Writings
Articles
Desperta Ferro
Billock, Cody J. "La batalla por la ciudad imperial" (The Battle for the Imperial City). Desperta Ferro, September 2024, pp. 12-19.
The article "La batalla por la ciudad imperial" focuses on the battle to recapture the Citadel during the Tet Offensive of 1968. It provides a detailed account of the intense urban combat between U.S. Marines, South Vietnamese forces, and the entrenched North Vietnamese troops. The article also highlights the crucial role of the South Vietnamese forces in the effort to reclaim the city, emphasizing their contribution to the eventual victory. The narrative culminates with the recapture of the Imperial City on February 24, 1968, and underscores the strategic importance of Huế and the challenges faced in this pivotal battle of the Vietnam War.
Desperta Ferro
Billock, Cody J. "Huế: la conquista inesperada" (Huế: The Unexpected Conquest). Desperta Ferro, September 2024, pp. 12-19.
The article “Huế: la conquista inesperada” examines the unexpected capture of Huế during the Tet Offensive in January 1968. It provides a detailed account of how communist forces infiltrated the city and quickly seized key strategic locations, including the Citadel and military posts. The article emphasizes the role of local communist networks in planning the attack and the unpreparedness of South Vietnamese and U.S. forces, who were caught off guard by the scale and intensity of the offensive. This analysis sheds light on the early successes of the communist forces during one of the most significant battles of the Vietnam War.
Book & Article Reviews
H-Diplo Article Review 1214
Article review of Nathaniel Moir, “To Each His Turn … Today Yours, Tomorrow Mine: François Sully’s Turn in History,” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 30 (2023) 274–309.
In my review of Nathaniel Moir's article, "To Each His Turn … Today Yours, Tomorrow Mine: François Sully’s Turn in History," I summarize Moir’s examination of the career of French journalist François Sully and his influential role in shaping Western views on the Vietnam War and the Republic of Vietnam. Sully, known for his critical reporting on the Ngô Đình Diệm regime, spent over two decades in Vietnam, immersing himself in Vietnamese society. Moir argues that Sully's reporting contributed to the deteriorating relationship between the Western press and the Diệm government, ultimately playing a role in Diệm’s assassination. In addition, Moir highlights how some Western reporters like Sully had very legitimate area studies expertise.
Moir critiques the "Vietnamese turn" in Vietnam War scholarship, arguing that this shift has overshadowed journalists like Sully by focusing more on Vietnamese perspectives and archival research. He suggests that Sully’s work has been undervalued due to the emphasis on Vietnamese agency in more recent scholarship. In my response, I argue that the "Vietnamese turn" does not aim to ignore Western actors like Sully but rather to create a more comprehensive historical narrative by highlighting Vietnamese actors. I also note some of Sully’s limitations as a Vietnam watcher. Furthermore, I note that the "Vietnamese turn" accounts for only a small percentage of the overall scholarship on the Vietnam War, which continues to be dominated by works based on American archives.
Found here: https://networks.h-net.org/group/discussions/20036144/h-diplo-article-review-1214-billock-moir-each-his-turn
François Sully
Society of Military History Review Nguyen-Marshall, Van. Between War and the State: Civil Society in South Vietnam, 1955-1975. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023.
In my review of Van Nguyen-Marshall's "Between War and the State: Civil Society in South Vietnam, 1954-1975,” I explore how the author delves into the often overlooked civil society organizations in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). Nguyen-Marshall challenges the traditional portrayal of the RVN as a puppet regime, instead highlighting the agency of non-state actors like labor unions, social service groups, and orphanages. Her Vietnam-centric approach demonstrates the continuity between colonial, pre-colonial, and modern Vietnamese organizations, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of South Vietnam’s society during the war. While the book has a somewhat disjointed structure, the scholarship is truly impressive, as she draws from oral interviews, newspapers, and Vietnamese archival documentation. She has made a significant contribution to our understanding of South Vietnamese society.
Society of Military History Review
Billock, Cody. “Review of SOG Kontum: Top Secret Missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, 1968–1969, by Joe Parnar and Robert Dumont.” The Journal of Military History 87, no. 4 (October 2023): 1183-1185.
In my review of SOG Kontum: Top Secret Missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, 1968–1969, I focus on the book’s detailed recounting of SOG veterans' personal experiences during covert operations in the Central Highlands. The narrative emphasizes the bravery and sacrifices of these soldiers, offering compelling insights into these top-secret and previously disclosed missions. The book is based on an impressive array of interviews. However, it lacks any engagement with other historical scholarship and, consequently, is well-suited for general readers and military history enthusiasts.
Conference Papers
The COSVN Series: New Insights into the Communist Revolution in South Vietnam
In April 2024, I presented a paper entitled, “The COSVN Series: New Insights into the Communist Revolution in South Vietnam,” hosted at the University of California Berkeley. The conference’s theme was Vietnam-Centric Approaches to Vietnam’s Twentieth-Century History.
Abstract: For Vietnam War scholars, the controversial nature of the insurgency against the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and the secretive approach of the victorious Communist side have posed a research challenge since the conflict’s end in 1975. Early scholars grappled with a politically charged research environment and a scarcity of Vietnamese sources. More recent scholars have gained access to state archives—certainly a welcome development. However, this access has remained limited in fundamental ways. Vietnam’s leaders still do not allow scholars to work in the archives of the Communist Party or its military forces, and National Liberation Front (NLF) materials are not available via the National Archival system. Therefore, the Vietnamese government’s recent publication of a massive eighteen-volume collection of Communist Party documents related to the Vietnam War represents an intriguing opportunity. The new collection was compiled by National Truth Political Publishing House and is titled Documents of the Central Office of the South 1946-1975 (Văn kiện Trung ương cục miền nam giai đoạn 1946-1975). It will take years for scholars to work through the collection’s 18,000 pages of documents and assess the various ways that they affect our understanding of the Vietnam War. In this essay, painting in broad brushstrokes, I describe the basic content of this collection and suggest some of the possible implications of its materials. The common denominator of these implications is a remarkably dynamic and engaged Central Office of the South (COSVN) acting as the Communist Party’s eyes, ears, and arms in South Vietnam.
In March 2024, I presented a chapter of my dissertation for the Saigon Social Sciences Hub and the École française d'Extrême-Orient.
The 1966 Central Upheaval: Politics and Protests in the RVN
On March 29, 2024, the prestigious École Française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO, the French School of the Far East) and the Sài Gòn Social Sciences Hub invited me to give an hour-long talk on my dissertation chapter on the 1966 Central Upheavals. These complicated political protests, based in Huế and Đà Nẵng cities in Central Vietnam, were motivated by calls for democracy and plagued by factionalism and infighting. This presentation was based on extensive research I had previously conducted in Vietnam. You can watch the video on my Youtube page found below.
I presented my research in 2019 at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In 2019, I was awarded the Presidential Award at San Diego State University (SDSU) for my research project on the 1968 Tết Offensive and my presentation at the Student Research Symposium.