leaders to establish their interpretation of the nation; even warlords have used museums to institutionalise their view of national struggle (Milosevic Bijleveld 2006). In addition to this are self-perpetuating forms of Foucauldian ‘capillary power’ or ‘governmentality’ (Barrett 1991, 142; Foucault 1991, 103) transmitted through the media, social mores and countless other forms of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1995). Together, they serve to instil in the individual a sense of belonging to the nation, though this is by no means an exclusive identity. The nation is not the only or necessary legitimating construct imaginable. It has been argued, for instance, that citizenship regimes should be linked to residence rather than evidence of national belonging (Kostakopoulou 2006, 93). This would amount to decoupling the natural body, capable of love, loyalty, patriotic emotion and sacrifice, from the political ‘geo-body’ as holder of rights and duties (Hansen & Stepputat 2006, 297). In the same way, there could eventually be a move away from national belonging as a source of legitimacy to ‘post-national’ configurations (Soysal 1994; cf. Klopp 2002). Jürgen Habermas’ interpretation of constitutional patriotism, although not reflected in current German citizenship legislation, is one variation on this theme (Till 2005, 130). Yet governments are keen to pre-empt the decoupling of legitimacy from emotional expressions of belonging, which are so central to the nation-state construct. Indeed, a move away from the ‘geo-body’ of the nation (Thongchai 1994) might in turn undermine the influence of ‘bio-power’ over national populations, and thus enable resistance to its effects in the spirit of Foucauldian critique (Foucault 1980b, 142). Although Foucault himself did not explicitly elaborate on the spatial aspects of his thought, he certainly found an interviewer’s suggestion that nationalism was a ‘geographical discourse which justifies frontiers’ and brought about ‘the national internment

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of the citizen-soldier’ (Foucault 1980a, 73) to be a stimulating avenue for further research.

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Discourse Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s theory of discourse seeks to identify the impermanent articulations between concepts which become relatively dominant, or hegemonic, as ‘moments’ of a given discourse (Laclau & Mouffe 1985; Sutherland 2005a). According to this view, any discursive frameworks are partial and temporary; they are not indicative of underlying class-based structures or relations of production. Instead, the irremediable impermanence of concepts introduces dynamism into relationships, which are constantly subject to challenge and change. Nodal points, in turn, denote ‘privileged discursive points of this partial fixation’ (Laclau & Mouffe 1985, 112), or concepts, such as the nation, which give meaning to many other concepts. The nodal point of nation can give meaning to a system of ideas called nationalism or, when government-led, nation-building. This moves away from notions of state verticality and encompassment; ‘[T]he relational character of every social identity implies a breaking-up of the differentiation of planes’ (Laclau & Mouffe 1985, 93). John Law and others in the loose grouping of scholars behind actor–network theory sought to transcend regionalism, understood as the idea ‘that the world takes the form of a flat surface which may then be broken up into principalities of varying sizes’ (Law 1999, 6). Instead, they privileged a relational analysis of networks, leading to a radically different conception of space; ‘[F]or instance, nation states are made by telephone systems, paperwork, and geographical triangulation points’ (Law 1999, 7). A wider-ranging manifesto for a relational sociology (Emirbayer 1997) also sought to focus on ‘bonds, not essences’ (Tilly cited in Emirbayer 1997, 292) in order to question the apparently unproblematic nature of bounded units such as nation-states. These insights alert us to the ‘spatial understandings which underwrite ideologies’ (Shields 1991, 48) and the fluidity of boundaries. For instance, the Iron Curtain was an ideological construct which could nonetheless be traced onto maps, its life-shaping significance now much reduced. Similarly, the Berlin Wall was a physical barrier which was attributed meanings now obsolete, such as the official GDR title of Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, or anti-fascist protective wall. Today, the wall is reduced to a dotted line of paving stones discreetly tracing parts of its route, and new meanings are being assigned to this commemorative project in a dynamic process of recognition and interpretation. Indeed, ‘[t]he memorial virtually requires participation in order to complete its meaning’ (Scott 1998, 355). In these analyses, spatial relations and ideology come together in what has variously been described as a ‘tangle’ (Whatmore 2002, 87) and a

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‘yarn’ (Shields 1991, 262). The latter term also alludes to the storytelling, or myth-making inherent in constructing nations. What emerges is an approach privileging ‘the relations between differently valorised sites and spaces sutured together under masks of unity such as the nation-state’ (Shields 1991, 278). The extent to which Laclau and Mouffe use spatial metaphors in their writing is striking; on a single page of their book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy we find the words void, dislocation, suture, topography, limits, frontiers, areas, area and poles (Laclau & Mouffe 1985, 47). The present study makes this explicit by linking spatial awareness to relational dynamics: ‘It makes no sense to envision constituent elements apart from the flows within which they are involved’ (Emirbayer 1997, 289). A relational approach to political analysis is rather reminiscent of electric cables, through which energy can pulse, flow or go dead. Nodal intersections designate focal points of activity, or ‘network switchings’ (Emirbayer 1997, 306), while other cables dangle abandoned or on standby. This seeks to convey the flexibility and adaptability of nationbuilding. In turn, the appropriation of space is one means of expressing identity and belonging (Till 2005, 17). This approach clearly links theory and empirical cases. The analysis of cityscapes, museums and school textbooks emphasises both nodal points of discourse and their dynamic relationships in spatial terms, be it between street scenes and symbolic monuments, heroes and their shadows, or national myths and the silenced story behind them. Each serves to illustrate how nodal points of nation-building ideology are expressed with the aim of legitimating soldered states. The slippery concept of political culture is a crucial contributor to political systems, and thus central to comparative studies. Echoing Gabriel Almond’s classic work on the subject (Almond 1963, Almond & Verba 1989), political culture can be defined as ‘the set of political beliefs, feelings and values that prevail in a nation at a given time’ (Dogan & Pelassy 1984, 58). Political culture and ideologies work in synergy. National identity, for instance, is an aspect of political culture which nationalists attempt to manipulate and mobilise. At the same time, however, identity and ideology cannot be divorced from the elements of political culture influencing their articulation, such as the existence of multiple identities and their relationship to the history, party politics and constitutional legitimacy of a given political arena. Long the preserve of social psychologists attempting to theorise the psychological link between the individual and the group, the concept of identity is defined by Henri Tajfel (1981, 255) as ‘that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership’. Given that social identity theory sets out to describe the composition and content of a group, particularly in opposition to non-members, it is highly relevant to nationalism. As Ross Poole (1999, 1) puts it: ‘The nation is not just a form

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of consciousness, it is also a form of self-consciousness . . . If the nation is an imagined community, it is also a form of identity’. Identity in the political context will be characterised here as an inchoate sense of belonging to be manipulated and mobilised according to ideological principles, with national identity as one among multiple identities capable of commanding loyalty and legitimacy. In sum ‘[n]ationalism locates the source of individual identity within a “people”, which is seen as the bearer of sovereignty, the central object of loyalty, and the basis of collective solidarity’ (Greenfeld 1993, 160). Ideology Definitions of ideology are manifold, but can be broadly divided into the categories of ‘neutral’ and ‘negative’. The neutral view tends to stick closely to the semantic definition of ideology as the logic of an idea. The concept’s pejorative connotations are said to originate from Napoleon’s scorn of the French Enlightenment Idéologues, led by Destutt de Tracy, who was the first to use the word idéologie. Marx was another prominent proponent of the negative view of ideology, which was only explicitly defined, however, by Friedrich Engels in 1893: Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces are unknown to him: otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process . . . He works with mere thought material, which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, and does not investigate further for a more remote source independent of thought. (Engels, cited in Shapiro 1980, 75)

This description raises many of the issues central to defining ideology, not least the question of false consciousness and the perception of ideology as a closed, self-sufficient Weltanschauung. Engels portrays ideology as a logical, coherent belief system, but one based on false premises. The ‘remote source’ he refers to points to the central Marxist tenet that material conditions determine thought, although he would later qualify this statement by asserting that although the economic environment was ‘decisive’ in men’s lives, other political and ideological factors could still have an influence (Shapiro 1980, 76). This is linked to the proposition that bourgeois ideology oppresses the proletariat by perpetuating the illusion of fair exchange, and thus preserves its own interest in capital accumulation by the most insidious means of thought control. Subsequent theorists have claimed that even science and technology – the supposedly objective bastions of rationality with which ideology is often contrasted – are harbingers of bourgeois ideology. According to Jürgen Habermas (1992), belief in progress and objectivity is merely another means of perpetuating the accumulation of

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capital and maintaining the ruling class in power. Far from being the antithesis of ideology, Habermas portrays technocracy and rationality as its most subtle manifestations. Although based on a radically different theoretical premise, there are echoes of Foucault’s ‘governmentality’ here (Foucault 1991, 103). The sociologist Karl Mannheim (1991 [1929], 173) distinguished ideology from utopia, defining ideology as a set of ideas which transcends the existing order but can be pursued within it. A utopia, on the other hand, would necessarily shatter the existing order if put into practice. This distinction provides a means of getting to grips with the sometimes value-laden classification of political movements into ideological and non-ideological. One example is provided by Leszek Kolakowski (1980, 124): ‘The social function of ideologies is to furnish an existing power system (or aspirations to power) a legitimacy which is based on the possession of absolute and all-encompassing truth’. This definition incorporates the characteristic claim to truth of ideology, as well as introducing the distinction – equivalent to Mannheim’s ideology– utopia dichotomy – between existing power and aspiration to power. It also encapsulates governments’ use of nationalist ideology to legitimise state constructs, otherwise known as nation-building. However, the reluctance among some social scientists to include the political status quo and far less their own value systems in their understanding of ideology, stems from the concept’s persistent negative connotations. To Kolakowski (1980, 124), ‘typical examples of ideologies so conceived are . . . communism (in all its variants), nazism, fascism, panarabism, zionism, various aggressive nationalist or racial activities, as well as imperial or imperialist ideas’. With the partial exceptions of Zionism and panarabism, all of these movements are most often regarded in a negative light. However, as Kolakowski goes on to remark; ‘conversely, the noun [ideology] seems less fitting when associated with adjectives like “liberal”, “pacifist” and “conservative” ’. No further explanation is offered as to why the term ideology might be ‘less fitting’ in the latter cases. The juxtaposition of ‘bad’ ideologies with what appear to be examples of ‘good’ alternatives, illustrates the difficulty of achieving a value-neutral categorisation (Spencer & Wollman 1998). Karl Mannheim explicitly drew attention to this by calling the ‘thought-style’ justifying the political status quo an ideology (1991 [1929], 46). This ‘general’ view of ideology will be adopted here and applied to the cases of soldered states. In Mannheim’s terms, a ‘special’ view of ideology, on the other hand, would posit the researcher as an ideology-free observer. Thus, ‘special’ value judgements mould Kolakowski’s supposedly non-ideological definition of the concept. Mannheim’s conception of ‘general’ ideology, in recognising that all thought, including that of the observer, was socially determined, moved away from the possibility of truth (Mannheim 1991 [1929], 69). In an attempt to respond to charges of relativism, Mannheim (1991 [1929], 70) redefined his

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approach as ‘relationism’. He saw each social analyst as contributing partial insights to knowledge, which would one day be amalgamated into a comprehensive, supra-partisan science. Regardless of whether one shares this ultimate goal, Mannheim’s ‘general’ view can still be reconciled with a definition of ideology as all pervasive, and an understanding of social dynamics as ultimately unstable and fragmented (Sutherland 2005a). Ideology is a flexible, adaptable, but internally coherent belief system that offers a simple, interpretive explanation of society coupled with practical measures for maintaining or revolutionising the political status quo. The view that ideologies are not only principled but also necessarily rigid and dogmatic mistakenly attributes a lack of flexibility to ideology, by failing to distinguish its immutable core from an adaptable, changing periphery (Freeden 1998). If an ideology can no longer explain, reassure and mobilise, it becomes anachronistic. General ideological currents such as liberalism, socialism and nationalism undoubtedly differ from those propagated by specific governments with limited influence and support. However, ‘ideologies do not have to be grand narratives; they certainly do not have to be closed, doctrinaire and abstract systems. Ideologies are recurrent, action-oriented patterns of political argument’ (Freeden 1999, 45). The attribute ‘action-oriented’ suggests that actors are central to any account of ideology. Indeed, political parties and the governments they form are among the few entities to combine a coherent world-view with a strategy for implementing it. Although the beliefs and values of all individuals contain ideological elements, very rarely can these be mapped as a completely thought-out ideology (Cohen 1996). In contrast, parties and governments seek to combine the philosophy and practice of ideology in their political programme and the strategies they adopt to gain or wield power. Far from signalling a decline of ideology in the political arena, the adaptability of today’s governments and parties to changing social and economic circumstances, not to mention their quickness to respond to political opponents, demonstrate that ideologues must also be pragmatists. Parties and governments bring together the strategic, explanatory, political, responsive and dynamic features of ideology. In so doing they represent what Karl Mannheim (1991 [1929], 49) would call a ‘total’ ideology, as opposed to an individual’s ‘particular’ ideology (Cohen 1996). Mannheim stressed that a total ideology is not simply the sum of the particular ideologies of all group members. Parties offer instead a systematisation of an ideological trend such as nationalism. None actually represents either an entire nation or the entire complexity of nationalism, although ‘one form of speaking might claim to be the language of the whole nation’ (Billig 1995, 88). However, they do offer an interpretation of society and a programme for action when in government: ‘The age in which we live, far from being post-ideological, is one of ideological experimentation, of the resurrection of past principles combined with new

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attitudes’ (Freeden 1999, 43; Vincent 1998, 52). According to this view, the adaptability of contemporary parties does not make them less ideological than those which stuck to their original principles, only to become obsolete. On the contrary, it is a sign of ideological and strategic flexibility that they have been able to adapt to the demands of a changing society. For instance, government ideologies have evolved in response to a globalising world (Hay & Rosamond 2002), as we will see in the cases of soldered states. Focusing on governments serves to illustrate the dynamic element of an ideology, which must be pragmatic, down to earth and regularly revised in order to reflect society’s evolving needs. The empirical study of ideology analyses ‘the distinctive configurations it forms out of political concepts, the occasional new meanings it assigns to political words in common currency, and the innovative way in which it blends ideas both internal and external to its traditions’ (Freeden 1999, 45). The present study examines both the key principles which intertwine to form a unique ideological configuration and the external ideas, such as regional integration, which have been incorporated into nation-building in two soldered states. Conceptual travelling Abstract terms such as legitimacy and sovereignty are often coupled with notions of ‘possession’ or ‘division’ in order to grasp their significance and measure their relative strength. This reifies ‘the sovereign in its ideal and transcendent form (nation, state, the people)’ (Hansen & Stepputat 2006, 301). These concepts remain ‘essentially contested’ (Gallie 1962) and their theoretical import must be carefully distinguished from their use as tools of political ideology. Indeed, it is an irony of the colonial experience that anti-colonial nationalists often used the language of their oppressors to organise resistance (Chatterjee 1993). In turn, ASEAN member states have made sovereignty a fundamental element of their post-colonial credo, and use it to resist any interference in their domestic affairs (Narine 2002, 193). Any analysis of the articulation of sovereignty and legitimacy in contemporary nation-building should therefore include the regionalist dimension. Similarly, challenges to supposedly universal understandings of human rights have come from Southeast Asia (Sutherland 2006b), suggesting that in ‘travelling’ to other corners of the globe (Sartori 1970), Western concepts are invested with new meanings worthy of investigation. Basic political concepts (Grundbegriffe) such as liberty, democracy and the state are always controversial (Richter 2005, 10). Such concepts, or nodal points, must be contextualised in order to chart shifts in meaning over time and battles for ‘conceptual hegemony’. This is particularly important when studying Asian countries, where the influence of Western missionaries, traders,

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diplomats and colonists vied with existing political systems. Western concepts were translated using approximate, sometimes anachronistic equivalents that sat uneasily with local lexicons of power (Walters 2003). This was one reason for the normative definitions of ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’ in China, such as ‘“disorderly administration by many” and “government by the rabble”’ (Richter 2005, 12).2 Similarly, Western terminology rendered into Vietnamese was often the result of a double translation, first from French or English into Chinese or Japanese, and then again into modern Vietnamese (Kelley 2003, 72; Marr 2003, 257). The following case studies of two soldered states allow for the contextualisation of contested concepts, political culture and nationbuilding ideology. It is important to examine the appropriateness of exporting notions of Westphalian sovereignty and other European-forged concepts to another region, in this case Southeast Asia. This takes up Sartori’s (1970) concern that ‘conceptual travelling’ should not ‘stretch’ terms outwith their appropriate context, and guides the detailed discussion of the Vietnamese case throughout this book. Not long before his death, the eminent anthropologist Clifford Geertz called on academics across the social sciences to rethink the process and consequences of ‘nationalism, decolonization, democratization, economic takeoff, modernization’ (Geertz 2004, 578) taking place in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. Geertz went on to problematise the term nationbuilding, suggesting that ‘the assemblage of large ideas, casually inherited from Western philosophy and political theory, upon which we have tended to rely for initial positioning and analytical guidance is due for reexamination and reconsideration, critique, and overhaul’ (Geertz 2004, 579). The Cold War influenced academic understanding of the concepts of nation-building and development. A dominant narrative of ‘progress’ towards a democratic nation-state informed area studies in general and the ‘shaping’ of Southeast Asia in particular. It assumed ‘the universalisation of the nation-state system’ (Berger 2003, 447) on which international relations are still premised today. As with notions of sovereignty and legitimacy, post-colonial countries are now reinterpreting these concepts in light of their own interests and experiences. The evolution of democracy into the global panacea of much Western development and political discourse (Welch & Kennedy-Pipe 2004, 128) has not materialised in many Asian states. Some, such as Malaysia, Singapore and Cambodia, combine authoritarian and democratic elements. Thai democracy was once again undermined by the 2006 military coup and partisan unrest in 2008. The Philippines lacks political stability and Indonesia’s fledgling democracy remains fragile, as military men start rattling their sabres once more (The Economist, 2007, 58). Prospects for democratisation remain bleakest in Burma, as evidenced by the government crackdown on popular protest in 2007

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and the ruling generals’ chicanery following Cyclone Nargis in 2008. Vietnam’s 1992 constitution sought a clearer separation of government and party organs as a step towards greater transparency within the state apparatus. This was one expression of the VCP’s recognition of its past failings and a contribution to strengthening the rule of law and combating corruption, an ongoing process since 1987 (Gainsborough 1996, 496). It was also a response to the collapse of European communism and the end of Soviet aid flows. Vietnam intensified diplomatic relations with countries other than ‘socialist brother nations’, without replicating the systemic changes taking place in Central and Eastern Europe. It is also important to note that the Vietnamese political system derives from an understanding of democracy based on mass participation. This is ensured through the important role of mass organisations – under the aegis of the Fatherland Front – in everything from policy implementation at local level to the selection of parliamentary candidates. Measures such as the grassroots democracy decree also signalled a limited loosening of centralised party control. This was passed in 1998 as a response to large-scale and sometimes violent demonstrations in Thai Binh province, triggered by corruption and conspicuous consumption on the part of local officials (Luong 2003, 24). An overhaul of mass organisation leadership and more robust government scrutiny by the elected National Assembly provide further evidence of liberalisation (Gainsborough 1996, 497). Nevertheless, tolerance of dissent is strictly limited in Vietnam. There are periodic clampdowns on the media (Marr 2003, 279–81), democratic activism is strictly forbidden, and religious activity outwith officially recognised organs is actively discouraged (Kerkvliet 2003, 35). The VCP’s pursuit of legitimacy is not based on the conception of popular sovereignty and democracy current in the West. The introduction of nationalist and socialist principles to Vietnam in the twentieth century was by no means simple. A range of neologisms had to be expressed in the Vietnamese language, which was better equipped to define fine nuances in Confucian hierarchy than the intricacies of historical materialism. The meaning of existing terms also changed, as the entire cultural system on which they were based underwent a revolution. Both the legal and the moral sense of legitimacy are now rendered in Vietnamese, suggesting that it is a feasible analytical term in this context (cf. Jamieson 1993, 317). The word hợp pháp literally means to be in agreement with the law, whereas chính đáng conveys both a sense of justice and government. Sovereignty is rendered as quyê`n tô´ i cao đoc lâp, literally meaning the highest form of independence. ˙ ˙ sovereignty also exists in Vietnam, expressed in terms The concept of popular of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat (Zingerli 2004, 55). There are two main words for nation, namely quô´ c gia and đâ´ t nước, often shortened to nước. The first is of Chinese derivation and conveys the idea of an extended family, whereas the second is composed of roots meaning

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land and water (Tran 2003, 267). This conveys the sense of elemental balance central to Vietnamese cosmology; the founding legend of the Vietnamese people tells that they are descended from a king of the sea and a mountain princess. In the same vein, the history textbook analysed in chapter 5 describes Vietnam as being composed of both the territory itself and the skies above it (Nguyên et al. 2006a, 3). The same textbook also emphasises the importance of knowing Vietnam’s history in order to love its people and the fatherland (tổ quô´ c) even more. Finally, dân tôc is used to refer to ethnic groups, of which ˙ there are officially fifty-four in Vietnam. Composed of the words for people and lineage, it is also used to refer to the Vietnamese people, or nation, as a whole. In Vietnam, as elsewhere, the nation thus has an important ethnic component. Conclusion [T]hrough the lens of sovereignty in practice, colonial rule appears less hegemonic and effective than in its self-presentations in official texts and plans. A key feature of the colonial world was that different kinds and registers of sovereignty coexisted and overlapped. (Hansen & Stepputat 2006, 297)

This statement highlights the crucial distinction between ‘sovereignty in practice’ – which shares the same, macro-level register as regionalisation – and official ‘self-presentations’, the ideological register which is the primary focus here. In turn, the notion of transnational governmentality seeks to grasp the deterritorialised links between a whole host of international organisations (Ferguson and Gupta 2002, 994), which undermine familiar state roles today. Yet among these flows, governments nonetheless continue to reproduce the state in terms of verticality and encompassment as a means of maintaining their legitimacy. The following chapters seek to show how nation-builders in Germany and Vietnam continue to propagate myths of unity as a means of ‘soldering’ the state. Twenty-first-century nationalism evolves in a different context to its nineteenth-century antecedents. Official nation-building, however, continues to be based on the premises of state sovereignty and legitimacy. Karl Mannheim’s distinction between ‘total’ ideology and individuals’ ‘particular’ ideology helps us to understand how governments, in their pursuit of state legitimacy, construct a representation of the nation which does not correspond to individual experience. Situations where such outward representations did not reflect an individual’s personal convictions – their particular ideology – were rife in the former GDR, for instance (Miller 1999, 109). This process might seem increasingly squeezed by the corset of regionalisation, with globalisation pulling the strings ever tighter. A total ideology is not a monolithic construct, however, but shifts with the parties in power and the influence on

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political culture of factors like public opinion, regional integration and national unification. It manipulates history, memory and identity in order to legitimate state power. This dynamic underlies every nation-state construct, for without the legitimating myth of national unity, state authority is seriously undermined; ‘An imagined community at the political level is a precondition for an economic and social nation’ (Borneman 1992, 318). Notes 1. Ferguson, J. & Gupta, A. (2002) ‘Spatializing states: toward an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality’ in American Ethnologist Vol. 29 (4) pp. 981–1002. 2. This interpretation is also similar to dominant, elite understandings of democracy from classical Greece to nineteenth-century England (Arblaster 2002, 7).

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This chapter explores the contention that Germany and Vietnam were both divided states and divided nations before their respective (re)unification in 1990 and 1976. International recognition of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) varied along the ideological lines of the Cold War, but the official date of state unification goes largely undisputed. The division of a nation is a far more difficult case to argue, however, let alone measure. Elsewhere I have studied political parties (Sutherland 2001, 2006a) and intellectuals (Sutherland 2006c) as agents of nationalist ideology. In this case, the focus on state fusion and nation-building calls for analysis of macro-level actors, namely the governments who negotiate these changes. Recent academic works entitled Vietnam: Borderless Histories (Tran & Reid 2006) and German History from the Margins (Gregor et al. 2006) show that, contrary to what nation-building ideology might suggest, neither country’s history can be viewed as the single, linear progression of a homogenous whole. Indeed, Vietnam and Germany did not exist as unified states until 1802 and 1871 respectively. Prior to these dates, the term ‘nationstate’ was certainly a misnomer. Today, the presence of ethnic minorities in both states and the existence of an international diaspora indicate that an ethnic Vietnamese or German nation is not coterminous with state borders. Government definitions of the national community may be more or less exclusive, thereby affecting the status of ethnic minorities living on state territory, citizenship and immigration regimes, and also the Vietnamese and German diasporas. Nation-building in the GDR and the FRG revolved around their competing claims to be the sole legitimate representative, or ‘rightful political embodiment’ (McKay 1998, 3) of the German nation. Each state initially supported unification as a means of extending its political system across both territories, with the FRG eventually doing just that in 1990. In contrast to consistent West German support, the retreat of the GDR’s ruling Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED)) from the goal of German

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unity lasted from 1970 until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 1976 SED party programme tied its own legitimacy ‘to everything progressive in the history of the German people’ (cited in McKay 1998, 120). This exemplifies the ‘direct line’ or longue durée approach to nation-building, which seeks to derive current legitimation from a long historical lineage (Ludz 1977, 246). A similar strategy has been used consistently by the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), which has blended communist ideology with nationalism throughout its history. For instance, Võ Nguyên Giáp, the general who masterminded victory over the French colonial power at the battle of ≠iên Biên Phu’ in May 1954, was fond ˙ its direct antecedent in past wars of repeating that revolutionary strategy had against the Chinese (Turley 1980, 72). The SED’s nationalist ideology changed quite radically with its pragmatic political interest in achieving international recognition for the GDR and placating the Soviet Union. This contributed to the limited impact of its propaganda on domestic legitimacy or citizens’ evolving sense of German – and GDR – identity. In West Germany, on the other hand, the principle of German unity embodied in its Basic Law was complemented by a strong commitment to European integration from its inception in the 1950s. Though Vietnam’s membership of the ASEAN is more recent, the VCP’s regionalist ideology shared both Germanies’ goal of buttressing the nation-state. Vietnamese nation-building Today’s Vietnamese state is a creature of conquest. Following a millennium of Chinese rule ending in the tenth century, the inhabitants of the Red River Delta began to extend their territorial reach from the eleventh century onwards, expanding progressively southwards into the lands of the once mighty Cham and Khmer civilisations. By 1471, the Cham empire had all but disappeared, its last vestiges wiped out by the nineteenth-century Nguyê˜ n emperors (Maspero 1928). By the mid-eighteenth century, Vietnamese soldier and peasant settlers had reached the Mekong delta, a process which pushed back Khmer control but left large numbers of ethnic Khmer in place. Effectively partitioned during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Vietnamese empire would be unified in 1802 under Gia Long, founder of the Nguyê˜ n dynasty. French conquest soon followed, however, and by 1887 Vietnam had been divided into three administrative zones within French Indochina, partly designed to weaken any sense of national unity. Mountain ranges and climatic variations characterise a country stretching over two thousand kilometres, from the overpopulated rice plains of the Red River Delta in the north to the fertile and expansive Mekong Delta in the subtropical south. Politically, mountain passes marked Vietnam’s seventeenthcentury division into rival regions and twentieth-century schism into two

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republics. There are also uniting topographical features, however. The Trương Sơn mountain range, for instance, Vietnam’s ‘backbone’ running for twothirds of its length, was of strategic importance to successive imperial dynasties. It was also the site of the Ho Chi Minh trail, which played a key part in the DRV’s official war effort to ‘liberate the South and to unify the country’ (Khoi 2001, 66). Contrasting living conditions, historical settlement and ethnic mixes across the country go some way towards explaining commonly held stereotypes among Vietnamese themselves (Li 1998, 156). It is important to note that the division of Vietnam’s current territory during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also did much to foster ‘two different ways of being Vietnamese’ (Li 1998, 12). For instance, northerners can be portrayed as more reserved and frugal than southerners, who are reputed to be rather spendthrift and fun-loving. Under the nominal rule of the Lê dynasty throughout, the northern and southern territories, or inner region (≠ang Tròng) and outer region (≠ang Ngoài), were actually controlled by the rival Tri nh and Nguyê˜ n lords respectively. Southern administration was characterised˙ by the promotion of Buddhism, international trade and a distinct taxation system, the burden of which was none too heavy on its relatively expansive and fertile lands. Northern rule, on the other hand, remained firmly wedded to Confucian principles and a more isolationist agricultural economy across the limited lands of the Red River Delta, going some way towards explaining the origins of the above stereotypes. The notional unity of Vietnamese history evidently does not go uncontested. The legacy of Nguyê˜ n Hoàng, the sixteenth-century general originally sent southwards from Hanoi to pacify ‘pirates’ and Mac rebels, but who definitively ˙ returned south in 1600 to establish his own rule there, has been largely ignored in today’s official Vietnamese historiography as undermining the nationbuilding myth of unity (Taylor 1993, 45). For Vietnamese historians ‘who were obliged to construct a national history that emanated from and evolved around Hanoi, such interpretations, with their claims and suggestions of southern autonomy, had to be carefully managed’ (Pelley 2002, 31) following independence from colonialism in 1946. Western historians also continue to debate the significance of Nguyê˜ n Hoàng’s actions, some suggesting that loyalty to lineage and land of origin overrode any ambitions for autonomy during much of the seventeenth century (Cooke 1998). Yet the year 1627, when Nguyê˜ n Hoàng’s son stopped paying taxes to Hanoi (then Tha˘ ng Long) can be interpreted as a key event in establishing a separate polity and formalising the de facto disunity of which contemporary sources were well aware (Taylor 1993, 58). The resulting wars shaped southern life for much of the seventeenth century. By the turn of the eighteenth century, however, the Nguyê˜n lords were trying to establish themselves as monarchs, renaming themselves accordingly, applying (unsuccessfully) for separate recognition by their suzerains in Beijing,

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and even creating their own originary myth (Li 1998, 46, 101). Continual southward expansion was also encouraged under the Nguyê˜ n lords, and not their northern counterparts. Even the Nguyê˜ n were not fully in control of the southern reaches of their rapidly expanding empire, however, which would eventually provide the basis of the Tây Sơn rebellion and their own downfall: ‘The final collapse of the Nguyê˜ n regime in ≠ang Tròng, therefore, seems to have had everything to do with its expansion in the southern and western directions. In merely two hundred years, this regime had acquired three-fifths of Vietnam’s contemporary territory’ (Li 1998, 153). Yet only a century later, Vietnam would once again be divided, this time into the three French colonial pays of Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina. When Nguyê˜ n Ánh finally brought northern and southern territories together in 1802 under the name Gia Long, court historians were keen to cement his legitimacy by stressing an orderly transition from the previous Lê dynasty, conveniently ‘forgetting’ that ‘the Nguyê˜ n regime destroyed national unity for two hundred years’ (Li 1998, 13). Later, the VCP would be equally keen to stress its key nation-building myths of national unity and resistance to foreign aggression, inscribing the existence of ≠ang Tròng within an orderly process of southward expansion (nam tiê´ n), if at all. However, the suggestion that this was a smooth, centrally organised ‘linear progression’ (Li 1998, 19) is misleading. Before the decisive defeat of the Cham empire by Lê Thánh Tôn in 1471, conflicts were rather about prestige, people and treasure than a coherent policy of extending Vietnamese Lebensraum beyond the cramped Red River Delta. Thereafter, devastating wars between the Lê and the Ma c, ˙ compounded by failed crops and famine, caused many to flee southwards for survival, and most officially sanctioned migration was in order to establish military outposts (Li 1998, 25). National unity was never a given. If southern Vietnamese identity had anything distinctive, it was as a hybrid of local and immigrant cultures, which in some ways had more in common with other Southeast Asian civilisations than with China. It did not experience imposed Vietnamisation (Li 1998, 99, 156). Accordingly, some of the SinoVietnamese structures, rites and beliefs so central to life in the Red River Delta lost their significance in southern society. The village unit as an established source of family identity and community, for example, was undermined by the characteristic mobility of the southern settlers (Li 1998, 110). Today, patterns of religious worship also differ substantially across Vietnam. Whereas the cult of the Holy Mothers thrives in northern Vietnam, for instance (Ngo 2003), syncretic religions such as Hòa Ha’ o and Cao ≠ài are peculiar to the south (P. Taylor 2001, 17). At the same time, it would be dangerous simply to substitute a history of unity with one of division into two or even three parts. The aim here is merely to highlight that there are ‘many voices that undermine the idea of a single Vietnamese past’ (Taylor 1995, 5). Nevertheless, an important

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strand of VCP nation-building is a consciously constructed narrative geared to legitimising and maintaining a unified Vietnamese nation-state within today’s borders. Unsurprisingly, this eminently politicised view has poured scorn on Vietnamese historians of southern origin who emphasised regional identities or Nguyê˜ n Hoàng’s role in establishing what they saw as ‘the autonomy of culture and politics in the South’ (Pelley 2002, 39), for instance. Yet the attitude of VCP ideologues towards southern particularities has not been consistent, either. Immediately following unification in 1976, southern reluctance to implement collectivisation and nationalisation was vilified as ‘backward’ compared to the more ‘advanced’ communist system in the north (P. Taylor 2001, 26). Following đổi mới, however, this ‘resistance’ gained more positive connotations in some quarters, as southern experience of commerce and trade became worthy of attention and eventually emulation (P. Taylor 2001, 85, 90). Most official VCP spokesmen would note regional differences only to emphasise the overriding national patriotism of southern inhabitants, as exemplified by their home-grown communist heroes (P. Taylor 2001, 91). They asserted that despite the corrupting influence of the French and Americans, southern Vietnamese retained their ancestors’ pioneering spirit and love of country. In the early 1980s, however, some official sources recognised southern particularities, suggesting that factors such as greater pragmatism, dynamism and ‘modernity’ made the region well placed to face the challenges of globalisation. This was sometimes couched in an alternative narrative of ancient origins, one which downplayed French colonial and ‘neocolonial’ US influence in creating a narrative of southern diversity and openness to change. It highlighted indigenous traits, such as a pioneering spirit and a pre-colonial agricultural commodity economy, pointing to different settlement patterns from the archetypal, enclosed northern Vietnamese village as evidence of a more syncretic and fluid way of life. These traits are sometimes used to link the ancient Sa Huy`nh and Óc Eo civilisations of southern Vietnam to regional characteristics, thereby apparently acknowledging their indigenous descendants alongside Vietnamese settlers. In constructing a sea-oriented, trading tradition and emphasising peaceful integration with local Khmer and Cham, three centuries of Vietnamese history were thus extended to three or four thousand years. This was quite difficult to reconcile with the dominant narrative of a southwards march into deserted territory (P. Taylor 2001, 109). Despite such tendentious essentialisations of the Vietnamese south as embodying change and the north as representing tradition, the contested concept of regional identity tended to be resolved in favour of wider nation-building themes, such as foreign threats and ‘grassroots heroism’ (P. Taylor 2001, 177). The Nguyê˜n dynasty’s ignominious defeat by French colonialists in the midnineteenth century led to its loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the Vietnamese

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people, and a need for new leaders to take on ‘the mandate of heaven’ (Mus 1973; Vu 2007, 186). French colonialism brought with it a spate of soulsearching among the Vietnamese, which would continue unabated until at least 1945. The ultimate success of France’s gradual incursions into Vietnam was commonly attributed to the inadequacy of the Vietnamese imperial court, its stubborn ignorance of scientific advances and its over-reliance on an ossified form of Confucian teaching. The defeat of the anti-colonialist ‘Aid the King’ (Câ`n Vương) movement in 1895 was often interpreted among Vietnam’s young, educated elite as conclusive proof of the anachronistic nature of Confucianism, hitherto the main source of court morality and government. Reduced to puppets of the French, subsequent emperors lost any remaining credibility. In time, the scholar-intellectuals once deemed worthy of the highest respect became as outdated as the court they served, to be replaced by a younger generation with a new-fangled education and no socially entrenched right to be heard. Nonetheless, they raided the past for the symbolic right to influence Vietnam’s future. Their one common theme was anti-colonialism and the pressing need to regain Vietnamese autonomy, if not full independence. A measure of the importance of this goal and its link to individual self-respect is evident from the ‘Society of Like Hearts’, active in the 1920s, which had no clear manifesto beyond independence and the restoration of Vietnamese ‘dignity as human beings’ (Tai 1992, 64). Similarly, the ongoing Vietnamese self-strengthening movement – giving rise to organisations like the SelfCultivation League, the Self-Perfection Society and the Self-Reliance Literary Group – points to the overlap between intellectuals’ aspirations for themselves and their community. Until the early twentieth century, Vietnamese men of learning could be more or less equated with the imperial bureaucracy. Classical Confucian scholars aspired to pass the civil examinations and become court mandarins, contenting themselves with local officialdom or a life of teaching and contemplation if they failed. When this system was discontinued in 1929, such Vietnamese could, at best, hope for a minor post in the colonial administration. Vietnamese nationalist thinkers belonged primarily to the educated bourgeoisie (Tai 1992, 55). Some made their living as writers, journalists and teachers, or even professional revolutionaries as in the case of Phan Bôi Châu ˙ (1867–1940). The non-professional intellectual stratum was restricted to the few Confucian scholars who opted for passive resistance to colonialism and withdrew to their villages. Whereas those active from the turn of the twentieth century until the 1920s were schooled in the Confucian tradition, the next generation was more often a product of Western education. Most were still deeply imbued with Confucian ethics, however, even if no longer capable of reading classical Chinese texts.

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Vietnamese intellectuals had no wish to do away with all that was not modern. For instance, the first-generation nationalists Phan Bô i Châu and ˙ for heroic Phan Chu Trinh (1872–1926) saw the nation as a stamping ground men of virtue modelled on the Confucian canon, rather than a means of mobilising the people. Tellingly, Phan Chu Trinh’s account of the American revolution for an Asian audience put George Washington at the forefront of a moral struggle, with little mention of other factors (Woodside 1976, 40). Such an elitist understanding of government was difficult to reconcile with the advent of mass politics, and the neo-traditionalist tendency was largely abandoned by the next generation of Vietnamese nationalist intellectuals. Ho Chi Minh’s communist-led Viet Minh coalition was only one of many contesting the nature of the Vietnamese nation (Tai 1992). Nguyê˜ n An Ninh, for example, died in 1943 as one of many anti-colonialists to perish in the infamous French island prison of Poulo Condore. Greatly influenced by anarchism and Nietzsche, he promoted individual liberty and espoused the vision propounded by the French socialist Jean Jaurès of ‘nationalism which extends into internationalism’ (Tai 1992, 83). In the event, the Viet Minh’s combination of nationalism with the ostensible goal of worldwide proletarian revolution helped to give them the upper hand over the likes of Nguyê˜ n An Ninh and faction-ridden nationalist groups such as the Viêt Nam Quô´ c Dân ˙ ≠a’ ng (Evans & Rowley 1984, 11). The younger generation of Vietnamese nationalists often graduated from French schools, which were open only to a select and carefully controlled group destined for lowly administrative positions far below their capabilities. With only about a dozen graduating from university a year, the ‘French colonial presence in Vietnam insidiously undermined feelings of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-satisfaction . . . even those who did not suffer in objective terms developed a strong sense of relative deprivation’ (Jamieson 1993, 97). Mired in petty officialdom, it is likely that they projected their own lack of advancement on the situation of their country and compatriots as a whole. How could the Vietnamese fulfil their potential when colonial policy explicitly stated that no native, however highly qualified, should earn more than a French caretaker employed in Vietnam (Jamieson 1993, 97)? Paradoxically, it was exposure to French philosophers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, mostly via Chinese translations, which helped to sow the seeds of nationalist responses to colonialism (Bradley 2000, 12). Intellectuals attempted to recover a sense of pride through a new interpretation of Vietnamese culture. They spent a substantial proportion of their time expounding theories of resistance and renewal, using the cause of national independence as their vehicle. David Marr (1981) charts the exponential rise in book publishing and chronicles its largely nationalist themes from the later 1920s onwards. Significantly, biographies of national heroes made up the large majority of publications (Whitmore 1983, 10).

