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Singapore and the Vietnam war

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2009

Ang Cheng Guan
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Abstract

This article attempts to fill two gaps in two sets of inter-related historiographies, that of the diplomatic history of Singapore and that of the Vietnam war. For a number of reasons, not much had been published about the foreign policy of Singapore from the historical perspective. The Southeast Asian dimension of the Vietnam war is also starkly missing from the voluminous literature on the war. This article thus tries to describe and explain Singapore's attitude towards the war as it evolved over the ten years — from 1965, when the war really began and which coincided with the year that Singapore became independent, to 1975, a period which overlaps with the first ten years of Singapore's independence. Hopefully, this study will provide an understanding of one aspect of Singapore's foreign policy in its first 10 years as well as offer one Southeast Asian perspective on the Vietnam war.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 353 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2009

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