Anecdotally, some Vietnamese friends I've spoken to have more sympathy for France than they do for the U.S. or even China.
The U.S. is like this bumbling idiot god that just causes destruction wherever it goes, including in Vietnam. France, while still evil, at least introduced some cultural elements that have become a part of everyday life.
For sure, but it's also just a consequence of prolonged imperialism: the conquering culture gets rolled into the conquered culture, to the point where it's normalized for people living in the aftermath of conquest.
Like for better or worse Bahn mi and Catholicism and Latin script are all part of Vietnamese culture now, and the people I've talked to encounter it in their daily lives. But they're not old enough to remember the brutality of French Indochina.
dunno how the anti-french resistance war stacks up against the American war, but the latter had the us dumping cluster bombs, agent orange and napalm on villages, is far more recent, made uninvolved neighbor Laos the most bombed country on earth and still maims and kills people across se Asia to this day (those pesky cluster bombs again!) Not shocking that some people might be more bothered by the more recent experience - people are happier about banh mi than birth defects.
I am also leery of arguing against the expressed opinion of actual Vietnamese people on which they consider to be worse.
Anecdotally, some Vietnamese friends I've spoken to have more sympathy for France than they do for the U.S. or even China.
The U.S. is like this bumbling idiot god that just causes destruction wherever it goes, including in Vietnam. France, while still evil, at least introduced some cultural elements that have become a part of everyday life.
Eeeh that sounds dangerously similar to "oh the british empire was good cuz Civilization(TM)"
For sure, but it's also just a consequence of prolonged imperialism: the conquering culture gets rolled into the conquered culture, to the point where it's normalized for people living in the aftermath of conquest.
Like for better or worse Bahn mi and Catholicism and Latin script are all part of Vietnamese culture now, and the people I've talked to encounter it in their daily lives. But they're not old enough to remember the brutality of French Indochina.
Makes sense, lots of white people are like "oh cool Latin, the smarty pants language" forgetting that time Italians raped everybody for 1000 years
dunno how the anti-french resistance war stacks up against the American war, but the latter had the us dumping cluster bombs, agent orange and napalm on villages, is far more recent, made uninvolved neighbor Laos the most bombed country on earth and still maims and kills people across se Asia to this day (those pesky cluster bombs again!) Not shocking that some people might be more bothered by the more recent experience - people are happier about banh mi than birth defects.
I am also leery of arguing against the expressed opinion of actual Vietnamese people on which they consider to be worse.