Random Question.

[Discount_Blade]

There is a small but still sizeable portion of Vietnamese where I'm at. Now, you would think Vietnamese would have some kind of issues with Americans considering the Vietnam War wasan't too long ago. Many of them are old enough to remember it. It only ended in '75. But the funny thing is...most Vietnamese still LOVE Americans. And this isn't some narrow view. I personally know numerous men and women who had relatives who MOVED TO VIETNAM, for various reasons. Their is a massive military veteran expat community in Vietnam for Americans. And they are extremely beloved. It confuses me. I've heard from Vietnamese, little kids on up to 80 year old men and women who all remember Americans fondly. They talk about how they wish more would come to Vietnam. Quite a few had daughters who married American men back in Vietnam, the men staying in Vietnam.

IT's weird. But then you mention the French and oh hell....
They hate them. They villify them. The Indochina Wars are like a blight upon the memory of life and existence itself. But essentially...both the Vietnam and Indochina Wars were basically the Vietnamese versus a foreign force. A Western force. And yet...Vietnamese in general....love Americans. But hate French. And I can say this with much confidence due to my own meetings with many Vietnamese immigrants from 3 different generations. They ALL like Americans. And a least 1 of every 3 I met have a daughter even a few have a son who is married to an American. This is an even higher ratio than Americans and South Koreans ....which I used to think had the largest American-Asian foreign couples population. Plenty of Koreans immigrants here too but the love is just so much more noticeable with Vietnamese.

With South Koreans...its more the older generation loving Americans while the younger not so much. But Vietnamese? All ages. All generatios.

So essentially, why do Vietnamese treat Americans differently from the French when both were a foreign enemy of some sort?

I've seen Vietnamese people just straight up turn devilish on some French Canadians on more than one occasion when they heard them speaking French.

 

[Michuyu]

That's pretty interesting... :o My older brother is kind of engaged to a Vietnamese girl. They met in Japan while he was stationed there. I also thought that they would hate Americans a lot... and I was kind of nervous for my brother haha. It seems like her parents are fine with their engagement too. They were gonna marry in Vietnam before this whole covid thing happened.

I don't know a lot about why they were at war, but from what I remember, I think America lost the Vietnam war, and maybe the french became a more prominent enemy/danger(?) there. ?? ^^' Maybe I'm just getting everything mixed up haha

 

[Discount_Blade]

That's pretty interesting... :o My older brother is kind of engaged to a Vietnamese girl. They met in Japan while he was stationed there. I also thought that they would hate Americans a lot... and I was kind of nervous for my brother haha. It seems like her parents are fine with their engagement too. They were gonna marry in Vietnam before this whole covid thing happened.

I don't know a lot about why they were at war, but from what I remember, I think America lost the Vietnam war, and maybe the french became a more prominent enemy/danger(?) there. ?? ^^' Maybe I'm just getting everything mixed up haha

Americans lost, yeah, but the French war was before the American one, and far, far more Vietnamese died against Americans than French. The last statistics were, around 300,000 Vietnamese dead compared to 134,000 French dead.

Whereas in the war against America, it was about 53,000 dead Americans versus a little over 1 million dead Vietnamese. If you add the South Vietnamese allies of America in the war, you can add another 300,000 more Vietnamese dead to that other 1 million dead which were mostly Northern Vietnamese.

So, technically the Americans were a much nastier threat, did much more damage and suffered only about 2/5 the losses the French did while doing 5-6 times the amount of damage. America was the far bigger threat. But Vietnamese still love Americans and villify French.

So, French War (300,000 Vietnamese casualties compared to 134,000 French casualties)
The American War (1.3 million Vietnamese casualties compared to 53,000 American casualties)
The American War also lasted about twice as long as the French one which was around 9 years while the American one was about 19.

According to this....they should despise America and prefer the French. But nope. I'm truly confused.

 

[Michuyu]

Americans lost, yeah, but the French war was before the American one, and far, far more Vietnamese died against Americans than French. The last statistics were, around 300,000 Vietnamese dead compared to 134,000 French dead.

Whereas in the war against America, it was about 53,000 dead Americans versus a little over 1 million dead Vietnamese. If you add the South Vietnamese allies of America in the war, you can add another 300,000 more Vietnamese dead to that other 1 million dead which were mostly Northern Vietnamese.

So, technically the Americans were a much nastier threat, did much more damage and suffered only about 2/5 the losses the French did while doing 5-6 times the amount of damage. America was the far bigger threat. But Vietnamese still love Americans and villify French.

So, French War (300,000 Vietnamese casualties compared to 134,000 French casualties)
The American War (1.3 million Vietnamese casualties compared to 53,000 American casualties)
The American War also lasted about twice as long as the French one which was around 9 years while the American one was about 19.

Did the french win though? :o

 

[Discount_Blade]

Did the french win though? :o

Nope. Got tossed out. Americans weren't tossed out, they were psychologically exhausted in a war of attrition that lasted twice as long as the French war and thus voluntarily pulled out when they realized nothing was changing. The French were military defeated and forced to leave.