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An estimated 90 per cent of Ho Chi Minh’s Youth League in 1928 came from this young intelligentsia, some of whom were being groomed to form the future communist party (Marr 1981, 374). These recruits put their modern science and ideology to the service of a historicising nationalism led by the charismatic ‘Uncle Ho’. Their interpretation of the Vietnamese nation would shape official nation-building following independence. The Viet Minh – headed by the last of the ‘old-school’ Confucian scholars, Ho Chi Minh – is widely recognised to have best captured the imagination and loyalty of the people because of its active organisation of resistance and proselytisation among the peasantry. Its overriding goal was abundantly clear from its name, a shortened form of ‘League for Vietnamese Independence’. Although officially a cross-party alliance of nationalist groups created in 1941, communists dominated the Viet Minh and the coalition government which took office after the revolution of August 1945. As early as 1931, Ho Chi Minh himself was criticised by Vietnamese communist cadres faithful to the Soviet Comintern for emphasising the national character of the independence struggle over its socialist goals (Turley 1980, 51). His priorities were not to change, however. Ten years later, he penned an overtly patriotic letter to the Vietnamese people, likening the national struggle ahead to Vietnam’s resistance to Chinese and Mongol invasions throughout its history. In the same way as the generals who saw off these mighty foes, Ho Chi Minh himself would soon come to be revered according to the long-standing Vietnamese practice of hero worship. This cult of personality also fitted into the almost universal Vietnamese practice of honouring dead ancestors, with Ho Chi Minh characterised as the ‘father of the nation’ (Tai 1995). Significantly, Ho Chi Minh’s patriotic letter also referred to the Bronze Age kingdom of Âu Lac, deemed an early example ˙ of Vietnamese civilisation in the Red River Delta. This was an appeal to Vietnamese patriotism without a single reference to communist principles; ‘Ho Chi Minh set the tone of Viet Minh propaganda by giving Vietnamese resistance to foreign aggression a timeless quality above and beyond the historical dialectic’ (Marr 1981, 402). In 1927, Ho Chi Minh published a book entitled The Road to Revolution, containing much-simplified Leninist thought in a form specially tailored to his Vietnamese recruits. He made references to French oppression as well as to moral principles familiar to every child brought up in the Confucian way (Marr 1981, 375). Military generals from the first millennium CE, who had fought for an imperial dynasty against the Chinese and the Mongols, were anachronistically redefined as Vietnamese national liberation heroes. Traditional symbolism was thereby used to incorporate Lenin into the Vietnamese pantheon of heroes. Even Trotsky could be worshipped among his Vietnamese followers in accordance with this tradition (Tai 1992, 242). The adulatory funeral of the first-generation nationalist Phan Chu Trinh also unleashed a

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wave of nationalist fervour. Regardless of ideology, these figures were all integrated into what was by then perceived as an ongoing national struggle for independence. In turn, ‘Uncle Ho’s’ carefully crafted image of accessibility, asceticism and true moral fibre enabled him to appear at once as the modern ‘father of the nation’, a virtuous Confucian elder and a communist revolutionary. Often pictured surrounded by children, dressed in peasant garb and smoking (his only public vice), Ho Chi Minh presented an image with which all social and educational strata could identify; he seemed the embodiment of revolutionary spirit and traditional wisdom. In a direct reference to Vietnam, the scholar of nationalism A. D. Smith (1981, 132) suggests that the ‘curious symbiosis of Marxist communism and nationalism’ there was made possible through an alliance with the peasantry. Though Marxism was popular among Vietnamese intellectuals, with its promise of modernisation without imperialism, it had to percolate through a nationalist filter to be made palatable to the peasant masses. In contrast to industrial-age workers or upstart entrepreneurs, a tiny minority of Vietnam’s rural economy in any case, the peasantry had the required stamp of authenticity, an ancient ethnic cachet. By the late 1930s, the communists were becoming decidedly more nationalist than universalist, in order to dissociate themselves from the then French socialist government’s disappointing response to their demands. Ho Chi Minh understood that ‘selective glorification of the Vietnamese past [and] praise of particular Vietnamese customs’ (Marr 1981, 416) could mobilise his compatriots more effectively than explanations of historical materialism. The year 1935 saw the Vietnamese communists seeking to ally with Vietnamese ‘bourgeois nationalists’, in line with the Soviet Comintern policy of creating a popular front in order to achieve a two-stage revolution. These compatriots shared a form of linguistic nationalism, which championed a romanised transcription of Vietnamese as the national script. Known as quô´ c ngữ – meaning national language – it offered an alternative to both the Chinese ideograms used at the imperial court and a Vietnamese variant of these called nôm. The easy-to-learn Latin alphabet was promoted to encourage literacy among Vietnamese speakers and a sense of shared identity, which had not been facilitated by complex ideograms accessible only to the well educated. The French had originally thought that their own support for quô´ c ngữ would undermine the status of the traditional elite and bind the population to the colonial regime. On the contrary, literature and newspapers in quô´ c ngữ not only helped to awaken the political consciousness of the people, but also encouraged Vietnamese intellectuals to express themselves in their own idiom instead of French or Chinese. A bridge to the Vietnamese village was built; intellectuals found they could speak the language of the masses literally through quô´ c ngữ and figuratively through an ideology which portrayed traditional

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values and customs as the wellspring of the Vietnamese nation. Accordingly, the ‘Theses on Vietnamese Culture’ promulgated by the communist party in 1943 sought to present culture as a vital element of the revolutionary struggle against colonialism. Vietnamese culture was envisaged as ‘pure and beautiful’, free of superstition and corruption (Trường Chinh cited in Endres 2002, 305). Rural festivals, for instance, fell out of favour. In 1957 Nhân Dân, the communist party mouthpiece, called them ‘depraved customs’ (cited in Endres 2002, 303) reminiscent of feudalism. Today, however, their official rehabilitation seems complete (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2003). Philip Taylor (2002) has documented a contemporary folk revival with a nationalist gloss, officially condoning Vietnamese forms of worship in response to the last twenty years of market liberalisation and opening to the West. The VCP’s nationalist discourse has thus adapted to changing times, but the core principle of prioritising the independence of a unified Vietnamese nation has never wavered. William Duiker (1981, 5) reports Ho Chi Minh’s comment that ‘for him, the road to communism went through nationalism’, illustrating how closely the two ideologies were linked in the Vietnamese case. Today, ‘Uncle Ho’s’ carefully constructed cult of personality as a Vietnamese father figure continues to emphasise his nationalism as much as his communist credentials. One of his most quoted phrases, emblazoned on a banner at the entrance to his mausoleum, reads ‘there is nothing more precious than independence and freedom’. Ironically, the VCP’s attempts at defining the national essence are not so far removed from the works of French collaborators such as Pham ˙ Quy`nh (Tai 1992, 50), although the emphasis on Vietnam’s Bronze Age origins was not current in colonial times (Pelley 1995, 234–5). Born in the 1890s and an early victim of Viet Minh reprisals, Pham Quy` nh edited a newspaper ˙ intended as a mouthpiece for official French views. He believed in the inherent superiority of French culture, but nonetheless considered himself patriotic in supporting the continued presence of the French in Vietnam as a guiding hand to lift the country out of what he considered its backward state (Tai 1992, 52). Although an ardent supporter of quô´ c ngữ, his search for the national essence was not a reaffirmation of the value of village life, but rather a litany of proposals for its reform. Rather paradoxically, however, even he believed the spirit of resistance to be central to the Vietnamese national soul (Pelley 1995, 235). The portrayal of Vietnam as a nation is thus eminently ideological, and historical interpretation plays an important part in this. To quote a Vietnamese text dated 1906: ‘If there is a nation, then it must have a history’ (cited in Kelley 2003, 73). Vietnamese intellectuals redefined symbols and traditions according to the new nationalist idiom which, in turn, was to be propagated through modern education. Traditional scholars were chastised for ignoring ‘the famous people and great events of our fatherland’

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(cited in Kelley 2003, 74). Chinese administrators once deemed worthy of emulation were written out of history and figures hitherto respected for their virtue were admired for their nationalism instead. This nation-building trend can be traced through the waves of anti-colonial resistance, the revolutionary rhetoric of the Viet Minh and the nation-building ideology of the VCP’s various incarnations. In August 1945, the Viet Minh helped to channel the patriotic fervour of a people galvanised by severe famine, coupled with the end of the Second World War and the total collapse of Japanese and French legitimacy (Marr 1981, 371). The Viet Minh’s rhetoric, rooted as it was in traditional Vietnamese values and cultural forms, was an important source of popularity. This interpretation of history continued to be faithfully upheld in communist party propaganda during the Vietnam–American war, which urged soldiers to go to the front safe in the knowledge that they had four thousand years of history behind them. After the fall of Saigon in April 1975, the VCP’s then general secretary echoed Ho Chi Minh’s rhetoric by evoking the Trưng sisters and the Lady Triê u, leaders of first- and third-century anti-Chinese insurrections respectively˙ (Post 1989, 83). Viet Minh rhetoric was a combination of appeals to traditional virtues, references to past heroes and pleas for Vietnamese solidarity in the face of foreign aggression. As a vision of mythically inspired nationalist unity transcending political divisions and internal contradictions, it was in direct contrast to French colonial accounts of Vietnam as an ethnically divided society (Pelley 1998, 376). Yet the Viet Minh’s emphasis on historic victories ascribed to the Vietnamese (or Kinh) majority was problematic in that it was unlikely to resonate with Vietnam’s many ethnic minorities. Although Ho Chi Minh may have used Kinh-based appeals to the majority, he was nonetheless eminently pragmatic in making it as palatable as possible to the minority, however. Indeed, in 1937, before the inevitable split between Vietnamese communists and Trotskyists, the latter already felt that too much attention was being paid to ethnic issues, to the detriment of class struggle (Marr 1981, 390). Significantly, Ho sought to valorise minority cultures by recognising their languages and devoting some of his prodigious poetic output to their traditions, as well as integrating them into the party machinery (Marr 1981, 404). One important reason for including ethnic minorities in the Viet Minh was that it had its strongest base in northern Vietnam before the August revolution. This mountainous area, with concentrations of Thai, Hmong, Dao and other ethnicities, had a history of being more antagonistic towards the lowland Vietnamese than towards the French (Pelley 1998, 382). Similarly, contact with minorities from Vietnam’s central highlands had hitherto been limited to trade and a recognition of Kinh suzerainty, punctuated by regular warfare and banditry (Proschan 2003, 60). The aim of the Viet Minh among these overwhelmingly rural farming communities was to train locals to become

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cadres and have the ethnic Kinh withdraw from the villages, so that the revolution would be perceived there as truly nationwide and not dominated by the majority ethnic group. Ho Chi Minh’s approach to integrating ethnic minorities conveniently chimed with one interpretation of Vietnam’s foundation myth. This tells of the hundred sons of a dragon king and a fairy queen, half of whom stayed in the flatlands and became ancestors of the Kinh, half of whom went to the mountains to become the forefathers of minority groups. This legend may have been manipulated for modern requirements, however. Indeed, the mountains referred to could be those of Ba Vì, lying only 60 kilometres from Hanoi and remembered as the stamping ground of the legendary Hùng kings, rather than the distant highland homelands of most ethnic minorities. The Vietnamese nation is officially deemed to be composed of fifty-four ethnic groups, including the ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh), who make up around 86 per cent of the population. Characterisations of the majority Kinh as the ‘older brother’ of other ethnic minorities testifies to a sense of kinship, albeit with a clear indication of which is the ‘dominant ethnie’ (A. D. Smith 1995, 106) within the ‘Vietnamese national family’ (An Thu cited in Pelley 1998, 384). Rather more neutrally, the 1992 constitution defines Vietnam as ‘a unified state of the ethnicities (các dân tôc) who live on Vietnamese territory’ (cited ˙ in Proschan 2003, 57). Nevertheless, the perception that the ethnic Kinh are more advanced culturally and economically, with a concomitant duty to help those ‘less developed’, has been a constant theme of post-colonial discourse. ’ In 1960, for instance, then communist party secretary Lê Duân announced a migration programme designed to help ‘the ethnic minorities catch up with ’ the Kinh’ (Lê Duân, cited in Hardy 2003, 110). Current cultural policy pursues the official goal of unity in diversity (Dang 1998, 45), but persistent inequalities and a long-standing policy of migration from the overcrowded lowlands to ‘new economic zones’ in the highlands has fuelled ethnic tensions. Today’s official nation-building emphasises continuity and a lasting sense of Vietnamese nationhood throughout the ages, regardless of its anachronistic and exclusionary aspects. Post-colonial histories sponsored by the VCP hammered home its ideological vision of a united nation, despite centuries of autonomous rule and development in the country’s south (Pelley 1995, 244; Li 1998). They underplayed the gradual southwards expansion of the Vietnamese empire from the Red River Delta, so as not to disrupt the dominant narrative thread of Vietnam as a victim and not a perpetrator of expansionism. Although this southwards movement saw the progressive subjugation of Cham and Khmer territories over a period of some five centuries, only reaching today’s Ho Chi Minh City in 1674, official histories characterised Vietnam as a single, fixed bloc, with a common language, territory, economy and culture (Pelley 1995, 240). On the other hand, a great deal of ethnographic research

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was carried out after 1954, which seemed to support the idea of ethnic diversity. Official Vietnamese historiography was thus decidedly schizophrenic, until a renewed focus on traditions of resistance to foreign aggression and latterly a fascination with an even more distant, Bronze Age past helped it transcend troublesome ethnic divisions and inconsistencies with a uniting narrative. The 1955 Geneva accords marking the end of the first Indochinese war between France and Vietnam temporarily divided the territory along the seventeenth parallel North of the equator, stipulating that elections should be held within two years across the whole country. A Vietnamese who was present at the negotiations remarked ominously: ‘The competition begins between the South and the North’ (Tran Van Do, cited in Catton 2002, 26). Indeed, Ngô ≠ình Diê m, who in 1955 took over as leader of the newly proclaimed ˙ southern Republic of Vietnam (RVN) from the discredited Nguyê˜ n emperor ’ Bao ≠ai, was constantly competing economically and ideologically with the DRV to˙ be recognised as the legitimate leader of an ‘unnaturally’ divided Vietnam. Diê m’s delegation had not signed the Geneva accords, something ˙ presented in RVN propaganda as a patriotic protest against which was later the ‘amputation of the national territory’ (cited in Masur 2004, 158). Literature circulating in the RVN echoed this sentiment, suggesting that the notion of a single Vietnamese ‘geo-body’ was accepted beyond official circles; ‘Fold up all the maps. Everything that bears any trace of the concept of division, I want to cast it all away’ (Thao Truong, cited in Jamieson 1993, 285). Yet the same idea of national unity was being propagated in the DRV. Jamieson (1993, 273) also cites a propaganda poem by Truong Lu: ‘O southern region of a thousand memories and a million affections/ Flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood/ The flesh cannot be torn asunder/ And your blood is still mingled with ours’. In the RVN, its position was officially contrasted to the DRV’s alleged abdication of sovereignty to Chinese and Soviet communism, its disavowal of national heroes and its neglect of the Vietnamese arts. In Diêm’s own words, ˙ up in treason’ ‘nationalism which allies itself with communism is bound to end (cited in Catton 2002, 37). Diêm’s regime officially portrayed itself as battling ˙ ‘Communism, Underdevelopment, and Disunity’ (cited in Catton 2002, 37). Disunity, understood as both ideological and territorial, was attributed to colonial partition and underdevelopment. Anti-communism, in turn, was supplemented by the rather vague and opaque doctrine of personalism, which Diêm sought to reconcile with Asian traditions such as Confucianism. At the ˙ time, however, the VCP was preparing to ‘liberate the South and to unify same the country’ (Khoi 2001, 66). Ngô ≠ình Diê m’s regime pursued the most developed nation-building ˙ the short life of the RVN. Diêm set about establishing his programme during ˙ placed more emphasis on legitimacy as president of a ‘Diê mocracy’, which ˙ the role of an enlightened sovereign than free elections, parliamentary debate

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or the like (Masur 2004, 33). By denouncing the DRV as incompatible with Vietnamese tradition and under the thumb of a foreign ideology, Diêm was ˙ staking the RVN’s own claim to be the only legitimate successor to Vietnam’s history of resistance and cultural sophistication (Catton 2002, 27). For instance, Diêm declared a national holiday to remember the Hùng kings, thus seeking to ˙burnish his own, young regime with the patina of an ancient, Red River civilisation. He sought to overcome the lack of territorial continuity between the Red River Delta and the RVN by building up the central Vietnamese city of Huê´ as a centre of traditional learning and culture to rival Hanoi. Situated close to the demarcation line between the DRV and the RVN, Huê´ ’s newly founded university and restored national monuments were meant to function as a beacon of ‘true’ Vietnamese culture and values that would radiate north. In accordance with this aim, the Nguyê˜ n dynasty’s role in facilitating colonial encroachment and their citadel’s similarity to Beijing’s forbidden city were omitted from official publications, which carefully distinguished Vietnamese culture from Chinese forms and antecedents (Masur 2004, 144). Diêm was well aware of the ambivalence of his own reliance on US support ˙ difficulty of reconciling this with his self-conscious patriotism (Catton and the 2002, 25), but also realised the need for economic development to foster legitimacy. Convinced of the importance of winning ‘hearts and minds’, he pursued various nation-building policies through propaganda campaigns, film and radio broadcasting, education drives and a range of printed media, before being ousted in 1963. Key themes included the vilification of the communist ‘Other’ and the idea of self-sacrifice, which he claimed to embody in an attempted cult of personality that could do little to compete with ‘Uncle Ho’ (Catton 2002, 35). Nevertheless, Diê m purported to represent the true ˙ Vietnamese nation, declaring in 1956 that his aim was to ‘unify our ravaged fatherland’ (cited in Masur 2004, 45) despite his refusal to contest elections. Diêm also had recourse to familiar themes of historical heroism to bolster his ˙ instance, the introduction of another national holiday honouring the rule. For Trưng sisters emphasised their non-imperial, mandarin status – similar to Diêm’s own – as evidence of their closeness to the people (Masur 2004, 107). In ˙ Madame Nhu, Diê m’s notorious sister-in-law, inaugurated a statue in 1961 ˙ honour of the two heroines with a speech linking them to the people of the RVN as ‘their proud descendants’ (cited in Masur 2004, 201; Catton 2002, 17), thus positing a direct genealogical link between them and a putative Vietnamese nation. Populism, patriotism and personality cult were thus combined in Diê m’s official nation-building ideology, and there is evidence that some ˙ southern Vietnamese did indeed regard him as a patriot (P. Taylor 2001, 186). At the same time as wanting to preserve the best of Vietnamese tradition, however, Diêm was keen to modernise the country, just like those progressive, ˙ early twentieth-century nationalists who advocated reform (Catton 2002, 36).

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US propaganda, which was disseminated in parallel to Diêm’s, echoed his ˙ to justify the anti-communist message, but found it increasingly difficult regime’s failure to raise living standards. It shifted from emphasising Diêm’s ˙ alleged achievements to showcasing American culture, values and its so-called ‘people’s capitalism’ (Masur 2004, 87), through everything from sumptuous urban cultural centres to provincial theatre performances. This promotion of democracy, coupled with the consumer goods flooding the Vietnamese south under US aid programmes, served to cast Diê m’s own rigged elections and ˙ his autocratic, unpopular policies in an even worse light. Neither was Diê m ˙ keen to fuel accusations of being America’s ‘lackey’ or ‘puppet’ – a constant feature of VCP propaganda – among RVN citizens (Catton 2002, 28). The escalating demands of war meant that Diêm’s successor, Nguyê˜ n Va˘ n Thiêu, ˙ strategy, and his tenure was more ˙ never developed an elaborate nation-building about monopolising power than attempting to legitimate it (Beresford 1989, 54; Morris 1973, 144). Meanwhile, the communist regime which Diê m ˙ portrayed as having capitulated ideologically to the Chinese enemy was busy moulding its own nation-building project using much the same legitimating myths, but casting itself as the latest exponent of a long history of Vietnamese resistance. Some outside observers also espoused the view that Vietnam was an ancient nation. For theorists of nationalism, the Vietnamese case provides some support for the ethno-symbolist claim that a pre-modern sense of ancestry and identity forms the basis of modern nationalism (Smith 1986). Impressive archaeological finds, including pediform axe heads, burial goods and large, richly decorated drums, offer ample evidence of a sophisticated Bronze Age culture in northern Vietnam’s Red River Delta. Linguists have found evidence of phonetically similar words meaning ‘people’ and by extension ‘nation’, among those living between the Yangtze and the Mekong rivers (Taylor 1983, 3). Today, the Vietnamese nation is officially portrayed as having pre-existed Chinese conquest in the first millennium CE and emerged with its cultural identity intact. Developed by the Vietnamese government’s Institute of History in the 1950s and 1960s (Pelley 1995, 233), this interpretation is a conscious contradiction of French colonial theories characterising Vietnam as a withered offshoot of Chinese civilisation. The VCP continues to use the idea of national longue durée to bolster its own legitimacy as leader and guardian of the nation. For instance, a poster commemorating the party’s fifty-year jubilee adapted the familiar image of the Bronze Age drums by replacing their characteristic bird and boatmen motifs with factories and silos, setting a hammer and sickle squarely in the centre (Loofs-Wissowa 1991, 48). The drums also figure prominently in museums, shrines to Ho Chi Minh, and even the Vietnamese version of the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ television game show. This primordialist perspective is shared by a

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number of Western scholars, a trend Tuong Vu (2007, 189) associates with the radicalisation of many academics in opposition to the Vietnam–American war. Keith Taylor’s (1983) survey of early Vietnamese history is one of the most authoritative English-language statements of this position, although he subsequently sought to qualify it (Taylor 1998). Evans and Rowley (1984, 10) refer to ‘that loose sense of national identity that could be termed “protonationalism”’. William Duiker (2000, 11) writes of a ‘tenacious sense of . . . national identity’ born of resistance to Chinese rule. Alexander Woodside (1976, 30) uses the term ‘national spirit’ and Ken Post (1989, 86) asserts that by the thirteenth century, the Vietnamese ‘had become a unified people conscious of themselves as such and with a pantheon of heroes and heroines’. Citing territory, history, economy and language as unifying factors, Post (1989, 83) argues that the Vietnamese never forgot their independent existence before the millennium of Chinese rule (179 BCE–938 CE) and upheld customs such as tattooing, teeth-blackening and betel-nut chewing despite Chinese attempts to eradicate these. The fact that the Vietnamese took on many aspects of Chinese civilisation after independence, such as a legal code in 1042 and the Confucian examination system in 1075, is interpreted as a sign of level-headed recognition of progressive reforms rather than evidence of cultural assimilation. Current school history textbooks, the contents of which are state controlled, present much the same view (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 18). Finally, several Vietnamese scholars (Pham et al. 2001, 15; Dang 1998, 48) are of the opinion that Vietnamese nationalism’s emphasis on the family, the community and villages centred around a tutelary spirit should not be equated with Western ideological forms. In line with ethno-symbolist scholars, however (A. D. Smith 1995, 57), they identify a myth of common origin as crucial to the sense of Vietnamese nationhood. On the other hand, the argument that nationalism is a product of modern circumstance also has much to commend it in the Vietnamese case (Vu 2007, 180). Liam Kelley (2003) has demonstrated how second millennium understandings of the Vietnamese realm as a ‘domain of manifest civility’ were premised on a completely different world-view to that of nation-states. This status was measured in literary output and records accessible only to the educated elite. It contrasts with early twentieth-century nationalism, which spread quickly to the masses, partly due to the popularisation of romanised script (quô´ c ngữ) that was relatively easy to master (Anderson 1991, 126). Although much Vietnamese tradition is rooted in village life, it is questionable whether this can be equated with national loyalties. Indeed, the VCP itself was undecided as to the limits of the Vietnamese nation right up until the 1940s (Goscha 1995). Nevertheless, the mobilising force of the nation has been exploited by Vietnamese leaders ever since and remains fundamental to the VCP’s legitimacy. Contemporary nation-building emphasises unity despite

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significant regional disparities and historical cleavages within the Vietnamese nation-state. The most common broad distinction made by Vietnamese today is between northern, central and southern Vietnam, respectively centred around the cities of Hanoi, Huê´ and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Attachments to home provinces tend to be strong too, and informal support networks among internal migrants are arranged accordingly. There is also a very structured recognition of ethnic minorities within Vietnam. Institutions such as Hanoi’s Museum of Ethnology and the Institute of History (Pelley 1995: 233) continue to document cultural difference within governmentdefined boundaries, and the country’s multiethnic character is enshrined in its constitution. Vietnam does not pursue a policy of multiculturalism, however, if we take this term to mean the acceptance and incorporation of ‘claims made by minority constituencies for inclusion and cultural recognition’ (Kostakopoulou 2006, 85). This is in large part because of multiculturalism’s perceived incompatibility with national unity (Stratton & Ang 1994), which is at the core of VCP nation-building. In Vietnam, the ethnic Vietnamese are variously described as the ‘elder brother’ of minority groups or the ‘nucleus’ of Vietnamese culture (Mai Quang, cited in Evans 1985, 125). A parallel can be drawn with the German term Leitkultur, or guiding culture, reputedly coined in 2000 by the Christian Democrat politician Friedrich Merz (Green 2004, 119). The concept has periodically resurfaced in political discourse since then. Its exact meaning remains contested, ranging from recognition of the values contained in Germany’s Basic Law to advanced cultural and linguistic competence in all things German (Klusmeyer 2001). Left-leaning politicians tend to condemn its exclusivity, only to be criticised by their opponents for offering an allegedly wishy-washy multicultural alternative (hence the pejorative use of the term Multikulti). Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that nation-building in both Germany and Vietnam ‘entails both a more conscious attempt to embrace the civic ideal and simultaneously insists on the national-state being underpinned by the culture and traditions of its dominant or core ethnie,’ understood as an ethnic group (A. D. Smith 1995, 106). As will be documented in the following chapters, this is evident from the prominence given to ethnic Vietnamese and, to a lesser extent, German cultural symbols as representative of the whole nation. German nation-building Germany is often cited as the archetypal example of an ethnic Volksnation or Kulturnation, as envisaged by the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century romantic movement. Its regional identities and political antecedents as a disparate collection of sovereign states within the Holy Roman Empire are just

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as important to understanding contemporary German federalism and nationbuilding, however. The nineteenth-century Prussian chancellor Bismarck was key to engineering the unification of the kingdoms of Bavaria, Prussia and dozens of other dukedoms and principalities in 1871, including Alsace and Lorraine newly wrested from France. Prussian territories then covered great swathes of modern Poland, stretching as far as the city of Königsberg, today’s Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Romantic nationalist thinking, itself wideranging and relatively marginal in political terms, cannot be taken as indicative of the prevailing nineteenth-century sentiment; ‘When Gottlieb Fichte, Heinrich Heine, Leopold von Ranke, or Richard Wagner engaged the question “What is German?” after all, their contributions described an ambition, rather than a state of affairs’ (Gregor et al. 2006, 3). The concept of Kultur was itself contested, having associations with everything from high culture, through folklore and class, to religious confession (H. W. Smith 1995, 21). Indeed, the only thing uniting the former states of the Holy Roman Empire after its dissolution in 1806 was opposition to Napoleonic rule, which could mobilise a broad cross-section of society against the enemy ‘Other’. Matthew Levinger (2000) shows how Prussian bureaucrats sought to exploit this inchoate nationalist sentiment to underpin their emperor’s rule, while remaining remarkably ambiguous about the Prussian or German nature of their appeals. Aristocrats, romantics and republicans all sought to mould the national idea to fit their interests, emphasising its cultural, territorial, conservative or revolutionary potential accordingly. What each had in common, however, was the overriding concept of national unity, understood as ‘an ideally harmonious political community possessing a unitary interest and a unitary will’ (Levinger 2000, 48). This construct was by no means a foregone conclusion. A range of alternative political set-ups were thinkable (Levinger 2000, 239) and societal divisions continued to run deep beneath the ideal type of the unified nation. As such, different understandings of what constituted national culture and identity ‘divided as much as it unified society’ (H. W. Smith 1995, 233). For instance, many forms of romantic nationalism included a strong Protestant and anti-Semitic component which only compounded existing religious confessional differences. Religion was also central to the heated debates surrounding kleindeutsch – and hence predominantly Protestant – German unification, as opposed to the grossdeutsche Lösung including Catholic Austria (Levinger 2000, 223). Regional loyalties added to the essentially contested concept of the German nation throughout the nineteenth century. The states of Saxony, Hannover and Württemberg, for instance, sought to foster patriotism towards them as ‘Fatherlands’ (Green 2001). Attempts to legitimate their small-scale monarchies through festivals, museums and history textbooks, among other means, much resembled nation-building in today’s Germany and Vietnam. Yet they were

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not deemed incompatible with a larger-scale loyalty to an overarching, but as yet ill-defined, German nation. Although the impact of these policies is hard to measure, they seemed to have had some success in combination with local loyalty to one’s Heimat, or homeland (Sutherland 2001). Writing about his early twentieth-century childhood, for instance, former West German chancellor Kurt Kiesinger reminisced: ‘[W]e not only were citizens of the German Reich, but also, and foremost, good citizens of Württemberg’ (cited in Weber & Kowert 2007, 70). Affiliations to Länder, or federal states, thus shaped some German leaders’ post-war thinking. Born into a devout Catholic background in the Rhineland, then West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer said in 1946; ‘[N]ationalism has experienced the strongest intellectual resistance in those catholic and protestant parts of Germany that least fell for the teachings of Karl Marx’ (cited in Weber & Kowert 2007, 47). He thereby distanced himself at once from socialism and Prussian, state-led nationalism, to which he felt the Rhineland had never really subscribed. Concepts such as Heimat thus served as a stepping stone, rather than a hurdle, to fostering emotional attachment to the wider nation (Eley 2006; Applegate 1990; Confino 1997). Alon Confino charts how the definition of the term Heimat was gradually widened between 1871 and 1914 to mean not only the locality, but also the nation, until the concept of deutsche Heimat became corrupted by Nazi ideology. However, Celia Applegate points out that it was ‘pulled out of the rubble of the Nazi Reich as a victim, not a perpetrator’ and came to embody once more the local patriotism which had been discouraged by Nazism (Applegate 1990, 228). The Heimat became a vehicle for ‘speaking the unspeakable’ horror of the Third Reich in order to transcend it (Applegate 1990, 228). It has been argued that in West Germany, identification with post-war economic reconstruction made a virtue out of necessity (Giesen 2001). Emphasis on traits such as industriousness, reliability and efficiency helped to fill the gaping void left by the collapse of Nazism, and could include immigrants, at least in principle. Giesen (2001, 49) also points to a rejection of both ethnic and petit bourgeois interpretations of German identity among some sections of society. This attitude was typified in the student protests of 1968, which railed against materialism, bureaucracy and German society’s perceived reluctance to come to terms with Nazism. The anti-establishment movement particularly deplored what it saw as the continuing government authoritarianism embodied in proposed emergency laws. Chancellor Willy Brandt, elected in 1969, accordingly proposed to ‘dare more democracy.’ In terms of identity politics, there was a concerted attempt to engage in Vergangensheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the Nazi past, through heated media debates and a strong emphasis on the Third Reich in school history lessons. An internationalist identity also came to prominence in 1968,

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espoused by many who felt alienated from a Germany they associated with ossified conservatism (Davies 2007). The shadow of the Iron Curtain loomed so large over West Germany’s nation-building that it completely blocked out the issue of economic migrants. The West German constitution, known as the Basic Law, bestowed automatic citizenship on all ethnic Germans living in Eastern bloc countries, including the GDR. Having thus taken on constitutional responsibility for millions of potential German arrivals, successive West German governments were reluctant to include the tens of thousands of labour migrants, tellingly called Gastarbeiter or guest workers, who were actually settling: ‘The very existence of East Germany made a redefinition of German citizenship . . . difficult, as this would ipso facto dilute the pan-German definition taken over by West Germany’ (Green 2004, 39). When the Iron Curtain disappeared and that putative panGerman state was realised, the pressing issue of ethnic Germans who began arriving in droves once again pushed non-German immigration to the bottom of the agenda. Following the 1998 federal election, Gerhard Schröder’s coalition government promised a debate which historical circumstance had hindered thus far. Its result, the nationality law of 2000, rejected the principle of life-long dual nationality and the possibly divided loyalties it entailed. As a direct result of vocal party and public opposition (Holmes Cooper 2002), citizenship for German-born children of foreigners was not an automatic right. It had to be sealed by a positive recognition of German belonging and repudiation of any other nationality by the age of 23. The latest piece of legislation in this field is the 2005 immigration law. Among other measures, this ties the naturalisation process to several years’ residence and the completion of a course in German language and civic culture. This can be interpreted as an attempt to inculcate basic principles of German Leitkultur in would-be citizens, as studies show these tests to be less about communicative competence or general knowledge and more about subjective impressions of how an individual ‘fits in’ to German society. Ingrid Piller (2001, 270) points out that the German Interior Ministry’s naturalisation criteria emphasise the applicant’s ability to understand (passively), thus privileging a perspective whereby the applicant is expected to assimilate both literally (the text) and figuratively (Germanness) rather than play an active role in an intercultural conversation. This supports the view that German nation-building continues to be organised around the model of a dominant ethnie rather than multiculturalism. In contrast to the FRG, the official identity of the former GDR was premised on anti-fascism from the outset. Any East German Vergangenheitsbewältigung was thus out of the question, as it was assumed that the entire East German population had been opposed to fascism. Another strand in GDR nationbuilding was internationalism. This included giving political asylum to likeminded ‘fighters against imperialism’ fleeing dictatorships in Spain, Greece,

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Chile and elsewhere (Poutrus 2005, 120). Official events marking international worker solidarity were not necessarily reflected in everyday life, however (Kolinsky 2004). For example, the lives of foreigners working and studying in the GDR were strictly controlled and they were largely segregated from the German population in separate housing blocks. Workers contracted from Vietnam, Cuba, Mozambique and elsewhere as factory labour were not encouraged to learn German or to integrate. The internationalist strand in government nation-building did not translate into the promotion of an inclusive self-understanding (Kolinsky 2004). The Cold War erected major barriers to imagining a German national identity not rooted in ethnicity. Despite Germany’s division into two states, both East (until 1974) and West German governments maintained that it continued to be a single nation. Ultimately, the popular expression of this aspiration was decisive in bringing about a unitary state, if not a nation. ‘Wir sind ein Volk’ (we are one people) soon supplanted ‘Wir sind das Volk’ (we are the people) as the chant adopted by East Germans demonstrating for greater political freedom in the autumn of 1989. Today, ‘the peculiarity of an incomplete, vicarious nation-state for all Germans in the communist diaspora is no more’ (Joppke 1999, 95). Unification, coupled with the pressures of ethnic Germans (Aussiedler) and asylum seekers arriving in large numbers, led to a pragmatic policy shift requiring changes to united Germany’s Basic Law. It is now politically possible to go about redefining German identity, and the incremental steps taken towards reforming citizenship law testify to this. However, sustained opposition to reform suggests that political culture is not in step with legislation, and that the idea of Germany as a country of immigration, let alone a multicultural melting pot, has yet to make much headway (Dennis & Kolinsky 2004). In 2004, then German chancellor Gerhard Schröder interpreted his invitation to attend commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day landings as showing that ‘the post-war period is over and done for good’ (Reuters 2004). Nevertheless, Germans continue to deliberate over their relationship to the past and its implications for national identity, patriotism and pride (Green et al. 2008, 19; Roberts 2000, 181). Almost twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the legacy of the GDR also continues to be the subject of public debate. In looking at how the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991) finds its expression in unified Germany, there are indications that contemporary nation-building ideology has not incorporated four decades of separate GDR statehood as an equally constituent part of national identity. Evidence suggests that some East Germans do not identify strongly with their current status as German citizens, due to the dominance of West German norms, institutions and values in public discourse since reunification (Schneider 2004, 171). Certain felt the speed of reunification cheated them of the chance to preserve what they considered positive aspects of GDR society

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(Roberts 2000, 185). Despite the fact that a former GDR citizen, Angela Merkel, became German chancellor in 2005 (Berg 2005), differences in selfunderstanding persist between East and West, including class ascription, forms of communication and attitudes towards the state. This can be partly attributed to the GDR’s role in socialising its citizens (Ahbe 2004, 113). At the local level, for instance, this continued differentiation can be observed in former East and West Berliners’ choice of newspapers, parliamentary representation and figures of speech (Schneider 2004, 178). One popular expression of difference has filtered into mainstream culture as Ostalgie, or nostalgia for the east, reaching a mass audience through popular films such as Goodbye, Lenin, the relaunch of East German products like Nudossi (chocolate spread) and the commercialisation of the distinctive figure at former GDR pedestrian crossings, known as the Ampelmännchen. The release of widely acclaimed feature films like Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), coupled with periodic revelations from East Germany’s secret police files, also ensure that their activities remain in the public eye. The GDR museum, which opened in Berlin in 2006 as a private, commercial venture, has been criticised for riding this wave of Ostalgie. A spokesman for the DHM attacked its narrow focus on consumer goods, its over-emphasis on daily life and its lack of context (Stone 2006), something which he claimed the two thousand year span of his museum could provide. At the same time, the banalisation or even glamorisation of East German life can be interpreted as undermining narratives of continuous German unity (Cooke 2005) and thus threatening the ideological premise of the DHM as representing two millennia of continuous German history. Yet an overarching sense of belonging must also have oiled the wheels of rapid German reunification. The so-called ‘chancellor of unity’ Helmut Kohl and his Christian Democrat party returned to the idea of a shared German Kultur in order to underline continuity despite partition (Fulbrook 1994, 213). However, the notion of a common German culture and sense of belonging remains as contested today as in its nineteenth-century usages. Indeed, unified Germany has been said to display ‘three kinds of linked consciousness: a postcommunist kind for the eastern Länder, a somewhat bewildered move to a unified national consciousness 50 years after World War Two; and the reach for a speculative “European” consciousness’ (Wood 1998, 10). The impact of the Third Reich on Germany’s sense of national identity is well documented, but the effect of the GDR past on national unity and memory is just as important. The abbreviation GDR was specifically used and encouraged by its government in order to avoid associations with both Germany’s pre-war history and West Germany, its constant rival. East Germany’s ruling party, the SED, upheld the notion of national unity in the 1950s and 1960s, however, before experimenting with an ill-fated form of ‘socialist nationalism’. As in Vietnam, the SED commissioned an official history in order to help to

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legitimise itself as the latest embodiment of Germany’s putatively socialist character. This was complemented by the promotion of communist role models such as Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, but also cultural figures like Bach, Beethoven and Goethe, as well as the renovation of Berlin’s traditional architecture (Nothnagle 1999). Yet an explicitly East German citizenship was created in the late 1960s and the goal of German reunification excised from the GDR’s 1974 constitution, whereas West Germany remained wedded to the idea of a pan-German nation throughout its existence. The ideological manipulation of the nation is particularly clear-cut in the GDR case, since the SED sought to foster a national consciousness as a crucial boost to its legitimacy. In 1954, its then general secretary Walter Ulbricht used typically nationalist language at the fourth SED congress: ‘We want German unity because the Germans in the western part of our homeland are our brothers, because we love our fatherland, because we know that the restoration of German unity is an unavoidable aspect of the logic of history’ (cited in McKay 1998, 15). To this extent, it is remarkably similar to a speech made a year earlier by then West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer on a visit to the United States: ‘[R]eunification shall be achieved only in peace and freedom. We, in the West of Germany, will not submit to the Soviet yoke in order to reunite with our brethren in the East as a Russian satellite state. We shall not do so because we would thereby betray our compatriots in the East who expect us to maintain our freedom so that they, too, can share it one day again’ (cited in Weber & Kowert 2007, 63). Ulbricht, however, understood national unity in terms of working-class solidarity. He assumed that class could undermine nation, and aimed to extend the socialist system to West Germany. Adenauer, on the other hand, would only countenance a ‘free’ Germany. Since they did not consider reunification without either socialist revolution or democracy a worthy goal, both subordinated nationalism to their respective ideologies. Each nonetheless upheld the ultimate aim of unity, despite the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. However, the SED soon found it increasingly difficult to square this with its promotion of a ‘socialist national consciousness’ specific to East Germany (Meuschel 1992, 291). The renaming of institutions without the word ‘German’, for instance, remained patchy and confusing, indicating inconsistencies in the SED’s message, which would dog its attempts to influence GDR citizens’ understanding of nationhood. In 1969, then West German chancellor Willy Brandt’s formulation of ‘two states in one nation’ contrasted with Walter Ulbricht’s emphasis on state sovereignty over national unity. Brandt understood the nation as a combination of historical reality and political will, which went beyond a common language and culture to encompass a shared feeling of belonging (Meuschel 1992, 276). Despite his diplomatic overtures to the East, known as Ostpolitik, Brandt’s assertion of ongoing national unity served to justify the FRG’s

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continued refusal to recognise the GDR as a sovereign state, Conversely, Ulbricht’s decision to abandon his earlier claim of German unity in 1970 had a lot to do with his increasingly precarious position as leader, differences with the Soviet Union, and retaliation at Brandt’s use of the unity concept to thwart GDR ambitions to join the United Nations. Ulbricht began to question the unity of German culture and language, which he considered Americanised in the FRG, ‘contaminated by imperialism and manipulated by capitalism’ (cited in McKay 1998, 55). This position continued under his successor, Erich Honecker, who oversaw a hardening of the SED’s stance towards the FRG as a ‘foreign country’ in the early 1970s. This was another confusing reversal which flowed from a policy of Abgrenzung, meaning demarcation or separation (Ludz 1977, 222). The SED’s pursuit of external state sovereignty had entailed a repudiation of the German nation, although survey evidence at the time suggested that East Germans were able to distinguish between state and nation, and even see the GDR as their ‘fatherland’ without prejudice to accepting the continued existence of a historic and cultural German nation (McKay 1998, 92). These differences between popular understanding and ideological manipulation exemplify Karl Mannheim’s (1991 [1929], 49) distinction between total and particular national ideologies. The GDR’s 1974 constitution replaced references to the German nation and national unity with an emphasis on the socialist character of the state (Ludz 1977, 223). Tellingly, in 1970, Brezhnev had summed up the German question as follows: ‘[N]ever forget that without us, the Soviet Union, with our power and strength, the GDR would not exist . . . Germany does not exist anymore and it is better that way. There is the socialist GDR and the imperialist FRG’ (cited in McKay 1998, 57). The SED did try to replace an ethnically and historically grounded conception of Germanness with a ‘socialist national consciousness’, albeit one which appropriated suitable German historical figures. The official introduction of a distinction between the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’ in late 1974 came as a belated theoretical justification for the glaring contradictions and inconsistencies in this policy (Meuschel 1992, 281). A 1975 article in the party organ, Neues Deutschland (the name of which was never ‘deGermanised’) explained that the ‘complexity of ethnic characteristics, traits and features of a population is described as “nationality”. Therefore the concept of nationality is narrower than the concept of the nation, and what is more, not the most decisive’ (cited in McKay 1998, 109). Despite this nice academic distinction, which rescued German history and culture while subordinating them to the overriding strength of socialist principles, the SED’s nation-building ideology suffered from being too obviously instrumental, topdown and authoritarian. This is in contrast to the gradual socialisation and lived experience of former GDR citizens, which continue to influence their identities and personal ideologies to this day.

