"Virgin Mary is Going South": Refugee Resettlement in South Vietnam, 1954-1956

Virgin Mary is Going South: Refugee Resettlement in South Vietnam, 1954-1956 Lecture | February 15 | 12:30-2 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton, 6th Floor), 6F Conference Room
Speaker: Jessica Breiteneicher Elkind, Assistant Professor of History, San Francisco State University Sponsor: Center for Southeast Asia Studies
In the months following the 1954 partition of Vietnam, nearly one million people left their homes north of the 17th parallel, hoping for better and more secure lives in the south. Vietnamese and American policy makers believed this refugee crisis was occurring at a crucial time for the new state of South Vietnam, and they became heavily invested in resettling the refugees. Using American and Vietnamese archival sources, this presentation will examine how the government of South Vietnam worked in partnership with the U.S. government and various American non-governmental organizations on resettlement efforts. However, these efforts were not the overwhelming success that policymakers at the time and many scholars since have made them out to be. Instead, Vietnamese and American officials allowed the short-term accomplishments of resettlement programs to mask the long-term failures of their policies. Most importantly, their experiences in refugee resettlement efforts instilled in Americans a misplaced optimism about the feasibility of U.S. efforts to support and modernize the South Vietnamese state - an illusion that ultimately led to full-scale military intervention.

Jessica Elkind (Ph.D., UCLA) is an assistant professor of history at San Francisco State University where she teaches courses on U.S. foreign relations and Southeast Asian history. She is currently working on a book that explores American nation-building efforts and the role of civilian aid workers in South Vietnam from 1955 to 1965.
Event Contact: cseas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-3609