In this study of the encounter between Vietnam and the United States from 1919 to 1950, Mark Bradley reconceptualizes the origins of the Cold War in Vietnam and the place of postcolonial Vietnam in the history of the twentieth century. Bradley draws on Vietnamese-language primary sources and interviews as well as archival materials from France, Great Britain, and the United States, using these sources to reveal an imagined America that occupied a central place in Vietnamese political discourse, symbolizing the qualities that revolutionaries believed were critical for reshaping their society. American policymakers, he argues, articulated their own imagined Vietnam, a deprecating vision informed by the conviction that the country should be remade in America's image. Bradley contends that the global discourse and practices of colonialism, race, modernism, and postcolonial state-making were profoundly implicated in--and ultimately transcended--the dynamics of the Cold War in shaping Vietnamese-American relations. --From publisher's description.

European wind, American rain: the United States in Vietnamese anticolonial discourse -- Representing Vietnam: the interwar American construction of French Indochina -- Trusteeship and the American vision of postcolonial Vietnam -- Self-evident truths?: Vietnam, America, and the August revolution of 1945 -- Improbable opportunities: Vietnamese and American diplomacy in the postcolonial moment -- Conclusion becoming postcolonial in a Cold War world.