Part 1: "Getting In: The United States
and Vietnam to 1968”
Daniel Sargent
Assistant Professor
University of California, Berkeley

Listen to Lecture 1 | (go to Lecture 2)

Daniel Sargent link is an Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD. from Harvard University and has written numerous articles and books on internationalism, globalism and US foreign policy.

Speaker's Slides coming soon |Speaker's Readings

Summary: This first lecture covers the Vietnam War through to the 1968 Tet Offensive. After situating the Vietnam War in broader historical context, this lecture tursn to its origins, from the French colonization of Indochina to the emergence of the United States as the major foreign sponsor of the independent Republic of Viet Nam (RVN) from the mid-1950's. The lecture assk how ideas about social development and nation-building shaped American involvement in Viet Nam, and it explains why the United States ended up taking a proactive military role, from 1965 onwards. This lecture concludes with the Tet Offensive of 1968.