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German reunification was a unique event; never before had two developed welfare states been brought together so quickly or comprehensively (Lehmbruch 1993, 32). The chosen method was accession under Article 23 of West Germany’s Basic Law. A preliminary treaty between the two states in May 1990 preceded unification on 3 October of the same year. Originally conceived as a caretaker document in 1949, the Basic Law would actually become the constitution of the united German state almost overnight, leaving East Germans to grapple with their new status as citizens of a united Germany. The hurdles to be overcome in the eleven months between the fall of the Berlin Wall and unification were enormous. This process was legitimated by the GDR’s first and only free elections of March 1990, in which the conservative Alliance for Democracy’s majority was interpreted as an endorsement of Helmut Kohl’s quick reunification policy (Lehmbruch 1993, 26). Expectations in the East were high. Even if standards of living were relatively good there compared to other Eastern bloc countries, they could not compete with the images of West German affluence reaching GDR television sets, and the SED regime continually measured itself both practically and ideologically against its neighbour. There would inevitably be disappointment. As soon as the wall came down, East Germans faced huge challenges, including the revision of rents, the introduction of the West German pension and benefit system, the fear that their homes might be repossessed by pre-war landowners, and unemployment (Kolinsky 1995). These changes caused untold mental strain. The status of pensioners, single parents, women, young people and the relatively privileged was turned upside down as the existing social system disappeared. For instance, the overwhelming majority of East Germans were accustomed to a way of life which revolved around their Betrieb, or workplace (Kolinsky 1995, 22). Yet every second family in the Leipzig area is estimated to have experienced the economic, social and psychological consequences of unemployment in the five years following unification (Kolinsky 1995, 71). Although the influence of SED ideology on its former citizens is an important feature of East German socialisation, this must be distinguished from the regime’s total ideology. Wolf Biermann, a famous East German poet and singer-songwriter who fell foul of the authorities there and was expelled in 1976, describes the sense of alienation and difference he felt living in West Germany; ‘I came from Germany to Germany, I could speak the language but didn’t understand a word. Why? Because the system of cultural and political references in which I found myself was so different to the one I knew. I felt as though I was in a foreign land’ (Spiegel 2006b).1 Biermann did not regard West Germany as a foreign land until he experienced it as such, since he spoke German and enjoyed West German citizenship by virtue of Article 116 of the Basic Law. He claims that he would rather have been exiled to Poland or the Soviet Union, because they had the same ‘social structure’ as the GDR

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(Spiegel 2006b). This underlines how deeply the GDR regime, modelled on the Soviet system, had affected Biermann’s ability to relate to his fellow Germans across the border and live a normal life there. It also gives a sense of the disorientation felt in 1989 by East Germans, who even struggled with everyday tasks like grocery shopping due to the glut of unfamiliar products which suddenly became available (Confino & Fritzsche 2002). Despite failing in its state-legitimating function, at least one analyst concludes that GDR ideology left behind: [A] distinctive outlook on life, an unmistakably East German use of language, a vast constellation of shattered dreams and hurt feelings, a widespread distrust of ‘Western’ values, a general inability to look critically at the recent past and at one’s own role in it, a unique setting of priorities molded by forty years of life in a socialist society and unremitting assaults by the SED’s myth-building machine. For better or worse, the new united Germany now lives with this legacy. (Nothnagle 1999, 38)

The idea of a single German nation, as enshrined in the Basic Law, West German citizenship legislation and East German demonstrators’ chants of ‘We are one people’ (Wir sind ein Volk) in 1989, did not correspond to lived experience before and after unification. In his unique anthropological study of East and West Berlin before 1989, John Borneman (1992, 22) refers to the building of the wall in 1961 as ‘a realization of what already had been a divided community in the political imagination of the residents’. That is, the creation of a physical barrier entrenched already established and diverging nationbuilding projects premised on communism and capitalism, Soviet and Western alliances respectively. When the wall crumbled, so did the apparatus of state security, national myth-making and self-censorship which had characterised the GDR regime. In its place came a rapid and wholesale adoption of the West German model (McKay 1998, 157). Despite initial euphoria, however, this did not and could not erase GDR citizens’ completely different socialisation, leading to a gap between the official ideological basis of the new ‘Berlin republic’ and their own ‘particular’ ideological identification with the united German nation. In the first pan-German election of 1990, the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD)) candidate, Oskar Lafontaine, was embarrassed by the national question, leaving it up to the incumbent Christian Democrats to shape the new national discourse (Berger 1994, 59). Chancellor Helmut Kohl represented the nation in terms of a prosperous political order modelled on West Germany and anchored within the EU, but open to all German Landsleute, or fellow countrymen (Borneman 1992, 318). This reassuring reference to compatriots was vague and inclusive enough for East and West Germans alike to conjure up their own mental images of where

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and to what they belonged. Yet one factor indicating disillusionment with postunification life is a resurgence in Eastern support for the Party of Democratic Socialism (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS)), the SED’s successor, which merged with another left-wing group to form Die Linke in 2007. With reference to the GDR, the former PDS leader Gabrielle Zimmer contrasted the difficulties of those born in the 1940s and growing up under Stalinist influence with nationhood to those of her later generation, who identified with the GDR in a less ideological, politicised way and found the idea of national belonging and pride less problematic: ‘[I]t is a question of seeking an identity in place rather than ideology. Paradoxically, the collapse of Stalinism as an ideology has emptied the GDR of its political content and left a shell of memories of Heimat, order and stability’ (Thompson 2002, 125). Members of Zimmer’s GDR generation were also less ambivalent about national identity than those of their West German counterparts who participated in the youth movements of the 1960s and 1970s (Brunssen 2002, 21). Nonetheless, embracing post-unity German identity was far from straightforward for Gabrielle Zimmer or other Eastern Germans, regardless of their political persuasion. Some rekindled regional loyalties to the likes of Saxony (Szejnmann 2002). Others, ironically, regarded the GDR as a ‘retrospectively imagined community’ (Thompson 2002, 128), one which forty years of SED propaganda could not impose but which former citizens adopted in hindsight. To them it represented the sense of community and stability which they yearned for when confronted with the hectic and confusing pace of capitalism and globalisation in united Germany. This was emphatically not a hankering after past authoritarianism and, to the extent that it was political at all, represented more of a negative reaction to neo-liberalism. Distinguishing politicisation from socialisation in this way was not difficult for former GDR citizens who had grown used to separating ideological allegiance to the SED’s ‘socialist nationalist consciousness’ from everyday life and loyalties (Cooke 2005, 7). However, it was precisely a perceived inability in post-unification discourse to deal with the GDR in a nuanced and differentiated way which rankled with many. Their experience of ‘everyday socialism’ seemed to set them apart from their Western German counterparts, though a parallel could be drawn with the consciously depoliticised nature of post-war West German identity; ‘If the West Germans had the economic miracle and a form of patriotism rooted in the strength of the German mark as a substitute identity then the East Germans had their antiquarian so-called niche existence. What both had in common was a propensity not to examine the underlying geo-strategic and historical conditions’ (Thompson 2002, 131). Despite its origins as the successor party to the SED, the PDS is just as much about capturing those voters who identify with ‘everyday socialism’ as those who espouse the ideology itself, hence its own use of the term Heimat in party

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materials to evoke a sense of familiarity and belonging to a retrospectively imagined community (Hough 2005). Mary Fulbrook (2001) discusses ‘the creation of two German societies’ between 1945 and 1990, an observation which in itself chips away at the notion of ongoing national unity: ‘Ultimately, a common language, a common heritage, and a residual sense of common national identity, were fractured by deep-rooted and extensive differences in the very constitution of social classes, life chances, cultural attitudes and patterns of behaviour’ (Fulbrook 2001, 245). At the same time, it could be argued that unification was in some ways constitutive of an ex post facto GDR identity, as former citizens were confronted with contrasting East and West German socialisation (Cooke 2005, 7). Both conclusions do much to undermine the myth of German unity on which the taken for granted term ‘reunification’ is premised. Furthermore, the nature of this narrative, laden in favour of both Western capitalist norms and an ethnic understanding of the Kulturnation, contains a contradiction and an imbalance inimical to the very project of present and future national integration; ‘On the one hand, both parts of Germany must grow together after unification. And this integration takes place in the name of ethnic belonging. On the other hand, the integration of immigrants cannot be undertaken in the name of an ethnic nation’ (von Thadden, cited in von Dirke 1994, 532).2 Vietnam and Germany share experience of state division and communist government. In the Vietnamese case, communist control became nationwide with the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975 and the creation of the SRV from the DRV and the RVN in 1976. This political system remains in place, despite the opening up (đổi mới) to capital markets and foreign investment ushered in by the 1986 Communist Party Congress. State planning and subsidies have been rolled back in some areas, including health and education, encouraging the participation of civil society in building a ‘socialist market economy’ (Thai 2001). In Germany, 3 October 1990 marked the official end of East German communism with the accession of the GDR to the FRG. GDR identity was an ideological construct like any other nation-building tool, but its myths and symbols were more overtly ideological and its creation relatively recent and raw. It offered disembodied anti-fascism where the FRG offered reassuring territorial continuity; the Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 1973 that the FRG was ‘partially identical’ with the pre-Nazi Reich, for instance (Knischewski 1996, 133). From 1954 to 1990, the FRG celebrated the ‘Day of German Unity’ on 17 June. This commemorated the GDR worker uprising in 1953, which it interpreted as expressing a desire for reunification (Knischewski 1996, 132). Although West Germany’s calls for unity changed over time – the FRG recognising GDR sovereignty in 1972 – they continuously enabled the truncated West German state to construct a coherent claim to represent the whole nation. When the time came in 1989, the FRG set about soldering the states according

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to its own designs. Chancellor Kohl’s use of rhetoric like ‘ “our German fatherland”, “our compatriots in the GDR”, and “two states in Germany” ’ (Knischewski 1996, 140) helped prepare the ground for rapid reunification. The discourse of unity thus remained a constant in the DRV and SRV, as well as in the pre and post-unification FRG. Both the Vietnamese and East German communist parties also sought to combine nation-building and socialist ideology in order to legitimate their regimes, with very different results. The DRV was at war for most of its existence. Far from being eclipsed by communist ideology, the narrative of Vietnamese resistance to invasion and myths of national resilience and determination continuously fuelled its war effort. Nation-building after the Second World War blended anti-colonialism, ancient myth and revolutionary fervour, a potent mix personified in the tradition of honouring national heroes like ‘Uncle Ho’. At the same time, Ho’s communist credentials constitute a central legitimating link between the present government and Vietnam’s struggles for independence. The cult of DRV war heroes – and explicitly not RVN war dead, whose graves have been neglected and in some cases razed (Schwenkel 2008, 60) – represents another legitimating tool. Monuments erected to war heroes, and particularly those to ‘patriots and revolutionaries’, link their bravery to Vietnam’s hard-won independence and to the VCP as leader of the revolution (Malarney 2001; Dixon 2004, 17). As such, they continue to be central to the Vietnamese government’s legitimacy today: ‘[The Vietnam–American] war was the mother’s milk, the school and the testing-ground of Vietnamese communism. It provides historical justification for the indispensable leadership of the Communist Party’ (Pham 2005, no page). The East German SED, on the other hand, attempted to supplement its anti-fascist discourse with reference to home-grown communists, but faced difficulties in accounting for critiques of Lenin penned by the likes of Rosa Luxembourg (Terray 1995, 192). References to Karl Marx and Martin Luther were also ambivalent as, contrary to the FRG, the GDR was unwilling to assume responsibility for acts which did not support the dominant ideology (such as Luther’s condemnation of the 1524 peasant revolt). In 1980, SED secretary general Erich Honecker commented archly: ‘We cannot possibly run the risk of celebrating the same national heroes as the FRG since you will search in vain for institutions bearing the names of Nazi greats in our country’ (cited in McKay 1998, 124). Although it also sought to co-opt eminent cultural figures into its national pantheon, the GDR could not exploit links to a magnificent ancient civilisation, as was the VCP’s good fortune. The bronze drums which have been found in northern Vietnam are generally dated to between 700 and 1000 BCE. However, in a conflation of history and myth, nationalist rhetoric does not shy away from asserting Vietnam’s even more ancient origins by evoking the legendary dynasty of Hùng

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Kings (Pelley 1995, 233). Ho Chi Minh himself is quoted as saying; ‘The Kings Hung [sic] have founded the country; as for us, we must safeguard it’ (cited in Dang 1998, 44). Archaeological interpretation is thus put to use in legitimating the VCP as the latest in a long line of leaders representing the Vietnamese nation. This trend is likely to continue as other credentials associated with war veterans fade with the generations, and new forms of collective action distinct from mass organisations such as the Fatherland Front, become more vocal in Vietnam (Luong 2003, 24; Malarney 1997, 917). The ‘postcolonial cult of antiquity’ (Pelley 1998, 375) also has an impact on the VCP’s regionalist discourse. One example is Vietnam’s contribution to the ASEAN culture week, which took place in Hanoi and Ha Long City in 2004. The Vietnamese section ˙ of the opening performance featured an array of dancers in feathered headdresses, vaguely reminiscent of the characters etched on archaeological artefacts. The prominently displayed replica of a bronze drum made it clear that this was an evocation of the country’s pre-Chinese, Bronze Age culture, appropriately entitled ‘Dance of the Ancient Viet’. Although similar drums have been found elsewhere in Southeast Asia, some of the oldest artefacts have been uncovered in Vietnam. As such, this symbolism evokes both a shared regional heritage and a ‘race to antiquity’ among ASEAN member states (Loofs-Wissowa 1993). It remains to be seen how united Vietnam and Germany reconcile nation-building with regionalism more generally. Investing in regional integration The fiftieth anniversary of the EU and ASEAN’s fortieth jubilee both occurred in 2007. ASEAN remains an eminently flexible, intergovernmental organisation based on member state consensus, and is unencumbered by any supranational institutions beyond a permanent secretariat and a series of regular meetings. In this sense, ASEAN differs greatly from the EU, but this does not rule out fruitful comparisons. Despite being ‘at opposite ends of the spectrum of institutionalised regionalism’ (Wunderlich 2006, 2) their fundamentally different nature represents unique responses to international challenges that have been shaped and developed by member states and, in the EU case, its own institutions. Both organisations were born of a shared desire to promote peace and development, but adopted very different principles and strategies in pursuing that aim. Member state understandings of nation-building are one among many contextual factors contributing to this divergence. This section argues that it was primarily in Vietnamese and German national interests to take part in regional integration, for historical, political and strategic reasons. Accordingly, regionalism is an integral part of their nation-building ideologies. When West Germany became a founding member of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, going on to participate in the European Economic

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Community from 1957, it saw this as a means to forge a lasting alliance with its former enemy, France, to underpin its economic recovery with a free trade area and to be rehabilitated as a respected partner on the international political arena following the Second World War. Other European countries, as well as the United States of America, saw a pressing need to tie West Germany securely to the anti-Soviet bloc in the escalating Cold War, and to monitor the country’s reconstruction by integrating key aspects of European trade and industry. Similarly ASEAN, founded in 1967 by Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, had an important, if implicit, anti-communist element (but cf. Tarling 2006, 135). All of its original members feared the impact of domestic and international communist movements on state stability. As a result, one of ASEAN’s goals was to provide a regional bulwark against communism in Indochina, consisting of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Today, however, the loose set of guidelines known as the ‘ASEAN way’ corresponds to key principles of Vietnamese diplomacy as laid down at the ninth VCP Congress in 2001, namely non-interference and respect for independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty. Vietnam’s current focus on developing international ties is closely linked to its socio-economic development, for which it requires technical expertise and assistance, while continuing to profess an ideological commitment to the international proletariat and socialism. Vietnamese regionalism Vietnam’s membership of ASEAN and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), as well as sub-regional initiatives surrounding the Mekong Basin (Dosch & Hensengerth 2005) signals its readiness to engage in supranational dialogue, if not deep integration. The sixth VCP Congress in 1986 saw the introduction of an open door policy known as đổi mới, meaning renovation. This brought with it major changes in domestic policy, including the property regime and economic reforms. Despite these, the VCP continues to cling to its interpretation of ‘one-party democracy’. It hopes that Vietnam’s rapid growth, averaging 7.2 per cent in the decade to 2005 (Economist 2008, 238), will cement the party’s legitimacy and its interpretation of national identity, rather than encouraging calls for greater political pluralism. The current revival of religious observance amongst Vietnam’s urban elites, for instance, has been interpreted as both an individual response to social change and part of ‘state attempts to strengthen national identifications as a counterbalance to its policies of economic liberalisation’ (Taylor 2003, 383). Taking place a few years before the collapse of European communism, the sixth VCP Congress also heralded changes in Vietnam’s foreign policy, and by extension in the official portrayal of national self-understanding. This was strongly linked to its continuing nation-building efforts.

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Vietnamese leaders’ references to unleashing the nation’s ‘inner strength’ recalled traditions of national determination and resistance. They also attempted to counter disillusionment that decades of war did not bring an end to hardship and privations; ‘Relative poverty more than 25 years after reunification has hurt the pride of the nation’ (Dosch and Ta 2004, 203). The VCP now claims that the strong will, dynamism, creativity and effort of the Vietnamese people were successfully harnessed by đổi mới and effective state management. People had to be at least as resourceful before then to make ends meet despite state policies, however. During the 1970s, Vietnam had been suspicious of whether ASEAN supported ‘genuine neutrality’ (Narine 2002, 40), given the foreign military bases in Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as Thailand and the Philippines’ support for the USA in the Vietnam– American war. Throughout the 1980s, ASEAN and Vietnam were on opposite sides of a stand-off over Cambodia (then Kampuchea), where the murderous Khmer Rouge regime had been toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in 1978 and replaced by a client government. Vietnam presented this as a humanitarian intervention. ASEAN saw it as a move to assert Vietnamese dominance over communist Indochina, thereby directly threatening neighbouring Thailand. This conflict realised ASEAN’s fears of communist advance. Vietnam’s attempts to draw closer to its ASEAN neighbours in the run-up to the 1978 invasion made it all the more shocking when it came. ASEAN member states were united in condemnation but divided on an appropriate strategic response (Narine 2002, 45). ASEAN’s prestige as an international diplomatic partner was raised through diplomatic initiatives such as the International Conference on Kampuchea in 1981. However, internal tensions between Thailand and Indonesia in particular, coupled with the superpowers’ pursuit of divergent interests in the region, highlighted ASEAN’s limited clout. Vietnam, which had declared its intention to withdraw all troops from Cambodia by 1990, accelerated the process as its Soviet ally became weaker and its own domestic reforms demanded external support, notably the normalisation of relations with China and the resumption of suspended aid. Despite the diplomatic stalemate, economic cooperation with ASEAN improved in the 1980s and Vietnam openly indicated its desire eventually to become a member. Trade finally trumped tension with the Paris Peace Treaty of 1991, which determined Cambodia’s future under the aegis of the United Nations. Vietnam’s accession to ASEAN in 1995 signalled its readiness to pursue regionalism as part of its continuing nation-building project. This step can be seen as part of a wider strategy in response to the collapse of communism, premised on the view that ‘regional institutions can assist the state-building process’ (Narine 2004, 444). The tension between the theory and practice of ASEAN integration can be added to that between national interests and ASEAN credibility, as well as

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institution-building and actual cooperation (Boisseau du Rocher 1998, 107). If regionalism is about fostering mutual understanding and international prestige, it is also about reinforcing each member state’s domestic legitimacy (Boisseau du Rocher 1998, 107). Just as state visits have an important symbolic function (for instance, Bill Clinton’s visit to Vietnam in 2000 as the first US president to set foot in unified Vietnam), so the symbolism of ASEAN cooperation is at least as significant as its concrete achievements. In ideological terms, it was of prime importance for the founding members to signal their unity vis-à-vis what they considered the Vietnamese threat throughout the 1970s and, in the 1980s, against domestic instability in the Philippines and elsewhere. Yet only after the end of the Vietnam–American war did ASEAN heads of government first come together to be formally associated with the fledgling organisation, whose affairs had hitherto been left to foreign ministers. The 1976 Bali summit not only gave the organisation a higher profile, but also resulted in the decision to create a more robust institutional structure. By the 1990s, the end of the Cold War, peace in Cambodia and the departure of US troops from the Philippines called for new impetus. The Singapore summit in 1992 accordingly focused on economic and security cooperation, as well as the need to restructure ASEAN internally. The agreement to create an ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) can be understood as a response to the creation of a single market in the EU and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), even if actual progress on reducing tariff barriers has been slow. Another ASEAN initiative, the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN), joined the congeries of groupings testifying to political will, if not assiduous implementation. ASEAN’s slow reaction to the 1997 Asian financial crisis and lacklustre condemnation of the Burmese government’s spectacular failings further demonstrate the misfit between symbolic cooperation and concrete action. By the year 2000, Vietnam had diplomatic ties with 177 countries, compared to 23 states sharing its ideological opposition to capitalism in 1989 (Dosch and Ta 2004, 197). ASEAN’s integration of its erstwhile enemy was a sign of changing times. The Vietnamese government was anxious to end its isolation as a political pariah and become an accepted partner for regional and international trade and investment. ASEAN’s founding members, in turn, were keen to unite against a new threat in the post-Cold War era, that of regional insignificance. Sandwiched between the fast-developing economies of India and China, they wanted to assert themselves on a newly configured world stage and resist outsiders’ attempts to impose their will on the region (Ramcharan 2003). It was unthinkable that regional integration could be at the expense of strong state sovereignty. On the contrary, in member states’ regionalist thinking, sovereignty was seen as a ‘necessary prerequisite’ (Narine 2004, 444; emphasis in original).

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ASEAN functions according to the principles of non-interference and decision-making by consensus, known collectively as ‘the ASEAN way’. Its emphasis on respecting territorial sovereignty offers a means of reconciling regionalisation with nation-building. Vietnam, long considered a destabilising factor in the region, has made conspicuous efforts to demonstrate both its regional commitment and ability to lead, hosting ASEAN summits, initiating the ASEAN culture week and organising other regional events such as the 2003 Southeast Asian games, the 2004 Asia–Europe meeting (ASEM) and the 2006 APEC summit in Hanoi. This helps to strengthen perceptions of Southeast Asia as a region, at least among elites, while establishing Vietnam as an international player (Sutherland 2005b). Vietnam has carefully constructed its move from describing ASEAN as a hostile, capitalist, ‘NATO-type’ organisation to embracing membership. The VCP now claims that ‘the present enemy of Vietnam is poverty and backwardness, and the friend of Vietnam is everybody who is willing to co-operate with and help us to push back poverty and backwardness’ (Tran, cited in Dosch and Ta 2004, 200). This militaristic rhetoric recalls not only that of the war years, but also the official language of struggle and heroism used since then to motivate the population in facing new challenges (P. Taylor 2001, 28). ASEAN membership thereby plays both to domestic legitimacy and external sovereignty; it helps define a new enemy against which the VCP can lead the people, while at the same time seeking to bolster its international recognition. Membership of ASEAN signals a shift from military to political and economic security. Although Vietnam still officially pursues ‘socialist construction’ in the creation of a ‘socialist market economy’, this rhetoric has not hindered substantial foreign direct investment and development aid from both donor countries and international organisations like the World Bank. After all, ‘the Vietnamese bureaucracy is well schooled in slogans’ (Templer 1998, 148) and its stated commitment to reform has been conducive to international cooperation. Despite important regional and ethnic disparities and a growing income differential (Luong 2003, 16), Vietnam’s success in reducing poverty since the 1990s makes it attractive to aid agencies, which are keen to see their projects lead to measurable results. Yet Vietnam retains a vigorous ‘self-belief’ (Gainsborough 2002, 704) derived from its national myth of resistance, which makes it less vulnerable to international pressure than neighbouring states such as Laos and Cambodia. Foreign aid donors have found this to their cost; the democratic agenda behind the World Bank’s good governance programme has made little headway in Vietnam, for instance (Zingerli 2004, 55). Instead, the Vietnamese government implements its explicit aim of ‘absorbing external resources long and consistently [sic]’ (VCP Central Committee 1997, cited in Dinh 2006, 9) while ‘ensuring independence, self-control and socialist orientation’ (Polit Bureau 2001, cited in Dinh 2006, 10). For the time being,

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the ‘ASEAN way’ poses no threat to that vision. On the contrary, it is calculated to strengthen international economic and political clout while maintaining ideological orthodoxy at home. Both internal and external sovereignty must be secure for Vietnam to countenance any form of cooperation, including regional integration. Given that respect for national sovereignty is a core feature of the ‘ASEAN Way’ (Palmujoki 2001, 8), ASEAN member states would dispute the following assessment of the concept: [S]tate sovereignty has been eroded by the notion that the international community has obligations towards individual members of other states. Action on this idea of political legitimacy runs counter to the notion of the territorial integrity of states and the absolute sovereignty of states over their internal affairs. (Moore 2001, 46)

Neither do they appreciate external interference from outside the region. ASEAN member states are hostile towards attempts by the likes of the EU to tie human rights conditionality clauses to trade agreements, for instance. In some cases, they justify this using arguments that human rights are not universal or that ‘Asian values’ prioritise so-called second-generation rights – to work, for instance – over first-generation human rights like freedom of speech, association and religion (Sutherland 2006b). Member states see the ability to present a united front against international pressures as a positive feature of the organisation, although the failings of fellow member states such as Burma are also a source of embarrassment (Agence France Presse 2006). When the ASEAN Culture Week took place in Hanoi and Ha’ i Phòng in 2004, Vietnam’s then prime minister Phan Va˘n Kha’ i expressed his support for ASEAN’s fundamental principles and ‘the flexible and wise combination of the interests of each nation and of the whole region’ (Vietnam News 2004). Indeed, the Vietnamese government first initiated the ASEAN culture week as a means of ‘ “fostering a sense of regional identity”’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2004). Declarations of principle can be an effective way of signalling unity without ceding sovereignty. It is unclear, for instance, whether Vietnam would accept the proposed ASEAN human rights commission (International Herald Tribune 2007), with all the implications for domestic sovereignty this entails. This is one instance where Vietnam’s regionalist rhetoric conflicts with the pressure of actual regionalisation. Nevertheless, the strategic advantage of ASEAN membership in strengthening Southeast Asia’s presence on the world stage is not currently tempered by lost sovereignty or onerous international constraints, and so does not undermine Vietnam’s nation-building ideology. The key consideration underpinning the future of ASEAN remains unchanged: ‘[T]he best prospect for institutional development in the Asia-Pacific is still that states believe that regional institutions can assist the state-building process’ (Narine 2004, 444).

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Despite lofty aspirations, enshrined in ASEAN’s Hanoi (1999) and Vientiane (2004) action plans, the organisation remains resolutely intergovernmental. Moves towards creating an AFTA have made slow progress, despite ambitions for a regional economic zone modelled on the EU by 2015 (Tuổi Tre’ Online 2006). Vietnamese foreign policy continues to be officially articulated in nationalist and socialist terms. In turn, this is linked to principles of Ho Chi Minh’s thought, which has been put on a par with Marxist-Leninist doctrine in Vietnam. One of the VCP’s central, explicit aims is to develop the economy in order to narrow the gap with regional neighbours. The new focus on ‘economic emulation’ over Cold War cleavages, however, is couched in a firm and frequently repeated commitment to upholding ‘national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national unification’ (Dinh 2006, 1). The VCP’s regionalism is premised on its potential to rescue or ‘buttress’ (Milward 1994, 3) the nation-state without even symbolically ‘pooling’ sovereignty at the ASEAN level. The regionalist element in Vietnam’s nation-building discourse can well afford to be positive, as it currently offers the ‘win-win’ prospect of enhancing both domestic legitimacy and external sovereignty. German regionalism The core aim of the 1950 Schumann declaration, which prepared the ground for the European Coal and Steel Community as the first step in European integration, was to make war ‘materially impossible’. This was to be achieved by locking the major powers of France and Germany, who had been at war three times in the past century, into cooperation over vital defence industries. It was also clear to the six founding members and other Western powers like the United States and the United Kingdom that European integration was a means of controlling Germany economically and politically (Anderson 2005, 78). In turn, the preamble of the West German Basic Law unequivocally anchored it within the European project, as ‘an equal member of a united Europe’. The prominence given to this self-understanding signals the importance of European integration as a positive focus of German identity. Despite being predominantly economic in practice, integration was always a highly political project for successive West German governments, entrenching the FRG ideologically as a member of the Western bloc and in opposition to the GDR. Economic integration also fitted well with the identity-promoting aspects of the FRG’s post-war Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle. West Germany’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, was committed to building trust with international partners, particularly France; ‘If this meant subordinating the German state to Western or European political institutions, he was not inclined to object’ (Weber & Kowert 2007, 51). In this he fundamentally disagreed with the opposition leader of the SPD, Kurt Schumacher,

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who advocated German self-determination as a precondition for international cooperation, and not vice versa (Schweiger 2007, 45). Schumacher believed that respect for national rights would prevent a return to right-wing nationalism, whereas Adenauer was of the view that German affairs, including the question of unification, would have to be embedded in a multilateral, but resolutely Western approach. Adenauer was under no illusions that reunification was unrealistic in the prevailing Cold War climate. However, his Westpolitik would come to be complemented by Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik during Brandt’s time as foreign minister in a grand SPD–CDU coalition from 1966–69, and then as chancellor of an SPD–FDP coalition from 1969 until his resignation in 1974. This Ostpolitik included direct contact with the GDR (rather than through the Soviet Union) and recognition of the Oder–Neisse line as marking Germany’s eastern border. Brandt was also committed to pursuing national unity, which he carefully distinguished from right-wing nationalism. Some continuity in government policy can be seen in the extent to which Brandt, like Adenauer, valued informal multilateralism and trustbuilding over a strict, legalistic approach to international relations. Again like Adenauer, Brandt also emphasised an internationally embedded Germany as a precondition of unity: ‘There can only be a European answer to the German question’ (Brandt, cited in Weber & Kowert 2007, 85). This, he stressed, was as much in Germany’s interests as European peace and good East–West relations, underlining the extent to which Germany’s fate was bound up with Europe’s ideological division (Schweiger 2007, 49). In practical terms, Brandt’s policy of détente with the East also had to be pursued in close cooperation with European allies, under the terms agreed in the 1955 Deutschlandvertrag. On becoming chancellor in 1982, Helmut Kohl would explicitly adopt the internationalist approach to German unification, arguing that ‘we all want to transcend the division of Europe and, within it, the division of our fatherland’ (cited in Weber & Kowert 2007, 95; Wood 1998, 320). His decision to host GDR leader Erich Honecker on a ‘working visit’ to the FRG in 1987, and his key role in moving quickly towards unification, also have similarities with Brandt’s pragmatic approach to German–German relations. For one, they were based on an assertion of ongoing German national unity (Zückert & Zückert 1993, 140). This contrasts with the SPD’s much more cautious attitude to unification which, though it proved to be well founded, did not chime with the mood of the time. Oskar Lafontaine, the SPD chancellor candidate in the 1990 federal elections, called for a new constitution giving due weight to East German wishes and the slow development of a fresh institutional set-up. Indeed, his overall political outlook was so internationalist that in 1989 he called for a United States of Europe (already mooted by Winston Churchill in 1946) and looked forward to a time which ‘will make national state concepts out of date’ (Lafontaine, cited in Weber & Kowert 2007, 104). Lafontaine’s

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distaste for nationalism extended to all its manifestations. He sought to supersede the nation-state completely in the spirit of the 1968 generation, and perhaps also realise the transnational flavour of his regional Heimat, the federal state of Saarland on the French border. Even though they saw unification differently, both Kohl and Lafontaine were therefore committed to embedding Germany further in an international framework. Kohl would demonstrate this in his support for the 1992 Treaty on European Union (also known as the Treaty of Maastricht), with its goals of economic and monetary union and a common foreign and security policy. The EU was long regarded positively in post-war West Germany as an alternative project to the difficult process of nation-building. This ‘often led to an almost artificial denial of national sentiments and an exaggeration of European idealism’ (Schweiger 2007, 46). Successive West German leaders seemed to equate the country’s interests with those of the EU, perpetuating the close link between German and European identity in their nation-building ideology. European integration became more problematic in the 1990s, however, as Germany was faced with the social and economic consequences of unification. The so-called ‘normalisation’ of united Germany’s international status also threw the strategic nature of its pro-integrationist stance into stark relief. For some conservative journalists, politicians and historians, unification signalled the end of the post-war era and an invitation to reassess Germany’s role in Europe. A more critical approach towards European allies was articulated in the widely read, conservative broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and news magazines like the weekly Spiegel, in particular by its editor Rudolf Augstein. He used its pages explicitly to demand full German sovereignty and, in no uncertain terms, that ‘all four of the victorious Allied powers (Siegermächte) should get out of Berlin’ (Augstein, cited in Wiegel 2001, 155).3 This also influenced the argument that German nation-building was no longer beholden to European integration as it once was. Other media commentators such as Günter Wetzel, writing in the FAZ, were of the view that state sovereignty should henceforth trump the long-standing policy of Westbindung, one which according to him had always undermined the Basic Law’s commitment to unification (Wiegel 2001, 157). This view ran counter to a vision of the nation-state as embedded within – rather than antagonistic towards – regional structures. Yet the embedded approach continued to be favoured by both chancellor Kohl’s foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and his Green party successor in 1998, Joschka Fischer, who was explicit in calling for a federal Europe to transcend the nation-state. Kohl himself, though he was to be remembered as the ‘chancellor of unity’, was at pains to reassure his EU partners that reunification should take place within a strong European framework. During the 1990s, the official national narrative of pacifism, openness to asylum seekers and a commitment to Europe as enshrined in the

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German Basic Law was nonetheless being revised. The relationship between regionalism and nationalism had to be thrashed out anew. While seeking to preserve and expand the EU framework, Kohl was also keen to promote a new sense of national identity during his chancellorship, which coincided with a reassessment of Germany’s Nazi past. The conservative historian Ernst Nolte led the fray in the so-called Historikerstreit of the 1980s. His highly controversial, revisionist reading of Hitler and the Holocaust sought to question the apportioning of collective guilt on Germans and to relativise the horrors of Nazism in the context of Stalinism. Berlin, the carved up centre of the continued Allied presence since the Second World War, and the semiotics of its monuments also played a part in the debate. In Nolte’s view, a project such as the planned Holocaust memorial in Berlin embodied everything that was wrong with a ‘totalising’, anti-German discourse. Instead, Nolte argued that it should be dedicated to all the victims of what he called twentieth-century ‘ideological states’ (Ideologiestaaten) (Wiegel 2001, 389), a clear reference to the Soviet Union. Kohl himself waded in with his proposal for a German Historical Museum, a plan which was formally adopted to coincide with Berlin’s 750th anniversary in 1987. Together with the reassessment of Nazism, this was an important element in what has been defined as a neo-conservative process of ‘renationalisation’ beginning in the 1980s, aiming for ‘the homogenisation of the German people, which could then present itself as a closed unit in international competition’4 (Wiegel 2001, 13). Understood as a cultural discourse encompassing both historiography and the shift to a Christian Democrat majority government in 1982, ‘renationalisation’ sought to challenge more left-wing interpretations of German identity which had flourished since the 1960s. Like Adenauer, who had pursued a canny policy of reassuring his European allies while establishing limited German sovereignty and achieving NATO membership by 1955, Kohl regarded regionalism as an asset to nation-building. Yet the prospect of German reunification in 1990 rekindled fears, notably in France and the United Kingdom, that an enlarged and economically powerful Germany might pose a future threat. These fears proved to be largely unfounded, as the East German ‘blooming landscapes’ promised by Kohl failed to materialise, and the economy struggled with the crippling cost of reunification. By signing up for Economic and Monetary Union at Maastricht in 1992, Germany gave up the Deutschmark – ‘almost a national monument’ in itself (Fulbrook 2001, 228) – in return for promises of closer political integration. Once again, Germany regarded this as furthering its constitutionally entrenched aim to be ‘an equal member of a united Europe’, but also as a politically expedient means of shifting responsibility for controversial asylum and immigration regulations to the European level. With the Deutschmark, however, went a strong, tangible symbol of West German

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values, one which Jürgen Habermas’ advocacy of rather abstract constitutional patriotism could not replace (Habermas 1996, 133). Little heed was paid to the fact that former citizens of the GDR were having to handle their third currency in twelve years. The SED had been shadow-boxing with the FRG throughout the GDR’s existence. Politically, a cornerstone of official GDR nation-building attributed all Nazi perpetrators and guilt to West Germany. Economically, the SED had vowed to catch up with and overtake the FRG. Culturally, the SED claimed to be the true guardian of Goethe, Schiller and others’ legacies, backing this with investment in museum collections such as the Museum für deutsche Geschichte in Berlin. From the 1960s onwards, however, it moved to replace the adjective ‘German’ in official discourse with ‘GDR’, in an attempt to establish its particularity and repudiate any West German links. Ironically, this GDR identity remained largely semantic until the dying days of the regime, when it provided a focus for reform-minded citizens, and retrospectively for those aspects of GDR life not associated with the authorities. Although the SED’s nation-building ideology failed to achieve its legitimising end, this makes its construction no less intriguing. Indeed, SED ideologues performed interpretational acrobatics in order to dissociate historical figures from unacceptable associations and turn them into ‘socialist national’ heroes of an East German stamp. Some historical interpretations in unified Germany could be criticised as no less subtle. Many of the discussions surrounding the perceived lack of ‘inner unity’ in Germany today do not examine the presumption of nationhood on which they are based. Paradoxically, one commentator claimed in 1963 that the experience of being torn apart was actually constitutive of German identity (Enzensberger, cited in Brunssen 2002, 23). Today, others argue that while both East and West Germany sought to define themselves in opposition to the Third Reich (and each other), post-unification Germany tends to measure itself against West Germany’s positively portrayed Erfolgsgeschichte, or success story (Brunssen 2002, 19). This, in turn, is reflected in its negative depiction of the GDR, which includes drawing parallels between SED authoritarianism and Nazism, the GDR’s problematic characterisation as an Unrechtsstaat, and intense scrutiny of the secret police and the Berlin Wall over other aspects of East German history. One prominent proponent of this discourse was the Enquete Commission, a body composed of German federal parliamentarians. Conceived as an alternative to the truth and reconciliation commissions created in post-apartheid South Africa, post-Pinochet Chile and elsewhere, it was tasked with investigating the legacy of the GDR for the Berlin republic. Avowedly political, its conclusions clearly supported an ‘anti-totalitarian consensus’ in comparing the authoritarianism of the Third Reich to the GDR (Cooke 2005, 38). The idea of German unity was also upheld in the portrayal of the GDR as an illegitimate

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‘aberration of history’ (Cooke 2005, 40) as opposed to a constitutive part of contemporary Germany’s heritage. The overriding emphasis on the iniquities of the GDR system served to cast the FRG, and the West German politicians turned historians on the commission, in a better light. As such, this eminently politicised reckoning with the past did not extend to any possible shortcomings within the FRG (Fulbrook 1994, endnote 3). Rather ironically given its own partisan approach, the commission’s 1994 report urged readers not to forget ‘the horrors of the fallen dictatorship . . . in the face of an undifferentiated “GDR nostalgia” ’ (cited in McAdams 2001, 111). It thereby reinforced a nationbuilding project premised on the greater validity of the West German experience and continuity between the Bonn and Berlin republics. Its interpretation of history left little scope for examining the complex legacy of life in the GDR and ‘probably did more to impede inter-German understanding than to further it’ (McAdams 2001, 20). An alternative report ‘from left-wing standpoints’ (Allinson 2001, 50) sought to emphasise lived experience in the GDR over its ideology and institutions, but the two main reports’ harsh condemnation of all things East German remain more indicative of the dominant discourse. Vietnamese and German history briefly collided due to the worldwide repercussions of the Vietnam–American war. Fuelled by the media impact of events such as the 1968 Tet offensive, emerging evidence of the My Lai massacre and a constant stream of searing photojournalism, the DRV was widely seen internationally as the victim of US aggression. In Germany too, it was used as a role model for resistance. Rudi Dutschke, leader of the German student movement, drew parallels between the anti-authoritarianism of his cause and Vietnamese communist struggle. On the other hand, opposing, pro-US factions equated the defence of the RVN with that of West Berlin in a Cold War comparison writ large (Davies 2007). Germany was also beginning its own ‘debates over Germans as either perpetrators or victims’ of Nazism (Green et al. 2008, 19). This would continue into the 1990s with the publication in 1997 of Daniel Goldhagen’s book entitled Hitler’s Willing Executioners and the Wehrmachtausstellung, an exhibition exploring the extent to which ordinary soldiers had been implicated in Nazi atrocities. The debate hinged on whether the German people should be portrayed as the victims of war, terror and devastation wrought by a relatively small, murderous elite, or carry some of the blame themselves. The GDR’s anti-fascist myth, on the other hand, had clearly exonerated its citizens from any responsibility, while pointing to West Germany’s aborted denazification as evidence of continuity with the fascist regime. The absorption of many former Nazis into its own socialist system was simply passed over in favour of this clear ideological line, as was any meaningful coming to terms with the past. Meanwhile, historical continuity between the GDR and Germany’s pre-Nazi past was manufactured through a workers’ narrative and official reverence towards cultural icons. Its celebrations of these figures

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paralleled the VCP’s commemoration of selected Vietnamese heroes and role models (Pelley 2002, 173), a widespread practice across the communist world. West Germany’s freedom of expression naturally gave rise to greater ambiguity regarding victims, perpetrators and the related question of historical continuity. Did the Third Reich represent an unbridgeable caesura, or was Germany’s post-war status an ‘unnatural’ division hindering a return to Germany’s rightful historical path, as the term reunification suggested? These interpretations, highly politicised and polarised as they were, presuppose a shared yearning for a single narrative thread uniting Germany across both space and time, regardless of whether the chosen starting point is taken as Bismarck’s political creation of 1871 or a prior, ethno-symbolist Kulturnation. They also all recognised one victim of the Nazi period, namely German national identity, though views differed widely on whether it should be rehabilitated (Schwilk & Schacht 1994) or forever laid to rest in favour of an internationalist outlook. In policy terms, the Bonn republic’s foreign policy ‘was shaped by a binary objective of recreating a united Germany in a united Europe’ (Wood 1998, 320), yet the nature of the nation justifying this goal remained open to question, not least due to the issue of immigration. German unification in 1990 put West German politics and economics from Westbindung to the Wirtschaftswunder in wider historical perspective, with a significant strand of neo-conservative opinion arguing for a return to ‘national normality’ unhindered by war guilt. The shift in focus to ‘the image of a nation legitimated through tradition and history [experienced] Germany’s fascist past as a block on that unbroken, positive relationship to history’ (Wiegel 2001, 178).5 All these strands of opinion revolved around the question of how to define a united German nation. Conclusion Germany and Vietnam share a presumption of national unity despite decades of division. In contrast to Germany, however, positively connoted national patriotism has been identified as one of the most important features of the Vietnamese mental world (Pham et al. 2001, 14). The Vietnamese experienced the clash with French colonial culture as an awakening. This led to various forms of nationalist resistance, with the VCP eventually emerging victorious. However, one particular difficulty encountered by the VCP has been to integrate the Vietnamese south into a nation-building narrative. The southern ‘history of intense engagement with the capitalist world [has resulted in] attempts by the central government to eliminate and, failing that, assimilate these legacies, while trying to retain power in an era of globalised capitalism’ (P. Taylor 2001, 193). It is dangerous to assume that political developments in Asia will necessarily lead to Western-style liberal democracy (Gainsborough 2002, 696). The 2006 coup in Thailand, until recently considered a standard bearer of Southeast Asian

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democracy, is a case in point. The 1990s rhetoric of prominent leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad is another (Mahathir & Ishihara 1995; Sutherland 2006b). Neither can social scientists measure popular legitimacy in Southeast Asia through the blunt instrument of the ballot box, and more sophisticated methods are being developed and tested (White 2005). Yet official nation-building in Vietnam is nevertheless based on the pursuit of popular legitimacy and state sovereignty. The latter might seem increasingly untenable in the context of globalisation, but the concept of sovereignty is still useful in linking nation-state legitimacy with the wider regional context to which it must adapt. Recent studies of the Vietnamese state highlight great variations in its degree of penetration and control over different areas of the political system (Dixon 2004, 16). The present political climate is also a mixture of tolerance and periodic clampdowns. The case of Vietnamese nation-building in ASEAN has shown that regionalism can be reconciled with a nation-building project, similar to Germany within the EU. In Vietnam, this has been achieved by subordinating regionalism to an existing political ideology, and in united Germany, despite ‘normalisation’ and a return to full sovereignty, by extending West Germany’s commitment to European integration into the twenty-first century. Regionalism can thus be used to bolster both national legitimacy and external sovereignty; ‘ASEAN is [designed] to support Southeast Asian nation-building’ (Palmujoki 2001, 14). Likewise, the EU framework reassures Germany’s partners and its own governments that nation-building can take place without slipping into chauvinistic nationalism. It remains to be seen how nation-building actually takes place through a range of empirical examples considered in the following chapters. Notes 1

2

3 4 5

‘Ich kam von Deutschland nach Deutschland, war der Sprache mächtig – und verstand kein Wort. Warum? Weil das kulturelle und politische Koordinatensystem der Gesellschaft, in die ich nun geraten war, so anders war, als jenes, das ich kannte. Ich kam mir vor wie in einem fremden Land.’ ‘Einerseits müssen die beiden Teile Deutschlands nach der Vereinigung zusammenwachsen. Und diese Eingliederung geschieht im Namen der ethnischen Zusammengehörigkeit. Auf der anderen Seite kann die Integration der Einwanderer jedoch nicht im Namen einer ethnischen Nation vollzogen werden.’ ‘darum sollen alle vier Siegermächte aus Berlin verschwinden.’ ‘die Homogenisierung der deutschen Bevölkerung . . . die sich so als geschlossene Einheit im internationalen Konkurrenzkampf präsentieren soll.’ ‘die Vorstellung der durch Tradition und Geschichte legitimierten Nation . . . Die faschistische deutsche Vergangenheit als Blockade jedes ungebrochen positiven Bezugs auf die Geschichte ist demnach für beide Richtungen des Neokonservatismus ein gravierendes Problem, dem mittels Relativierung, Historisierung und offener Umwertung begegnet wird.’

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[T]he cities, with the problems that they raised, and the particular forms that they took, served as the models for the governmental rationality that was to apply to the whole of the territory. There is an entire series of utopias or projects for governing territory that developed on the premise that the state is like a large city; the capital is like its main square; the roads are like its streets. (Foucault 1984, 241)

Michel Foucault’s description of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century visions of the French city can also be applied to that country’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial ventures. Infrastructure and transport networks were an important feature of colonialism, tracing relations of power onto the landscape. This was less about creating a sense of national unity through contact and communication, and more about subjugating and controlling the native population. The French colonisation of Vietnam involved huge investment in public works to facilitate the exploitation of its resources and provide access to other potential riches, hence the building of a railway to China. By 1931, 2,500 kilometres of railtracks and almost ten times as many kilometres of roads had been built, substantially using Vietnamese corvée labour (Truong 2000, 31). Roads cut across fields and burial sites, with no respect for Vietnamese geomantic beliefs. Although they served for communication, travel and exchange, this benefited only a privileged few. Locals tended to pick their way along the edges of the road, for fear of colliding with a speeding car and being held responsible for the damage (Truong 2000, 46). The road was understood differently by coloniser and colonised; as a communications highway facilitating travel and progress on the one hand and on the other, as a blot on the landscape testifying to hard labour and capable of inflicting further suffering. Similarly, French colonial attempts to control and compartmentalise Hanoi broke with pre-colonial practice, only to be revolutionised once more with the desacralisation and decolonisation of space under communist rule (Drummond 2000, 2378). The buildings, museums and monuments which marked the cityscape were invested with a new range of meanings in line with the dominant ideology, illustrating how the city can be considered a microcosm of nationalist symbolism.

