Summary of chapter 4 of the Arch of the Empire
The arch of empire is a book that narrates the events of the great war that took place in Asia involving America. These series of wars ran through the Philippines, Japan, Korea and Vietnam from 1899 to 1973 (Hunt and Steven 4). The armed struggle began in the Philippines engaging the military, and it involved very brutal and a long struggle to attain their freedom. As the tension was winding up in the Philippines, tension rose between Japan and America that exploded into a full-blown war in the Pearl Harbor. Aftermath the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered, but Korea joined the conflict chain five years later. The four battles were not part or distinct in fact they were linked. The aim of the Americans was to dominate Asia even after decades of strong resistance.
Chapter four of the book gives the detail of the events that took place in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973(Hunt and Steven 88). It provides an account of what was done to break the American dominance in Asia. After the Japanese had surrendered the war to America, the Vietnamese gathered in towns to demonstrate for liberation. Earlier they had lived in secret organizing resistance to French colonizers. Nguyen AI Quoc had led a movement with the message “all men are created equal” to resist the French, and a combination the American Declaration of Independence and French Declaration Man and Citizen Rights and a prominent Vietnamese man named Ho was taking over the resistance using the same message. During World War I the American government had perfected the appeal of nationalism, and self-determination.
It is clear that the Vietnamese were not ready to surrender to the US policies, and the power of nationalism made them patriotic and ready to fight for their nation. They had organized themselves well and even expanded their territories south and to add to that they had French by their side. They had historical experience with their resistance from Chinese, and they believed that they were more advanced than the Cambodians and the Laotians and hence had natural leadership in them. They could not allow themselves to return to their past life that characterized weak and backward nation.
Works Cited
Hunt, Michael H, and Steven I. Levine. Arc of Empire: America's Wars in Asia from the Philippines to Vietnam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Internet resource. 185-186. 188-189
