| Description |
The FULRO rebellion in September 1964 was the direct result of Vietnamese meddling with Montagnard political identity, political identity created through Catholic missionaries, French colonialists, and American attempts to use the Montagnards to further their own political objectives. The overarching conclusion of this thesis asserts that the unintended results of prolonged historical abuse and misunderstanding of the Montagnard people contributed to the political instability of the central highlands of Vietnam around the time period of the Vietnam War. This instability caused serious complications for American and South Vietnamese efforts to secure the porous Central Highlands of Vietnam against communist aggression. Militant Montagnard nationalism, compounded by communist military operations in South Vietnam, contributed to the destabilization of the strategically important Central Highlands during the critical year of 1964. As a result, the United States government introduced large scale American military intervention into South Vietnam to combat the communist threat in South East Asia. While international communism, and not Montagnard nationalism, was the primary political factor causing American intervention, the story of the creation of a Montagnard militant nationalist identity plays an important role in the narrative of the Vietnam War. This was a definitive contributing cause to the political turmoil within South Vietnam that influenced American intervention in an effort to create a viable American-assisted and democratic South Vietnamese government. |