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Symbolic capitals According to Raymond Williams (1985, 239), the city is the ‘physical embodiment of a decisive modern consciousness’. Capital cities, in particular, can be seen as representing a psychological community and are thus a privileged site of nation-building. This has been described as ‘the creation of a national “cult” in capital cities, where various of the symbolic forms are condensed’ (King 2008, 133). At the same time, the bustle and dynamism that are inherent features of city life highlight the negotiated nature of identity, national or otherwise. Indeed, the street embodies ‘all that is unregulated and volatile’ (Worpole 1989, 128). This chapter examines the significance of cities as privileged sites for nation-building. It explores the myths and meanings associated with Hanoi as a colonial and Vietnamese capital, and Berlin’s iconic status as a symbol of German division. The ideological clash of the Cold War underwrites the recent history of both cases, which nation-building has sought to overcome since reunification. Yet city-dwellers also disrupt official ideology in their subversive use of space, highlighting the complex networks which criss-cross government representations. An analysis which privileges the dynamic, pulsating nature of city life can read cityscapes as a microcosm of soldered states. Hodgkin and Radstone (2003, 169) highlight a ‘bond between memory and nationalism, that of place’. As an expression of public commemoration, national monuments, in turn, show how ‘memory is built’ (Till 2005, 17). They are the culmination of a political process of historical interpretation, which is necessarily ideological. A striking example of this is the removal in the early 1990s of Budapest’s communist-era monuments to a small park outside the city centre (Nadkarni 2003). Limited public debate took place over whether this symbolic manifestation of memory served to honour Hungary’s communist past or brush it aside and encourage forgetting. The statues thereby took on ideological significance as communist symbols once again. For many city-dwellers, however, they had equally strong cultural associations as meeting places, familiar features of the cityscape, or markers of political passivity. This last form of political accommodation was also widespread amongst the East German population (Nothnagle 1999, 37). By removing the Hungarian statues to a park, now run as a business, city-dwellers were no longer directly confronted with their own past relationship to communism, but could use the park to ‘consume memory’ (Nadkarni 2003, 202) if they so wished. The Hungarian case highlights the interplay between individual memories and public memory, whereby ‘public space became another site for producing personal meanings’ (Nadkarni 2003, 199). Museums are another prime example of how memory is made for public consumption. They have responsibility for interpreting huge and complex themes such as colonialism (Sutherland 2005c) and genocide (Hughes 2003). Germany’s task in remembering the Holocaust is

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of a similar magnitude. It is an ideological endeavour, as exemplified by the stormy debate among German historians in the 1980s (der Historikerstreit) over whether Nazi atrocities could or should be relativised. Similarly, the founding of the ‘Berlin republic’ after unification gave a new symbolic meaning to this city, once an icon of Cold War division. For instance, the years of controversy surrounding the eventual decision to tear down the GDR’s flagship cultural centre, the Palast der Republik, has echoes of the Hungarian case. Itself built on the ruins of a Prussian palace torn down by the GDR, it too became the victim of an ‘ideological battle of political symbols’ (Halsall 1996, 96). The Palast der Republik has been dismantled as a symbol of Germany’s communist legacy to make way for a more homogenous homage to Berlin’s Prussian heritage. This illustrates how a city can be made to represent unity by privileging a particular interpretation of national history. A country’s capital city tells an ideological story through the style of its official buildings and the choice of its street names (Azaryahu 1997). Its very layout can emphasise certain historical episodes and associations while choosing to neglect others. Monuments can become sedimented on the landscape over time, but the ‘preconstructed cultural discourses about sites’ (Shields 1991, 31) may yet shift as official interpretations respond to evolving public attitudes and political culture. For instance, a seldom visited Soviet war memorial in Berlin’s Pankow district continues to be maintained by a small team of gardeners. Stalin’s words still feature near the entrance, but a cryptic tribute to Nazism has been removed, the outline of the iron lettering barely decipherable.1 Official commemoration changes with regimes and their alliances, and sentiments once set in stone will be chipped away. In turn, a range of popular attitudes will coincide or conflict with official nation-building ideology over public space, the relationship between the two constantly evolving through time and circumstance. Berlin’s twentieth-century experience of six regimes, two of them simultaneously, has led to manifold changes in street names, for example, with the latest transition prompting heated debate (Azaryahu 1997). Even in authoritarian states like Vietnam, there is some scope to inhabit public spaces with more than their commemorative name and function, thus influencing how official nation-building is taken up in political culture and discourse. The Ho Chi Minh Museum, located next to his mausoleum on Hanoi’s Ba ≠ình square, is an example of a ‘museum-shrine’ (Giebel 2001). It is organised around a central atrium displaying a larger-than-life, golden statue of ‘Uncle Ho’, with a sun and a banyan tree representing the light of his thought and the longevity of the Vietnamese people respectively. Ho Chi Minh continues to be greatly revered in official Vietnamese discourse, and references to resistance heroes in and around the museum attempt to incorporate him into this national pantheon (Tai 1995, 283). On the mornings when Ho’s mausoleum

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is open, the flow of people through his tomb is strictly regulated by barriers and guards. All visitors to Ba ≠ình square, which also features Ho’s stilt house and the one-pillar pagoda, are channelled through the same entrance to the rear of the complex. When the mausoleum is closed, however, these restrictions disappear and people are free to wander over the wide grassy area in front of it. Indeed, the open spaces around Hanoi’s monuments are favourite places for sport and relaxation. In the evening cool, breakdancers practise their moves at the foot of general Quang Trung’s towering statue to the south of the city, while aerobics classes take place on the large esplanade. A sign by the national war memorial forbids games, but two badminton courts are traced onto the concrete forecourt. The statue of Ly´ Thái Tổ by Hoàn Kiê´ m lake in central Hanoi attracts families with young children, whereas Lenin’s statue on ≠iên ˙ Biên Phu’ Street is a favourite spot for BMX riders. The spacious layout of these monuments has helped to make them places of recreation as much as commemoration, thus integrating historical sites into contemporary life. They are not windswept monuments from another age lying abandoned on the outskirts like the Hungarian examples, but are included in the city’s vibrancy instead. They have become familiar, taken for granted markers of people’s political socialisation. Although cityscapes cannot be said to reflect conditions across the nation, they can be taken as indicative of government-led practices and ideology. As discussed in chapter 1, authoritarian aspects of the Vietnamese system are tempered to some extent by a porous or ‘patchy’ application of rules and regulations. For instance, Hanoians’ pragmatic use of the precious esplanades in this built-up city is not forbidden as inappropriate for a commemorative space, even though they tend to be appreciated as spots for rest and relaxation rather than solemn memorials. In the case of the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, the commemorative function fades into the background depending on the time of day. Nevertheless, in an example of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1995), its taken for granted presence still serves to impress Ho’s legacy on the minds of city-dwellers and visitors alike. The important point here is that individuals have a stake in nation-building ideology, which is expressed in their attitude to its concrete manifestations and the government’s more or less rigid policing of the sites. Vietnamese may be called on by the VCP to participate in official nation-building during commemorative rituals and choreographed museum visits, but at other times they can assign meanings according to their own particular ideologies, and inhabit the space accordingly. The capital city can be considered as ‘embodying and directing the whole country’ (Williams 1985, 149). Although the experience of a city may result in a sense of alienation from the crowd, it can also be constitutive of national identity and, by extension, of an individual sense of belonging to the nation. As such, the capital city can be both symbolic of nationhood and symptomatic

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of the ‘rootlessness, alienation and psychological distance between individuals and groups’ (Appadurai 2001 [1990], 254) which some identify with globalised communication flows. Both associations may variously omit minorities, foreigners, rural poor and many ‘Others’ who are neither swept up in nationbuilding ideology nor the communications revolution. They can also mask the daily horror of some city life; Appadurai (2001 [1990], 255) points out how the Filipino political elite played ‘while the slums of Manila expanded and decayed’. Cityscapes nonetheless exemplify the ideological manipulation of national identity and thereby contribute to understanding how legitimacy is pursued in the changing context of twenty-first-century nation-building. Through graffiti, the physical use of space and more monumental markers, cityscapes also provide clues as to how official ideology relates to and evolves within an ever-changing political culture and myriad particular ideologies. Hanoi’s noisy and bustling street life is one instance of the private sphere evading state control and encroaching upon public space, as commercial, leisure and domestic activities spill onto pavements, parks and squares. Periodic clampdowns, during which goods and vehicles are confiscated by local police, are still capable of returning Hanoi’s streets to the eerie emptiness which struck visitors to the city before economic liberalisation in the mid-1980s. Today, these are temporary interruptions in the city’s fast pulse, usually preceding an important international event. Nevertheless, control is not simply synonymous with order. Writing about one of the first big cities of the modern world, Raymond Williams (1985, 145) notes that ‘much of the physical squalor and complexity of eighteenth-century London was a consequence not simply of rapid expansion but of attempts to control that expansion [and] to limit the city’s growth’. The government goal of ‘legibility’ (Scott 1998) came up against citizens’ capacity to circumvent regulation and create spaces for themselves, whether it be an underground music venue or a shanty town. The same can be said for nation-building through the cityscape, a process which is implicitly appropriated, mediated or ignored by its inhabitants. Michael Dutton (1998, 196) highlights the way in which the city of Beijing was organised into walled compounds around the imperial palace, in contrast to churches as the architectural focal point of European cities. The bricks and mortar which testify to urban planning also reflect a national or imperial construct in miniature. For instance, Li Tana (1998, 115) points out that the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Nguyê˜ n lords did not construct city walls in southern Vietnamese towns, perhaps to mark their rejection of this Sinic tradition. The nineteenth-century imperial Nguyê˜ n court, on the other hand, was organised along strongly Confucian lines and centred on Huê´ ’s imperial citadel, modelled on Beijing’s forbidden city. The segregation inherent in these compounds persists in today’s Hanoi, to the extent that much of its former palace grounds belong to the military. Thus, the location and function of sites

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and buildings speak volumes about the state structure they represent, and the underlying national project of legitimation. It is also important to highlight the dynamic, ever-evolving nature of ‘public space’, however. A national narrative may be constructed and, quite literally, set in stone, but is always open to reinterpretation by those exposed to it. If nationalism is the ‘God of modernity’ (Llobera 1994), then heroes and role models are the icons of this secular religion. In its narrower sense, an icon is the representation of a sacred or honoured person. The idea of hero worship is particularly relevant here, since one defining feature of nations is that they venerate their own heroes. As signifiers loaded with meaning (Hourihan 1997, 13), heroic images stand for a host of associations in nation-building discourse, such as pride, valour and resistance. They can also represent an entire mythology: ‘Once the myth is generally understood, it can be reduced to symbolic form without losing any of its power; in religious imagery, an icon or totem pole; in political imagery, the swastika or the British crown jewels’ (Nothnagle 1999, 6). In a wider sense, buildings, cities and even pop stars are regularly accorded iconic status. For instance, Leslie Sklair (2006, 21) has pointed to a shift from iconic architecture as being ‘mainly driven by those who controlled the state and/or religion’ towards the ambit of the global capitalist class. Nevertheless, while so-called, international ‘starchitects’ and large corporations such as the Guggenheim collections have made their distinctive mark across the world, their projects continue to contribute to the prestige of states and cities. Examples include Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Beijing’s Olympic Stadium by Herzog and de Meuron, Norman Foster’s so-called ‘Gherkin’ in London and I. M. Pei’s Louvre pyramid in Paris. If we understand iconic architecture as a ‘resource in struggles for meaning and, by implication, for power’ (Sklair 2006, 22), then buildings such as Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, Peter Eisenman’s Holocaust memorial and Norman Foster’s Reichstag cupola in Berlin have at least as much impact on the identity of cities and nation-building as on global markets. Iconic exteriors and ideological interiors often complement each other in museums, too. With their explicitly didactic function, these can convey historical memory or future vision in stone, while reinforcing messages through temporary and permanent exhibitions. By situating museums within their urban and national contexts, we can seek to discern a dominant narrative, which is increasingly unlikely to be linear or closed. The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, for instance, disrupts other visions of US history represented in the museums and memorials lining the National Mall (Message 2006). In the Vietnamese context, exhibits at the War Remnants Museum and the Museum of History in Ho Chi Minh City do introduce alternative perspectives to the dominant, official narrative. For instance, Christina Schwenkel (2008) points out how an exhibit of Vietnamese and Western war photographers’

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work raised the spectre of the RVN, and the (lack of) commemoration of its soldiers and war dead. To some extent, these emerging alternatives are shaped by transnational tourism, international diplomacy (Kennedy & Williams 2001), cosmopolitan capital and the technological and social effects of globalisation (Sklair 2006, 22). Museum exhibits are thus one example of how socialist realism, together with related understandings of science and art as serving country and communism, compete with so-called ‘capitalist realism’ (Schwenkel 2008, 46), which holds up truth and objectivity as ideals. Collaborative exhibits in particular ‘signif[y] the increasing transnationalization of historical memory and knowledge that is less about challenging official history than contributing to its diversification’ (Schwenkel 2008, 38). Official nation-building, then, continues to be a major strand of both museum representation and cityscape interpretation. Hanoi Hanoi is the stuff of lyricism and legend, an evocative space independently of its nation-building role. The city has provided inspiration for generations of artists; the shade and heady scent of its flowering trees are evoked in countless love songs, Bùi Xuân Phái’s paintings of shophouses, gateways and electricity pylons seek to capture its spirit, and its streets and cafés have provided the backdrop to many novels. It also occupies a central place in Vietnam’s national history and mythology. For example, Hanoi’s largest lake, the West Lake, is said to have been the birthplace of La c Long Quân, legendary founding father ˙ to have seen titanic struggles between of the Vietnamese. The city is reputed mountain and water spirits, a constant preoccupation in this delta region, reflected in the dykes separating Hanoi from the Red River. But these legends also draw on Chinese stories (Papin 2001, 31), testifying to the site’s distant antecedents as a colonial outpost of successive Chinese dynasties, and the farreaching influence of its northern neighbour. Although a Chinese garrison since the fifth century CE, official Vietnamese discourse dates the birth of the city to 1010, when the first king of the Ly´ dynasty saw a propitious vision and decided to found a city there, naming it Tha˘ng Long (ascending dragon) in memory of the event. Tha˘ng Long was planned according to geomantic principles. The imperial palace occupied the strongest point, associated with the dragon’s navel, and artificial mounds and lakes were laid out to achieve an optimum balance of forces. Despite several name changes and the loss of its status as imperial capital to Huê´ in 1802, Hanoi (a name bestowed in 1831 meaning ‘inside the river bend’) is regarded as having an unbroken history since 1010. Preparations for its millennial celebrations have been under way for some time, an important component of this being the archaeological excavations of the old imperial citadel, resulting in some eleventh-century

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finds. Yet remnants of the city’s previous history remain to disrupt this narrative. Surviving dyke roads such as ≠ê La Thành to the south of the city testify to their Chinese origins as part of a colonial administrative centre known as ≠a i La Thành or simply ≠ai La (Papin 2001, 379; Tran 2003, 291). Indeed, ˙ a Chinese citadel was built on ˙the site of today’s Hanoi well before Vietnamese emperors sought to harness the power of the dragon’s navel (Papin 2001, 25). Another example is the Tô Lich river, a tributary of the Red River, which flowed ˙ alongside the chandlers of Hàng Buô` m (sail street) and around the city until it was reduced to a trickle by French public works. According to an eighthcentury Chinese source, Tô Lich was a gifted local administrator during Jin ˙ dynasty (265–420 CE) domination, and it is likely that his association with the settlement and its waterways was a means of legitimising its foundation during the Chinese ‘protectorate’ (Papin 2001, 26). In 1873 Francis Garnier, a French adventurer who audaciously occupied Hanoi without explicit authorisation from his superiors, added insult to injury by demanding that his troops be stationed in that symbolic nodal point of power, the imperial citadel. Consolidating their control over the next decade, French colonisers set about turning Hanoi into the capital of their Indochinese empire. Significantly, one of the first public buildings erected was a prison (Zinoman 2001), which would be followed by law courts, the governor’s palace, an opera, a museum, customs house and police station, among many others. Built in either regional French or hybrid ‘Indochinese’ style by French architects or their Vietnamese trainees, the wide, symmetrical avenues of Hanoi’s colonial district still stand in stark contrast to the narrow, teeming streets of the old town. Testament to colonial segregation into ‘native’ and French quarters, this defining period of Hanoi’s current cityscape also speaks volumes about nation-building in the post-colonial era, as symbols of oppression are redefined. The Vietnamese journalist Tam Lang’s 1932 piece of reportage ‘I pulled a rickshaw’ (tôi kéo xe) was twice re-edited in the 1990s, perhaps because the urban regeneration which flowed from Vietnam’s renovation policy suggested parallels with colonial planning (Lockhart & Lockhart 1996, 3). In it, the highborn Tam Lang becomes a lowly rickshaw puller, thereby transgressing the new class boundaries which had emerged to challenge pre-colonial hierarchies (Lockhart & Lockhart 1996, 9). Peasants chased from their land by colonial landowners migrated to the cities in search of work. They created a new underclass of labourers and servants, an enduring urban phenomenon in Vietnam. Atomised by the loosening of family and village bonds, a new solidarity could emerge as they converged on the cities, echoing the theoretical link made by Ernest Gellner (1983) between nationalism and urbanisation. They made their mark on the cityscape, living in dosshouses on the flood-prone land between Hanoi’s dykes and the Red River. Meanwhile, Vu˜ Trong Phung’s comic novel ˙ ˙

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Dumb Luck [Sô´ Do’ ] (2002 [1936]) satirises wealthy urban Vietnamese in thrall to Western ways. For instance, characters use the French pronouns toi and moi when speaking Vietnamese, thereby setting themselves outside the complex social hierarchies reflected in Vietnamese grammar. This affectation was also designed to propel them into the orbit of a Westernised society, into which they would never be fully accepted. The French continued to live segregated in the villas and townhouses of the colonial quarter, until Vietnamese professionals could afford to rival their lifestyle by building stylish art-deco villas along Ly´ Thường Kiêt street and surrounds. The relationship between colonised ˙ middle class and working class was thus inscribed onto and colonisers, the new the Hanoian cityscape. A French observer described late-nineteenth-century Hanoi as an amalgam of administrative centre, trading town and many villages, rather than a city (Ligougne 2006, 318). Village links remained strong; artisans organised themselves according to trade guilds still recognisable today in Hanoi’s administrative wards (phường) and the specialised streets of the old quarter. Indeed, the administrative similarities between village and city were explicitly identified by then prime minister Võ Va˘n Kiêt in 1995 as holding back urban projects (Tran 2003, 303). Hanoi is also a city of˙ lakes, which have both symbolic and practical importance as the centre of village life. In the same way as Hanoi was designed to reflect a balance of earth and water, village temples were traditionally built at a height and located near a pond or water. The former function of Hanoi’s lakes as an interconnected network for absorbing floodwaters has been lost as land is reclaimed for building or redevelopment, however. For example, much of Kim Liên’s village lake, now an administrative ward of Hanoi, has been paved over. Sandwiched between the village templecum-communal house and a major traffic artery, it has become a small, concrete esplanade used for relaxation and by ambulant traders. Reduced to a stagnant pool, the remains of the lake contrast sharply with its poetic name on the sign designating it a historical vestige. More prominent sites associated with Vietnamese national identity have also seen their traditional geomantic layout change. The temple of literature (Va˘n Miê´ u), Vietnam’s first university, whose main gate is often reproduced as the city’s emblem, has been separated from its lake by a main road. Hoàn Kiê´ m Lake, described as iconic of the city (Ligougne 2006, 320), has also seen its contours change drastically. Otherwise known as the lake of the returned sword (Hô` Gươm), legend has it that the future emperor Lê Lợi received his Excalibur from a golden turtle there, going on to defeat the Minh dynasty in the fifteenth century. The shady lakeside surrounds of these key commemorative sites are thus being eaten away by property speculators and government works since the beginning of đổi mới (Drummond 2000). Just as Vietnam’s imperial dynasties used geomantic principles to build a capital embodying strength and harmony (Papin 2001, 49), so the VCP set

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about reclaiming the city of Hanoi as a symbol of independence and unity after the final French defeat at the battle of ≠iên Biên Phu’ in 1954. Buildings ˙ designed for French imperial purposes were adapted to the nation-building needs of the DRV. The Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient, a centre of colonial scholarship on Indochina, became the national history museum. The customs building was turned into the museum of the revolution, and the offices of the Indochinese railway company became the Vietnamese trade union headquarters. Other key symbols of authority saw their colonial administrators replaced with Vietnamese counterparts, such as the law courts, the prison (dubbed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ when it held American prisoners of war) and the police station. These edifices stand on streets named after the revered generals Trâ` n Hưng ≠a o and Ly´ Thường Kiêt, a typical example of how the names of ˙ ˙ particularly illustrious heroes were chosen for the city’s main arteries. A street dedicated to the Trưng sisters runs parallel, and all three are bisected by Quang Trung street, named after the man credited with briefly unifying Vietnam in 1789. The commemoration of national heroes was central to the city’s ‘rebranding’ as the capital of an independent nation. Hanoi’s entire colonial quarter was renamed after those officially revered as nationalist patriots or great kings of past dynasties, such as Ly´ Thái Tổ. The area surrounding the colonial seat of power, namely the Indochinese governor’s palace in Ba ≠ình, would also become the new centre of government. Most famously, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence there in 1945, in the presence of an estimated one million people (Pelley 2002, 1). Today, national heroes take pride of place on the site; Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum along the western end faces a huge war memorial, and the VCP headquarters (once the elite colonial high school), the Ho Chi Minh Museum and the National Parliament also abut the square. In contrast to the (still) enclosed Vietnamese imperial sanctum nearby, this space symbolises state power in a very public way. It has reconfigured the colonial significance of the square, but has also adopted the colonial practice of commemorating key national figures and events in order to reinforce its own nation-building ideology, as opposed to traditional family, religious or community rites (Pelley 2002, 166). The icons of state power, national honour and heroic valour in and around Ba ≠ình are also infused with populist significance. For instance, Ho Chi Minh refused to live in the French governor’s palace when he became president of the new DRV, preferring to live in a simple stilt house on its grounds. Ho’s stilt house helps to balance the bombast of his mausoleum, where he lies as a communist statesman to be revered as Lenin or Mao. Sets of postcards sold at the entrance to the stilt house show him in his avuncular role, playing sports with smiling youths. This carefully preserved relic has become a place of pilgrimage, testament to the asceticism and humility of ‘Uncle Ho.’ Hue-Tam Ho Tai (1995) has highlighted the ‘monumental

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ambiguity’ which characterises the state commemoration of Ho Chi Minh. This is partly due to the competing claims of communist and nationalist ideology on his legacy. The former emphasises ‘Soviet-style iconography, the heroic, larger-than-life features’ whereas ‘those which are meant to depict him in more “nationalist” terms are more likely to surround him with children’ (Tai 1995, 286). After independence, Hanoi became a testbed for socialist utopia with the help of Soviet architects and urban planners. Although only a fraction of projects would come to fruition, the housing compounds which sprang up in the 1960s and monumental structures such as the Soviet–Vietnamese friendship palace testify to this vision (Logan 2000). This internationalist facet of the cityscape coexists with nationalist monuments, inscribing different aspects of VCP nation-building into the urban fabric. From its distant origins as a Chinese garrison, Hanoi would thus be reimagined as imperial centre, capital of colonial Indochina, site of the August 1945 revolution and the declaration of Vietnamese independence which followed, before becoming the focus of urban planning for a socialist utopia and later property speculators. Throughout its history, then, Hanoi has been shaped by the prevailing governmentality and latterly, by nation-building ideology. Hanoian myths and historical episodes alike have been revived and reinterpreted or quietly forgotten in the service of the city’s successive rulers. Its residents, on the other hand, have weathered these changes and made their own mark on the cityscape through their use of the streets and other public spaces. Berlin A parallel has been drawn between the clearing of rubble from German cities following the Second World War and the ‘dusting down’ of German history following unification (Wiegel 2001, 179). This, in turn, had important implications for nation-building in its new capital city: ‘In Berlin, architecture and the politics of reunification quickly became intertwined’ (Stewart 2002, 51). The choice to preserve some buildings and, literally, erase others contributes to the story told by a cityscape, whether it presents an image of modernity, a seamless narrative of continuity, or an architectural hotchpotch hinting at historical disjuncture and change (Stewart 2002). Like most other semiotics of Berlin’s cityscape, the very question of which city should be unified Germany’s capital gave rise to a fierce debate. Some saw Berlin as ‘the best place to heal the wounds of division’ (Ladd 1997, 225) while others saw it as an ominous return to the centre of Europe and potential hegemonic aspirations. In the event, the German federal parliament voted only narrowly in favour of leaving Bonn. Becoming the country’s capital once again, its name synonymous with the new ‘Berlin republic’, not only shone a spotlight on the city’s

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contemporary symbolic importance, but also on its history as capital of the Prussian monarchy, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and the GDR. Like Hanoi, Berlin was a showcase for competing ideologies. In Cold War Germany, however, they confronted each other simultaneously on either side of the Berlin Wall, rather than holding sway consecutively. For instance, Paul Stangl (2006, 353) shows that ‘ideological values, understanding of nation and heritage, beliefs about the relationship between society and space, and perceptions of political context affected decision-making’ regarding Unter den Linden, the magnificent Prussian boulevard situated in East Berlin which again became the city’s main thoroughfare after unification. For the SED, the avenue would contribute to party propaganda as a historic backdrop for political parades. Linking the GDR regime with Germany’s national heritage in this way was intended to create a sense of historical continuity and legitimacy by association, in what the SED called the ‘Battle for German Unity’ (Stangl 2006, 355). The representative nature of the avenue was therefore also directed towards West Berlin. City planning seeks to influence people’s behaviour, but the way in which a space is used says something about its relevance to society. If it is well maintained, then it is evidently deemed to merit official care and attention. Today, the graffitied bust of the murdered communist leader Ernst Thälmann in Berlin’s eastern district of Prenzlauer Berg no longer stands as a monument to his heroism, but rather as a marker of his official neglect in the new nationbuilding climate of the FRG (see Figure 3.1). Those who spray graffiti may intend it as a subversive, destructive or even decorative act. The extent to which it is tolerated also says much about official attitudes to the message being conveyed. For instance, the Stasi Museum in Berlin documents the time it took for subversive graffiti to be whitewashed from walls during the last days of the GDR. The Thälmann monument remains in place partly because of a concerted effort to prevent its removal in 1993, and partly because of its sheer size and immovability. The dismantling of a huge statue of Lenin two years previously had provided a focal point for those East Berliners antagonised by what they saw as the crystallisation of Western ‘claim[s] that only the Federal Republic had represented postwar Germany’ (Ladd 1997, 198). Although this view was decried by other former GDR citizens, it can be more readily interpreted as distress at losing familiar markers of belonging and socialisation than nostalgia for the SED regime. As a relic of the East, few could have identified with the Thälmann monument’s thrusting socialist-realist style or its oppressive proportions. Brian Ladd (1997, 202–3) documents two pieces of graffiti decorating the monument in 1991 and 1995 respectively. The first, ‘Don’t you have it in a larger size?’ testifies to Berliners’ reputation for dry, irreverent wit. The second, ‘Imprisoned-murdered-besmeared’, is a more thoughtful summary of Thälmann’s fate, which might have included ‘revered’

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Figure 3.1 Monument to Ernst Thälmann, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, December 2007

for completeness. His decline, the fall narrowly averted, was now spraypainted on the cityscape for all to see: ‘The accumulating graffiti around the statue’s base made it clear enough that the heroic Thälmann no longer met with official favor’ (Ladd 1997, 203). The most graffitied monument of all, at least on its western side, was of course the Berlin Wall. The stark contrast between the bare East and colourful West testifies to its role as a symbol of strictly imposed authority on the one hand. On the other, it was an international canvas for the multilingual expression of dissent, creativity and insubordination, although the wall’s western side was at first whitewashed periodically for fear of antagonising the GDR (Baker 1993). The wall was dismantled remarkably quickly and dispersed all around the world, variously repackaged as work of art and tourist souvenir. This led to warning calls that it should be preserved for posterity, and fierce debates about how to present and interpret commemorative sites. The proximity of one surviving section to the site of the demolished Gestapo headquarters, for instance, was interpreted by some as inviting comparison between the Nazi regime and that of the GDR (Baker 1993). The former route

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of the wall is now marked by information panels, paving stones, sculptures and a few remaining sections, as part of a complete commemorative scheme (Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, no date). Yet the site on Bernauer Straße stands out as being the only one to reproduce a section of the wall, complete with its no man’s-land and barbed wire. In March 1990, both the German Historical Museum and its GDR counterpart, the Museum for German History, called for the wall to be preserved at this point, in the face of already advanced demolition (Sälter 2007, 14). Today, as part of a sculptural installation, the reconstructed patch of wall is enclosed by high steel panels which reflect the structure into infinity (see Figure 3.2). As a result, the wall is only fully visible from the viewing platform atop the documentation centre standing opposite. The fragment forms part of a memorial complex, together with a chapel on the site of a church, which lay in no man’s-land before being torn down by the East German authorities in 1985. According to the official website for the memorial complex, it is designed to ‘facilitate in different ways and forms an understanding of the history and consequences of the Berlin

Figure 3.2 Reconstructed section of wall seen from the Berlin Wall Documentation Centre, Bernauer Straße, Berlin, December 2007

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Wall, through art, documents and religious spirituality . . . Visitors are thus able to choose which approach to the historical site and reminder of the past best suits them’ (Dokumentationszentrum Berliner Mauer, no date a). These various elements come together as the culmination of what was a fraught process of negotiation between different interest groups, from the pensioners living in the old people’s home overlooking the site who advocated complete erasure and forgetting (Baker 1993), to the German Historical Museum, which commissioned the monument design competition. A taste of this controversy is provided in the foreign-language versions of the website documentation, but not in the German-language section, which only points out that the memorial’s original inscription to ‘the memory of the division of the city from August 13, 1961 to November 9, 1989,’ was extended following ‘vehement protest’. It now reads ‘in memory of the victims of the communist tyranny’ (Dokumentationszentrum Berliner Mauer, no date b), thereby turning the memorial from a marker of the city’s division into a strong condemnation of the GDR. An iconic feature of the city’s Cold War landscape, the Berlin Wall stood as a symbol of how global tensions were played out at the local level. Families were separated by the wall, Eastern escapees were shot at the wall, and political ideologies were soon moulded around the wall. In the face of real nuclear threat, politicians on both sides had to tread very carefully so as not to risk a potentially catastrophic escalation of tensions (Baker 1993). In official SED terms, the wall was an ‘anti-fascist protection barrier’ designed to keep people out, and not a means of stemming the strong flow of refugees. From West German governments’ perspective, it officially divided not only a city but also a nation. Known in German as die Mauer, this had connotations of an exclusionary barrier not rendered in the English ‘Wall’ or the German alternative, die Wand (Baker 1993, 710). It was the clearest possible marker of the ‘Other’. In architectural terms, the fall of the wall signalled a reappraisal of the cityscape and its modernist and classical pasts (see Figure 3.3). The debate came to be dominated by so-called ‘new traditionalists’ (Halsall 1996, 99) or ‘critical reconstructionists’ who were concerned with the ‘legibility’ (Murray 2008, 10) of the city as a historical narrative set in stone. Indeed, they explicitly praised das steinerne Berlin, namely the stone-built residential tenements erected between 1860 and 1910 (Murray 2008, 12), which post-war reformers had been so keen to tear down (Ladd 1997, 177). Other favoured periods were Prussia’s eighteenth-century Enlightenment and nineteenth-century neo-classicism, the latter epitomised by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The European, cosmopolitan aspects of the city’s architecture were also appreciated, whereas GDR modernism – and its architects – were emphatically not. A proponent of critical reconstruction, Hans Stimman, was appointed to the new position

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of ‘city architect’ in 1991, stating ‘I want us (i.e. Berlin) to become a normal capital city where “normal” can be interpreted as where the architectural present is no longer determined by a desire to “come to terms with the past”’ (Simman cited in Halsall 1996, 99–100). Other like-minded architects such as Hans Kollhoff made their mark on central Berlin squares, including Alexanderplatz and Potsdamer Platz, former central square of the GDR and Cold War border zone respectively. Significantly, Kollhoff would also favour the rebuilding of Schinkel’s nineteenth-century Bauakademie in place of the demolished GDR foreign ministry, a similar project to the resurrection of the eighteenth-century city palace over the GDR’s Palast der Republik. Not only an erasure of the GDR legacy, these projects call for a return to a pre-war past rather than advocating new building, showing a readiness to forget that the Cold War ever even happened (Ladd 1997, 233). Indeed, as the biggest building site in Europe, Berlin was self-consciously marketed as ‘new’ and cosmopolitan in order to make a break with Cold War associations. The influential critical reconstructionists’ preference for austere, ordered and solid forms was a conscious rejection of modern architecture, which they blamed for the alienating, chaotic and impersonal face of contemporary cities (Till 2005, 48). For them, the end of division brought with it the need to plan Berlin as a whole, and privilege a historicist homogeneity over architectural ‘highlights’ (Murray 2008, 15; Halsall 1996, 99). Yet this highly selective reading of Berlin’s pasts was also much criticised. The sometimes provocative positions taken by exponents of critical reconstruction like Vittorio Lampugnani, particularly in his assessment of Berlin’s Nazi-era buildings, led to accusations of reactionary conservatism, and even authoritarianism by the likes of Daniel Libeskind, the architect behind Berlin’s Jewish museum (Till 2005, 50; Ladd 1997, 233). The early 1990s thus saw an Architektenstreit which took up many of the themes of the previous decade’s Historikerstreit (Halsall 1996, 98). Debates about how to interpret and evaluate Nazism and communism were being marked onto the cityscape as an iconic symbol of the Berlin Republic’s nation-building. The city architect Hans Stimman’s highly political understanding of ‘normality’ cited above, illustrates the importance of buildings, quite apart from monuments or museums, as political statements: ‘a debate about the architecture appropriate to the desired image of a city is in an important sense a debate about collective identity’ (Murray 2008, 15). One example of this is the controversy surrounding the proposed wrapping of Berlin’s Reichstag building by the artist Christo. The wrapping of the Reichstag eventually took place in 1995 after permission was granted by the German parliament. Some politicians, typically of the left, saw the wrapping as a means of distancing the viewer from the building’s chequered past and heralding its new beginning as the Berlin

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Figure 3.3 Hotel advertisement highlighting two facets of Berlin’s cityscape, December 2007

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republic’s federal parliament (Halsall 1996, 105). Others, like the prominent Christian Democrat Wolfgang Schäuble, saw it as an attack on the building’s dignity as well as a sign of shame towards the history it represented. Showing some discomfort with the multiple meanings suggested by the artist’s work, Schäuble also highlighted the danger of fomenting disunity: ‘The wrapping of the Reichstag . . . would not unite people or bring them together, it would polarize them’ (Schäuble cited in Halsall 1996, 106). The neo-conservative agenda of promoting unity and a robust national identity was clearly evident in Schäuble’s stance. It was also being pursued by then chancellor Kohl in the shape of the German Historical Museum project and his reinterpretation of the Neue Wache war memorial (Ladd 1997, 219). However, debates surrounding Berlin’s architecture and its interpretation tended to sideline the East German experience, thus doing little to overcome ‘divided memory’ (Murray 2008, 15); ‘Neither side ever fully acknowledged the division of the city; the official view in East and West was that Berlin was one city and the other side was responsible for its unfortunate partition’ (Ladd 1997, 180). Neither was a multi-perspective view of Berlin in its fragmented complexity particularly encouraged. Once again, Berlin was iconic of the prevailing nationbuilding view; chancellor Kohl’s successor, Gerhard Schröder, persisted in painting the German nation as a ‘normal’ and hence unitary ‘nation-state’. The sensitivity towards ‘divided memory’ displayed by the next incumbent, Angela Merkel, is discussed in chapter 4, but has yet to be expressed in the sort of grand, symbolic gestures which Kohl used for nation-building. In 1998, the strong wish of long-standing magazine editor and media personality Rudolf Augstein to leave the past behind was clearly expressed in his attitude to the planned Holocaust memorial, underlining the symbolic power of cities and their monuments for nation-building: Now a monument (Mahnmal) to our continuing shame (Schande) should stand in the middle of the reclaimed capital Berlin . . . One feels that this mark of shame (Schandmal) is directed against the capital and the newly forming Germany in Berlin . . . We shall not be dictated to from outside, how to shape our new capital in commemoration of the past. (Augstein, cited in Wiegel 2001, 221–2)2

Here we see a monument, which Augstein also terms a Brandmal or ‘blazing marker’ being interpreted as an outside imposition on a newly confident nation, with Berlin as its standard-bearer. United Germany’s national identity is placed in direct opposition to the Nazi legacy, and outsiders are blamed for continuing to tar Germans with this brush. Indeed, the capital has just been ‘reclaimed’ from the Allied powers, and Augstein refuses to ‘be dictated to’ further in matters of historical memory and what he sees, literally, as a blot on the landscape of a rightfully reunited Germany and a new beginning for the Berlin republic.

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Augstein’s play on the multiple permutations of the German word for monument highlights its negative connotations for him and his unwillingness to consider a national identity incorporating remembrance as part of a cathartic commemorative process. Instead, a strict opposition between ‘them’ and ‘us’ is created, one which seems to construe Germany as a victim of outside pressure to accept the attribution of guilt, rather than embrace it as constitutive of Germans’ own shaping of their new capital. These highly tendentious comments illustrate one revisionist view of post-unification nation-building. Alleging an outside conspiracy to rob Germany of its right to construct its own capital, country and community shows how emotive a space Berlin’s centre can be, especially if the city is presented as a ‘reclaimed capital’ ready to renew ties with positively connoted German history and patriotism. To this extent, Berlin’s cityscape crystallises many of the issues thrown up by the historians’ debate (Historikerstreit) of the late 1980s. Whether it be monuments commemorating the Berlin Wall or the Holocaust, debates over national memory can be mapped onto Berlin. Most of the changes in post-unification Berlin, from its very status as capital, through the fate of its former communist heroes, to the form of its re-emerging centre, were the subject of heated, and often polarised debate. Berlin is very much an iconic city in that its buildings, and by extension, its identity, are being used as a ‘resource in struggles for meaning’ (Sklair 2006, 22). The Berlin republic’s dominant nation-building ideology favours a discourse of national unity which has, often literally, undermined the city’s GDR legacy and the memories of division and divergent development it entails. The monumental statue of Ernst Thälmann might have stayed though Lenin’s disappeared, but the graffiti on it offered a space for public reckoning with its symbolism over and above the Berlin Republic’s official discourse. The way in which people inhabit a space makes a defining mark on the cityscape, which can never be completely controlled by the urban planner. Streets and squares teeming with activity provide a counterpoint to the monumental expression of nation-building ideology. Conclusion Rather like the tourists and traders who pecked away at the Berlin Wall when it was divested of state symbolism, turning it into mementos or merchandise in line with their particular ideologies, so urban space can be redefined by its use and abuse. The cityscape exemplifies how the ‘verticality’ and ‘encompassment’ of the nation-state is constantly disrupted by the dynamism of citizens’ response to ideology-infused places (Ferguson & Gupta 2002). From examples of ‘banal nationalism’ to spaces contested from multiple perspectives, capital cities tend to reproduce nodal points of nation-building. Nowhere more so than ‘Berlin. Here the crisis of modern architecture and urban planning

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coincides with the crisis of national identity’ (Ladd 1997, 230). The Berlin Republic is the latest attempt to make the city an icon of national unity for a recently soldered state. To use Arjun Appadurai’s typology, ethnoscapes, or the ‘shifting world’ (Appadurai 1990, 297) of people in motion, affect the political ideologies he calls ideoscapes. In the case of nation-building for state legitimation, he highlights both the fluidity and situatedness implied in his concepts. Although not ‘global cities’ on a par with Tokyo, New York and London, Berlin and Hanoi nevertheless exemplify that dynamism and situatedness. Raymond Williams (1985, 147) identified a key characteristic of eighteenth-century London as ‘managing and directing so much of other people’s business. A dominant part of the life of the nation was reflected but also created within it’. The same can be said of Germany and Vietnam’s capitals today. Their cityscapes reflect an evolving nation-building narrative, which is reinforced in the national history museums to which we now turn. Notes 1

2

The inscription reads: ‘Dem Faschismus/Ihre Liebe zur Heimat/Die Treue zu Ihrem Volk/Waren stärker als der Tod (To Fascism/Its love for the homeland/Loyalty to its people/Were stronger than death)’. “Nun soll in der Mitte der wiedergewonnenen Hauptstadt Berlin ein Mahnmal an unsere fortwährende Schande erinnern . . . Man ahnt, dass dieses Schandmal gegen die Hauptstadt und das in Berlin neu formierende Deutschland gerichtet ist . . . Man kann uns nicht von aussen diktieren, wie wir unsere neue Hauptstadt in Erinnerung an die Vergangenheit gestalten.”

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Museum myths

The nationality of the worker is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is labour, free slavery, self-huckstering. His government is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is capital. His native air is neither French, nor German, nor English, it is factory air. The land belonging to him is neither French, nor English, nor German, it lies a few feet below the ground. (Marx [1845] cited in Szporluk 1988, 35; emphasis in original)

Karl Marx’s writings on nationalism were patchy, as befitted an ideology which he believed would be eradicated by communism. Nevertheless, the European revolutions of 1848 prompted him to take a more practical view of nationalism’s potential role in the communist cause, just as Lenin’s experience of the First World War led him to recognise nationalism’s enduring mobilising force. Both would temper their core belief in the primacy of class loyalties over nationalist ones with strategic support for national self-determination. The basic philosophical incompatibility between class and national solidarity, and between communism and nationalism, was to some extent overcome by the pragmatic approach of Marx and Lenin, and the policies of communist leaders in East Germany, Vietnam and elsewhere. Ideologies bring together a system of ideas with a political action plan, so that not only principles, but also their translation into policy and propaganda are key to understanding; ‘Indeed, when communism has defeated rival doctrines, it has owed its victory to the adoption of at least some of the principles of nationalism and to the fact that it has become national, indeed nationalist, itself’ (Szporluk 1988, 5). This chapter explores two ideologies – communism and nationalism – with reference to two countries – Germany and Vietnam. As the legacy of the defunct GDR and Vietnam’s current state ideology respectively, communist ideology has been important in socialising a significant proportion of the population. By helping to repudiate communism in contemporary Germany and consolidate it in Vietnam, museums make a significant contribution to shaping nation-building in each case. Differing conceptions of the museum’s role in socialist and capitalist, contemporary and traditional settings provide the context for a comparative analysis of the German Historical Museum in Berlin and the Vietnamese History Museum in Hanoi. Both offer a chronological

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national narrative which is necessarily selective but also ideologically motivated in presenting a particular, unifying representation of national history. The chapter begins by tracing some of the conceptual difficulties in reconciling communism and nationalism and how these were addressed in practice. The emphasis lies with the aspects of communism relating to nation and selfdetermination which provided the basis of SED and VCP policy. The analysis is concerned with communism as a party political programme rather than communism as the philosophy of historical materialism. It concludes, with Walker Connor, that ‘at one and the same time, a differentiation between the concepts of nation and nationality that was being advanced in East Germany to support a case for one nationality but two nations was being employed in Vietnam to support a case for several nationalities but one nation’ (Connor 1984, 454; emphasis in original). Officially sanctioned national history museums in Germany and Vietnam construct a national past in accordance with post-unification nation-building, one which ‘is more about myth-making than critical evaluation’ (Penny 1995, 367). The influential theorist of nationalism, Anthony D. Smith (1995, 57), defined myths as ‘bring[ing] together in a single potent vision elements of historical fact and legendary elaboration to create an overriding bond and commitment for the community’. He also highlighted the importance of myths in creating ‘ethnic boundaries’ to delimit a sense of belonging and otherness. Alan Nothnagle (1993, 93) adds that myths are important for passing on social and cultural norms, as well as simplifying complex events into an easily understood, explanatory narrative. Above all, however, ‘the myth cannot just be made, it must also be built: one stone on top of the other, through national monuments, school texts, festivals and holidays, and a variety of other media’ (Nothnagle 1993, 94; emphasis in original). This underlines both the symbolic and practical significance of myths as nation-building tools. Further, A. D. Smith (1995, 58) distinguishes between genealogical or biological myths of descent, based on blood belonging, and what he calls ‘cultural–ideological myths . . . that rest on a cultural affinity and ideological “fit” with the presumed ancestors’. The focus here is on the latter. Such myths portray heroic virtues and other attributes, whether it be dogged resistance, patriotism or shared cultural traits, as being passed down through the generations to create a common bond, which in turn helps to legitimise the current regime (Gerwarth 2005, 5). Finally, in seeking to distinguish myth and ideology, Vladimir Tismaneanu (1998) suggests that ideologies all share a ‘mythological core, but in addition they build up conceptual edifices’. Nothnagle (1993, 6), on the other hand, calls a myth ‘an abbreviated world outlook, an ideology in miniature’. Myths can thus be seen as a component of more elaborate ideologies, or simple stories within wider thought systems. It is to the broader landscape of ideologies that we now turn.

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Reconciling communism and nationalism Prior to 1848, Marx’s interpretation of the industrial revolution clashed with those who saw solidarity among members of the German Kulturnation as the basis of economic and political progress (Szporluk 1988, 13). Such nationbased views would evolve in a creative tension with socialism. It is important to distinguish Marx and Lenin’s philosophical engagement with historical materialism from their commitment to the communist cause, and the strategic decisions which historical events and practical observation led them to make. In 1844, Marx observed that ‘one fine day our knights of cotton and heroes of iron found themselves metamorphosed into patriots. The sovereignty of monopoly within the country has begun to be recognized since sovereignty vis-à-vis foreign countries was attributed to it’ (Marx cited in Szporluk 1988, 23; emphasis in original). Marx thereby attacked the link made between economic protectionism, or nationalism, and political sovereignty, or independence. He distinguished the liberating effect of a national, ‘merely political revolution which leaves the pillars of the building standing’ (Marx, cited in Szporluk 1988, 24; emphasis in original), from the projected role of the proletariat in bringing about universal liberation, thereby transcending states, nationalities and societies (such as the German Kulturnation) in their then form. National identity was seen as a form of false consciousness to be overcome by the prevailing logic of economics and the abolition of private property. In principle, Marx believed the bourgeoisie to share a common interest in capitalism across countries, which overrode any national allegiance. In his view, any bourgeois reference to nationalism was merely a duplicitous attempt to cloak class interests in those of a national community and thereby undermine the international solidarity of the proletariat. In practice, however, Marx too would seek to exploit the mobilising force of nationalism. Nineteenth-century Europe was buffeted between the ideologies of socialism and nationalism. Published in the same year as the European revolutions of 1848, the Communist Manifesto recognised the strategic appeal of national solidarity: ‘Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word’ (Marx [1848] cited in Connor 1984, 7). Nationalism could thus be harnessed temporarily to the revolutionary cause, as a prelude to the withering away of state and nation. In 1865, for instance, the London Conference of the First International supported the ‘Proclamation on the Polish Question’ which advocated the ‘right of self-determination which belongs to every nation’ (Marx [1865] cited in Connor 1984, 11). Engels soon restricted this general principle to a set of larger, ‘worthy’ nations as distinct from ‘small relics of peoples’ (Engels [1866] cited in Connor 1984, 12), which included the Welsh, Serbs,

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Croats and Czechs. By introducing a hierarchy based on nations’ economic viability as much as their cultural and political features, Marx and Engels were reserving the right to support a nationalist movement on a case-by-case basis, a favour only actually bestowed on Ireland and Poland for various tactical reasons (Connor 1984, 13). Chief among these was whether it served the cause of international communism. This remained Marx and Engels’ core conviction, regardless of any flirtation with nationalism deemed necessary to achieve it. Needless to say, communists themselves were expected to remain resolutely internationalist at all times and never have any nationalist affiliations of their own. Walker Connor (1984, 20) distinguishes three types of Marxism: the pure internationalism of classical Marxism, strategic. Marxism’s recognition of national self-determination as universal in principle but limited in practice, and national Marxism’s understanding of the nation as a means to a higher revolutionary end. According to this typology, Lenin was a strategic Marxist. The strength and virulence of nationalism among workers and social democrats alike had shocked and disappointed him during the First World War. In light of its obvious continued appeal in the early twentieth century, Lenin opted for the more pragmatic approach to nationalism evident in some of Marx and Engels’ later writings. He theorised that by allying communism with the nationalist aspirations of colonised peoples across the world, he could undercut the imperialist exploitation of the colonies, whose labourers had temporarily eased the pressure on the European proletariat and thereby dulled their appetite for revolution. National self-determination, understood to include outright secession, thus took centre stage in the wider struggle for class emancipation from imperialism and exploitation. The link Lenin forged between anti-colonialism and communism would be particularly relevant in the Vietnamese case. Lenin did not see his policy as encouraging fragmentation, believing instead that smaller nations would opt to merge into larger, economically viable units. This attitude suggests that Lenin planned to meet nationalist demands merely in order to overcome them. He believed that assuaging nationalist resentment against past oppression would defuse it, and encourage assimilation. Lenin’s purely strategic commitment to nationalism highlights his enduring belief that economic and class interests would win out ‘against the stupidity of the cultural–national autonomists’ (Lenin [1914] cited in Connor 1984, 36). In practice, the Soviet Union would recognise the right to regional autonomy for some, but by no means all, ethnic groups. Stalin’s tract entitled ‘Marxism and the National Question’ would provide the basis for defining nations across the communist bloc (Stalin 1994 [1913]). Within the VCP, the recognition of nationalist aspirations also varied strategically; museums are just one expression of its hybrid communist and nationalist ideology.

