Join the Department of American and Canadian Studies for a ‘Roundtable on the 50th anniversary of the Americanisation of the Vietnam War’.

Contributions from some of the world’s leading scholars include:

• Professor Judy Wu, University of California, Irvine
• Professor Matthew Jones, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Dr Christopher Phelps, University of Nottingham

Lyndon Johnson’s decision in the spring of 1965 to commit American troops to Vietnam – which led to over 180,000 troops fighting there by the year’s end and over half a million by 1968 – provided the catalyst for a series of reappraisals of American power, the nature of the Cold War, and the state of America itself as nation-wide protests emerged against the continuance of the war and intersected with other prominent protest movements in the late 1960s. As debates in the wake of more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan attest, there is a strong sense that the United States has never quite come to terms with the fallout from the war in Vietnam. Coinciding with the anniversary of the key moments of decision in the United States fifty years ago, this roundtable will see two leading scholars draw out some of the consequences of US decision-making and open up a range of debates about the importance of the war in American history. Judy Wu will discuss the war’s consequence with respect to various protest movements and the emergence of a cohort of ‘internationalists’ committed to fighting for peace, race and gender equality; Matthew Jones, meanwhile, will discuss the reasons that underlay Johnson’s decisions to Americanise the war and cite the often overlooked importance of China’s emergence as a major regional force in shaping US thinking.

Admission free, all welcome.

To book, visit vietnamanniversary.eventbrite.co.uk