 

[Discount_Blade]

It's basically similar to how the British were crushed in their last Afghan War in the late 1800's, while the Russians voluntarily left when they realized their last afghan war was becoming one of attrition that they weren't willing to pay the costs for and voluntarily left.

 

[Sup_Khan]

Here in NZ, there's barely any discrimination. CHEEHOO~!

 

[Michuyu]

Nope. Got tossed out. Americans weren't tossed out, they just got psychologically exhausted in a war of attrition. The French were military defeated.

okay, that is really weird @_@ Have you asked some people there? I kind of want to know now too haha.. At the same time, maybe the area that you are in wasn't really affected too much by the war? There might be people who are old enough to remember, but that doesn't mean they experienced it first hand?

 

[CrusadeAgainstFurries]

There is a small but still sizeable portion of Vietnamese where I'm at. Now, you would think Vietnamese would have some kind of issues with Americans considering the Vietnam War wasan't too long ago. Many of them are old enough to remember it. It only ended in '75. But the funny thing is...most Vietnamese still LOVE Americans. And this isn't some narrow view. I personally know numerous men and women who had relatives who MOVED TO VIETNAM, for various reasons. Their is a massive military veteran expat community in Vietnam for Americans. And they are extremely beloved. It confuses me. I've heard from Vietnamese, little kids on up to 80 year old men and women who all remember Americans fondly. They talk about how they wish more would come to Vietnam. Quite a few had daughters who married American men back in Vietnam, the men staying in Vietnam.

IT's weird. But then you mention the French and oh hell....
They hate them. They villify them. The Indochina Wars are like a blight upon the memory of life and existence itself. But essentially...both the Vietnam and Indochina Wars were basically the Vietnamese versus a foreign force. A Western force. And yet...Vietnamese in general....love Americans. But hate French. And I can say this with much confidence due to my own meetings with many Vietnamese immigrants from 3 different generations. They ALL like Americans. And a least 1 of every 3 I met have a daughter even a few have a son who is married to an American. This is an even higher ratio than Americans and South Koreans ....which I used to think had the largest American-Asian foreign couples population. Plenty of Koreans immigrants here too but the love is just so much more noticeable with Vietnamese.

With South Koreans...its more the older generation loving Americans while the younger not so much. But Vietnamese? All ages. All generatios.

So essentially, why do Vietnamese treat Americans differently from the French when both were a foreign enemy of some sort?

I've seen Vietnamese people just straight up turn devilish on some French Canadians on more than one occasion when they heard them speaking French.

Uhm, you should be careful not to turn it too political, since the forum rules state to not discuss politics or religion. I personally don't care, but others might report you.

 

[NotaNuffian]

Uhm, you should be careful not to turn it too political, since the forum rules state to not discuss politics or religion. I personally don't care, but others might report you.

Inb4 reported lol.

But why the lack of hate... this is just a small opinion of mine, because America is still a superpower while France is somewhere down the river about to be put out of its misery. In a certain sense, noble adversary vs a dying mutt, who would you spit on?

 

[Toomanysorrows]

I'm not Vietnamese obviously, so not sure, but I could think of three possible reasons:
- France owned at least a part of Vietnam since 1885 (when they obtained North Vietnam as a colony) and the whole of Vietnam in 1887 and was having military interventions in the area quite a bit before that. So, that's roughly 70 years of colonial rule, with all its evils and oppression. That's a lot of time to breed resentment against the French in Vietnam. By contrast, as violent as the Americans were in their time in Vietnam, they were only there for 20 years. So with the French, resentment about their treatment could be passed down for generations and amplified each time with new abuses. With the Americans, it was one generation. And just look at how Europe treated Germany a few decades after the World War 2: even a heavy conflict can be forgiven if it doesn't last too long.

- To an extent the Vietnam war was a civil war, even if we don't often think of it as such. The Americans weren't going in and attacking a unified Vietnam, they were supporting capitalist South Vietnam against communist North Vietnam. And as much as a lot of people didn't like South Vietnam, there would definitely have been people who did support the south for various reasons and who might look more kindly on the Americans.

-The military presence would've worked differently. This one I'm more tentative about but I think it can play a factor. The thing is, Americans often do leave positive impressions in areas they were stationed in (at least around this period) for what they can bring: They have money to spend and they can get you luxury products like chocolate, western cigarettes, etc. I don't think this would've been the case with the French. First off, French colonial armies often relied on indigenous troops (or non French troops from other parts of its empire). So when soldiers start spending their money it wouldn't create the same favourable association with the French, since it's not the French spending. Moreover, I think it's fair to say that when French soldiers did get sent over, in like the 1890s or the 1920s, they might not have had as much to offer as an American GI in the 60s.

There's also more recent politics which have helped, like the US helping Vietnam in its conflicts with China over who controls which part of the South China Sea