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Museums as ideological space Conceived along the lines of the international exhibitions and fairs popularised in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Moscow’s Exhibition of the Achievements of the People’s Economy was ‘designed to represent the splendor of the entire Soviet Union in miniature’ (Schmid 2006, 332), and included exhibits devoted to its federal republics. As the name suggests, the sumptuous park was supposed to inspire awe and national pride in the visitor by offering an escape from the daily grind and a vision of a bright, communist future. Its many permanent pavilions also had an important didactic function, which went hand in hand with political propaganda. In contrast to common Western associations of natural science with objectivity, exhibitions such as the nuclear pavilion had an explicit ‘proletarian bias’ (Schmid 2006, 342). Everything from scientific innovation to historical exegesis was to make a contribution to legitimating state socialism which, after all, was itself deemed to have a scientific basis in historical materialism (Schmid 2006, 356). This understanding of science corresponded to the notion of Parteilichkeit in the GDR, a form of partisanship which pervaded all officially sanctioned academic output. Museum displays helped to fulfil this ideological function in socialist states. However, it is submitted that contemporary museums the world over also pursue ideological goals, some more overtly than others. In the case of officially sanctioned national history museums, their contribution to nation-building ideology is clear. The museums theorist Kylie Message (2006, 2) considers the location of the new National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, DC ‘alongside some of the most compelling and convincing symbols of American identity’ to contribute to the construction of that national identity. In this case, the museum’s role in campaigning for greater recognition of American Indians’ part in US identity is seen as introducing a certain heterogeneity to official representations. This underlines the Mall’s symbolic importance as a reflection of official nation-building, which need not necessarily be homogenising and monolithic. For instance, some contemporary museums, inspired by postmodern thinking, seek to integrate multiple perspectives in their exhibits. In terms of national museums, this can be considered an ideological endeavour in itself, one which tends to favour an understanding of national identity as contested, diverse and multicultural. Such exhibition spaces will generally avoid a strictly chronological or linear layout, so as not to guide the visitor along any predetermined path. At the same time, other museums still represent the nation and its history in a more conventional way, emphasising common origins and traditions. In all cases, ‘exhibitionary contexts continue to function as instruments of governance’ (Message 2006, 10). The museum can thus be characterised as an ideological,

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political institution in both the socialist and Western traditions. Indeed, nineteenth-century museums were often founded with nation-building in mind. From its origins as a cabinet of curiosities designed to entertain a single collector or a select, noble circle, the nineteenth-century museum evolved into an institution for social edification and the elevation of a sovereign benefactor in popular hearts and minds. Collections amassed for private pleasure were reinterpreted as symbols of state power (Grewal 1999, 48). For example, Abigail Green (2001) documents the jump in the number of public museums displaying the wealth, taste and status of rulers across Germany and, by extension, that of their discerning visitors. In Britain, the museum total rose from fifty in 1860 to two hundred in 1900 (Bennett 1996, 94). Cheaper tickets were also made available so that working-class citizens could be enlightened by the spectacle, reinforcing their sense of Britishness all the while. Museums were used to foster a wider sense of German national identity too; in 1853 the director of the Berlin Royal Museum described its role as ‘to promote the spiritual growth of the nation by the contemplation of the beautiful’ (Wagen cited in Message 2006, 91). Alongside the great exhibitions taking place worldwide and the developing department store, museums were supposed to educate visitors in matters of good taste and encourage them to consume accordingly. At the same time, these exhibitions conveyed ideologically charged messages of political grandeur and authority, as in the 1867 exposition in Paris, held by Napoleon III; ‘The objects in the exposition became the heroes of this new type of festival [and] acquired new levels of significance as emblems of the power of the regime that organized the space’ (Yamaguchi 1991, 60). This highlights not only the role of objects as ‘heroic’ icons symbolising state legitimacy, but also the importance of exhibition space as a meaningful context within which to create this narrative. In a similar way to Moscow’s Exhibition of the Achievements of the People’s Economy discussed above, London’s Great Exhibition in 1851 already included national pavilions, which helped to entrench prevailing imperial and racial hierarchies (Bennett 1996, 103). The exhibition and its artefacts should therefore be understood as drawing from and contributing to a wider nationbuilding discourse. The privileged position of museums in this endeavour, alongside learned institutions such as universities and law courts, can be attributed to the notion of authenticity, ‘from which an authoritative character emerges’ (Ferguson 1996, 176). Authenticity involves a claim to truth; museums are seemingly respected as repositories of scientific objectivity and reliability. As Crew and Sims (1991, 163) point out, however, authenticity is ‘a socially agreed-upon reality that exists only as long as confidence in the voice of the exhibition holds’. Museum curators, influenced by the wider prevailing discourse, shape exhibitions through their attitudes. Only recently have attempts been made to render this explicit and to incorporate alternative perspectives

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into museum displays. The issue then arises as to who is being represented and how, both key issues in constructing national identity and nation-building more generally. The national museum is a prime site for exploring this concatenation of nation and representation. The state is embodied in its institutions which, even if they do not speak with one voice, together convey a form of official culture. They represent one means of eliciting consent from the governed, as opposed to imposing power through force and punishment (Bennett 1996, 108). Among these institutions, Foucauldian analyses point to the disciplining function of museums as ‘civilizing agencies [within] the exhibitionary complex’ (Bennett 1996, 88). Museums, international exhibitions, fairs and panoramas, followed later by department stores and arcades, encouraged people to internalise and identify with existing power relations through sentiments of awe and pride in national treasures and achievements. In turn, this served to promote a form of selfregulation which could be termed patriotism, or a form of civic virtue (Duncan 1991, 94). If indeed ‘[t]he will to influence is at the core of any exhibition’ (Ferguson 1996, 178) then it is important to understand the cues, references, omissions, emphases and other such strategies which together make up an exhibition’s treatment of time and space (Yamaguchi 1991, 61). For instance, following a didactic pattern which can be traced to the Louvre in Paris, many art galleries organise paintings chronologically and group them into period rooms according to a widely recognised canon of ‘great civilisations’. Historical museums often follow the same format (Bennett 1996, 98). Ultimately, both are engaged in interpreting artefacts and constructing identities according to a particular world-view. With the Vietnamese case in mind, however, it is important to ask whether these trends apply equally to non-Western, and particularly post-colonial museums. Museum exhibits in post-colonial countries are often a combination of pre-independence, prejudiced collections, contemporary nation-building and transnational prestige projects (Appadurai & Breckenridge 1992, 44). As such, they and their curators bring together ‘both the transnational (global) and the local (multicultural) levels’ (Ramirez 1996, 22). Whether representing science and technology, art or national history, they often have both local and international audiences in mind, and tap into museum discourse familiar in the West (Bal 1996, 204). On the other hand, non-Western traditions may have a different understanding of the object and its authenticity. In China, for instance, reproductions can be admired as testifying to the skill and sensibility of the copyist. In Japan, an object’s intrinsic worth can be deemed less than its value as a symbol of more enduring practices and traditions, including myths (Karp & Lavine 1991, 21). Nevertheless, many museums in post-colonial countries serve the same legitimating purpose as they did in nineteenth-century European states, reaching into the past to document the nation’s antiquity

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and its place amongst great civilisations. In so doing, they contribute to national myth-making ‘us[ing] art objects as elements in institutionalized stories’ (Ferguson 1996, 175). Post-colonial museums can also be the site of conflict, both local and transnational, as they seek to transcend past interpretations in accordance with the new orthodoxy (Bal 1996, 208). Museums in newly independent Zimbabwe, for instance, were required to redefine a role for museums which had hitherto pursued racist policies in acquisition, display and advertising (Munjeri 1991, 454). With reference to India, Appadurai and Breckenridge (1992, 44–5) point out that museums must also be understood in the narrower cultural context of ‘movies with nationalist themes, televisions serials with nationalist and mythological narratives and images, and newspapers and magazines that also construct and visualize the grand events of Indian history and mythology.’ The same can be said of Vietnam, where museums and monuments take their place within a rich historical and mythological iconography. This ranges from VCP propaganda billboards to the frequent use of nationalist imagery in film (Charlot 1994, 115), but also caters to some foreign perspectives and sensibilities (Schwenkel 2008; Kennedy & Williams 2001). Studies into Vietnamese representations of its history of resistance, such as war memorials (Malarney 2001), tourist attractions (Kennedy & Williams 2001), official historiography (Pelley 2002) and cultural policy (Ninh 2002), suggest trends in state discourse concerning Vietnam and its enemy ‘Other’. This is encapsulated in anti-colonial nationalism, which launched a ‘most powerful, creative, and historically significant project: to fashion a “modern” national culture that is nevertheless not Western’ (Chatterjee 1993, 6). For example, both French imperialism and the so-called ‘feudalism’ of the Vietnamese emperor’s court are condemned in museum representations of the colonial period, although to different degrees. Another instance is the role of post-war Vietnamese film in the DRV, which has been described as a ‘weapon of revolutionary struggle’ but also an expression of ‘national character [reflecting] the soul and way of life of the nation’ (Diem cited in Charlot 1994, 115; emphasis in original). Both themes are summed up in the myth of resistance. During the Vietnam–American war, this was conveyed to the outside world by the few foreign visitors to the DRV. Impressed by the personal sufferings of his informants, the German writer Peter Weiss sought to reconcile nationalist and communist ideologies following his visit to the DRV in 1968; ‘[S]imultaneously with this kind of [cultural] building process a socialist system with an international outlook is concomitantly being erected, thus eliminating chauvinistic elements’ (Weiss 1970, 13). The VCP encountered some difficulties in reinventing history to accord with communist principles. Its nation-building project required the erasure of ambiguous historical episodes (Giebel 2004) and much of the diversity

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within the Vietnamese resistance movement (Tai 1998, 197). The ‘socialist nationalist’ narrative is further disrupted by the presence of non-Vietnamese in their ranks. For instance, the Viennese Jew Ernst Frey became a member of the Viet Minh (Frey 2001), which also sought to encourage French foreign legionnaires (often German veterans of the Second World War ) to join their ranks. Although there seems to be some acknowledgement in official circles that alternative narratives should be considered (Tai 1998, 198), this has been slow to filter down to the likes of museums and school textbooks. By narrowing the focus to official discourse, we can analyse the specific ‘narrative–rhetorical structure’ (Bal 1996, 214) of a given museum and reflect on its contribution to the multifaceted and ever-evolving phenomenon of nation-building. Museums were a French innovation in Vietnam, later adopted by Vietnamese emperors in Huê´ , before being harnessed to the VCP cause. Today, a piece of museum legislation dating from 2001 has led to the first private museums in Vietnam and the search for non-state sources of funding, which should gradually weaken state control on museum representation (Vietnam Cultural Profile, Sectoral Overview no date). As a Western import which has represented both colonial and anti-colonial ideologies in Vietnam, the museum is thus an example of hybridity or cultural mixing (Schech & Haggis 2000, 79). Yet the VCP’s political rhetoric concerning the nation’s past continues to be dominated by memories of national resistance and valour. Historical symbols and heroic tales also colour social relations and foster everyday expressions of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1995) in Vietnam. One important element of this is the ‘reinvention’ of Vietnamese history to fit the dominant national narrative of resistance to foreign aggression, a narrative which also guides the Vietnamese school textbook examined in chapter 5. Comparison with the German case shows that museums there are also potent nation-building spaces. Following an analytical framework suggested in Macdonald (1998, 5), the focus is on rhetorical and thematic strategies adopted in museum exhibits – understood in terms of persuasive mechanisms and the socio-political implications of representation – as opposed to their poetic or aesthetic qualities. The German language has several words for public edifices which indicate their perceived role. For instance, one German word for monument (Denkmal) derives from the verb to think (denken). Other variations include Mahnmal, from mahnen, meaning to warn or admonish, and Ehrenmal, designed to honour (ehren) national heroes, resistance fighters and the like (Stangl 2006, 361). In today’s Germany, the emotive nature of such commemorative places contrasts with the allegedly more neutral and thoughtful space of the museum and its variants, including the so-called documentation centre (Dokumentationszentrum) and the memorial (Gedenkstätte). Such projects tend to be supported by parties on the left of the political spectrum, which are wary of conservatives’ aims in promoting a positive German identity (Till 2005, 88).

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Whether monument or museum, their titles clearly associate each with a particular activity. Some are explicitly labelled as places for learning and contemplation, while others are intended to convey a warning. To this extent, they all contribute to an ideological construction of the past which is sometimes explicitly normative. In East Germany, the commemoration of officially sanctioned heroes such as war dead and concentration camp victims was, quite literally, monumental, usually taking the form of giant sculptures of struggling prisoners, noble soldiers or communist resistance fighters. The vast esplanades of the Soviet war memorial in Berlin’s Treptow park (built 1946–48) and the Buchenwald Concentration Camp memorial (built 1954–58), for instance, were designed to stage large-scale processions (Till 2005, 85) as a means of legitimation by acclamation (Nothnagle 1999). West German war memorials, by contrast, focused more on victims of persecution whose identity as Jews, Roma and homosexuals among others was more to the fore than their political persuasion. The German Historical Museum The fall of the Berlin Wall ‘brought with it the implosion of an entire civilisation and its mythology’ (Nothnagle 1999, 201), namely that of East Germany: All the main mythologies were dramatically shattered and given the lie: the myth of the Communist party as the incarnation of historical wisdom; the myth of the working class as the predestined group intimately linked to the project of ultimate social justice, freedom, and equality; the myth of World War II as a collective struggle of all nations of the Soviet Union for survival against Nazi attack . . . and so on. (Tismaneanu 1998, 35)

Given this complete collapse of communist mythologies and the structures which sustained them, is there any significance in the fact that Berlin’s newly renovated and curated German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM)) stands on the site of the GDR’s former flagship Museum of German History (Museum für deutsche Geschichte (MdG))? In her speech at the DHM’s opening ceremony in June 2006, chancellor Angela Merkel began with a reference to the East German associations of the museum’s location and collections, using Cold War terminology. According to her, the GDR’s ‘Marxist interpretation of history’ had been replaced by a ‘free and democratic’ one, signalling that one ideology had triumphed over another (Merkel 2006). Unsurprisingly, Merkel had nothing but scorn for communist ideology in her speech, choosing to revert to Cold War dichotomies in her opening remarks. Needless to say, her reading of the GDR legacy clashed with the regime’s own carefully constructed image as a protector of high German

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culture, of which its substantial museum collections were a part (Nothnagle 1999). Returning to her initial comment on Marxist historiography, however, Merkel pointed out that the DHM’s own exhibition was itself a ‘historicopolitical’ (geschichtspolitisch) undertaking. Her speech was thus significant in highlighting the all-pervasiveness of ideology, something which the museum materials themselves are more reluctant to countenance. Angela Merkel’s comments on ‘divided memory’ featured in the middle of her speech and are worth quoting in full: Communicating history is a historico-political issue of great importance for national identity and our common understanding. This applies also and particularly to Germany, which for decades was a divided country. To some extent people in East Germany naturally have other memories of recent German history than the people of the old federal republic. In this respect one could even speak of a divided memory. The German Historical Museum’s exhibition therefore has to reconcile different cultures of memory, first of all by making a German view of history (Geschichtsbild) accessible, which is committed to free and democratic values, and secondly by asserting the experiences and memories of the people who lived in the GDR. In this way the divided memory of Germans can become a common memory. Achieving that would be a fantastic outcome of this exhibition. (Merkel 2006)1

Merkel accepts that East and West Germans have different memories that should contribute equally to public commemoration and nation-building in united Germany, going on to suggest that the DHM should be a place for such ‘memory work’. A commission of experts reached complementary conclusions in mid-2006 (Frankfurter Rundschau 2006), calling for a stronger and more coherent engagement with the GDR past. Alongside themes relating to the inner-German border and state surveillance, they proposed a theme covering GDR society and resistance, which would explore former GDR citizens’ selfunderstanding and help to undermine uncritical, ‘Eastalgic’ media and museum portrayals of everyday life in the GDR. Plans to build a monument to German unity in Berlin are another important expression of this nationbuilding aim, which also has party political connotations (Spiegel 2007). The German History Museum project, for instance, was first conceived under Helmut Kohl’s chancellorship and criticised from the left for its potential to promote dangerous, chauvinistic national pride (Berliner Morgenpost 2006). For instance, a Green Party member attended the DHM’s opening ceremony wearing sackcloth to show his embarrassment and disgust at Germany officially celebrating its – to him – irremediably tainted national history. A neoconservative concern with creating a national narrative of longue durée has thus been associated with chancellor Kohl’s project. In 2006, the DHM’s director called it Germany’s ‘visual memory’, describing the museum’s central aim as to promote national ‘self-assurance’ (Selbstvergewisserung) (Spiegel 2006a).

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The division of East and West Germany is documented as one among many phases in two thousand years of history, yet Merkel’s inaugural speech was an important gesture in recognising the museum’s potential as a site for exploring ‘divided memory’ as well as shared cultural heritage. The DHM project was originally conceived in the 1980s as a democratic counterpart to the GDR’s MdG, one which would provide a ‘corrective’ to what was seen as its unacceptably skewed interpretation of German history (Berliner Morgenpost 2006). During the Historikerstreit, it also aroused debate within the FRG as to whom would control its exhibitions. Demonstrations led by green and social democratic politicians against Chancellor Kohl’s plans testify to both the ideological and party political nature of the project (Berliner Morgenpost 2006). Indeed, its first directors reminisced that on meeting Kohl, the purpose of the museum to tell ‘German history as a European story’ (Tagesspiegel 2007) replaced any discussion of the planned collection itself. Early post-unification DHM exhibits were also shown to make the controversial link between the Third Reich and the GDR in a very partisan manner (Penny 1995, 370). The DHM avoids confronting its own role in unified Germany’s nation-building by skipping over the (party) political origins of the museum project and creating a strongly negative ‘Other’ in its official depiction of the GDR museum which preceded it. Nevertheless, the DHM has carried over the myth of a united German nation in a European cultural crucible from the Bonn republic. Ironically, the DHM has focused on historic, visual and monumental myth-making in one of its temporary exhibitions, but has not examined its own contribution to the national identity which serves to legitimate today’s German state. The raison d’être of the GDR museum which occupied East Berlin’s historic Zeughaus from 1952 to 1990 has been summarised as ‘to fashion a German history, to create the foundations for an East German national identity, and to provide legitimization for the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED)’ (Penny 1995, 343). Although the DHM’s official guidebook traces the nation-building goal of both the Prussian Zeughaus armoury and museum, as well as its East German successor, it does not acknowledge its own, comparable contribution to contemporary German nation-building. According to the guidebook, the museum’s role is to offer ‘informative and varied insights into over two thousand years of the German past through authentic objects’ (Ottomeyer & Czech 2006, 6). This ostensibly neutral goal, suggested by the word ‘authentic’, is explicitly contrasted with the aim of the East German MdG, which is described as ‘to draw up and convey a view of history (Geschichtsbild) based on the teachings of historical materialism, in order to pave the way for a new, socialist sense of national identity amongst GDR citizens’ (Ottomeyer & Czech 2006, 7). The tenor of these statements is very different; whereas that of the GDR museum is portrayed as explicitly ideological, that of the DHM is

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presented as multifaceted, educational and non-ideological, in spite of the primordialist claim that German history can be traced back two thousand years. Further, the guidebook interprets the last GDR government’s decision to close its museum and transfer the collections to the DHM as an acceptance of the DHM’s approach, thus establishing its superiority over East German practice (Ottomeyer & Czech 2006, 7). As such, the experience of the DHM mirrors that of German unification. The GDR collections – both the old Prussian artefacts it had conserved and recent documentation on the ‘history of class struggle’ (Ottomeyer & Czech 2006, 7) – were incorporated into a pre-existing West German project. Notwithstanding its (party) political origins, the DHM understands itself as a ‘non-partisan chronicler’ (unparteiischer Chronist) (Vorsteher 2006, 18), in stark contrast to the MdG, as the following excerpt from the DHM’s official guidebook makes clear: The ideological cement between objects and their messages was destroyed with the end of GDR society. From the permanent exhibition displays, from the ‘arsenal’ of class struggle, the exhibits returned to storage. A place, where each object in the collection is neutralised and ‘de-ideologised’ in the first instance through its isolation. This is where cataloguing and research, preservation and conservation take place. (Vorsteher 2006, 13)2

The DHM is not understood as having a political, let alone ideological goal. Instead, it is portrayed as a bastion of objective, scientific research aloof from any manipulating agents or ideas. Accordingly, artefacts are ‘isolated’ and ‘neutralised’, and subsequent cataloguing is presented as somehow free from the normative evaluation inherent in any form of classification. The GDR collections, on the other hand, are caricatured as an aggressive weapon in the ‘arsenal of class struggle’, requiring ideological purification far from the ‘showrooms’ of a discredited regime. The DHM thus distances itself from any self-reflexive recognition of museology as necessarily ideological. Instead, it offers allegedly neutral information and heaps scorn on what it sees as distorting GDR practice. Elsewhere, it lauds its own ‘visionary’ sensibility in anticipating the interests of future generations and collecting accordingly, rather than acknowledging the influence of current political culture and values on its decision-making (Vorsteher 2006, 18). And yet, it also recognises collections as vitally necessary for preserving the national memory, arguing that to forget history is tantamount to dealing the nation a mortal blow (Vorsteher 2006, 18). The guidebook seems to suggest that artefacts under the DHM’s watch are drained of their symbolic, ideological and even ‘magical’ qualities to become dry exemplars of manufacturing techniques, military strategies and social mores (Vorsteher 2006, 14). However, the DHM’s supposedly objective, scientific approach to collecting and exhibiting is hard

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to square with its explicit commitment to Enlightenment values (Vorsteher 2006, 15), to a perspective firmly anchored in the European context, and to a set of guiding themes such as ‘What held the Germans together?’ and ‘How do Germans understand themselves?’ (Ottomeyer & Czech 2006, 10). Tellingly, these themes do not problematise the assumption that a unified community of Germans has long existed. In equating ideology with the authoritarianism of the GDR and alleging its own scientific objectivity and neutrality, the DHM is unable to acknowledge its nation-building agenda. The official guidebook’s superficial engagement with current trends in museology is undermined by the structure of the permanent collection, and its depiction of German history as two millennia of continuity. As will be shown below, however, the same cannot be said of all the museum’s temporary exhibits. Despite its linear, chronological organisation, which strongly suggests continuity in German history across a timeline stretching from 100 BCE to the withdrawal of Allied troops in 1994, the DHM seeks to situate itself within new museology. According to the official guidebook, it sets out to distinguish itself from the ‘goal-oriented’ nature of nineteenth- and twentieth-century museums by offering a ‘nuanced, historically critical’ view of German history. Its exhibition allegedly highlights breaks and ‘aberrations’ (Fehlentwicklung) as well as continuity (Ottomeyer & Czech 2006, 10), so that visitors can form their own opinions. The use of such normative terms as ‘aberration’ suggests otherwise, however, as do other historical interpretations offered in the guidebook. For instance, so-called ‘milestones’ signal each historical epoch, each within sight of the next, thereby providing a ‘visible, orienting marked line along the main way’ (Ottomeyer & Czech 2006, 9).3 The milestones offer an introductory text, a timeline and maps, thus placing each historical stage in time and space. Exhibits are allegedly chosen for their informative value and depictions stick as closely as possible to ‘historical realities’ (Ottomeyer & Czech 2006, 9). However, such an approach seems hard to square with the museum’s explicit wish to offer multifaceted and even contrasting perspectives ‘wherever possible’ (Ottomeyer & Czech 2006, 9). Instead, the museum layout strongly suggests visitors pick a particular path through history. The DHM aims to put German history in European context. Its guidebook explicitly contrasts this with the nation-building goal of the DHM’s predecessors, the Prussian Zeughaus and the communist MdG (Vorsteher 2006, 16). There is no hint that an orientation towards Europe might itself be inscribed within the ideological post-war project of Westbindung, European integration and the Basic Law’s commitment to Europe; all elements in FRG nation-building before and after unification. Significantly, with reference to the twentieth century, the guidebook contrasts its ‘bloody and cruel’ first half with a second half characterised by reconciliation and peace politics (Vorsteher 2006, 16). This emphasis evokes the integrationist ambitions of Western Europe rather

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than the tense, Cold War situation of Europe as a whole. Further, the observation that this theme is ‘widely reflected in the contents of the collections and also in the permanent exhibition’ (Vorsteher 2006, 16) indicates the museum’s orientation towards a West German ideological paradigm. In contrast, the political, institutional and educational links with Western Europe fostered by the FRG were early identified by GDR politicians as an alleged betrayal of the ‘true’ German history supposedly preserved in their state, although with time the GDR itself would move to a more internationalist contextualisation of Germany’s past (Penny 1995, 350). As an expression of GDR nation-building, the MdG explicitly stressed continuity with the Zeughaus as a historic location handed over to the people, thereby appropriating Prussian heritage and the classical German pantheon in order to present the GDR as its culmination (Penny 1995, 349). The DHM’s name, its overall spatial organisation and its core aim of surveying two thousand years of German history offer a clear message to the visitor. This vision of German history as a continuous, unified whole on the European stage can best be illustrated with reference to the exhibit covering Germany from 1945 to 1994. One artefact is an architect’s model of the building designed for the banks of the Spree river, part of the original museum plans which were abandoned after unification. In a rare moment of selfreflection, the label explains that the DHM aroused controversy between proponents who thought it would ‘strengthen historical self-understanding’ and opponents who considered it an example of ‘nationalistic self-glorification’. What this dichotomy does not address, quite apart from the party political implications, is the chosen mode of historical interpretation. Although following neither a militaristic nor a Marxist approach along the lines of its predecessors, the DHM does adopt a decisive ideological stance. This core message is neatly conveyed by two artefacts, which are reproduced repeatedly in its guidebooks and materials. The first is quite literally a flagship image, a poster designed by Reyn Dirksen in 1950 to promote the post-war Marshall Plan for economic recovery. It depicts Europe as a sailing boat on the high seas, driven forward by the billowing flags of the mainly West European participants in the plan. The poster is used to promote the DHM’s permanent collection in conjunction with a portrait by Albrecht Dürer of Charles the Great, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Taken together, these iconic images can be interpreted as the first and latest stages in Germany’s European history, at once part of a European project but also figuring as a named – or flagged – German nation. Complete with its Englishlanguage caption, reading ‘All our colours to the mast’, the Marshall Plan poster also takes up a full colour page of the 2006 DHM magazine introducing the permanent collection, under the heading ‘German History – European History’. Not only does this image depict a Western European community

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of states, then, but it also highlights US influence over the FRG’s policy of Westbindung, for which it would be roundly criticised by the GDR. The museum thus pins its own colours to the mast by placing the dominant, West German strand of post-war history at the forefront of its publicity and emphasising the symbiosis between Germany and Europe. The European myth is complemented by a myth of German national unity, which permeates the museum’s treatment of state division in the post-war period. A second artefact reproduced in museum materials is a handmade placard used during the East German demonstrations of 1989, which helped to precipitate the fall of the Berlin Wall. It consists of a cut-out map of united Germany, the East–West border represented by a dotted line, painted in the colours of the German flag and sprayed with the slogan ‘Wir sind ein Volk’ (We are one people). The message of national unity, mapped, flagged and spelled out in völkisch terms, could hardly be more explicit. This image illustrates the official DHM guidebook’s introduction to the permanent collection’s ‘epoch’ of 1945–94, strongly suggesting that the nation lived on throughout the political division into two states. Indeed, the decision to delimit the period according to the beginning and end of Allied occupation, and not the existence of two German states (1949–90) serves to emphasise that Germany’s fate was shaped by international, political forces which did not ultimately undermine national unity. This impression is reinforced by the guidebook’s introductory text, which states: ‘[T]he escalation of the systemic conflict between the Western powers and the Soviet Union paved the way for the three Western zones to enter the Western state alliance and the Eastern zone to enter the Eastern one. The price of this integration was the division of Germany’.4 The corresponding section of the permanent exhibition confirms the impression that this temporary, enforced division did not disrupt an ongoing sense of national unity. Although Germany’s division into two states might be presented as a rupture in historical continuity, this is not reflected in the exhibition’s floorplan, which neatly divides the final section of its chronological tour by a wire mesh. The flow of visitors can circumvent and see through this barrier, which in no way resembles the succession of no man’s land, barbed wire, watchtowers, inner and outer walls that formed the Berlin Wall or the border between the two Germanies (Koshar 2000, 2). As such, it does not mimic the travel and communication hurdles between the states and their citizens. The exhibits themselves also emphasise correspondence over division and divergence; each side mirrors the other in thematic displays on education, housing and sport among others. For instance, an East German Trabant car is displayed opposite a West German Volkswagen and examples of consumer goods from each state. The overriding impression, then, is one of parallel developments merging in the final exhibition space, which depicts popular demonstrations in favour of reform and unification.

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One particular display addresses a guiding theme of the permanent exhibition, namely the way in which Germans understand themselves. The upper part of the panel lists FRG and GDR leaders and their terms in office. It then features a quote by former FRG president Richard von Weizsäcker, described elsewhere in the exhibition as the FRG’s highest representative, juxtaposed with one by Stefan Heym, an author who lived in the GDR but was also strongly critical of the regime. Von Weizsäcker’s public speeches, notably his description of the end of the Second World War as Germany’s liberation from Nazism rather than its defeat, were widely reported and respected as a contribution to Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the past. Consequently, he was generally regarded as having transcended his party political affiliation to speak for the (West) German nation (Bogdanor 1996, 412). Von Weizsäcker’s quote is not set alongside an official pronouncement by a GDR politician, however, who from the 1970s onwards would have propounded the official SED line of a distinct East German identity. Instead, Stefan Heym’s view reinforces von Weizsäcker’s point that differences in language, ideology and social systems are overridden by German national commonalities. This panel, then, silences and discredits the alternative, official interpretation of post-war German identity current in the GDR. The DHM exhibition does address the GDR’s official, anti-fascist foundation myth by displaying a reproduction of the Buchenwald monument and documentation on the public donations used to build it. Although this could be interpreted as showing widespread public support for the memorial, the fact that this was very much an official nation-building project is underlined by reproductions of high-flown rhetoric by GDR prime minister Otto Grotewohl, which emphasise heroism and sacrifice. Further, the accompanying explanatory text points out the SED’s abdication of any responsibility for the war or the Holocaust. The GDR’s repudiation of Germany’s recent past is thus portrayed in a negative light, suggesting that an acceptance of continuity, however painful, is preferable. These two elements in the exhibition implicitly contrast Germans’ personal ideologies, or self-understanding, apparently summed up in Richard von Weizsäcker’s assessment, with the total ideology of the GDR, which is not deemed to speak for the people. The thrust of von Weizsäcker’s quote is that, ‘there is more to bind us [Germans] than language, culture and responsibility for history’,5 implying some kind of spiritual unity transcending temporary divisions. The display thus preserves a sense of national unity through its interpretation of key questions, its neat spatial continuity with previous ‘epochs’ in the permanent collection, the parallel layout of exhibits and the portrayal of division as a relatively flimsy, transparent wire fence. This unitary myth is summed up in the information panel covering the rapprochement between the GDR and the FRG in the 1970s, which carries the title ‘two states – one nation’.

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The DHM’s temporary exhibitions are located in the new wing of the museum, designed by the international ‘starchitect’ I. M. Pei. Perhaps as a reflection of the post-modern architectural space, the conception and design of these exhibits is rather less conventional than the permanent collection in the main building. In contrast to the permanent collection, temporary exhibitions such as ‘Zuwanderungsland Deutschland’ and ‘Mythen der Nationen’ offer detailed treatments of migration and myths. Notwithstanding the use of slightly ambiguous terminology (Sutherland 2007, 39), the first exhibition questions the long-standing, official West German trope that Germany is not a country of immigration by tracing successive waves and types of immigration back to 1500. The second exhibition is of particular relevance here due to its comparative, thematic structure, non-linear layout and central focus on the myth of nations and resistance. It also offers an appropriate point of comparison to the Vietnamese case, where myths of resistance to the national ‘Other’ are a central component of nation-building in museums and textbooks alike. It has been suggested that the MdG’s temporary exhibitions offered a more immediate reflection of the ever-evolving debates surrounding national identity in the GDR than the more static, permanent collection (Penny 1995, 352). In contrast to a touring exhibition in the early 1990s which was a thinly veiled attack on the GDR (Penny 1995, 370), the DHM’s engagement with myths and migration suggests a desire to probe some of the received ideas about Germanness shaping current debates in a less polarised fashion. For instance, the 2004 exhibition Mythen der Nationen (Myths of Nations), surveys a set of master narratives concerning the Second World War across several European countries, as well as the USA and Israel. Using the concepts of myth, icon and hero to structure the enquiry, it is also careful to distinguish personal from national, or collective memory, which it defines as simultaneously supportive of and created by a political community in order to foster solidarity (Bresky & Vogel 2004, 47). This echoes Karl Mannheim’s distinction between total and particular ideology discussed in chapter 1, as well as the conceptual framework adopted in the present study (Mannheim 1991 [1929], 49). The exhibition highlights the manipulation of myths and iconic images, but also the constructed nature of the nation, thereby encouraging a critical approach to films, novels and visual icons, but also to Berlin’s national monuments and, implicitly perhaps, its museums. The exhibition defines myths and their representation in schoolbooks, film, novels, the press, theatre and art as ‘national icons’. According to the exhibition materials, these resemble religious icons in that they are considered to embody a transcendental truth, which is strongly anchored in collective consciousness (Bresky & Vogel 2004, 24–5). Much like nationalist ideology, the purpose of myths is to unify and delimit the community, and explain its past through storytelling. Again, recalling the pragmatism and flexibility of ideology, myths

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are said to respond to economic, social, cultural and political change, to compete with alternative narratives and to be periodically replaced by them. Alongside the myths of victory, freedom and responsibility that developed across Europe following the Second World War, a key example documented in the exhibition is the myth of resistance. This is presented as a necessary tool to unify fractured societies and prevent civil war. Just as in contemporary nation-building, myths served to overcome internal divisions after the war, helping to make sense of the past in order to face the future together. Tellingly, the exhibition points out that Germany itself, despite being the invading nation, constructed its own myths of resistance. In West Germany this centred on the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944 by Claus von Stauffenberg and other military ‘heroes’, a term which in time would also come to be applied to civilian resistance. The exhibition illustrates how the myth of anti-fascist resistance was central to the GDR’s legitimation too, as exemplified in the monumental commemoration centring on Buchenwald concentration camp, and the direct link made between the resistance of political prisoners and the GDR regime (Nothnagle 1993, 98). This is summed up in the slogan featured on one of the posters exhibited: ‘That for which the antifascists fought is reality in the GDR’.6 The exhibition Mythen der Nationen thereby clearly underlines the nation-building purpose of the resistance myth in both Germanies, one which finds a parallel in today’s Vietnam. Berlin’s Allied Museum was called into being in 1993 under the aegis of the DHM. It is steered by a committee representing France, Germany, the United Stated and the United Kingdom, as well as the State of Berlin and expert advisers, and is therefore very much alive to international sensibilities. The museum’s explicit goal is to document the ‘Western powers’ role in and commitment to Berlin and Germany as a whole’ (Birkemeyer 2007, 6). The positive connotations of the word commitment (Engagement) are underlined by the director’s welcome on the museum website, which begins: ‘The Allied Museum tells a unique story full of excitement and drama. Almost like in a fairy tale, the forces of Good [sic] win in the end’ (Allied Museum, no date). This parallel with storytelling highlights the museum’s role as a maker and purveyor of myths designed to present history from a particular, normative perspective. Further, the text evokes an apparently Manichean narrative of Cold War conflict, with Berlin as its ‘showplace’ (Allied Museum, no date). It sets up a classic dichotomy of friend vs. foe, good vs. evil, communist vs. capitalist, made possible by the fact that Soviet–German relations are documented in a separate museum in Berlin-Karlshorst. Housed in a listed building – a 1950s theatre built for US personnel – the Allied Museum itself combines the iconic architecture of the post-war period with the myth-making of its exhibitions. At the same time, it seeks to open up its thematic orientation and selection to question and criticism by

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providing an environment for learning and dialogue with visitors, including ‘the opportunity to reflect on the tentativeness of contemporary historiography’ (Birkemeyer 2007, 5).7 Nonetheless, its interpretation can be understood in terms of a dominant narrative in contemporary historiography, one influenced by the ideologies and attitudes of its sponsors and the wider nation-building discourse within which these are embedded. To differing degrees, museum practice in Germany and Vietnam allows space for alternative interpretations, but this still presents an official narrative with an ideological rationale. For instance, an employee of Hanoi’s national museum explained why exhibits of the Vietnam–American war emphasised national heroism over individual suffering: ‘That is because we were victorious and we were right. You must understand that Vietnam has a long history of foreign invasion’ (cited in Schwenkel 2008, 50). The war is thus associated with national pride, vindication and moral superiority, before being placed in the wider tradition of resistance to invasion, a recurrent theme in Vietnamese school textbooks and museums alike. This is illustrated in one of Hanoi’s commemorations of the Vietnam–American war, namely the B52 Museum dedicated to the US warplanes shot down over the city. Vietnamese history museums The grounds of Hanoi’s B52 Museum are decorated with a large-scale frieze (see Figure 4.1). It shows the city during the resistance against the US winter bombing campaign of 1972, intended by president Nixon to force favourable terms from the DRV during the negotiations which culminated in the 1973 Paris Agreement and US withdrawal from Vietnam. A US pilot is depicted, waist high in water and being held at gunpoint by a Vietnamese soldier. To the left are the rockets and camouflaged launchers which presumably caused the crash. An aeroplane in nosedive, ‘B52’ and ‘US A.F.’ (air force) emblazoned on its wings, is surrounded by clouds of smoke reminiscent in style to the traditional decoration found in Vietnamese temples. The Vietnamese soldier’s pose and the star at the bottom of the frame smack of the socialist-realist style, however. Hanoi’s Long Biên bridge and its flag tower are shown elsewhere on the frieze. Other elements of the urban landscape, including the upturned roofs of a pagoda, and the densely packed, low-built façades of old quarter shophouses, convey a more timeless quality. All these elements come together to place a specific wartime episode within a narrative of resistance. Indeed, the bombings of Hanoi and Ha’ i Phòng have been dubbed the ‘≠iên Biên Phu’ ˙ directly of the skies’ in official Vietnamese discourse (see Figure 4.2). This links spirited resistance in the Vietnam–American war to the final, victorious battle against French colonial troops in 1954, portrayed in turn as part of two millennia of fending off foreign attack.

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Figure 4.1 Decorative frieze in the grounds of Hanoi’s B52 Museum, August 2007

France’s colonisation of Indochina began with the acquisition of Cochinchina in southern Vietnam from the Nguyê˜ n emperor in 1864 and ended ninety years later in defeat at the battle of ≠iê n Biên Phu’. The French progressively ˙ ´ , ≠à Na˘˜ ng and Saigon to house the established museums in Hanoi, Huê collections of the Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient (EFEO), an institution founded in 1901 to study Indochina’s monuments, languages and cultures. The importance of museums to nation-building was not lost on Ho Chi Minh, who in 1945 issued a decree establishing an Oriental Institute explicitly dedicated to documenting Vietnam’s history of struggle and defence against invasion (Tai 1998, 190). Following the end of colonialism, control of EFEO museum collections passed to the DRV and RVN governments. No new museums were created by the RVN during its lifetime, but the DRV actively added to the museum landscape, creating the Museum of the Vietnamese Revolution, the Vietnam Military History Museum and the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum between 1959 and 1966 in Hanoi alone (Tai 1998, 190). Together with Hanoi’s History Museum, all are under the direct control of the Ministry of Culture and

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Figure 4.2 Hanoi street scene with a poster depicting the ‘≠iên Biên Phu’ of the skies’, ˙ August 2007

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Information. In 1958, an evaluation by none other than Ho Chi Minh himself insisted that the Ministry approach culture as an ideological and educational tool, rather than merely a form of entertainment (Ninh 2002). During the 1950s, the very concept of Vietnamese culture was being revolutionised at the same time as the countryside was undergoing the upheaval of land reform. Most religious festivals and rituals were banned as superstitious, wedding and funeral feasts were severely curtailed and ostentatious ancestral altars were strongly discouraged. Explicit goals included constructing a national culture by making good use of past heritage and eradicating foreign vestiges; ‘Some of the Ministry of Culture’s most important work would be in sketching out the shape and content of Vietnamese culture untainted by colonialism’ (Ninh 2002, 173). After 1954, Vietnamese intellectuals in the DRV had begun to voice their discontent that censorship and other controls were not being relaxed. A crackdown on the publications they used to voice their opinions came in 1956. This was followed in 1958 by the campaign entitled ‘Wage a New Life’, designed to discourage outdated practices. Through measures such as these, the Vietnamese government set about eradicating ‘the enemy within’, namely bourgeois attitudes and French educational influence, which had been all too evident from the style and substance of the intellectuals’ protests. The government’s initial ambivalence as to whether to do so by preserving or destroying the past (Ninh 2002, 240) recalls the impassioned debates on Vietnamese national identity of the 1920s and 1930s (Marr 1971, 1981). This contested nation-building process necessarily continues to this day, as Vietnam positions itself vis-à-vis China, the West and its own traditions. The need to cater to these different audiences helps to explain the lack of a clear narrative on the colonial period across state-run museums. More general trends appear to be the celebration of an ancient past – an archaeological ‘race to antiquity’ also being pursued by Thailand, Laos and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) among others (Loofs-Wissowa 1993; Pholsena 2004) – and a selective rehabilitation and revival of folk beliefs (Taylor 2002). Patricia Pelley (1995, 1998, 2002) has demonstrated how the VCP’s emphasis on the ‘spirit of resistance’ was a product of post-colonial historians working for the government Institute of History after 1954: ‘To the extent that there really is, or was, a shared sense of the past . . . it clearly emanated from the didacticism of the 1950s and 1960s’ (Pelley 1995, 233). Attempts to create a discourse of unity in diversity can also be traced to this source, which in turn rested upon Stalin’s definition of the nation (Pelley 1995, 241). During the 1960s, it was politically imperative to present a resolutely united front, victorious against the French and ready to face further attacks. Furthermore, French colonial researchers had been particularly active in the field of ethnology, documenting the country’s diversity. The Vietnamese were keen

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to undo these colonial ethnographies with their all-too-apposite connotations of looming splits, and redraw the map of Vietnam on their own terms. As Christopher Goscha (1995) carefully documents, this was no easy matter. The Vietnamese Communist Party itself, after all, was originally called the Indochinese Communist Party, and was initially unsure whether to pursue the goal of a Vietnamese or Indochinese state. The unfixity of the national space in Vietnamese minds helps to explain the flurry of ethnographic and historical writing which took place after 1954, with the resulting interpretations still being represented in Hanoi’s museums today. One might expect resistance against French colonialism to feature strongly in Vietnamese narratives on national resistance. Indeed, the choice of Stalin as a mentor on the national question was originally an attempt to repudiate French influence and align with the brotherhood of socialist states. DRV scholars still had to work within colonial categories, however, in order to repudiate them effectively. Pelley (1998, 374) draws a parallel between the Vietnamese army’s successful defeat of France’s supposedly impregnable defences at ≠iê n Biên Phu’ and their subsequent ‘intellectual assault’ on the colonial reading˙ of Vietnamese culture. Although the RVN did not invest directly in museums, in 1957 it did inaugurate a large National Library and Cultural Centre in central Saigon, with the declared aim of preserving national heritage and fostering a spirit of independence (Masur 2004, 70). It also invested in restoring and preserving historic monuments in the city of Huê´ . Further, an exhibition organised in conjunction with the respected Smithsonian Institute in Washington, which toured the US in 1960–61, shows that the regime was aware of the importance of such projects in establishing the RVN’s legitimacy abroad. This aim was made clear at the planning stage, and the exhibit’s opening was timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Diê m’s declaration of the Republic of Vietnam (Masur 2004, 177). The artefacts ˙themselves were chosen to showcase cultural refinement and longevity, including that of southern Vietnam in particular. For instance, one of the centrepieces was a Buddha from the Funan culture of the Mekong delta, dated 300 CE (Masur 2004, 177), and the ancient Óc Eo culture was also represented. More recent Cham pieces and works by ethnic minorities figured too. Although the accompanying brochure traced the roots of Vietnamese identity to the Bronze Age civilisation of the Red River Delta – then cut off from the RVN in DRV territory – it also featured influences specific to the southern region. These emphasised a syncretic, Southeast Asian heritage and reinforced a sense of distinctiveness from China. Indeed, the exhibit guide explicitly stated that Vietnamese culture was ‘not to be regarded primarily as sub-Chinese in nature’ (cited in Masur 2004, 180). This was a central theme in RVN nation-building propaganda, which sought to portray the communist regime to the north as beholden to China and the Soviet Union, while the RVN continued the tradition of resistance to Chinese aggression.

