Dr. David G. Marr

As the Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper said, David Marr first came to Vietnam in 1962 as a US soldier, an experience that gave him a deeper understanding of the unjust war he was taking part in.

Two years later, he left the army and went back to the US to continue his post-graduate studies. In 1965, Marr returned to Saigon to do research for his doctorate’s thesis. After joining in with other US students in demonstrations that demanded peace in South Vietnam, Marr was expelled from the country in 1967.

Back in the US, he continued to take part in anti-Vietnam war movements, and helped to establish the Indochina Resource Centre, which provided intelligence and documents that heavily influenced the US public in their protests against the war.

In 1972, Marr and hundreds of other Americans were jailed for taking part in a sit-in in front of the US House of Representatives, in protest against the US’s bombing campaign in Vietnam’s northern region.

Years later, Marr met with numerous difficulties when carrying out a study of Vietnam as he was not welcome at any US universities.

To overcome the hurdles he faced, the American researcher moved to Canberra in Australia where he lectured and conducted research at the Australian Institute of Asian and Pacific Studies of the Australia National University.

His life in Australia encouraged Marr to continue pressing ahead with his Vietnamese studies, from which he produced a number of new and valuable works on Vietnam’s history, including “Challenges to the Vietnamese Tradition; 1920-1945” and “Vietnam-1945, the quest for power”.

By drawing on richly detailed and descriptive analyses of Vietnamese history, Marr was sometimes criticised for giving the wrong assessment of the essence of the Vietnamese August Revolution.

However, he was later proved right at talks chaired by Professor Phan Huy Le, who also nominated him for the Phan Chau Trinh Culture Foundation’s “2008 Vietnam Studies” award.

Professor Le stated that Marr’s books and articles criticising the US’s war in Vietnam provided an important and well-informed voice to the anti-war movement in the US.

Apart from lecturing and conducting research on Vietnam, Dr. Marr has tutored many researchers from the UK, the US and China who are also writing their theses on Vietnamese history.

Historian Dao Hung, who received the award on behalf of Dr. Marr, said that the professor had told him he was extremely moved that at last his contributions to recording and interpreting Vietnam’s history have been appreciated by Vietnamese scholars.

Dr. Marr said that he now plans to write the biographies of several prominent Vietnamese including, scholars, religious leaders and businesspeople.

VietNamNet/VNA