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Today, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s cultural policy continues to be based on party principles laid down in 1943. These state that culture is the spiritual foundation of society, that Vietnam’s culture should be progressive and imbued with national identity, that it is both united and diversified, and that the VCP leads all the people in its building and development (Vietnam Cultural Profile, Origins of Vietnamese Culture Policy, no date). The exact wording regarding national identity was repeated in a 1998 resolution, intended to tackle the negative influence on Vietnam’s traditional heritage of the internet, pornography, Western culture and ‘social evils’ such as drug abuse and prostitution. The Ministry of Culture and Information still strongly emphasises the core values and overall unity of Vietnamese culture. In a system running parallel to government structures, the VCP oversees an extensive network of literary, artistic, theatrical, film, ethnology and other associations, which all continue to adhere to the party line. Since 1997, a government directive has called on the cultural sector to look for additional sources of funding to state subsidies, which have been severely scaled back since the market-oriented renovation policy known as đổi mới was introduced in 1986. Many cultural institutions have lacked the skills to market themselves in this new environment. One notable exception is Hanoi’s Museum of Ethnology, which receives technical support from the Rockefeller Foundation and Smithsonian Institute, as well as funding from a raft of foreign embassies. From a current nationwide total of around one hundred and twenty major metropolitan and provincially run museums and three thousand listed cultural and heritage sites, Hanoi itself is home to around fifteen museums. The structure and contents of nationalist discourse in Vietnam is exemplified by Hanoi’s History Museum, which tells a linear, chronological story emphasising the idea of national unity. This is complemented by the Museum of Ethnology (ba’ o tàng dân tôc), designed to document Vietnam’s ethnic diversity. The ˙ dân tôc – variously translated as nation, race, ethnic group Vietnamese term ˙ and nationality – is used both to create the term chu’ ngh˜ı a dân tôc for ’ ˙ is nationalism and also dân tôc thiê u sô´ , meaning ethnic minority. Vietnam ˙ thus described today as being both one nation (dân tôc Viê t Nam là môt – the ˙ ˙ or ethnic˙groups Vietnamese nation is one) and a country of many nationalities (Viê t Nam là mô t nước có nhiê`u dân tôc – Vietnam is a country of many ˙ ˙ nationalities). This tension was also ˙evident in post-colonial histories sponsored by the VCP. Official histories characterised Vietnam as a single, fixed bloc, with a common language, territory, economy and culture (Pelley 1995, 240), in direct contrast to French colonial accounts of Vietnam as an ethnically divided society (Pelley 1998, 376). Today, Vietnam’s Museum of Ethnology celebrates the country’s fifty-four officially recognised ethnic groups, while seeking to reinforce a sense of national unity. For instance, a visit to the museum begins with ethnographic maps and a timeline recording when

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different ethnic groups migrated into Vietnam. As the visitor’s eye moves along the timeline, these groups are seen to join the linear flow of Vietnam’s common history and destiny. Vietnamese official historiography privileges the theme of resistance to foreign aggression, a trend clearly illustrated in Hanoi’s Military and History Museums. The first episode usually highlighted is the Trưng sisters’ successful attempt to drive the occupying Chinese from Vietnam in 40–41 CE. The litany of heroes continues with the revered figures of Lady Triêu, Ngô Quyê` n, Trâ` n Hưng ≠a o, Nguyê˜ n Trãi and Lê Lợi. In the room of ˙the Military History Museum ˙devoted to pre-colonial Vietnam, these figures are listed next to the entrance, and the main wall of the room is occupied by a huge oil painting of the thirteenth-century Mongol defeat on the Ba ch ≠a˘` ng river, complete with wooden stakes on which the enemy warships˙ were impaled. The same oil painting and more stakes are exhibited in the Hanoi History Museum. Further focal points of that museum’s linear interpretation of Vietnam’s past are maps and weapons from epic battles, photographs of shrines to these heroes and poems lauding their courage. The 1954 battle of ≠iê n Biên Phu’ which ˙ marked the final French defeat is another important element of Vietnamese government discourse on the theme of national resistance. It is the subject of a large auditorium in the Military History Museum, which screens original footage accompanied by a very detailed voiceover in French, English or Vietnamese describing the Vietnamese strategy of attack. Its tone is resolute, referring at one point to Vietnam’s millennial national tradition of inflicting defeat. A relief map on the ground below the screen lights up to show the fortifications and troop movements referred to in the film. Display cases along both adjacent walls show weapons and equipment as well as fallen soldiers’ photographs and belongings. Above them, friezes of soldiers on the march exemplify state-sponsored socialist realist art depicting a timeless Vietnamese ‘national character’ (Taylor 2001, 113). The museum is an important means of presenting sometimes competing national histories. In Taiwan, for instance, the Kuomintang party long styled itself the true guardian of China’s cultural heritage, as embodied in the art collections shipped there from Beijing’s forbidden city in the late 1940s. The Hong Kong museum of history, on the other hand, has had more difficulty in positioning itself vis-à-vis the PRC with an appropriate narrative (Watson 1998). More subtle differences characterise the history museums of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), however. Both housed in colonial buildings, the focus and organisation of each differ somewhat, especially in the emphasis placed on non-Vietnamese contributions to the national narrative. The HCMC museum of Vietnamese history has the dual role of reinforcing a sense of Vietnamese unity while also showcasing ‘typical cultural features of Southern provinces’ (HCMC history museum brochure, undated). It is organised into

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two sections, linked by a central atrium featuring a bust of Ho Chi Minh and a plaque with his words: ‘The Hung Kings founded our country. It is up to our generation to defend it’ (translation by Tai 1998, 194). The theme of struggle and defence is strongly reinforced by a low-relief frieze of battle scenes decorating the entrance courtyard. The succession of rooms devoted to Vietnamese history also clearly follows the narrative of longue durée established by Ho’s quote, stretching even further back ‘from the first human vestiges (circa 500,000 years ago) until the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’ (HCMC history museum brochure, undated). A room dedicated to the Hùng kings, dating them from circa 2,700 BCE to 179 BCE, precedes a room on ‘the period of struggles for national independence’ up to the tenth century, followed by a succession of rooms devoted to each dynasty from the Ly´ onwards. Arrows indicating the direction of the visit reinforce the linear, chronological narrative. In a separate section of the museum, to be found on the opposite side of the central atrium, are four rooms entitled ‘Óc Eo Culture’, ‘Stone sculpture of Cambodia’, ‘the Art of Champa’ and ‘Ethnic Minorities Culture in Southern Vietnam’. As the names suggest, the focus here is cultural and aesthetic rather than historical and chronological. Examples of religious art and handicrafts present an essentialised view of these civilisations and, crucially, one which is not integrated into the linear narrative of Vietnamese history. These cultural traditions are kept separate from the dominant narrative both spatially and rhetorically, although they represent southern ways of life which influenced Vietnamese settlers across the centuries. The museum thus acknowledges them as typical of southern Vietnam, but does not recognise their contribution to official Vietnamese history. This remains dominated by the Kinh ethnic group, whose origins are traced back to the Red River Delta. Other influential members of southern Vietnamese society, such as the sizeable ethnic Chinese community, are completely ignored (Tai 1998, 198). The museum therefore does not present Vietnamese history from one or more southern perspectives, despite a 1976 government directive that regional museums should present local contributions to national history (Tai 1998, 193). Instead, it perpetuates the official nation-building narrative of Vietnamese unity from the mythical Hùng kings onwards. Other ethnic groups remain peripheral, never constitutive. Hue-Tam Ho Tai points out that the museum’s previous incarnation under the RVN, which featured a range of artefacts from Funan, Cambodia, Thailand and elsewhere, was not regarded as a truly Vietnamese museum since it did not trace the history of the dominant Vietnamese ethnie (Tai 1998, 194). Today’s museum, on the contrary, privileges this unitary narrative over any subversive suggestion of different southern experiences, ethnic groups and encounters with Vietnamese settlers. Similarly, the section on Vietnamese communism reproduces images and interpretations familiar

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from Hanoi’s Museum of the Revolution, with little attention paid to southern movements and their particularities (cf. Giebel 2004, 146). As is to be expected, the history museum in Hanoi faithfully depicts Vietnam’s official nation-building narrative. The exhibit is arranged chronologically and divided into the same dynastic eras as its HCMC counterpart. Reference to Vietnam’s allegedly ancient roots is made even more explicit, however, in a section entitled ‘foundation of a nation (700–208 BCE)’ (Hanoi History Museum brochure, undated). This includes the Va˘n Lang states under the Hùng kings, precisely dated from 696–258 BCE, followed by the Âu La c ˙ state. The Hùng kings are thus plucked from the realm of legend and established as part of a historical chronology. Indeed, drawings of clothes labelled as typical of the Hùng king era are shown on a nearby touch screen. Similarly, a magnificent bronze drum marks the start of the main exhibition space, thus beginning the historical narrative with the ≠ông Sơn era. Interestingly, early southern and central Vietnamese civilisations are also represented in the form of artefacts from the Óc Eo and Sa Huy` nh cultures. Although listed in the museum brochure’s historical chronology, the Sa Huy` nh culture is merely identified as a possible basis of the Cham civilisation, however, implicitly excluding it as one of the cultural origins of today’s Vietnam. Spatially, the area devoted to Cham culture is completely separate from the museum’s main exhibition. As in the Ho Chi Minh City history museum, the sculptures displayed are presented as aesthetic objects. No history of the Cham is offered beyond an information panel asserting that they form part of the ‘multicoloured picture of the Vietnamese Community’ as one of its recognised ethnic groups. Official nation-building therefore provides the central focus of the exhibition. Non-Kinh cultures, both ancient and modern, are given a peripheral role, but are not deemed to form a part of the core, nation-building narrative. Creating an impression of Vietnam as a monolithic bloc is thus preferred to charting its gradual territorial expansion, with all the different regional histories that this would entail. For instance, Hue-Tam Ho Tai (1998, 196) points to the HCMC history museum’s neglect of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Nguyê˜ n dynasty as an indication of its minor importance to the official, northern-centric national narrative. She also interprets the relatively few nineteenth-century exhibits as evidence of how three centuries of Nguyê˜ n rule in southern Vietnam are relegated to a matter of regional culture (Tai 1998, 196). Although today’s ethnic minorities are represented in Hanoi’s Museum of Ethnology and the Museum of the Cultures of Vietnam’s Ethnic Groups in Thái Nguyê˜ n province, these museums clearly offer contemporary ethnographies and not historical analyses of minorities’ contribution to Vietnamese nation-building (Cohen et al. 1998, 8). Similarly, the distinctive historical trajectory of southern Vietnam is nowhere thematised. The process of nam

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tiê´ n, or southwards expansion, is completely subsumed under the myth of Vietnamese unity. For instance, the English-language Hanoi History Museum brochure describes the later Lê dynasty (1428–1789) as follows: ‘Although Mac Dynasty [sic] was still in charge, the country was ruled by two mandarin families: Trinh Lords (North) and Nguyen Lords (South) who fought each other. This conflict divided the country in two parts, each with different economic and trading systems’. This account acknowledges division but assumes the prior unity of ‘the country’, when in fact Vietnamese settlement extended southwards into new territories under Nguyê˜ n rule. Neither does the brochure mention the southwards expansion undertaken in previous centuries, nor are there exhibits to illustrate this advance in the museum. Instead, a series of maps of contemporary Vietnam adorn the museum’s entrance lobby, as if to imprint the country’s current borders on visitors’ minds from the outset. There is nothing in the museum to suggest that past Vietnamese dynasties did not always control this territory. Conclusion Germany and Vietnam’s national history museums help to propagate a nationbuilding ideology through myths of longue durée and national unity. In both cases, the existence of the nation is traced back over two thousand years, and the museum displays are organised accordingly. In performing a legitimating function for recently soldered states, the museums create a link between ancient artefacts and contemporary communities, which also has wide-ranging implications for collectors and curators. With reference to an African case, Anthony Appiah (2006) asks why a 2,000-year-old Nok sculpture should be claimed as Nigeria’s cultural heritage, merely because it was found on the territory of that relatively recent state. A similar point can be made about the myth of longue durée propagated in the German and Vietnamese cases. As for the unity myth, the question ‘What held Germans together?’ in the DHM is used to frame its permanent exhibition, without exploring underlying assumptions of shared ethnicity on the one hand, and division as an ‘aberration’ on the other. In Vietnam, official discourse pays lip-service to ethnic minorities and the idea of unity in diversity, but Hanoi’s History Museum presents a history of the dominant Kinh ethnie as the basis of Vietnam’s national unity myth. Finally, both soldered states are embedded in a contextualising myth. In the German case, this emerges strongly and explicitly as European history. In Vietnam, the myth of resistance to foreign invaders provides a self-strengthening ‘Other’ against which to measure Vietnamese heroism. The DHM’s treatment of the two Germanies constructs an ideological narrative of European unity, just as ‘the raw materials of modern Vietnamese history’ (Tai 2001, 12) have been inscribed within a long, legitimating tradition of resistance.

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The state-legitimating function of nation-building intertwines with socialist ideology in both country cases, though in very different ways. The DHM condemns its predecessor, East Germany’s MdG, as an instrument of propaganda, and contrasts it to the DHM’s allegedly educational, balanced approach. Nowhere is the shared nation-building function of both institutions acknowledged, nor is the DHM’s decision to present a two-thousand-year, European account of shared German history justified. In the Vietnamese case, a history of building and defending the nation serves to legitimate VCP rule as the guardian and inheritor of that tradition. By an ideological sleight of hand, it links a brilliant Bronze Age culture to the party’s role in the communist revolution, depicting it as the latest instalment in a long tradition of regaining Vietnamese independence from foreign domination. By emphasising this spiritual link to resistance heroes through the ages, the current regime can lay claim to an illustrious lineage. Nationalism is symbiotic with socialism in this case, and the myths become mutually supportive within this general ideological framework. In Germany, on the other hand, the strong rejection of everything the GDR stood for after unification hindered self-reflection on the ideology and values underlying the Berlin republic’s own historical understanding. Despite heated debates surrounding possible party political influence over the DHM, an examination of its role in perpetuating a deeper-seated ‘general ideology’, to use Karl Mannheim’s term, has not been discussed or recognised (Mannheim 1991 [1929], 46). This is likely to result in a continued, misguided understanding of museums as bastions of objective knowledge rather than instruments of nation-building. Ironically, communist institutions have always been open about their ideological role, only to be condemned by Western museums such as the DHM. Ho Chi Minh understood the museum as ‘a living history book [where people] will be able to see how heroes have sacrificed themselves for the nation’ (cited in Tai 1998, 190). This explicitly links the didactic, nation-building purpose of museums to history books and the central role of heroic figures, to which we now turn. Notes 1

‘[D]ie Vermittlung von Geschichte ist eine geschichtspolitische Angelegenheit, die von großer Bedeutung für die nationale Identität, für unser gemeinsames Verständnis ist. Das gilt auch und besonders für Deutschland, das jahrzehntelang ein geteiltes Land war. Die Menschen in Ostdeutschland haben natürlich zum Teil andere Erinnerungen an die jüngste deutsche Geschichte als die Menschen der alten Bundesrepublik. Insofern könnte man sogar von einer geteilten Erinnerung sprechen. Die Ausstellung des Deutschen Historischen Museums hat daher auch verschiedene Erinnerungskulturen miteinander zu versöhnen, indem erstens ein deutsches Geschichtsbild erfahrbar gemacht wird, das freiheitlichen und demokratischen Grundsätzen verpflichtet ist, und indem zweitens die Erfahrungen

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und Erinnerungen der Menschen, die in der DDR lebten, zur Geltung kommen. So kann aus einer geteilten Erinnerung der Deutschen eine gemeinsame Erinnerung werden. Das zu schaffen, wäre ein großartiges Ergebnis dieser Ausstellung.’ ‘Der ideologische Kitt zwischen den Objekten und deren Botschaft ist mit dem Untergang der DDR-Gesellschaft zerbrochen. Aus den Schauräumen der Ständigen Ausstellung, aus dem “Arsenal” des Klassenkampfes, sind die Exponate zurückgekehrt in die Magazine. Ein Ort, wo jeder Sammlungsgegenstand durch seine Vereinzelung zunächst neutralisiert und “entideologisiert” wird. Hier wird inventarisiert und erforscht, bewahrt und erhalten.’ ‘sichtbare, orientierende Markierungslinie auf dem Hauptweg.’ ‘Die Zuspitzung des Systemkonflikts zwischen den Westmächten und der Sowjetunion ebnete den Weg der drei Westzonen in das westliche Staatenbündnis, den der Ostzone in das östliche. Preis dieser Integration war die Spaltung Deutschlands.’ ‘Uns verbindet mehr als Sprache, Kultur und Haftung für die Geschichte.’ ‘Wofür die Antifaschisten kämpften, ist in der DDR Wirklichkeit.’ ‘Das AlliertenMuseum hat die Aufgabe, die Rolle und das Engagement der Westmächte für Berlin und Deutschland als Ganzes zu dokumentieren’ (Birkemeyer 2007, 6); ‘[d]ie Konfrontation des schulischen Wissens mit den in der Ausstellung vermittelten Inhalten bieten die Möglichkeit zur Reflexion über die Vorläufigkeit der zeitgeschichtlichen Historiographie’ (Birkemeyer 2007, 5).

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Textbook heroes

[E]very nationalism requires a touchstone of virtue and heroism, to guide and give meaning to the tasks of regeneration . . . Heroes provide models of virtuous conduct, their deeds of valour inspire faith and courage in their oppressed and decadent descendants. (A. D. Smith 1995, 65)

Heroes take on many forms in both Western and Asian cultures, from Hercules and Ulysses, through champion athletes and cartoon superheroes, to selfsacrificing national patriots. Definitions of heroism in the Western canon often refer to virtues like honour, courage, service to a cause, resistance in the face of great adversity and an idealistic, combative spirit. Some distinguish heroes’ warrior-like tendencies from the more passive resistance of Socrates or Gandhi (Souchon et al. 2000, 8), although all share the same exceptional resolve. Other definitions highlight the concept’s gendered nature; where female figures like Joan of Arc are depicted as heroic, this is because they conform to certain male stereotypes such as stoicism and aggressiveness (Hourihan 1997, 67). The relationship between reason and heroism is disputed, however. The rationalism of some heroic deeds (Hourihan 1997, 16) can be contrasted to the heroes who follow passion over prudence, and are prepared to take great risks in the face of formidable odds. Had Don Quixote faced giants rather than windmills, for instance, his courage would have been heroic, not misguided (Souchon et al. 2000, 12). Virtuous, principled and resolute resistance to real threats, sometimes requiring superhuman effort, nevertheless emerges as a key, heroic characteristic. Such selflessness may be open to manipulation, however, when heroism is harnessed to ideologies and false promises. These attempts at definition are also relevant to Vietnamese constructions of the hero, and national heroes in particular. Indeed, the range of associations is particularly rich in the Vietnamese case, hence the extended discussion in section three below. For instance, the so-called ‘scholar-patriot’ has a certain Socratic resolve, heroines like the Trưng sisters tend to be depicted in warlike poses, and a combination of the extraordinary and the down-to-earth can be found in both legendary guardian spirits and communist role models like Ho Chi Minh.

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As the latest figure to be elevated to the pantheon of national heroes, he embodies the VCP’s ideological blend of communism and nationalism. More than sixty years after ‘Uncle Ho’ first declared Vietnamese independence, national heroes continue to be remembered and revered in history books, museums and monuments, all of which are controlled by the ruling VCP. As one of the few remaining one-party states in the world, the goals of the VCP and the Vietnamese government coincide as regards nation-building and state legitimation (Gainsborough 1996). Government discourse differs depending on whether it is aimed at an international or a domestic audience, and has also changed over time to reflect the country’s progressive opening to foreign trade, investment, aid and diplomacy (Dosch & Ta 2004). Nevertheless, the following discussion will show that the VCP continues to propagate and maintain a nation-building ideology centred on the theme of heroic resistance to foreign aggression. This discourse is disseminated through the media, party propaganda and other state-controlled publications and institutions, such as museums and the education system, as well as through state symbols and awards. Heroic role models combine nationalist and communist principles by protecting the independence of the Vietnamese nation and thereby embodying the people and their will. As such, the concept of the hero is central to the VCP’s attempts to shore up its own legitimacy: ‘[T]hey rediscovered Vietnamese heroes, most obviously the leaders in ancient struggles against the Chinese and the Mongols, but increasingly those who had fought the French as well’ (Marr 1981, 252). This quote refers to Vietnamese intellectuals of the 1920s, but the trend has continued to the present day. This chapter focuses on contemporary depictions of national heroes, with reference to school textbooks. It sets out to show how heroes function as the embodiment of national unity and pride. Benedict Anderson (1991, 163) writes that ‘in the “nation-building” policies of the new states one sees both a genuine, popular nationalist enthusiasm, and a systematic, even Machiavellian, instilling of nationalist ideology through the mass media, the educational system, administrative regulations, and so forth’. The chapter offers a close reading of two school texts, in order to gauge whether these do indeed seek to instil nationalist ideology in their young readers. After a short survey of the education systems in both cases, Vietnamese and German definitions of the hero are discussed. The official understanding of heroism is then contextualised by examining how it is represented in a range of official discourse. Finally, the analysis focuses on a history textbook studied by all 10-year-olds across Vietnam today, and a Franco-German textbook for final year secondary students. The first is used to show how Vietnamese nation-building is mediated through the concept of the hero, while the second focuses on positive depictions of Europe and specifically the EU, as a regionalist alternative to national identification with Germany.

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The analysis of the Vietnamese case shows how Vietnamese history continues to be structured around ‘two categories: building and defending the nation’ (Marr 1981, 286), as laid down in VCP guidelines published in 1943. Indeed, the chosen textbook focuses strongly on resistance heroes (and two notable heroines) as metaphors for Vietnam’s repeated struggle for independence. The German case study, on the other hand, explores a concrete instance of promoting European identity, thus illustrating how regionalist ideology is conveyed in practice. The definition of ‘Europe’ remains contested in the literature on education, despite an early commitment by EU education ministers to promote the ‘European dimension’ in schools (Convery 1997, 1). This covers a wide spectrum, from language teaching and school exchanges to more overt political promotion of European citizenship, as derived from EU membership (Convery et al. 1997, 3). The aims and execution of a textbook endorsed at the highest political level enable an evaluation of its contribution to this debate and to Germany’s nation-building project more generally. The chapter concludes that VCP nation-building does indeed systematically disseminate nationalist ideology by perpetuating a patriotic discourse through symbolic and didactic information channels. In so doing, it seeks to bolster its own legitimacy as guardian of an ‘invented tradition’ of resistance (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). In the German case, an explicit commitment to the EU is reflected in the positive, sometimes heroic portrayal of the integration process. The textbook also contributes to German nation-building by projecting a historicised sense of European identity on the younger generation. This is underpinned by the Franco-German partnership, which indirectly promotes a national identity embedded within European structures. Education in Germany and Vietnam Textbooks ‘showcase the different, and changing, language, stories, myths and images involved in schools’ mediation between the state and its citizens’ (Kennedy 2006, 146). For instance, education was recognised and pursued as a key means of nation-building in nineteenth century German states, prompting one historian to comment that ‘Germany became a land of schools’ (Nipperdey, cited in Levinger 2000, 231). After 1848, history and geography classes were identified as a priority in German federal states (Länder) like Saxony and Württemberg. This suggests that at the Länder level, ‘government was primarily concerned with fostering patriotism’ (Green 2001, 211). But for the uniform school textbook imposed under Nazi rule, Länder education ministries approved appropriate texts from the 1870s onwards, although there was not always a specific history text available (Kennedy 2006, 148). In some cases, particularly Prussia, history books explicitly condemned socialist principles, but this was to change during the Weimar republic, when they began

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to discuss Marx and the genesis of the social democratic – but not communist – parties (Kennedy 2006, 153). Regional variations and confessional schools allowed for schoolbooks sympathetic to minorities such as Catholics and, to a lesser extent, Jews. Elsewhere, however, the existence of diversity was silenced in favour of the promotion of common family, local and national ties (Kennedy 2006, 146). Chauvinistic, racist–nationalist messages inevitably dominated schoolbooks produced during the Third Reich, particularly from 1940 onwards, when they moved from the purview of the Education Ministry to that of the Nazi party. The GDR’s education system was structured around comprehensive schools and a strictly enforced curriculum, with an emphasis on military and civic instruction, as well as the teaching of Russian as a foreign language. From kindergarten onwards, the ‘spirit of socialism’ (Pritchard 2002, 50) was instilled in children, including the importance of defending the fatherland. Membership of the mass youth organisation, the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ), was a sign of ideological conformity and important for accessing education opportunities. Following unification, West German textbooks flooded the market as the new federal states adopted the FRG’s selective, tripartite school system with only slight modifications (Wilde 2002, 44). This period was therefore characterised less by educational reform than by assimilation of the West German model, complete with the long-standing criticism of its elitist, exclusionary nature (Rotte & Rotte 2007, 309). Pressure for reform has only grown stronger since German pupils achieved only average rankings in the 2001 and 2003 ‘PISA’ studies, an international assessment of educational attainment conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (Rotte & Rotte 2007, 297). However, the fact that education remains under the control of the German Länder has been identified as a hindrance to major change. The stark political differences between the Vietnamese and German cases are reflected in the materials available for analysis. For instance, Germany’s decentralised education system means that there is no single school syllabus, let alone textbook, in use across the whole country. In addition, pupils are streamed from the age of 11 into a three-tiered system of vocationally and academically oriented high schools. This fragmentation is worlds away from the single, statesanctioned Vietnamese curriculum. One general feature of the current German education system has been identified as a culture of democracy and debate (Luchtenberg 1998; Pritchard 2002, 56). A positive attitude towards European awareness-raising has also been observed in schools, but a multicultural understanding of German identity appears to be less widespread than one which is monocultural and monolingual (Luchtenberg 1998, 56). The nation-state provides the main framework for teaching German history today (Kreckel 2004), in spite of alternative approaches being practised in German universities. One consequence of this unified national narrative is

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that GDR history is in danger of being marginalised; ‘Should it indeed be the case that part of every successful nation-building process is the creation of a hegemonic national historiography, then one must foresee a similar development for GDR history as for that of the once sovereign Saarland; it is largely forgotten’ (Kreckel 2004, 21).1 The likelihood of this scenario is clearly linked to contemporary attitudes towards German identity in the Berlin republic, which tend to privilege historical continuity, characterising the GDR as a blip or temporary hiatus along this path (Faulenbach 2004, 65). In postwar West Germany, a similar approach led to an ambiguous political tendency to play down the nation-state with respect to Western powers and European integration, while calling for its restoration in the context of East–West German relations (Faulenbach 2004, 68): ‘Education was thus used to promote different values in each of the Germanys, and was associated with the development of national identity on both sides of the divide’ (Pritchard 2002, 56). As discussed in chapter 2, the restricted educational and career opportunities for Vietnamese children in colonial Indochina did much to fuel resentment among those gifted intellectuals who campaigned for change. Two of Vietnam’s most influential early nationalists, Phan Bôi Châu and Phan Chu Trinh, were ˙ involved in specific initiatives to counter the dearth of colonial era education. Inspired by Japan’s modernising drive and its defeat of Russia in 1905, Phan Bôi Châu began raising funds to send young Vietnamese to study in Japan. ˙ Their frugal existence and the privations they endured are still highlighted in official school textbooks today (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006b, 5). Phan Chu Trinh’s focus was a free, private school in Hanoi which developed an ambitious, modernising curriculum, delivered using the romanised Vietnamese alphabet known as quô´ c ngữ. The French, rightly suspicious of the school’s subversive, anti-colonial message, closed it down within a year. They also put pressure on the Japanese authorities to discourage Vietnamese students so that by 1909, there were only twenty left in Japan and Phan Bôi Châu himself was deported ˙ (Jamieson 1993, 65). Half-hearted attempts by the French to offer alternative education opportunities, such as the short-lived University of Hanoi, only confirmed the Vietnamese in their suspicions that the mission civilisatrice was a sham (Jamieson 1993, 62). After 1945, the DRV government quickly moved to reform colonial education, with the explicit aim of encouraging resistance in the resurgent conflict with France. This was clear from the slogan ‘fighting against famine, fighting against illiteracy, fighting against foreign aggression’. The estimated illiteracy rate of at least 90 per cent was not the only educational challenge facing the DRV (Ninh 2002, 206). Early twentieth-century education initiatives had ‘always carried an ideological component, namely, to counteract the Westernization embodied in colonial education and to reassert a sense of Vietnameseness’ (Ninh 2002, 206).

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Viet Minh campaigns pursued the same goal. Wartime restrictions meant measures were patchy and relied to a great extent on local support, but substantial reforms were introduced as early as 1950. When the first Indochinese war ended in 1954, the VCP increasingly looked to China and the Soviet Union for communist role models. By this time, political education was a wellestablished strand of teaching. It was combined with an emphasis on vocational education, which was partly a rejection of the highly regarded academic tradition in Vietnam. The aim was to produce ‘workers with culture’ (Ninh 2002, 213), and both teachers and students were selected according to class criteria. Overall, however, attempts to extend the availability of basic education to rural areas were hampered by the lack of trained teachers and the sheer scale of the task. The generally low existing educational level and the escalating Vietnam–American conflict in the 1960s also limited the training of worker and peasant intellectuals. Again, the imperative of resistance returned to dominate the DRV. The nationalist ‘continuity thesis’ (Marr, cited in Ninh 2002, 238) overshadowed colonial and post-colonial models of modernisation, revolution and communism by emphasising a long-standing Vietnamese fighting spirit. In the RVN, Diê m’s government also embarked on ambitious education ˙ initiatives, building five thousand elementary and secondary schools and more than tripling enrolment between 1954 and 1960 (Masur 2004, 54). A new national curriculum, introduced in 1956, focused on humanist principles, the rights and duties of citizenship, and cultural revival for explicitly patriotic ends (Masur 2004, 56). From 1959 onwards, greater emphasis was placed on Vietnamese language, history, geography and civic education. One theme woven into all of these subjects was the ‘fighting spirit’ of the Vietnamese people. Accordingly, the same resistance heroes were celebrated in RVN textbooks as in DRV ones. In the southern republic, however, parallels were drawn between Vietnam’s age-old Chinese foes and allegedly treacherous Vietnamese communists, who now shared an ideology. RVN textbooks also used the same primordialist practice of linking ancient civilisations to modern regimes, the only difference being that the RVN was presented as the legitimate inheritor of their legacy and not the DRV (Masur 2004, 68). Diê m himself ˙ was portrayed as a ‘scholar-patriot’ in the tradition of Phan Bôi Châu and ˙ Phan Chu Trinh (Masur 2004, 152), although Western commentators at the time opined that he could never be viewed as a ‘popular hero’ to rival Ho Chi Minh because of his temperament and behaviour (Buttinger cited in Masur 2004, 217). Both regimes thus pursued similar themes of national continuity, heroic resistance and sacrifice in their education policies, with the same legitimating goal (Vasavakul 1994). Today, these continue to be privileged elements of nation-building in school texts.

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National heroes National heroes are understood here as a product of nation-building, or the government-led construction of national identity, memory and history in order to promote an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991). Dictionary definitions offer an introduction to how the concept of hero is understood in different languages. Bilingual versions, in turn, give some clues as to the way in which this is conveyed to an international audience. The Vietnamese word for hero -anh hùng – can be translated both as a noun and an adjective, and has three distinct meanings. The first refers to a person of great merit, a so-called popular hero (anh hùng dân tôc). The second describes mythical characters remembered ˙ deeds and strong sense of purpose. Finally, and in for their talents, great contrast to English usage, Vietnamese uses the word to signify ‘the highest honour which the government can bestow on individuals or groups for their outstanding achievements and dedication at work or in combat’.2 One bilingual dictionary lists nine related entries, including labour hero, national hero and three different types of war hero.3 Alongside concepts familiar to speakers of English can also be found the rather more hermetic ‘Anh hùng cá nhân: Individualistically heroic. Chu’ ngh˜ı a anh hùng : Heroism (raised to an ethic) [and] chu’ ngh˜ı a anh hùng cách ma ng : Revolutionary heroism’ (≠a˘ ng et al. ˙ laden 2001, 4). This set of usages shows˙ that the concept is a complex one, with ideological, historical and normative meaning. Within the context of communist ideology, for instance, individualism (chu’ ngh˜ı a cá nhân) had negative connotations of alienation from traditional culture and values (P. Taylor 2001, 129). Indeed, a collectivist orientation was a key characteristic attributed to ‘new heroes’ (anh hùng mới), a title the VCP bestowed on exemplary wartime and labour role models from 1952 onwards (de Tréglodé, 2001, 202). This normative dimension is also evident from a further dictionary entry, anh hùng chu’ ngh˜ı a, defined as ‘characteristic of self-seeking heroism, adventurous, reckless’. Some forms of heroism are evidently more ideologically acceptable than others. They can be read as part of a wider discourse designed to ‘discourage the Vietnamese from thinking about themselves in purely particularistic terms’ (Pelley 2002, 12) and promote a sense of belonging to community and nation instead. This discourse continued to use the militaristic rhetoric of struggle, sacrifice, victory and heroism even after the end of the Vietnamese–American war in 1975, particularly with regard to the challenges facing southern Vietnam (P. Taylor 2001, 28). For instance, VCP functionaries exhorted southern peasants to respond ‘to the party’s appeal to turn revolutionary heroism in combat into revolutionary heroism in productive labour and national construction’ (Mai Chi Tho, cited in P. Taylor 2001, 35). Published by the state-controlled Ho Chi Minh City publishing house, the Vietnamese–English dictionary cited above explicitly refers in its foreword to

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the difficulties of translating ‘different political, social and cultural organisations in the nation’s history as well as of the particular nuances in the ethic [sic] and religious conceptions of our people’ (≠a˘ ng et al. 2001, ix). Like any text, ˙ a dictionary is not a source of objective definitions but an ideological artefact in itself, and examples of word usage can reinforce official interpretations of Vietnamese history. For instance, the dictionary illustrates the verb ‘to ’ symbolise’ (tiêu biê u) with the phrase ‘The Trung sisters symbolised the indomitable spirit of the Vietnamese women’ (≠a˘ng et al. 2001, 730). Similarly, ˙ the example given using the word lâ p quô´ c, translated as ‘to found a nation ˙ or state’, is ‘Vietnam was founded as a nation as early as in the Hong Bang time’ (≠a˘ ng et al. 2001, 412). The first example refers to the national heroines ˙ out Chinese invaders in the first century BCE, and the second to who drove the current, official interpretation of the Vietnamese nation as a primordial entity dating back to the Bronze Age. The entry under anh hùng in another bilingual dictionary also clearly highlights the link between heroism and national resistance, as well as its association with war and military valour.4 General Quang Trung, who defeated Qing dynasty invaders in the late eighteenth century, is cited as an example of a national hero. In turn, the example used to illustrate anh hùng ca, translated as ‘epic’, is ‘Vietnamese history is quite an immortal epic’.5 The concept of hero is also bound up with communist ideology. Veterans and invalids of the Vietnam–American war and their families, especially the mothers of ‘heroic martyrs’ (liê t s˜ı ), continue to play an important role in state commemoration of the ˙conflict. The VCP, eager to reinforce the legitimacy of the war effort, portrays their sacrifice as both nationalist and revolutionary. On the one hand, this draws ‘on the prestige that has historically accrued to those who protected the country from foreign aggression’ (Malarney 2001, 47). On the other, war heroes have their place within the hierarchy of communist heroes, in the same way as particularly ‘heroic and self-sacrificing’ (Kirss et al. 2004, 173) workers were honoured with the Order of Lenin or the Heroic Socialist Workers’ Gold Star across the former Soviet Union. Indeed, the Vietnamese ‘new hero’ was explicitly modelled on the USSR, as a means of courting external favour with international allies. Similarly, heroes in official GDR nation-building were often presented as workers striving for the common good. That the Vietnamese hierarchy of merit should culminate in a ‘hero of the fatherland’ (anh hùng tổ quô´ c), however, underlines the nationalist element complementing the communist model (de Tréglodé 2001, 204). West Germany, by contrast, had no overarching communist ideology to help replace the discredited heroes of Nazism. Early nineteenth-century romantic German nationalism was galvanised by Napoleonic occupation. This archetypal ‘Other’ was seen to be standing in the way of German unity. It was a time when heroic, Teutonic icons such

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as Germania and the medieval Song of the Nibelungen had associations with democracy, resistance and freedom (Hermand 2001, 6), long before they were co-opted into the racist nationalism of the Third Reich. Throughout the midnineteenth century, the Biedermeier period’s preoccupation with bourgeois conformity and ‘moral rectitude’ persisted after the failed revolutions of 1848, and was reflected in the literary heroes of the day (Belgum 2001, 25). In political terms, German unity became an overriding imperative. The decisive role of the ‘Iron Chancellor’ Bismarck in achieving this made him a hero in the eyes of many, to the point that his legacy became a strong bone of contention during the Weimar Republic. Two conceptions of the national hero clashed: those who saw Bismarck as the father of the unified German nation-state, versus democratic revolutionaries who had finally achieved their aim in spite of a reactionary Bismarck; ‘The pseudo-historical debate surrounding Bismarck was therefore only a pretext for a more fundamental question: the historical legitimacy of the Weimar republic’ (Gerwarth 2005, 3). This highlights the importance of national heroes and role models to a political system’s stability, something the Weimar Republic sorely lacked (Gerwarth 2005, 6). In addition to the economic woes and political fragmentation which dogged the republic’s fourteen-year existence, widespread admiration for Bismarck’s strong leadership helped to pave the way for the Nazi takeover of power. Under the Nazi regime, those artistic endeavours not labelled ‘degenerate’ focused instead on ‘encourag[ing] the German Volk to continue making heroic sacrifices for the “national community”’ (Poore 2001, 72). This was epitomised in Hermann Göring’s 1943 radio broadcast to German troops at Stalingrad, urging them to fight to the death even though the battle was lost (Brockmann 2001, 107). The parallel he drew between their heroic martyrdom and that of the Nibelungen serves to show how such references had become corrupted and appeared irremediably tainted to the post-war generation. In stark contrast to this militaristic view, a 1949 review of Bertold Brecht’s play Mother Courage and Her Children in the SED organ Neues Deutschland asked ‘Who still dares to speak of “heroes” . . . in view of the battlefields spread out like a scourge across the continent?’ (cited in Poore 2001, 75). Yet communist heroes like Ernst Thälmann were central to the GDR’s anti-fascist mythology, serving to eclipse both non-communist resistance and any overriding national loyalties in the post-war period (Brockmann 2001, 116). Thälmann in particular enjoyed a posthumous status similar to that of Lenin in the Soviet Union, one which was variously used to encourage German patriotism, socialist emulation and legitimation by association for the SED leaders Ulbricht and Honecker (Nothnagle 1999, 123). Ironically, then, given Brecht’s criticism of the need for heroes as a reflection of a society’s own inadequacies (Brockmann & Steakley 2001, x), the GDR society which he embraced not only sought to create a cult of heroic, self-sacrificing workers, peasants and communists, but also elevated

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many of its literary figures to a similar status. As privileged purveyors of nationbuilding myths, their work was much more closely bound up with the state apparatus and ideology than that of their Western counterparts, who often expressed disillusionment with and alienation from the state and capitalism. For instance, the work of East German intellectuals would often feature both an archetypal resistance fighter and a ‘proletarian hero of industry’ (Swaffar 2001, 141), respectively embodying nationalist and communist virtues devoted to the collective. As such, the GDR hero very much resembled today’s official Vietnamese version. In the FRG, on the other hand, individualism and social responsibility proved hard to reconcile, and potential role models were difficult to find. Following the Stunde Null at the end of the Second World War the fledgling FRG had to cast around for heroic role models untainted by Nazism. This was complicated by the fact that many Germans had made compromises with the regime, so that the selfless courage of notable resistance fighters reflected poorly on them. Some even saw the work of exiles in undermining the Third Reich as a betrayal of the German war effort (Swaffar 2001, 142). As such, the elevation to heroic status of Claus von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators in the assassination attempt on Hitler, the Weisse Rose student group and other resistance movements, was neither immediate nor uncontroversial. In direct contrast to the GDR, communist resistance was largely excised from the picture (Swaffar 2001, 136). Instead, people’s post-war focus on survival and reconstruction encouraged identification with the likes of ordinary Trümmerfrauen, the women clearing rubble from devastated cities. They also admired the doughtiness of West Berliners and their Allied support during the eleven-month Soviet blockade in 1948–49. Even the entrepreneurship of capitalists and industrialists fuelling the West German Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) was respected, in spite of their frequently unsavoury wartime activities (Swaffar 2001, 136). A new literary hero also emerged to embody this disorientation, a ‘rebel without a cause’ whose principal aim was to break free not only from past tradition but also from conventional politics (Brockmann 2001, 111). In providing the inspiration for the dissident movements of the 1960s, this created the conditions for a new political faultline between the post-war establishment and the ‘extraparliamentary opposition’ led by the upcoming generation. It is clear that ‘particular ideological systems gave rise to a marketplace for particular heroic images, used as social management strategies’ (Swaffar 2001, 138). They were also important nation-building tools influencing the political and cultural socialisation of their respective citizens, and helping to create a gulf between the two German states: ‘The Cold War was eating away at the fundaments of the Kulturnation which had comforted so many intellectuals . . . As the German Staatsnation now reemerged in bifurcated form . . . Kultur itself became increasingly fragmented and polarized’

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(Brockmann 2001, 118). The implications for a united Germany have yet to be clearly articulated in official nation-building discourse. Some commentators hope for a new brand of hero, one able to draw and reflect on past experience of ideological manipulation and division (Swaffar 2001, 151). Despite some self-reflective interventions in national identity debates, however, it seems that heroic figures continue to function mainly as symbols of dominant national ideologies. The entries for ‘hero’ in the well-established Brockhaus and Duden German dictionaries both begin with definitions drawn from German and Greek myths. These describe the hero as a courageous male fighter, often of noble lineage, who has distinguished himself through acts of war (Drodowski 1993, 1518; Wahrig et al. 1981, 466). Only then is a more general description offered of an individual who earns admiration for bravely tackling a difficult task, with the range of examples often including sporting achievements. The Duden dictionary’s third entry defines the hero as a wartime role model, citing fallen soldiers as an example. The pre-unification Brockhaus dictionary, on the other hand, illustrates the same definition with particularly laden phrases such as ‘nameless antifascist resistance hero’, ‘a monument honouring the heroes of the revolution’ and ‘heroes of the fatherland’ (Wahrig 1981, 466). A selection of idioms in which the word hero is used ironically or teasingly also features, indicating that common usage subverts the hero’s exemplary qualities. Interestingly, these examples come before the definition of hero as wartime role model in the Brockhaus, and predominate in the Collins bilingual German–English dictionary (Terrell et al. 1980, 336), suggesting that they are widely used. Both the Duden and the Brockhaus then cover a separate, GDRspecific range of meanings used to highlight exceptional, ‘socially important’ achievements (Drodowski 1993, 1518), citing examples of resistance and labour heroes taken from the SED organ, Neues Deutschland. Despite being published on either side of unification, both dictionaries include a separate entry for the GDR honorific of ‘labour hero’. The final range of meanings offered in both cases pertains to literary heroes, followed by a whole set of derived words, from medieval literature, through soldier slang to yoga terminology. Several of these equate heroes with soldiers, including heroes’ cemetery (Heldenfriedhof), heroes’ remembrance day (Heldengedenktag) and hero’s grave (Heldengrab), underlining the link between militarism and heroism. Interestingly, a heroine (Heldin) is defined in the Duden dictionary as a particularly brave, selfsacrificing woman (Drodowski 1993, 1519), who stands up (sich einsetzen) for others. This suggests a gendered understanding of female bravery expressed through suffering and self-denial, far removed from the aggressive heroism at the forefront of the preceding entry. The Brockhaus definition of heroine, however, is more neutral, emphasising an exceptional, amazing achievement

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on the part of a brave woman or girl (Wahrig 1981, 467). Heroes in German can thus be defined in terms of ancient myth, military sacrifice, teasing irony and GDR ideology among others, indicating the concept’s wide range of current usages. The Vietnamese hero The Vietnamese anti-colonialist Phan Bôi Châu, himself held up as a national ˙ that a hero must have pure motives role model (Jamieson 1993, 73) considered and ‘that he be somehow linked to the masses by “like-mindedness” (dong tam) [sic], an emotionally evocative but essentially idealistic concept’ (Marr 1981, 256–7). This approach chimes with both nationalist and communist ideologies, in as much as the hero embodies the revolutionary fervour of the masses rather than individualistic or self-seeking valour; ‘Only much later did Phan come to emphasise the possibilities inherent in the concerted actions of a large number of “small heroes”. By that time, a new generation of intelligentsia were pursuing that idea on their own, and from a potentially more radical perspective’ (Marr 1981, 257). This new generation, many of its members influenced by communist ideals, would help to shape national discourse (Pelley 2002). Like Phan Bô i Châu, the founders of the Indochinese ˙ leaders were mostly intellectuals with Communist Party and other nationalist very little experience of peasant life (Tai 1992, 55). Ho Chi Minh and his followers conscientiously studied popular Vietnamese and minority culture as they built up the resistance movement, in order to appeal effectively to the masses. The charismatic Ho’s avuncular image, carefully preserved to this day, was one element of this. His mastery of nationalist rhetoric, including the evocation of legendary and real resistance heroes, was also widely admired. Ho would recast servants of imperial dynasties such as Trâ` n Hưng ≠a o and ˙ Ly´ Thường Kiê t as nationalist freedom fighters. This practice continues in ˙ Vietnamese school history textbooks, as will be shown below. Once in power, Ho Chi Minh’s government sought to establish the events of August 1945 as a revolutionary new beginning representing the popular will, despite widespread opposition to its rule (Pelley 2002, 3; cf. Marr 1995, 1). After 1945 and especially after 1954, the VCP-led Institute of History set about creating a dominant discourse designed to underpin the party’s legitimacy and, by the same token, undermine colonial interpretations of Vietnam’s past. ‘New histories of the nation’ were constructed and through ‘information presented in textbooks and public schools a new sense of the past – crystallized and condensed into the memorable bits – was instilled in the people’ (Pelley 2002, 6–7). Similar work was taking place in other post-colonial countries such as India. This included anachronistic projections of nationalist principles into the past, a guiding narrative of struggle for freedom and attempts to ‘mine the past

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for heroes, and otherwise seek to historicize legendary figures from Indian mythology’ (Lal 2003, 80). Focusing on the 1950s to 1970s, Patricia Pelley (2002, 12) has shown that within the Vietnamese state apparatus, ‘committee and institute historians viewed historical work as a project of political legitimation’. It is submitted that this continues to be the case. Alongside explicit party propaganda such as billboards, other nation-building tools like national holidays and the symbolism of cityscapes can refine our understanding of how heroes are regarded Vietnam. In the same way, school textbooks highlight only certain aspects of a story and thereby present a particular official narrative as more legitimate than any other. Despite some ‘mixed messages’ arising from the end of the Cold War and international opening (Tai 1995; Sutherland 2005b), the VCP’s narrative of heroic resistance remains a remarkably strong guiding thread of its ideology. The annual festival honouring the mythical dynasty of Hùng kings was made a national holiday in 2007. Its official title indicates that the kings are commemorated as ancestors (giô˜ tổ Hùng Vương). In celebrations across the country, some attended by the VCP general secretary Nông ≠ức Ma nh, the kings were celebrated, literally, as ‘nation-builders’ (dựng nứơc) with˙ temple offerings, costumed processions and typical foods representing Vietnamese cosmology. Newspaper reports underlined how the national holiday was an opportunity for the whole country to remember its common origins as ‘one hundred eggs from the same sac’ (boc tra˘m trứng) and unite to continue the ˙ country.6 The nation-building leitmotiv work of its forefathers in developing the of heroic resistance can thus already be seen in the popular founding myth of the Vietnamese people, in which the legendary La c Long Quân, lord of the ˙ snatched from an early plains and the sea, married Âu Cơ, a mountain princess northern invader; ‘This theme of the local culture hero neutralizing a northern threat by appropriating its source of legitimacy foreshadowed the historical relationship between the Vietnamese and the Chinese’ (Taylor 1983, 1). Âu Cơ is said to have borne La c Long Quân one hundred sons (hatched from eggs) including the first of the˙ Hùng dynasty. Eighteen Hùng kings are then supposed to have ruled from about 700 BCE. Vietnamese historians associate their shadowy presence, based on unreliable sources, with sophisticated Bronze Age artefacts found in the Red River Delta (Taylor 1983, 4), considered to be the cradle of Vietnamese civilisation. Fact, fiction and supposition are thus made to overlap, so that the origins of the Vietnamese seem to lose themselves in the mists of time. This provides the foundations for a primordial sense of belonging supported both by mythical symbolism and archaeological evidence, a form of nation-building theorised by A. D. Smith in his work on ‘ethno-symbolism’ (1986, 1999). Vietnamese legend is rich in heroic figures, with which all Vietnamese are familiar. Four typical characteristics of the Vietnamese hero are youth, humble

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origins, high aspirations and anonymity, in the sense that his own self pales in significance compared to the higher goal pursued (Tran 1995, 35). Outstanding Vietnamese heroes include the legendary Gióng (also known as Dóng), a boy who grew incredibly fast and saw off Chinese invaders using uprooted bamboo as a spear. Incorporated into the Buddhist pantheon as a protective spirit by the eleventh-century Ly´ emperors, and still revered to this day, Gióng’s actions reflect the typical heroic attributes outlined above. Additional qualities, such as bravery and aggressiveness, also seem to have been valued by successive Vietnamese dynasties. In the thirteenth century, for instance, the Trâ` n court acknowledged Gióng’s spiritual help in defeating Mongol invaders by elevating him to a tutelary deity with the title ≠a i Vương ˙ (Great King). Officially bestowed attributes, including ‘courageousness’ and ‘prestige’ (Tran 1995, 25) also helped to anthropomorphise the spirit; ‘[Natural genii] have been ‘humanized’ (or anthropomorphized), though for the most part not completely, and then “historicized”’ (Tran 1995, 13). Together with the widespread popular practice of worshipping ancestors and village guardians, this fuelled Gióng’s association with national resistance. Significantly, the centre of his cult, along with those of other admired figures like the Trưng sisters, was moved from outlying villages to Tha˘ng Long, today’s Hanoi, after it became the Ly´ dynasty’s capital in 1010 (Tran 1995, 25). This served to cement both their high symbolic status and that of the city. Similarly, military generals who fought against the Chinese and other foes are honoured with colourful mock battles during village festivals, sometimes together with ‘Ho Chi Minh, the hero of the Vietnamese people in the new era’ (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2003, 226). Though the French destroyed many temples during the first Indochinese war, their restoration and revival during the 1990s has been sanctioned by the authorities as a way of honouring ‘people’s heroes’, many temples now enjoying enhanced status as official heritage sites (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2003, 223). Born of a human mother and the god of thunder, Gióng’s life was shaped by a supernatural element reminiscent of Greek mythology. Like David against Goliath, he also overcame tremendous odds to defeat the iron spears of the invaders with simple bamboo poles. This material, used extensively by Vietnamese peasants, proved to be more solid than Gióng’s original iron whip. This story of the ordinary person, or the weaker nation, touched by greatness and capable of amazing feats is identified as a constant of Vietnamese history (Tran 1995, 34). It has elements of the binary structure which is key to stories of heroes and to the modernist paradigm more generally; heaven–earth, yang–yin, ordinary–superhuman, good–evil (Hourihan 1997, 16). However, the nature of the dichotomy is less about the fundamentally complementary and harmonious relationship between the forces of yin and yang (Jamieson 1993, 13) and more about the confrontational clash between friend and foe,

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homeland and invader, nation and ‘Other’. The myth of Gióng evolved syncretically over centuries, but his familiar image can be used in different contexts as symbolic shorthand for peasant-warrior, national hero and supernatural being. Drawing on the work of Roland Barthes, Margery Hourihan (1997, 13) observes that ‘[w]hen we encounter any version of the myth it imposes the pattern as a whole upon us’. Much like Saint George slaying the dragon has been used for centuries to symbolise Christian conquest, patriotic fervour or an elemental struggle between good and evil, so Gióng’s exploits can be read as an archetypal, heroic fight against enemies. This pattern of storytelling can be found repeatedly in Vietnamese legend and historiography alike; ‘That tradition of teaching through oral tales has permeated the schoolroom of today and the ways of life of modern society, and has spread the story of Genie Dóng all over the country’ (Tran, cited in Tran 1995, 14). A sense of cosmological balance, which sees man as a part of nature rather than its conqueror, is less to the fore in nationalist historiography than Westphalian notions of sovereignty, which emphasise conflicting interests. Religious stories and legends may also be appropriated for the purposes of regime legitimation and patriotic mobilisation. For instance, the symbolism of Gióng’s bamboo spear may be different when evoked at a village festival (emphasising animistic associations with the land and fertility) or featured in a patriotic retelling of the story (underlining the simplicity, flexibility and reliability of bamboo as characteristic of the common people, in contrast to the iron weapons of the elite) (Tran 1995, 34–5). By extension, bamboo can be used in both communist and nationalist mythologies to symbolise peasant resistance or patriotic resolve in repeatedly driving out mighty invaders with humble weapons. Post-war Marxist scholarship also traced aspects of Gióng’s legend (his iron whip and horse) to the Iron Age, thereby reinforcing the association between the nation’s ancient roots and Gióng’s mission to protect it from successive invaders. Others variously saw the legend’s origins in the era of the Hùng kings, or animistic worship of rock piles, storms and other natural phenomena, linked to Vietnamese spirit cults honouring both historical heroes and (super)natural figures. Contemporary VCP propaganda, in turn, seeks to associate past resistance heroes with exemplary workers, soldiers, peasants, intellectuals and schoolchildren, which are often used in socialist iconography to represent the people as a whole. The billboard below (Figure 5.1) shows Gióng in the background to the right. In the centre foreground, ‘the people’ stand united, forwardlooking and resolute. The slogan reads: ‘The communist party committee and the people of Gia Lâm [a district of Hanoi] are single-minded in successfully bringing about industrialisation and modernisation’. The billboard seems to make the link between the determination needed to achieve technological progress (as symbolised by the dam and power station in the background)

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Figure 5.1 VCP billboard, Gia Lâm District, Hanoi, c. 2005

and that of past resistance heroes, whose strong sense of purpose helped them achieve great things. It associates superhuman heroism with the exceptionally good work of labour heroes. However, the rather inflationary use of the term in government-sponsored awards suggests that not all heroes are considered similarly outstanding. For instance, not only individuals, but also state-owned enterprises and universities can be designated heroes. This category might not command the same respect as war heroes or national heroes, whose merit could be deemed to transcend the markers of achievement instituted by the present political system. The hero as a nodal point of storytelling, or mythologising, conjures up a wealth of associations to those initiated into a given political culture. Figures like Gióng evoke all sorts of heroic virtues for Vietnamese glancing at a VCP propaganda poster or children passing a playground mural. Such iconic representations are so familiar as to have become internalised and taken for granted by those socialised into Vietnamese society, and they are put to use in perpetuating officially favoured interpretations. Such ‘patterns of meaning’ can also be traced in school history textbooks, which have storytelling at their

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core; ‘for children who have not yet achieved the ability to reason abstractly [stories] provide images to think with’ (Hourihan 1997, 1). Constructing historical interpretations around key, heroic figures accomplishes a host of ideological functions, from providing role models for emulation to reinforcing a sense of patriotic loyalty and communist solidarity. The veneration of Vietnamese heroes has a further, spiritual dimension, which is closely linked to the worship of guardian spirits in village communal houses, or đình. The communal house-cum-temple of Kim Liên ward, for instance, is one of four defending the city of Hanoi at its cardinal points. It is dedicated to the mythical Cao Sơn, one of the hundred sons of La c Long Quân ˙ defeat his and Âu Cơ. His spirit is credited with helping king Lê Tương Dực enemies in the sixteenth century (Tran 1995, 13). This is recorded on a huge stone stele, dated 1510, which stands on the grounds of the đình. Inside the đình, the statue of Cao Sơn stands in a sanctuary behind a protective canopy, which is only opened on feast days. The đình also houses smaller altars dedicated to Ho Chi Minh and Trâ` n Hưng ≠a o, the general remembered ˙ for thwarting thirteenth-century Mongol invasions. Trâ` n Hưng ≠a o is worshipped in a side room alongside the Holy Mothers, animistic deities ˙often cited as evidence of a pre-Chinese, indigenous northern Vietnamese religion (Hữu 2004, 963). Ho Chi Minh thus takes his place among a pantheon of mythical and deified Vietnamese heroes as well as religious icons, in stark contrast to the communist symbolism of his mausoleum on Ba ≠ình square. Worship of Ho’s supernatural powers along the lines of Trâ` n Hưng ≠a o’s spirit cult have been officially banned (Malarney 2003, 241). However,˙ the altar in Kim Liên shows that his hero-worship in the style of a venerated ancestor is acceptable. The VCP ensured that ‘Vietnamese heroes as historical entities were praised as never before, but the actions of their posthumous spirits were either relegated to the museum category of feudal superstition or treated as symbolic reflections of continuing popular respect’ (Marr 1981, 285). The distinction between venerating historical entities as opposed to posthumous spirits has become increasingly blurred. For instance, the feast day dedicated to the Trưng sisters is now regarded positively as a Vietnamese national tradition (Malarney 2003, 240), despite their continuing associations with supernatural powers to bring rain or ease floods (Taylor 1983, 336). The emphasis on venerating the Hùng kings as historical nation-builders rather than powerful guardian spirits is similarly ambiguous, given that their cult revolves around a temple in Phú Tho province and their statues are ˙ only is ‘Uncle Ho’ officially showered with offerings on feast days. Not revered as a communist hero, then, his embalmed body visited by lines of schoolchildren and workers’ collectives in the tradition of Lenin and Mao, but he is also venerated as a guardian spirit in some village temples and đình. This cult testifies to his popularity as a nationalist figure. Furthermore, many

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Vietnamese sincerely admire his leadership qualities as an example to be followed (Tai 2001, 273). He is considered to embody a conception of virtue (đa o đức) and prestige (uy tín) which is central to legitimate leadership ˙ (Malarney 1997, 900). Local officials are expected to impress not only party cells but also the local population with these qualities in order to enjoy respect and legitimacy in positions of authority. As has been remarked with reference to India, ‘history is not the only mode of accessing the past’ (Lal 2003, 208) and myths may enjoy just as much popular legitimacy in some cultures as historical accounts; ‘Legends were remembered by the Vietnamese because they expressed their earliest identity as a people’ (Taylor 1983, 6). Recognising this, official historiography presents the Hùng dynasty as the first chapter in Vietnam’s history, beginning around 700 BCE (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006, 11), and does nothing to dampen the myth that its first king was hatched from eggs spawned by a mountain princess. As an ideological construct, the nation need not rest on rational principles or proven events, but is far more an exercise in the ‘ethno-symbolism’ of belonging (Smith 1986). The communal house at Kim Liên, laid to waste in 1946 as the French colonial power fought to regain the city, was only restored in 1992. It is now prospering once again as an important centre of worship alongside the neighbourhood pagoda. Its fate has been shaped by successive ideologies of colonialism, communism and more recent liberalisation. Indeed, Benedict Anderson (1991, 163) has pointed out that post-colonial nation-building should be linked to the ‘grammar’ of colonial ideologies and ‘the imaginings of the colonial state’ (Anderson 1991, 163). These tensions are also played out in current school textbooks. Heroes, role models and battles against successive enemies feature prominently in their interpretation of history. Vietnamese independence is portrayed as the unwavering goal and then the culmination of protracted struggle (đâ´ u tranh), with exceptional leaders embodying the will of the people throughout. The textbook hero A primary school history textbook published in 2006 covers the history of Vietnam from 700 BCE to 1858, spanning some twenty-five centuries in about sixty pages. The story told is naturally highly selective, and the chosen themes and episodes can tell us a great deal about the government discourse disseminated to schoolchildren, since textbooks ‘signify – through their content and form – particular constructions of reality, particular ways of selecting and organizing’’ (Apple and Christian-Smith, cited in Lal 2003, 13). During colonial times, history was told very differently. Today, all Vietnamese schoolchildren study from the same texts, and so their influence is pervasive. The core message is reinforced and expanded on in later classes and university manuals, all

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produced by the Ministry of Education and Training’s own publishing house (cf. Nguyê˜ n 2006; Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006b). In a pithy summary of the textbook’s recurring theme which echoes the Hùng kings’ reputation for nation-building, the introduction states that ‘in order for today’s beautiful fatherland to exist, our ancestors had to go through thousands of years of labour and struggle to build and protect the country’ (Nguyê˜n et al. 2006a, 3).7 Learning to love the fatherland even more is one of the reasons given for studying Vietnamese history and geography (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 3). Although the text then encourages pupils to ask ‘bold’ questions and engage in independent enquiry (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 4), the Vietnamese school system is still very much premised on rote learning. The questions interspersed throughout the text, for instance, generally call for simple repetition of the preceding paragraph’s content rather than interpretation or reflection. The book’s patriotic purpose is made explicit from the outset, and this is reflected in the historical narrative. For example, the territory is already referred to as ‘our country’ (nước ta) (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 11) in chapter one, thereby encouraging pupils to associate today’s Vietnam with the much less extensive feudal lands of Va˘n Lang, centred around the Red River Delta. In chapter two, the Bronze Age civilisation known as Âu La c is referred to as ‘our ˙ a primordialist link people’ (người ta) (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 15), again making between an ancient tribe and a modern sense of nationhood (Vasavakul 1994). The narrative is divided into eight periods which closely resemble those of the Hanoi History Museum discussed in chapter 4. Most are named after imperial reigns or centuries during dynastic divisions, but the first three reflect the textbook’s central theme by evoking national resistance and independence. For instance, one is entitled ‘Over one thousand years of struggle to regain independence’ (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 17).8 The textbook is further subdivided into twenty-nine short chapters, some of which describe cultural and technological accomplishments under successive dynasties, such as dambuilding, agricultural reforms, educational centres and literary output. About one-third of the chapters are devoted to the exploits of Vietnamese leaders and their armies in battle, however. These heroic figures are depicted as key players in a continuing struggle for independence. Anecdotes from their childhood are sometimes included to show how leaders from a humble background went on to do great things for their country, recalling one of the main attributes of Vietnamese heroism (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 26). This also tallies with the following analysis of Vietnamese historiography: ‘Poverty combined with patriotism, it should be noted, conferred even greater legitimacy than patriotism all on its own’ (Pelley 2002, 187). Chapter three of the textbook is entitled ‘our country under the yoke of domination of all the northern feudal reigns’ (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 17),9 a phrase which is repeated several times throughout the text. The chapter goes

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on to list a series of nine uprisings during the millennium of Chinese rule (179 BCE–938 CE). Each is associated with the name of its leader, so as to show that domination was never accepted and revolts were frequent. The next two chapters then pick out the exploits of the Trưng sisters in 40 CE and Ngô Quyê` n’s leadership at the battle of Ba ch ≠a˘` ng in 938 CE, which ended Chinese ˙ the beginning of ‘our people’s struggle control and, as the textbook puts it, saw to protect the independence and the unity of the country’ (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 25).10 The narrative thread moves through successive episodes involving Chinese and Mongol invaders, followed by French and American foes in the subsequent textbook. Tellingly, accounts of Vietnamese victory in battle tend to recount the fate of the enemy commander, as if to contrast his humiliation with Vietnamese heroism. Tô ≠i nh, for instance, escaped the Trưng sisters ˙ by shaving his head, dressing in peasant clothes and escaping among the crowds ˜ returning to China (Nguyên et al. 2006, 20). General Ngô Quyê` n’s opposite number was killed in action (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006, 22) and the Mongol commander Thoát Hoan made his decidedly unheroic escape by sneaking into a copper pipe (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006, 41)! Although these episodes recount dynastic struggles carried out in the name of an imperial family and not a modern nation-state, the textbook frames them in nationalist terms. This is evident in the summaries closing each chapter. For instance, the three sentences summing up Chinese domination from the second century BCE to the ninth century CE refer to ‘our country’ and twice to ‘our people’, as well as their ability to regain complete independence (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006, 23). These terms are anachronistic in that they are better suited to describing a system of nationstates than feudal regimes, but their role in perpetuating a narrative of national resistance is clear. This is reinforced by certain key words and phrases which occur repeatedly throughout the text, such as invasion (xâm lược), protect independence (giữ đôc lâp) and domination (đô hô). ˙ ˙ in the text as the victim of˙ outside invaders, fighting Vietnam is portrayed to regain its freedom. The expansionism of successive Vietnamese dynasties from the eleventh century onwards, and their military conquest of territories reaching as far south as the Mekong delta, are simply not mentioned. The decisive defeat of the once mighty kingdom of Champa under the Lê Dynasty in 1471 does not figure (Maspero 1928; Scupin 1989, 488). Instead, these lands are described as deserted (hoang), crying out to be cultivated by northern farmers (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006, 55). Existing inhabitants, such as the Cham and Khmer, are mentioned only in brackets. Rather than resisting the Vietnamese, they are depicted as joining forces with incoming farmers against the common enemy of natural disasters, their cultures mingling to form the harmonious and colourful whole of a united Vietnamese culture (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 56). The Manichaean division between Vietnam and the ‘Other’ is thus maintained by glossing over episodes which do not fit the overall theme of resistance to

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foreign aggression. As if to confirm this problematic omission, it is the only substantive chapter in the textbook which is not illustrated. Far from exemplifying the negatively laden ‘individualistic heroism’ defined in dictionaries, the figures featured in the textbook display the purity of motive and closeness to the people of Phan Bôi Châu’s definition. His understanding ˙ of heroism and its link to nationalism is exemplified in the textbook’s discussion of the short-lived, fifteenth century Hô` dynasty’s inability to stand up to a Minh invasion from the north. The explanation offered is that emperor Hô` Quy´ Ly relied only on the army and failed to unite the people as a whole behind the resistance (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 43), a fatal mistake which ensured he would not join the pantheon of official Vietnamese heroes. Throughout the textbook, successive dynasties are portrayed as following a cycle of brilliance and decadence judged in terms of their sense of responsibility to the people. The Ly´, Trâ` n and Hô` dynasties, for instance, are portrayed as having been founded by capable mandarins replacing ever weaker predecessors (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 37). The narrative structure is thus at once rather reminiscent of the cyclical understanding of history current in pre-colonial times (Pelley 2002, 167) while also imbued with socialist concerns (Pelley 2002, 9). For example, ’ the text tells that Ly´ Công Uân ‘empathised with people’s feelings’ (ca’ m hoá ˜ được lòng người) (Nguyên et al. 2006a, 30) and that the early Trâ` n kings provided a bell for anyone to ring to make requests or seek a remedy for injustice (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 38). Reforms, such as dam-building and land allocation, are presented as directly benefiting the people, and are contrasted with the exploitation of workers for personal profit and ‘depraved’ activities at court. For instance, the textbook chooses to include details of Hô` dynasty reforms which required aristocrats to surrender surplus servants and land to the government (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 43). Monarchs are toppled for their economic mismanagement rather than due to supernatural forces, and popular legitimacy is depicted in stark contrast to imperial decadence. Yet the leitmotiv of repeated resistance to aggression introduces a symbolic quality more reminiscent of morality tales than communist influence. This essentialising tendency, as personified in selected Vietnamese heroes, seeks to isolate a unique Vietnamese spirit from any Sinitic or colonial accretions (Pelley 2002, 11). It also serves as a symbol of Vietnamese unity vis-à-vis the ‘Other’. For example, an episode is included in which the Queen Mother of the ≠inh dynasty symbolically passes the throne to the founder of the early Lê dynasty, in the face of imminent invasion. As the text comments breathlessly: ‘the country was in great danger!’ (thê´ nước lâm nguy) (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 27). The evolving circumstances of Vietnamese historiography have meant that certain historical figures were adulated and then neglected, only to be rehabilitated or reinterpreted to conform to the ideological imperatives of the day. Once admired for creating the independent kingdom of Nam Viêt in the ˙

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third century BCE (Pelley 2002, 177), the textbook portrays the Chinese general Triê u ≠à as an enemy of ‘our people’ – equated with Âu La c – and clearly ˙ ˙ situates his kingdom in present day China (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 15). Trâ` n Hưng ≠a o’s thirteenth-century proclamation to officers and soldiers (H ich ˙ tướng s˜ı ),˙ once considered suspect for being written in classical Chinese (Pelley 2002, 183), does feature in the textbook, however. The choice of extract is a particularly gruesome description of patriotic sacrifice, presumably in order to underline that this can and should be read as a nationalist text. In later chapters, the influence of Chinese literature and civilisation on court mandarins and Confucian scholars is downplayed. Using an oppositional structure recalling the theme of resistance, the textbook describes the works of the fifteenth-century court scholar and strategist Nguyê˜ n Trãi as important in developing the Vietnamese nôm script to challenge the ‘dominant position’ (chiê´ m ưu thê´ ) of Chinese ideograms (Nguyê˜n et al. 2006a, 51). This nationalist reading of Nguyê˜ n Trãi’s legacy as helping ‘to break the dependence of Vietnamese literati on classical Chinese’ (Pelley 2002, 187) is hard to square with the fact that knowledge of Chinese is essential to be able to read and write nôm. Further, in an effort to link a member of the intellectual elite to the masses, the textbook describes one of his works as reflecting the people’s ‘heroic nature’ (khí phách anh hùng) (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 51). Here again, nationalist and socialist-inspired rhetoric coincide. The textbook’s necessarily selective narrative presents a seamless succession of dynasties underpinned by ideas of popular legitimacy, rather than courtly intrigue. It places a semi-mythical kingdom at the origin of ‘our country’, which is constructed in strong opposition to Sinitic influence and overlooks the subsequent expansionary tendencies of the northern Vietnamese dynasties towards southern lands. Finally, it creates a constant in the heroic warrior and later scholar-patriot, portrayed as single-minded in their defence of some sort of proto-nation and, by extension, embodying the alleged will of the people. Although it is hard to think of tenth-century fiefdoms in those terms, the chapter about this period states that the ‘country was divided’ (nước bi chia ˙ ca˘´ t) (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 25). ≠inh Bô L˜ı nh is then credited with bringing ˙ unity, but only thanks to ‘the people’; ‘When he managed to gain the support of the people, he won wherever he fought’ (Nguyê˜ n et al. 2006a, 26).11 By the end of the textbook, the scene is set for heroic figures to face the growing divergence between imperial interests and popular patriotism under the nineteenth-century Nguyê˜ n dynasty, often blamed for caving into colonialism. The analysis has sought to show how ‘[heroic] stories rather reaffirm the reader’s pre-existing sense of cultural identity . . . Because readers have experienced similar texts before they know that the hero will triumph and the story will assert the traditional dualisms’ (Hourihan 1997, 46). Children are offered familiar storytelling patterns which end in a clear conclusion

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distinguishing friend from foe, right from wrong and good from evil. In nationalist terms, independence and freedom represent the noble cause which dictates the right course of action and entails no moral dilemmas. Heroism is displayed in the service of the nation, as opposed to a self-interested pursuit of glory or power (Souchon et al. 2000, 15). Success is a reaffirmation of a nation’s identity, community and ultimately, superiority over the enemy ‘Other’. Another school textbook published in 2006 presents its own nation-building myth in a very different regionalist framework. Aimed at final year high school students, co-authored in Germany and France, and supported by leading politicians in both states, it sets out to offer a multifaceted view of Germany’s post-war history. The project originated in a request by the German–French youth parliament in 2003 to chancellor Schröder and president Chirac for a common history book aimed at fostering mutual understanding. The suggestion was taken up and the proposed contents, which had to conform to France and Germany’s curriculum, gained the support of both countries’ culture ministries as well as the German Länder, which control education under the German federal system.12 Having sold 45,000 copies, the first tome was followed by a second covering the period 1815–1945, and the series is to be completed by a third covering antiquity to the early nineteenth century. Klaus Wowereit, both Berlin’s mayor and Germany’s representative for German–French cultural cooperation, presided over the official book launched at a ceremony in the DHM. France’s education minister Xavier Darcos, who saw the book as a contribution to a ‘shared European consciousness’, was also present.13 Indeed, the first tome in the series is explicitly ideological, describing itself as the ‘political expression of a dialogue’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 6) between the two countries. The collaboration thus represents a unique initiative transcending not only the specific education systems in each of the German Länder, but also a national perspective which, as one German schoolchild put it, tends ‘to represent one’s own country as the hero’.14 In its place, however, and in spite of a narrative which consciously seeks to ‘view history from the other’s point of view’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 6), the French or German ‘Other’ is replaced by the same dichotomy which underpins the DHM’s interpretation of German history discussed in the previous chapter. Indeed, the section of the textbook covering Germany’s post-war history constructs a narrative of European friend and communist foe, which can also be compared to Vietnam’s depiction of the resistance hero–enemy invader dichotomy. A discussion in terms of heroes is useful here, because it helps to highlight the way in which not only nations but also European integration can be cast in a heroic light, as a facet of nation-building ideology. The textbook is a richly illustrated treatment of European and world history since 1945, reproducing a range of archive photographs, posters, political

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cartoons and magazine covers as well as many graphs and maps. It is organised into five sections covering the immediate post-war period, the Cold War, Europe in a globalised world (since 1989), technical, economic and cultural developments since 1945, and finally France and Germany since 1945. The textbook’s preface makes the ideological nature of the historiography quite explicit by saying that its emphasis on commonalities derives from ‘concerted efforts at mutual understanding, rapprochement and reconciliation’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 6). The book’s close link to the political project of European integration is also made clear from the outset. Not only does the foreword emphasise ‘project Europe’ and a ‘European perspective’, but it also explicitly supports the EU’s motto of ‘unity in diversity’, stating that ‘this history textbook should demonstrate this’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 7). Chapters seven and nine of the textbook chart the development of the EU from its post-war beginnings, offering a chronological account which emphasises European community-building and progress in contrast to past wars and conflict. A cartoon, for instance, shows generations of soldiers and standard-bearers applauding as two young people cast votes in the first European Parliament elections of 1979, the names of major historical battles looming behind them (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 113). On the next page, two maps are juxtaposed under the heading of ‘The Western European unification process’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 114). The first, a rather curious map subtitled ‘Europe – a cultural heritage’, plots important gothic and Islamic architectural sites, as well as Versailles-inspired palaces as symbols of absolutism. The theme of building and uniting Europe is thus projected onto a distant past, evoking developments from the tenth to eighteenth centuries. Rather crude architectural markers are used to suggest a shared Christian religion and political system, which overlap only slightly with the map’s clearly delineated borders of the Ottoman empire and Moorish-controlled Spain. Within the space of two pages, then, a series of ‘Others’ have been situated in time and space. On the one hand, Europe’s bellicose history and on the other, the Muslim world as well as parts of Central and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, to which the Gothic style apparently did not spread. On the facing page, a political map entitled ‘Europe – a political work in progress (Aufbauwerk)’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 115) traces the Iron Curtain and systems of supranational alliances. The map’s title and position seem to suggest continuity with the cultural heritage depicted alongside it, as well as recalling the positively connoted community-building theme running through the chapter. Similarly, each section heading charts progress in an upbeat way, with titles like ‘the ECSC – a decisive stage in the process of European unification’, ‘the EEC and EC – the time of new projects and first achievements’ and ‘Europe overcomes its crises’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 120, 122,124).15

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The textbook presents the first steps in European integration in terms of inexorable progress, shared values and a long-standing cultural affinity, an approach reminiscent of nation-building premised on longue durée. These themes are confirmed by the chapter’s introductory text. Under the heading ‘Europe – an old concept’, it refers to the cultural map described above as evidence for the assertion that ‘Since antiquity, Europe has understood itself as a geographical area with changing boundaries and as a shared cultural space, which was strongly influenced by a Greco-Roman cultural base and Christianity’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 116).16 The text goes on to point out that major intellectual, scientific and artistic trends crossed borders to affect the whole continent. Failed attempts to unite Europe through force of arms are then contrasted to peace-building, with post-war initiatives presented as prioritising basic human rights and the rule of law. Interestingly, the documents accompanying the text – a portrait of political leaders subtitled ‘Europe’s founding fathers’, a photo of a crowd of French and German students symbolically breaking down a border post in 1950, and a vision for a united Europe penned by a conspirator in the plot to assassinate Hitler – all link to familiar depictions of national, popular and resistance heroes respectively. European integration appears to be portrayed much like a primordialist nationbuilding process premised on the principle of longue durée and supported by shared culture, values and role models. This legitimising device is further supported in the text by incompatible ‘Others’, such as fascism and communist ‘People’s Democracies’, which are always framed by quotation marks as a distancing device (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 134). This is particularly important to the German case, as the attention paid to different German and French perspectives in the chapter summary makes clear. Here, the role of the communist party in French wartime resistance and post-war government is contrasted to the overwhelmingly negative view of GDR and Soviet communism in West Germany, described in the text as a Feindbild, or archetypal enemy (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 127). In line with these positive connotations of European integration, the chapter covering developments since 1989 opens with a reproduction of a French magazine cover depicting the EU as Superman, its twelve starred flag rippling on his muscular chest. This is juxtaposed with a German magazine cover illustrating the French ‘no’ vote in the 2005 referendum on the European constitution, which uses a modified version of Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting of Liberty leading the people across the barricades during the French Revolution. Her French flag is replaced with a European flag, crossed through in red, and accompanied by the strapline ‘uprising against Europe’. This draws a parallel between revolutionary nationalism and a nationalist backlash against the EU. Both of these images depict heroic figures, the first embodying Europe and the other national resistance to it. The intuitive incompatibility

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between European and national identities, one of the chapter’s themes, is thus introduced using the familiar device of personification. At this early stage of the chapter, it remains open as to whether readers’ sympathies should be with the European Superman or the French Marianne, but the book’s pro-European bias is clearly conveyed in what follows. The pages devoted to European identity, for instance, begin by pointing out that national identities took a long time to develop and that a sense of European belonging could only be the result of a long process, before discussing issues relating to transparency and the EU’s democratic deficit. The commentary ends with a section entitled ‘values, symbols and everyday realities’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 164), which asserts that the ratification of a European constitution would ‘undoubtedly’ strengthen European citizens’ sense of taking part in a common project. It also states that the EU’s student exchange programme has contributed to the creation of a European identity. ‘[T]he “Erasmus generation” will undoubtedly be the first to feel completely European’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 164; emphasis added).17 Promoting ‘the European project’ to its young readership seems to be the book’s main aim, even if this is at odds with the EU Commission-funded Eurobarometer survey of comparative national/European identity, which is also reproduced. This indicates a rough balance between European and national identities across member states. Mere presence in another country, shown as a map of the number of students undertaking student exchanges, is not sufficient evidence for such an optimistic view of young people’s European loyalties. The book’s sections on the EU institutions, administration and budget primarily cover their organisation, but the analysis of economic and monetary union focuses more on questions of identity. The caption under a large reproduction of the euro sign, for instance, explains that it symbolises stability and the Greek alphabet, ‘thus referring to a culture, which represents the cradle of Europe’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 156).18 A link is thereby forged between a contemporary currency and an ancient civilisation, recalling nationalist assertions of longue durée. This is underlined by an extract on the facing page from French President Chirac’s 2001 New Year speech, which characterises the introduction of the euro as a sign that ‘Our Europe is making progress [and] the Euro is a victory for Europe’ (Chirac, cited in Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 157).19 Chirac uses the possessive pronoun ‘our’ to link the French people to the European project, and contrasts this with the hatred and intolerance epitomised by the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He goes on to depict Europe as a triumphant victor in the battle against divisions and war, thereby attributing it heroic, human traits. The symbolism and rhetoric of self and other, hero and enemy are thus clearly represented in the textbook’s interpretation of European integration. These devices are evidence of a nation-building project, which sets out to embed a (Western) German national identity within a European context.

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Although the extensive treatment of European integration clearly privileges the West German experience and distances itself from ‘People’s Democracies’ behind the Iron Curtain, specific analysis of post-war Germany in chapter fifteen of the textbook presents a more balanced view. Both the GDR and the FRG are accorded the same number of pages, when some studies of Cold War ‘Germany’ still focus primarily or exclusively on West Germany (cf. Weber & Kowert 2007). Though the focus of the GDR analysis on daily life and sport might be considered rather trivial compared to the more extensive political analysis of developments in the FRG, the treatment itself is sober, detailing the political implications of sporting competitions, for instance. This approach might be justified as enhancing readers’ understanding of East German socialisation, as opposed to the probable alienating effect of reading about rigid and dogmatic SED structures. Elsewhere, a sub-section is devoted to the internal consequences of reunification, evoking ‘walls in the head’ but also practical issues of unemployment, property restitution and unfulfilled expectations. Indeed, the text asks ‘How could people in East and West grow together again into a nation-state (Staatsvolk) after decades of different experiences and influences?’ (Le Quintrec & Geiss 2006, 266).20 The use of the term Staatsvolk (literally ‘state people’) rather than Nation and the reference to divergent development suggest that unification is not a return to a ‘natural’ unity, but rather a difficult process of rapprochement closely linked to the state. As warranted by its explicitly pro-European aim and Franco-German basis, the myth of a long-standing European identity is promoted much more strongly in the textbook than a sense of popular German nationhood, which retains negative connotations despite post-unification ‘normalisation’. In this, the textbook differs markedly from the DHM’s approach to post-war history discussed in chapter four. Yet widespread official support for this bilateral textbook in Germany suggests that its approach chimes with the government’s current nation-building goal, which has much in common with the policy first adopted by chancellor Adenauer in 1950s West Germany. Despite some commentators’ demands for a return to a strong, independent Germany following unification, and a more robust foreign policy as a result of German ‘normalisation’ following Allied withdrawal, it seems apparent from textbooks such as this one that the German government still wishes to promote a vision of Germany as firmly embedded in a positively connoted European community. Rather more surprising, given the often hostile approach to the GDR legacy in official circles following unification, is the textbook’s emphasis on the ‘normality’ of division and the difficulties arising from it, rather than any assumption of reconstituted national unity. Almost twenty years after unification, perhaps it heralds a new stage in coming to terms with this aspect of Germany’s past.

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Conclusion The chapter has been concerned with what the historian David Marr (1995, 9) has termed ‘ex post facto ideological chaff’, or the interpretation of history to conform to a favoured, official discourse. Yet the demands of state legitimation suggest that far from being mere chaff, ideological interpretation is indispensable to nation-building. Looking at the past through contemporary political perspectives tells us a great deal about state legitimation. For instance, the multifaceted figure of the hero has a long tradition, on which the VCP has drawn substantially to create heroic role models at once patriotic, pure, and close to the people. The Nietzschean notion of ‘monumental history’ places heroes and their achievements on a pedestal to be emulated and admired. According to Nietzsche, however, it may thereby lead to distortion and mythologising (Berkowitz 1994, 15), especially when combined with elements of ‘antiquarian history’, described by Nietzsche as the (potentially debilitating) veneration of the nation or community’s past (Berkowitz 1994, 16). The VCP uses the political and spiritual dimensions of hero-worship in Vietnam ‘to focus popular allegiance’ (Giebel 2001, 87–8) and shore up its legitimacy, promoting a select pantheon of Vietnamese heroes for political ends. The likes of communist ‘new heroes’ (de Tréglodé 2001, 206), however, are elevated from local heroes to guardians of the nation, and their communist credentials pale in comparison. In this sense, these heroes can be considered a metaphor for Vietnamese independence, the pursuit of which clearly emerges as the school textbook’s guiding narrative. It exemplifies the way in which heroes’ spirit of patriotic resistance is emphasised above other virtues. A long list of fighters and writers embody elements of the communist, nationalist and anti-colonial ideologies which are central to the VCP’s nationbuilding discourse. Ho Chi Minh, who found time to write nationalist poetry while building up anti-colonial resistance in the mountains of northern Vietnam, is deemed to combine the traditions of heroic fighter and scholar patriot. Another crucial attribute of an officially sanctioned hero is empathy with the people, and great deeds contributing to a strong and independent nation. This theme is illustrated in the school textbook’s historical narrative, in which communist and nationalist ideologies coincide: ‘Peasants, in this instance substituting for the missing proletariat, are obviously anticolonial, and therefore nationalistic, and they are socialist to the extent that they oppose colonial oppression’ (Pelley 2002, 11). Although the VCP also upholds the communist tradition of recognising and rewarding labour heroes, the nationalist hero seems to command greater respect, especially if imbued with the spiritual aura of the Trưng sisters and Trâ` n Hưng ≠a o. In a variation on Benedict Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’, Christoph˙ Giebel (2004, 186) explores how the VCP fostered legitimacy through ‘imagined ancestries’;

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‘This ancestry was found in traditional concepts of authority and order of the country’s spiritual and worldly realms and in the unbroken sequence of national heroes . . . Placing the communist Revolution . . . within this continuum reasserted a sense of pride in times of bedevilling self-doubts’. The Vietnamese people are thus encouraged to trace their origins from the primordial Hùng dynasty (and a rather prosaic sac of eggs) through a steady succession of acts of resistance to foreign invasion, with hardly a whiff of national division or strife. The German textbook, on the other hand, downplays and even questions the myth of German unity in favour of a European identity. ‘Clearly, education can serve as the seed-bed of any ideology’ (Pritchard 2002, 56). Eschewing an interpretation of history focused on the nation-state, the Franco-German textbook privileges a myth of European longue durée instead. The EU is depicted as the culmination of a long-standing cultural heritage stretching from Greek antiquity, through the Gothic era to a steady post-war process of regional integration. The complex issue of German identity is largely bypassed. The European project, on the other hand, provides an alternative focus to national identity as well as a means of rapprochement with France through a shared narrative. Regionalist ideology therefore supports nation-building by detracting from the contested nature of the German nation and emphasising a European facet of its identity. It seeks to transcend the problematic nation-state as a nodal point of discourse, but thereby also contributes indirectly to nation-building by firmly embedding Germany within a legitimating European tradition. In the final analysis: ‘Germany’s continuity as a national state . . . has been repeatedly spoiled. Its official borders have been frequently and drastically redrawn; within the claims to nationhood the gaps between territorial integrity and cultural have been both variable and extreme’ (Eley 2006, 268). Focusing on the European dimension helps to smooth over this fraught national history. Notes 1 ‘Wenn es zutreffen sollte, dass zu jedem erfolgreichen Prozess des nation building auch die Herausbildung einer hegemonialen nationalen Geschichtserzählung gehört, dann muss man der DDR-Geschichte eine ähnliche Entwicklung prognostizieren wie der Geschichte des einstmals souveränen Saarlandes: Sie ist weit gehend vergessen’. 2 ‘Danh hiê u vinh dự cao nhâ´ t cu’ a nhà nước ta˘ng thưởng cho người hoa˘c đơn vi có ˙ thành tích˙ và cô´ ng hiê´ n đa˘c biêt xuâ´ t sa˘´ c trong˙lao đông hoa˘c chiê´ n đâ´ u’˙‘Anh hùng’, ’ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ´ Từ điên tiêng Viê t, www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~duc/Dict/, accessed 11 June ˙ 2007. 3 ‘Anh hùng’, MTD Web Multilingual Dictionaries http://dcs.lacviet.com.vn/ WebMtd/webmtd.aspx, accessed 11 June 2007.

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4 ‘Anh hùng’, MTD Web Multilingual Dictionaries http://dcs.lacviet.com.vn/ WebMtd/webmtd.aspx, accessed 11 June 2007. 5 ‘Anh hùng ca’, MTD Web Multilingual Dictionaries http://dcs.lacviet.com.vn/ WebMtd/webmtd.aspx, accessed 11 June 2007. 6 Thanh Trà ‘Thiêng liêng côi nguô`n ‘boc tra˘m trứng’!’ http://chuyenquangtrung. ˙ ˙ com.vn/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6, accessed 10 June 2007. ’ ´ 7 ‘≠ê có quôc Viêt Nam tươi đep như hôm nay, ông cha ta đã pha’ i tra’ i qua hàng ngàn ’ na˘m lao đông,˙đâ´ u tranh đê ˙dựng nước và giữ nứơc ’. ˙ ´ 8 ‘hơn môt nghìn na˘m đâu tranh giành lai đôc lâp’. ˙ ˙ kiê´ n phương ba˘´ c ’. 9 ‘nước ta˙ dưới ách đô hô cu’ a các triê`u đa˙i phong ’ ˙ ˙ 10 ‘nhân dân ta đã pha’ i đâ´ u tranh đê ba’ o vê nê`n đôc lâp và thô´ ng nhâ´ t cu’ a đâ´ t nước ’. ˙ tha˘´ng˙ đó’. ˙ 11 ‘≠ược nhân dân u’ ng hô nên ông đánh đâu ˙ 12 ‘Politische Bedeutung’, www.histoiregeschichte.com, accessed 18 June 2008. 13 ‘Presseerklärung Herausgegeben vom Presse- und Informationsamt des Landes Berlin’ www.klett.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=296614&template=pr_pressemeldung_ detail, accessed 11 June 2008. 14 ‘In anderen Geschichtsbüchern wird das eigene Land häufig als Held dargestellt’. Pupil of the Wilhelm-Raabe-Schule in Hannover, cited in ‘Geschichte aus zwei Blickwinkeln; Band II des deutsch–französischen Geschichtsbuchs erschienen’ 9 April 2008, press release; Klett: Stuttgart, Paris, London & Berlin. 15 ‘Die EGKS – eine entscheidende Etappe im europäischen Einigungsprozess’; ‘EWG und EG – die Zeit neuer Projekte und erster Errungenschaften (1957–79)’; ‘Europa überwindet seine Krisen (1965–89)’. 16 ‘Seit der Antike versteht sich Europa als ein geographisches Gebiet mit fließenden Konturen und als gemeinsamer Kulturraum, der von Beginn an stark von einem griechisch-römischen Kultursubstrat und dem Christentum geprägt war’. 17 ‘Die Generation Erasmus’ wird sich ohne Zweifel als erste ganz europäisch fühlen.’ 18 ‘und nimmt so Bezug auf eine Kultur, die die Wiege Europas verkörpert’. 19 ‘Unser Europa macht Fortschritte . . . Der Euro ist ein Sieg Europas’. 20 ‘Wie konnten die Menschen in Ost und West nach Jahrzehnten unterschiedlicher Erfahrungen und Prägungen wieder zu einem Staatsvolk zusammenwachsen?’.

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Conclusion

This study set out to look at three shared features of nation-building in unified Germany and Vietnam, namely national division, the impact of communism and the interplay with regional integration. It found that the nation-building process in post-unification Germany and Vietnam cannot be understood without a close reading of their respective historical, political and cultural contexts. The following concluding remarks compare and contrast the cases, considering in turn the impact of division, communism (with an inevitable focus on Vietnam) and regionalism. As a thin-centred ideology revolving around the central principle of prioritising the nation, ‘[n]ationalism does not have an ideological autonomy comparable to communism’ (Nederveen Pieterse 2001, 31). Instead, it takes on elements from other ideologies and adapts strategically to local circumstance. Each interpretation of the national idea is therefore unique, and must be examined in its specificity. Following unification, Vietnamese and German governments were clearly influenced by what had gone before, but chose to emphasise national unity over division. They also opted to downplay the legacy of the RVN and the GDR respectively. Instead, official nation-building in the united FRG not only emphasised continuity with West Germany, but constructed a primordialist narrative of two thousand years of German history. Although a combination of communism and nationalism held sway in Vietnam, the VCP portrayed its regime as the latest stage in four thousand years of Vietnamese history, characterised by heroic struggle against invasion and foreign domination. In both cases, legitimacy was sought in longevity, by linking the incumbent governments to selectively remembered historical and mythical episodes along a linear, national history. In the DRV and then united Vietnam, the basic incompatibility between class-based and nation-based ideology was resolved in favour of the latter. In divided Germany, on the other hand, assumptions on both sides about the superiority of West Germany’s brand of capitalism drowned out calls for internal reform from within the GDR. Post-unification attitudes varied from considering GDR culture through the rose-tinted spectacles of Ostalgie to the

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blanket vilification of all things East German. Chancellor Kohl’s evocation of ‘blühende landschaften’, or flourishing landscapes, had promised East Germans a share in a widespread vision of Western prosperity, which would fail to materialise. Eastern Germany’s five new federal states would also join the EU by virtue of acceding to the FRG and without any further formal proceedings. Catapulted from the Warsaw Pact into the emerging eurozone, which would be set in train by the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, East Germans did not share in the identity politics of either European integration or the Deutschmark. Since the GDR had laid all responsibility for Nazism at West Germany’s door, there had been no official reckoning with its citizens’ identity as Germans, and no perceived need to find an alternative, less tainted marker of belonging. Neither had the GDR experienced the identity-generating effects of West Germany’s post-war Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle, as embodied in its strong and stable currency. After unification, both Vietnamese and German governments did little to incorporate the identities and socialisation of those whose state had disappeared, into official nation-building. On the contrary, the southern re-education camps and waves of refugees fleeing Vietnam after 1975 point to the violent imposition of the newly dominant ideology. In stark contrast, the organisation and outcome of free elections in the moribund GDR testify to popular support for rapid reunification according to chancellor Kohl’s plan. Division It has been pointed out that ‘developed industrial democracies have their own mythologies, constellations of compelling ideas and emotions that organize collective passions’’ (Tismaneanu 1998, 26). As was shown in chapter 4, each myth functions as a symbol for a wider system of ideas, or ideology. Nationbuilding efforts in the Berlin republic seek to emphasise a return to German unity following Cold War division. The ideological void created by the collapse of East German communism has been filled by West German nation-building; the new FRG shows a great deal of continuity with its predecessor based in Bonn. The dominant narrative in united Germany has been to legitimise the FRG by contrasting it with East German totalitarianism (Cooke 2005, 185). In a survey of the legal and political measures taken following unification, such as property settlements, criminal prosecutions and the management of secret police files, James McAdams (2001, 7) observes that ‘[e]ven among those willing to give German decision makers credit for intending to do the right thing, many remain convinced that the net effect of these measures was to slow progress toward national unity by undermining public confidence in the fairness and impartiality of Germany’s ruling institutions’. One concrete aspect of this was whether FRG institutions had competence to sit in judgement

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over a legal and ideological system alien to them in so many respects. They interpreted ‘justice’ according to a liberal tradition far removed from GDR concepts of legality, highlighting the practical difficulties of dealing with the past. These also extend to the ideological sphere (McAdams 2001, 177). Debate was difficult because fully exploring the complex implications of division for nation-building in unified Germany would require the very notion of unity to be questioned: ‘[T]o forget nothing was to be reminded of the reasons for German disunity in the first place’ (Koshar 2000, 1). Any emphasis on hybridity and divergence is seen as endangering nation-building, when a more differentiated acknowledgement of the GDR’s legacy could in fact be a means of overcoming division and achieving ‘inner unity’ (Cooke 2005, 128). The portrayal of the RVN and the GDR in the ‘soldered states’ of Vietnam and Germany is instructive. In both cases, lived experience and official ideology in the defunct states have been variously vilified, undermined or forgotten as part of a new nation-building ideology which stresses national unity first and foremost. Cultural and political reassessments are seen as threatening this narrative, hence the deprecating use of terms like Ostalgie. Although ‘walls in the head’ are recognised as a hurdle to unity across Germany, the frustration felt by some former GDR citizens that their experiences are not sufficiently valued is justified to the extent that the dominance of one nation-building ideology in today’s Germany is not explicitly acknowledged as such (Miller 1999, 105). Distancing, exoticising or politicising the GDR in an undifferentiated way is not a productive form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the past. Similarly in Vietnam, some historians’ attempts to emphasise the importance of early, southern-based anticolonial movements have clashed with the VCP’s predominantly northern Vietnamese perspective (Giebel 2004, 146). Even a southern patriot like the former DRV president Tôn ≠ức Tha˘´ ng lived in the shadow of his illustrious predecessor Ho Chi Minh, and did more to symbolise the regime’s international communist credentials than embody southern contributions to the communist war effort. Attempts to write history from a southern perspective, in itself a multivocal and contested notion, might ‘crack the thick walls of the party’s historiographical rhetoric’ (Giebel 2004, xxii) and thus weaken its nation-building project. Hence, they are sidelined. It has been suggested that ‘discussion of German national identity might be shifted decisively away from old obsessions with the national state in a spirit more in keeping with European integration, the postnational future, and the idea of a common European home’ (Eley 2006, 282). One strong manifestation of this approach can be seen in the Franco-German textbook analysed in chapter 5. School textbooks often represent people’s most sustained exposure to history writing (Nothnagle 1999, 11), socialising them into an understanding of the nation which might later be reinforced through museum visits and

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exposure to iconic monuments. One aim is to have the particular ideologies of individuals merge with general, official nation-building ideology (Mannheim 1991 [1929], 46). In the GDR, for instance, mass events held at anti-fascist memorials, the SED’s appropriation of great cultural figures, and East Berlin’s reconstruction projects were a means to this end (Nothnagle 1999, 34). Official celebrations and pilgrimages persistently sought to associate GDR heroes like Ernst Thälmann with key events, including the building of the Berlin Wall (Nothnagle 1999, 112). The depth of individuals’ commitment to a nationbuilding ideology cannot be mandated, however, as evidenced by many GDR citizens’ withdrawal into a ‘niche’ society. Today, the Wall gone and Thälmann’s statue neglected, Berlin provides a platform on which the ideological interpretation of the past continues to be contested. Heroes were considered potent mobilising symbols in the DRV, RVN and GDR alike. Although figures like Hitler’s would-be assassin Claus von Stauffenberg were gradually elevated to similar status in post-war West Germany, the legacy of Nazism counselled caution in any form of heightened admiration. Those who did come to command respect did so for their doughtiness in establishing democratic and economic stability, for example, such as the conservative post-war politicians Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard, but they were hardly considered heroes. Literary giants like Goethe and Schiller did testify to an illustrious German canon, but were not as actively integrated into West German nation-building initiatives as they were in the GDR. Potential heroes and role models were also much more contested in West Germany than in the authoritarian systems of the GDR, RVN and DRV, the ‘extraparliamentary opposition’ and student protests of the late 1960s being prominent examples. New social movements as well as political parties like the Greens (Green et al. 2008, 33) and the PDS after unification (Hough 2005), also led spirited debate about most aspects of official discourse, including how to interpret national pride and belonging. Furthermore, some West German federal states as well as established regional identities also commanded people’s loyalties, though not to the extent of repudiating Germanness completely (Sutherland 2001). The myths of victimhood and heroism are propagated in both the ‘soldered states’ analysed here. In Vietnam, the country as a whole is portrayed as a victim of repeated foreign aggression, and resistance heroes embody the valour of a put-upon nation. In post-unification Germany, GDR representations of heroism, exemplified in the anti-fascist monument to inmates of the Buchenwald concentration camp, have given way to a commemorative focus on the victims of Nazism and the iniquities of the GDR. This has extended to portraying the Germans themselves as victims, as suggested by then FRG president Richard von Weizsäcker’s 1985 call to view the end of the Second World War as liberation for Germany, rather than capitulation. The nation-building

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discourse of Kohl’s chancellorship, which straddled unification, marked a return to an understanding of German identity in terms of longue durée. This is summed up in the DHM’s portrayal of two thousand years of German history. Narratives of longue durée are nothing new; thirteenth-century Vietnamese court historiographers interpreted history to serve a purpose, whether it be cementing Confucian teachings, repelling the Mongols or asserting equality with China (Tran & Reid 2006, 17). That they should continue to dominate official nation-building in two soldered states, however, shows limited recognition of minority voices and their contribution to the fragmented, patchy histories which criss-cross and transcend nation-states. Icons, heroes, myths, museums, texts and cityscapes all contribute to nation-building. In soldered states, they are put to use in constructing and propagating an ideology centred around unity and continuity. Such strategies are fundamental to maintaining the nation-state construct, whether they be supplemented by other legitimating practices, such as elections and economic growth, or imposed by authoritarian regimes. Beginning with Germany’s student-led protests of the 1960s, the Nazi legacy so neatly sidestepped by the SED and swept under the carpet in the West came back to haunt the Bonn republic, threatening the legitimating consensus forged from democratic institutions, decades of economic growth and the values enshrined in the Basic Law. It hindered the ‘renationalising’ (Wiegel 2001, 13) goal of Kohl’s chancellorship during the 1980s, which sought to normalise a robust national identity based on the premise of ongoing German unity. Berlin was a central site for this project, which included Kohl’s plans for a German historical museum (the DHM). The architectural mark made by a museum on the cityscape radiates a message too; the DHM combines the tradition of the Prussian Zeughaus armoury and the modernity of the ‘starchitect’ I. M. Pei’s annex. In turn, Vietnam’s national history museum in Hanoi has made a colonial building its own, symbolising the triumph of independence over oppression. At the same time, the museum’s hybrid, Indochinese architectural style hints at the combination of French collections and post-colonial interpretations which it contains. To this extent, these buildings themselves suggest a more multifaceted engagement with nation-building than the unitary, linear national narratives of their respective exhibitions. Skirting around the emotive and historically laden issue of German identity, successive West German governments placed strong emphasis instead on European integration as an alternative focus of belonging. This trend continues in Germany’s contemporary school textbooks and museum exhibits, examined in chapters 4 and 5. As such, the regional dimension has played a much stronger role in the FRG’s pre and post-unification nation-building than it ever has in Vietnam, not just because of Vietnam’s relatively recent accession to ASEAN, but also because nationalist symbols, rhetoric and other markers

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of belonging are much more positively connoted there. The unimaginable strains of repeated resistance to foreign invasion, including the human cost of the Vietnam–American conflict harrowingly retold in Ba’ o Ninh’s The Sorrow of War (1993), have not sapped the mobilising force of nationalist imagery. Instead, the narrative of resistance continues to be used by the VCP as it faces new ‘enemies’ such as poverty and underdevelopment. In Vietnam, a strong strand of nationalist ideology, combined with economic liberalisation, is designed to make the continued existence of a one-party state and its attendant communist principles more palatable. Accordingly, school textbooks establish narratives impatient with ambiguity, which rely on established, ‘scripted’ stories or myths to convey an interpretation of history supportive of current nationbuilding ideology. Whereas Vietnamese nation-building revolves around the resistance myth, the European integration project provides a suitable regionalist framework for German nation-building. In both cases, national unity is an undisputed, a priori assumption, in whose name divisions must be condemned and overcome. Communism Resolving the apparent tension between communism and nationalism was but one of the ideological battles waged among Vietnamese intellectuals ‘not only over the form of their state, but over the nature of Vietnamese society, the very identity of the Vietnamese’ (Huynh 1982, 9). The ‘scholar-patriots’ of the early anti-colonial struggle disagreed in their interpretation of modernisation and what was worth preserving of Vietnamese culture. In the decades after the Second World War, the DRV then had to find a suitable combination of socialist principle and nationalist mobilisation. In the GDR, a parallel process was conducted in an inconsistent and hence unconvincing manner. The SED went from upholding the unity of the German nation to repudiating it by the early 1970s, and attempting to construct a separate, GDR identity. While replacing some, but not all references to Germans and Germany with the term GDR, it sought to retain certain historical and literary paragons for this new nationbuilding endeavour. This forced its ideologues and historians to make tortuous distinctions between ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’, which never corresponded to many GDR citizens’ continued understanding of themselves as German. The East German experience lays bare the constructed nature of nationalist ideology in its bald reinterpretation of German history as class struggle, and its bold elevation of doctrinally sound communists to the status of national heroes, while leaving a host of other eminent historical figures by the wayside. The SED’s attempt to redefine the nation to fit its truncated state subjected German symbols to yet more manipulation, but this construct never achieved the legitimacy it craved. In 1989, it was trampled underfoot by East

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German demonstrators holding banners proclaiming ‘We are one people’, a signal that the competing ideology of German national unity had more enduring mobilising potential. Likewise in the RVN, a fledgling nation-state had to be fleshed out, which Ngô ≠ình Diêm set about using elements of his ‘personalist’ ideology, together ˙ myths and national heroes. Despite the many potential forms with traditional of Vietnamese nation-state which were mooted throughout the twentieth century, not least in the journey from the DRV’s collectivisation in the 1950s to a ‘socialist market economy’ in the SRV of the 1990s and beyond, the binding myth of belonging has continually drawn on the themes of national unity, longevity and resistance. Continued commemoration of heroic figures like the Trưng sisters and Trâ` n Hưng ≠a o draw on long-standing traditions of ˙ spirit worship, from the imperial practice of officially honouring guardian spirits and ‘culture heroes’ (Jamieson 1993, 9) to the many shrines and festivals, which are a feature of north Vietnamese villages. Although much of this tradition was condemned as ‘superstitious’ in the austere atmosphere of the DRV, it began to be rehabilitated following đổi mới as an example of Vietnamese heritage and patriotism. Historians of Vietnam have necessarily been influenced by ideological imperatives and developmental paradigms, such as the modernisation theory of inexorable progress in vogue among US academics during the 1950s and 1960s (Berger 2003). Their assessments have ranged from accounts emphasising civil war and disunity, and describing southwards expansion from the Red River Delta as ‘Vietnamese colonialism’ (Fall, cited in Vu 2007, 179), through depictions of the Vietnamese village as embodying a ‘national essence’, to seamless primordialist narratives of nationhood forged from resistance to foreign invasion. The Vietnam–American war polarised opinion among Western scholars and commentators, particularly with regard to the relationship between communism and nationalism (Vu 2007, 190). Many adopted the primordialist view of nationhood propagated by both the DRV and the RVN in bolstering their respective legitimacy as the ‘true’ representative of Vietnam. In both states, national division tended to be viewed as a temporary, regrettable aberration brought about by alien forces and ideologies, thereby perpetuating the myths of recurrent Vietnamese victimhood and ‘natural’ Vietnamese unity. The interplay of nationalist and socialist ideologies in Vietnam is encapsulated in a poem composed by Ho Chi Minh around 1940, likening Lenin to a stream and Marx to a mountain waiting to be ‘united into one country’ (Ho, cited in Bradley 2000, 110). This links the fathers of international communism to familiar mythological themes, reminiscent in particular of the Vietnamese founding legend of Âu Cơ and La c Long Quân, mountain fairy and water god respectively. It is typical of the˙ rhetorical technique Ho used

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to bring home the relevance of a fundamentally alien and complex ideology, with its opaque concepts of ‘bourgeoisie’, ‘class’ and even ‘worker’ (McHale 2004, 113). Although prefiguring the division of Vietnam along the seventeenth parallel, the poem’s reference to national unity was a core aim of anti-colonial nationalism, which sought to overcome French Indochina’s administrative divisions of Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina. Following Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of independence in 1945, his close colleague Võ Nguyên Giáp made a speech stating that ‘[t]he center, the south, and the north share one heart’ (cited in McHale 2004, 177). Ironically, general Giáp would go on to lead the French defeat at ≠iên Biên Phu’ in 1954, only to see the Vietnamese ‘geo-body’ (Thongchai 1994) ˙divided into two as a result of the subsequent Geneva agreement. No account can hope to convey fully the heated debates which surrounded the evolution of Vietnamese self-understanding among imperial court historians, anti-colonial nationalists (Tai 1992; Vu 2007, 207) and VCP ideologues alike (Ninh 2002, 242). The Communist Party’s own ideological focus shifted strategically during the 1930s and 1940s in response to the evolving domestic and international situation. Its eighth plenum in 1941 saw the creation of the Viet Minh and marked the move from emphasising class struggle towards ‘revolutionary nationalism’, anticolonial heroism and national liberation (Bradley 2000, 109). At the same time, communist internationalism was also reflected in the peripatetic lifestyle of leaders like Ho Chi Minh and cross-fertilisation with communists in China, the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Unlike the East German SED, neither the VCP nor Diê m’s regime ever attempted to create a nation to match their truncated state;˙both professed to be the true representative of Vietnam as a whole and demand reunification on their terms (Connor 1984, 454). The projection of national identity, continuity and unity into the distant past has been the mainstay of nationbuilding ideology in the SRV. Discrepancies, such as how to reconcile steady southwards expansion with de facto division in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and inaccuracies, such as the assertion that southern lands were deserted when Cham, Khmer and upland cultures really all had an important part to play in southern Vietnamese history, are glossed over in a narrative of Vietnamese unity. So what can we conclude from the Vietnamese case about the compatibility of communism and nationalism? Communist cadres were faced with the gargantuan task of introducing a new discourse to Vietnam; ‘of ensuring that the audience gave “ready-made” interpretations to individual concepts, nested these concepts within a structured ideology, and then linked this mental world back to practice’ (McHale 2004, 105). In the event, the Viet Minh appealed to the people (dân tôc) and the fatherland (tổ quô´ c) rather than highlight class divisions. To this˙extent, nationalist and communist goals could

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be complementary, but only if ideological links were forged between core elements of each, such as communist revolution and anti-colonial struggle, heroes and workers, capitalist exploitation and national liberation. Scholars have long debated whether nationalism or communism dominates this ideological construction of the Vietnamese nation and where the loyalties of its chief exponent truly lay (McHale 2004, 180; Vu 2007, 193). One is tempted to let Ho Chi Minh himself have the last, slightly ambiguous word on the matter, if we recall that Lenin merely paid lip service to nationalism: ‘At first, it was patriotism (chu nghia yeu nuoc) [sic] not yet communism (chu nghia cong san) [sic], which led me to have confidence in Lenin, in the third international’ (Ho, cited in Vasavakul 1995, 261). In its various guises, the VCP has continued to marry nationalism and communism in its nationbuilding, repeating core messages, myths and stories until they became taken for granted elements of official discourse. Regionalism To former GDR citizens, the introduction of the euro currency in 2000 signalled yet another stage in adapting to what was still a Western European project. In this sense, European integration was a symbolically laden process bound up with post-war West Germany’s rehabilitation as an international partner, the latest stage in which was an ambitious economic and monetary plan to bind a potentially strengthened and resurgent united Germany into a strong regional organisation. Similarly, Vietnam’s integration into ASEAN marks the recognition on all sides of the importance of a regional framework, with existing members overcoming suspicion of communist Vietnam in order to present a more united Southeast Asian front on the international stage. This provided a platform for embarking on negotiations with the EU, for instance, as well as a more viable basis for future economic integration through the ASEAN Free Trade Area (Stubbs 2004, 226). There were thus marked similarities between the goals of ASEAN’s founding members, who had come together for the sake of regional peace, security and economic development (Wunderlich 2006, 90), and the rationale behind ASEAN’s 1990s enlargement. Vietnam shared these objectives. Since beginning the process of economic liberalisation in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of collapse, Vietnam believed its national interests to be better served through regional alliances such as ASEAN, rather than former links with a ‘socialist brotherhood’ of nations. At the same time, Vietnam placed the same value on preserving national sovereignty as its ASEAN neighbours. The principle of non-interference which is central to the ‘ASEAN way’ enabled it to engage in regional integration without having to defend this sovereignty either rhetorically or in practice.

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Vietnam’s regionalism worked to shore up domestic legitimacy without affecting its nation-building discourse of resistance to foreign interference, economic, diplomatic or otherwise. United Germany’s commitment to economic and monetary union under the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, on the other hand, did mean sacrificing the pre-eminence of the Deutschmark, partly in order to reassure fellow EU member states as to its future intentions. The onset of Germany’s so-called ‘normalisation’ in the 1990s, which saw it reconsider its approach to foreign military intervention, for instance, was inscribed within a firm regional framework. This not only served the national interest, as in the Vietnamese case, but also those of other member states, by stopping Germany from ‘going it alone’. As such, both Germany and Vietnam may have come in from the cold to the regional fold at the beginning and end of Cold War hostilities respectively, but they did so under the very different premises of an ‘ever closer union’ in Europe and the inviolability of national sovereignty in Southeast Asia. Without legitimacy, the nation-state construct crumbles. It is therefore up to governments to create and maintain legitimacy through nation-building. This ideology is flexible and pragmatic enough to cope with the vagaries of the modern world: ‘It is not globalisation per se which might weaken the nation-state, so much as the way in which state elites respond to globalisation’ (Brown 2000, 92). Regionalism has been one means of co-opting international developments for nation-building purposes, and the importance of this to German nation-building is clear. Beneath the ‘thin veneer’ (Vatikiotis 1996, 22) of Vietnam’s cooperation with ASEAN, on the other hand, lies a nationbuilding project which places the notion of bounded sovereignty under no real threat. Indeed, ‘[r]egionalism may be a way of preserving the state, and the system of which it is a part’ (Tarling 2006, 31). Member state collaboration according to the less-than-onerous ‘ASEAN way’ can serve to insulate the Southeast Asian region against international threats while respecting a Westphalian understanding of territorial sovereignty far removed from precolonial forms of governance (Elson 2004, 18). ASEAN is ultimately an extension of ‘what nation-states do best, establishing and maintaining sovereign territorial boundaries’ (Callahan 2004, 58, 61). Several millennia of shared history, suzerainty, dynastic loyalty and conquest across continents cannot be shoehorned into Westphalian notions of national sovereignty and independence, although nation-building myths and ideologies tend to do just that (Wolters 1999; Kelley 2003). Vietnam’s complex relations with China, though ‘asymmetric’ (Womack 2006), cannot be reduced to a narrative of repeated national resistance against enemy incursions. Neither should the diverse Asian influences balancing the impact of Chinese culture and politics over the centuries be underestimated. Indeed, Vietnam’s own southern expansion was less about Vietnamisation than the multifaceted

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integration of Cham, Khmer and upland cultures, not to mention wider seaborne links with various Indian, Japanese, Malay and European traders and missionaries (Li 1998). The contours of Southeast Asia are fluid and contested, but its cultural diversity offers a rich iconography for constructing regionalist identity as an element of Vietnamese nation-building (Wunderlich 2006, 148). Long-term plans for an ASEAN museum on the grounds of the Ethnological Museum in Hanoi point to this possibility (Sutherland 2005b, 152). The European case, however, suggests that regionalist ideology does not necessarily involve a greater or more inclusive range of perspectives, if myths such as a shared Judeo-Christian heritage merely take the place of a dominant national ethnie (Smith 1995). Transcending notions of nation-state sovereignty and boundedness analytically leads to new theoretical paradigms, which are not hemmed in by a discourse of ‘verticality’ and ‘encompassment’ (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). In practice, however, the maintenance of political frontiers helps government nation-building to monitor their actual porousness and officially exclude ‘all that is not culturally familiar’ (Carter 1987, 158), be it through immigration controls, internet firewalls, clampdowns on democracy campaigners or limited opening to international cooperation. The impact of international ‘ethnoscapes’ and ‘ideoscapes’ (Appadurai 1990) is thus limited by the continued controls emanating from nation-states. Tom Nairn (1997, 210) extended Appadurai’s spatial metaphor to so-called ‘sovereigntyscapes’, which he defined as ‘the deeper configuration of central authority inherited and taken for granted, and in practice grafted on to most ideas (including popular ideas) of the nation’. The term emphasises the importance of placing nation-building within a wider relational network, while continuing to foreground sovereignty as a core concept of contemporary nation-building. Although Nairn (1997, 211) acknowledged that ‘the banks of sovereignty are now themselves shifting rapidly in new tides,’ the pursuit of legitimacy prompts governments to keep the nation-state afloat on such ‘new tides’ as globalisation and regionalisation. Hence the enduring allure of propagating unity and longevity myths in soldered states.

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1111 21 3 4 51 6 7 8 9 10 1 1112 3 411 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 211

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Germany is used here to mean the Federal Republic both before and after unification, except where the Bonn and Berlin republics have separate entries. Vietnam is used as shorthand for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in sub-entries. Adenauer, Konrad 54, 58, 71, 72, 74, 156, 163 AFTA see ASEAN Free Trade Area ASEAN see Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN Free Trade Area 68, 71, 168 Association of Southeast Asian Nations 23, 31, 65, 68, 168, 169, 170 Cambodia/Kampuchea and 67 human rights and 70 security and 11, 69 Vietnam and 11, 65–9, 164, 168, 168–70 way 21, 66, 69, 70, 168, 169 Augstein, Rudolf 73, 96–7 authenticity 104, 105, 110 Ba ≠ình square 2, 10, 81, 82, 88, 146 Basic Law (Grundgesetz) 37, 52, 55, 56, 60, 61, 71, 73, 74, 112, 164 Beijing 38, 83, 84 forbidden city 49, 83, 124 Berlin 76, 89–97, 98 Allied Museum 117 buildings 84, 94, 110, 116, 164 see also Palast der Republik GDR and 81, 90–3, 97 republic 75, 76, 81, 89, 96, 97, 98, 128, 134, 161 see also Federal Republic of Germany (Berlin Republic) symbolism of 3, 74, 80, 81, 117 Berlin Wall 3, 10, 26, 76, 91–3, 97, 114, 163 fall of 7, 37, 56, 108, 114 Biermann, Wolf 60–1 Bismarck, Otto von 53, 77, 138

Brandt, Willy 54, 58, 72 Brezhnev, Leonid 59 Bronze Age in Vietnam see ≠ông Sơn civilisation Budapest 80 Cambodia 11, 32, 66, 67, 68, 69, 125 Cham empire 11, 37, 39, 47, 122, 125, 126, 149, 167, 170 Champa see Cham empire China 16, 32, 39, 48, 50, 67, 68, 79, 105, 121, 122, 124, 135, 164, 167 Chinese imperialism in Vietnam 11, 37, 43, 46, 51, 124, 131, 135, 137, 142, 143, 149, 151 Chirac, Jacques 152, 155 Christo 94–5 cities 79, 80–5 citizenship 25 legislation in Germany 55, 56, 60 Cold War 7, 9, 36, 66, 80, 153 in Germany 3, 11, 56, 72, 81, 90, 93, 94, 108, 113, 117, 139, 156, 161 in Vietnam 71, 142 in Southeast Asia 68 communism 99 heroes and 137, 138, 140, 141, 144–5, 146, 150 in Vietnam 7, 48, 49, 50, 63, 64, 67, 76, 102, 125, 130, 135, 167 see also Vietnamese Communist Party in Germany 54, 63, 64, 94, 108, 152 see also Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands see also nationalism and communism

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conceptual travelling 8, 31–4 Confucianism 41, 42, 43, 48, 164 democracy 32, 33, 50, 69 Democratic Republic of Vietnam 38, 76, 88, 106, 118, 119, 121, 122, 134, 135, 160, 163, 165, 166 Republic of Vietnam and 48, 49 Deutsches Historisches Museum 10, 57, 74, 92, 93, 96, 99, 108–18, 127, 128, 152, 156, 164 DHM see Deutsches Historisches Museum Diêm see Ngô ≠ình Diêm ˙ 119, 122, 124, ≠iê˙ n Biên Phu’ 37, 88, 118, ˙ 167 Street, Hanoi 82 discourse 7, 10, 14, 18, 22, 25, 26–8, 47, 56, 65, 71, 81, 105, 106, 107, 136, 147, 158, 163, 168, 169, 170 nation and 5, 6, 16, 19, 24, 45, 61, 62, 64, 74, 75, 76, 84, 85, 97, 104, 118, 121, 123, 124, 127, 131, 140, 141, 157, 167 divided memory 96, 109, 110 đổi mới 7, 63, 66, 67, 87, 123, 166 ≠ông Sơn civilisation 48, 50, 64, 65, 122, 126, 128, 137, 142 DRV see Democratic Republic of Vietnam Dutschke, Rudi 76 East Germany see German Democratic Republic Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient 88, 119 Engels, Friedrich 28, 101, 102 Enquete Commission 75–6 Erhard, Ludwig 163 ethnic minorities in Vietnam 37, 40, 46, 47, 52, 123, 125, 126, 127, 141, 149, 167, 170 EU see European Union European Union 20, 71, 152, 153, 154, 155, 168 Germany and 65–6, 71–4, 77, 131, 168 see also Federal Republic of Germany and EU identity 20, 132, 170 Treaty on see Maastricht, Treaty of Federal Republic of Germany 36, 133, 160, 161 (Berlin republic) 56–7, 60, 74, 75, 134, 156 see also Berlin republic (Bonn republic) 54–5, 134, 154

EU and 11, 37, 61, 110, 112, 113, 114, 127, 134, 155, 156, 158, 161, 164, 165, 169 see also European Union and Germany security and 11 see also regional integration First World War 99, 102 Fischer, Joschka 73 French colonialism 37, 39, 41, 42, 44, 46, 50, 77, 79, 106, 107, 119, 121, 122, 123, 134, 147, 164 see also Hanoi FRG see Federal Republic of Germany Garnier, Francis 86 Gastarbeiter 55 GDR see German Democratic Republic Genscher, Hans-Dietrich 73 geo-body 16–17, 20, 25, 48, 167 German Democratic Republic 36, 91, 93, 94, 99, 109, 128, 133, 134, 139, 140, 154, 156, 160, 161, 162, 168 elections 60 identity 37, 62, 63, 75, 90, 110, 116 ideology 34, 61, 103, 108, 138, 165 German Historical Museum see Deutsches Historisches Museum German unification 60, 61, 62, 63, 72, 73, 74, 77, 89, 111, 113, 114, 133, 156 Germany see Federal Republic of Germany Gióng (Dóng) 143–4, 145 globalisation 18, 34, 40, 62, 78, 85, 169 regionalisation and 9, 11, 12, 170 globalism 18 Gorbachev, Mikhail 7 governance 13, 15, 18, 69, 103, 169 multilevel 20, 21–2 governmentality 17–18, 21, 25, 29, 34, 89 graffiti 83, 90–1, 97 Grotewohl, Otto 115 Grundgesetz see Basic Law Habermas, Jürgen 25, 75 Hanoi 52, 80, 85–9, 98 B52 Museum 118, 119, 120 French colonialism and 79, 86, 87, 88, 134 heroes and 87, 88, 143, 146 streetscape 1–3, 13, 82, 83, 87, 88, 120 Military Museum 124 Museum of Ethnology 52, 123, 126, 170 Museum of the Revolution 119, 126 National History Museum 10, 88, 99, 118, 123, 124, 127, 148, 164 VCP and 87–8

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Heimat 54, 62, 73 heroes 104, 128, 151, 152, 154, 157 definition of 130, 135–7, 140, 143 in Germany 90–1, 97, 117, 137–8, 139, 140, 152, 163 in the GDR 64, 75, 108, 163, 165, 137, 139 in Vietnam 11, 40, 42, 43, 46, 48, 49, 51, 64, 81, 107, 118, 124, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 135, 136, 137, 141–51, 163, 166 myths and 84 nations and 84 Heym, Stefan 115 Historikerstreit 74, 81, 94, 97, 110 Hitler, Adolf 74, 76, 117, 139, 154, 163 Ho Chi Minh 43, 44, 45, 46, 64, 65, 88–9, 119, 121, 125, 128, 130, 135, 141, 143, 146, 157, 166, 167, 168 Mausoleum, Hanoi 10, 45, 81–2, 88, 146 Museum, Hanoi 81 thought 71 trail 38 Ho Chi Minh City 47, 52 Museum of History 84, 124–6 War Remnants Museum 84 Holocaust, the 74, 80, 97, 115 memorial 3, 74, 84, 96 Honecker, Erich 59, 64, 72, 138 Hong Kong 124 Huê´ 49, 52, 83, 85, 107, 119, 122 Hùng kings 47, 49, 64, 125, 126, 142, 144, 146, 147, 148, 157 icons 88, 93, 94, 97, 104, 113, 117, 145, 163 definition of 84, 116 ideology 19, 27, 28–31, 34, 83, 99, 100, 121, 134, 137, 139, 146, 157, 158 definition of 17, 31 museums and 103, 109, 111 nationalist 4, 18, 116, 132, 140, 147, 164, 165 Indochina 37, 66, 67, 86, 88, 89, 119, 122, 134, 164, 167 Indochinese Communist Party 122, 141 Indochinese war 48, 135, 143 Japan 46, 105, 134, 170 Kampuchea see Cambodia Kiesinger, Kurt 54 Kim Liên 87, 146, 147

191

Kinh ethnic group 46, 47, 52, 125, 127 Kohl, Helmut 7, 57, 60, 61, 64, 72, 73–4, 96, 109, 110, 161, 164 Kollhoff, Hans 94 Lady Triêu see Triêu, Lady ˙ Oskar ˙61, 72–3 Lafontaine, Lampugnani, Vittorio 94 Laos 11, 66, 69, 121 Lê Duâ’ n 47 Lê Dynasty (early) 150 (later) 38, 39, 127, 146, 149 Lê Lợi 87, 124 Lee Kuan Yew 78 legitimacy 4, 10, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 68, 83, 147, 169 in Vietnam 33, 64, 69, 78, 128, 131, 132, 135, 137, 141, 147, 151, 157, 166 in Germany 110, 154 in the GDR 64, 90, 108, 110, 117, 165 museums and 105 state and 11, 17–18, 19, 31, 34, 84, 98, 100, 104, 128, 157, 158, 164 see also regional integration Leitkultur 52, 55 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 43, 64, 88, 99, 101, 102, 137, 138, 146, 166, 168 statues of 82, 90, 97 Libeskind, Daniel, 84, 94 London 83, 84, 98, 101, 104 Ly´ Thái Tổ 85, 88 Ly´ Thường Kiêt Street 87, 88˙ Maastricht, Treaty of 11, 73, 74, 161, 169 Mahathir, Mohamad 78 Mao Zedong 88, 146 Marx, Karl 28, 64, 99, 101, 102, 113, 166 Marxist-Leninism 33, 43, 44, 71, 102, 108, 109, 144 MdG see Museum für deutsche Geschichte Merkel, Angela 7, 57, 96, 108–10 Mongol invasions of Vietnam 11, 43, 124, 131, 143, 146, 149, 164 Moscow 103, 104 multiculturalism 52, 55, 56, 133 Museum für deutsche Geschichte 75, 92, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 128 museums 80, 84, 99, 100, 103–5 communism and 85, 103, 111, 128 Germany and 108–118 memory and 111

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myths and 106, 117, 127 post-colonialism and 105–6, 107 states and 104 Vietnam and 106, 107, 118–27, 131 see also nation-building myths 105–6, 117, 127, 147, 157, 161, 170 definition of 100, 116 in Germany 110, 114, 116, 117, 117, 156, 158 in the GDR 61, 75, 108, 115, 138 in Vietnam 34, 39, 47, 51, 64, 69, 85, 87, 116, 127, 142, 144, 145, 147, 165, 166 nam tiê´ n (Vietnamese southward expansion) 11, 39, 47, 83, 126, 127, 149, 151, 166, 167, 169 nation 26, 147 definition of 5 in the GDR 59 in Vietnam 34, 143–4 state and 4–6, 13–14, 29, 32, 34 nation-building 18, 19, 23, 25, 26, 103, 104, 128, 136, 147, 157, 160–70 cities and 81, 83 definition of 6, 8 education and 132–5 ideology 4–5, 83, 89, 97, 100, 131, 152 in Germany 36, 52–7, 58, 61–4, 97, 109, 110, 114, 118, 132, 134, 139–40, 156 see also national history in Germany in the GDR 36, 55, 57–9, 64, 76, 115, 137, 165 see also Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands and nation-building in Vietnam 11, 37–52, 64, 88, 126, 131, 132, 135, 141–51 see also national history in Vietnam; Vietnamese Communist Party and nation-building longue durée and 37, 50, 109, 127, 154, 155, 158, 160, 164 see also national history museums and 103, 104, 105, 107, 112, 119, 128 nation-state 4–6, 21, 36 national history 110, 144, 157, 158 in Germany 52–4, 81, 109, 110, 112, 113, 117–18, 133, 134, 152–6, 158, 160 see also nation-building in Germany; nation-building in the GDR in Vietnam 38–52, 65 106, 107, 119, 121–5, 132, 137, 141–2, 143, 144, 147, 148–52, 166, 167

see also nation-building and Vietnam; Vietnamese Communist Party and nation-building museums and 100, 103, 110, 111, 113, 124–7, 128 see also nation-building and longue durée national identity 27–8, 101, 103, 105, 136 cities and 82–3 in Germany 96–7, 98, 104, 107, 110, 115, 134, 140, 155 in Vietnam 87, 121, 124 see also patriotism in Vietnam national monuments communism and 80 in Hanoi 82 in Germany 107–8 in the GDR 108, 115, 117, 163 memory and 80 National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC 84, 103 nationalism 4, 26, 160 communism and 99, 100, 100–2, 106, 131, 139, 141, 144, 151, 154, 157, 165, 166, 167 theories of 5, 25, 50, 86, 142 Nazism 29, 54, 74, 76, 77, 81, 94, 96, 115, 132, 133, 137, 138, 139, 163, 164 GDR and 64, 75, 76, 91, 108, 110, 161 New York 98, 155 Ngô ≠ình Diêm 48–50, 135, 166, 167 ˙ 149 Ngô Quyê` n 124, Nguyê˜n An Ninh 42 Nguyê˜n dynasty 37, 38, 39, 41, 48, 49, 83, 106, 119, 126, 127, 151 Nguyê˜n Hoàng 38, 40 Nguyê˜n Trãi 124, 151 nodal points 9, 27, 31, 86, 97, 145, 158 definition of 26 Nolte, Ernst see Historikerstreit Nông ≠ư ´ c Manh 142

˙

Óc Eo civilisation 40, 122, 126 Ostpolitik 58, 72 Palast der Republik 3, 81, 94 Paris 104 Louvre 84, 105 Peace Treaty (1991) 67 Agreement (1973) 118 Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus 62, 163 patriotism 25, 75, 100, 105 in Germany 53, 54, 56, 62, 97, 132, 138

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in Vietnam 40, 43, 49, 77, 148, 151, 166, 168 PDS see Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus Pei, I.M. 84, 116, 164 Pham Quy`nh 45 ˙ Bôi Châu 41, 42, 134, 135, 141, 150 Phan ˙ Trinh 42, 43, 134, 135 Phan Chu Phan Va˘n Kha’ i 70 political culture 27 Quang Trung 82, 88, 137 quô´c ngữ 44, 45, 51, 134 regional integration 8, 19 theories of 20 state legitimacy and 12 Germany and 8, 11 regionalism 31 definition of 18 in Southeast Asia 19, 169 nation-building and 19, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 78, 155, 158, 169 see also ASEAN; European Union; globalisation and regionalisation see also regional integration Republic of Vietnam 48–50, 76, 85, 119, 122, 125, 135, 160, 162, 163, 166 RVN see Republic of Vietnam Sa Huy`nh civilisation 40, 126 Saigon 119, 122 fall of 7, 46, 63 see also Ho Chi Minh City Schäuble, Wolfgang 96 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 93, 94 Schröder, Gerhard 7, 11, 55, 56, 96, 152 Schumacher, Kurt 71 Second World War 15, 46, 64, 66, 74, 89, 107, 115, 116, 117, 163, 165 SED see Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands socialism see communism Socialist Republic of Vietnam 123, 166, 167 victimhood and 11, 47, 149, 163, 166 sovereignty 17, 18, 19, 21, 22–4, 31, 35, 101, 144, 170 ASEAN and 69, 70, 169 in Vietnam 33, 69, 70, 71, 78 Soviet Union 72, 74, 102, 103, 108, 114, 117, 137, 138 GDR and 37, 59, 60 Vietnam and 122, 135, 167, 168

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Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands 36–7, 60, 75, 100, 110, 138, 140, 156 nation-building and 57, 58, 59, 62, 64, 75, 90, 115, 165 space 22, 25, 26, 27, 80–4, 88, 90, 97, 122, 153 museums and 105, 107, 112, 113, 114, 125, 126 Stalin, Joseph 81, 102, 121, 122 Stalingrad 138 Stalinism 62, 74 state 4, 6, 22 in Vietnam 13, 14–15, 33, 78 spatialisation 15, 18, 21, 26, 34, 97, 170 Stauffenberg, Claus von 117, 139, 163 Stimman, Hans 93, 94 Taiwan 124 Tam Lang 86 textbooks 107, 131, 133, 145–6, 162 in Germany 132, 152–6 in Vietnam 134, 135, 141, 142, 147–52, 165, 157 Thailand 16, 66, 67, 77, 121, 125 Thälmann, Ernst 90, 97, 138, 163 Tha˘ ng Long 38, 85, 143 Tôn ≠ức Tha˘´ ng 162 Trâ`n Hưng ≠ao 88, 124, 141, 146, 151, 157, ˙ 166 Triêu, Lady 46, 124 ˙ sisters 46, 49, 88, 124, 130, 137, 143, Trưng 146, 149, 157, 166 Ulbricht, Walter 58, 59, 138 United States of America 11, 40, 49, 50, 68, 76, 84, 103, 114, 116, 117, 118, 166 US, USA see United States of America VCP see Vietnamese Communist Party Vergangenheitsbewältigung 54, 55, 76, 94, 115, 162 Viet Minh 42, 43, 45, 46, 107, 135, 167 Vietnam see Socialist Republic of Vietnam Vietnam–American War 46, 68, 76, 106, 118, 135, 136, 137, 165, 166 Vietnamese Communist Party 10, 15, 33, 46, 48, 50, 64, 65, 100, 123, 128, 131, 132, 135, 165, 167 Hanoi and 79 heroes and 77, 136, 137, 142, 144–5, 146, 157

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nation-building and 37, 39, 40, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 69, 77, 82, 89, 102, 107, 121, 141, 160, 162, 168 see also nation-building in Vietnam; national history and Vietnam regionalism and 37, 65, 66, 67, 71 see also ASEAN Vietnamese History Museum see Hanoi National History Museum Võ Nguyên Giáp 37, 167

Võ Va˘ n Kiêt 87 ˙ ng 86–7 Vu˜ Trong Phu ˙ ˙ Weizsäcker, Richard von 115, 163 West Germany see Federal Republic of Germany (Bonn republic) Westbindung 73, 77, 112, 114 Wirtschaftswunder 71, 77, 139, 161 Zimmer, Gabrielle 62