HY4B1: The Vietnam Wars, 1930-75: Regional and International Perspectives

ASSESSED ESSAY 2

The ASSESSED ESSAY 2 must be submitted no later than 12:00 (noon) on Monday
29 April 2024. The mark for this essay will account for 35% of the overall grade for the
course. The following regulations govern the submission of the assessed essay. Please
remember that the assessed essay counts as part of the examination and is governed by
the LSE examination regulations.

Submission: Assessed essay must be submitted on your Moodle course to Turnitin.

Submission of your work on Moodle should reach the Department by no later than
12.00 (noon) on Monday 29 April 2024. Please note that the date and time that you
submit your work on Moodle is taken as the official submission time for the purposes of
lateness penalties. The department may withhold provisional marks and feedback if you
do not submit your work on Moodle to Turnitin.

Your essay must be typed or word processed.

The first page of the essay should only state your examination candidate number, the
course code (‘HY4B1’), the name of Teacher Responsible for the Course [Dr Richard
Saich], and the title of the essay. Your file for Turnitin submission MUST include your
candidate number and the course code in the title, so it reads:
"HY4B1CandidateNumberxxxxx.doc"

Please state at the end of the essay the total number of words included in the text and
footnotes: it is ESSENTIAL that you do this.

The maximum of words allowed for the text and footnotes is 3,000 words. Please add a
bibliography (i.e. a list of books, articles, websites and other sources consulted). The
bibliography does not count towards the 3,000-word limit. One mark will be deducted
for up to every one hundred words by which you exceed the permitted maximum.
This means that the penalty kicks in at one word over the limit--i.e. at 3,001 words
for an assessed essay.

Late submission: The Department expects students to meet Assessed Essay deadlines,
and it is your responsibility to organise your time appropriately. Extensions to deadlines
can only be considered if you experience circumstances which are sudden, unforeseen,
out of your control and proximate to the assessment(s) in question. You will also need
to supply evidence of those circumstances which meets LSE’s Standards of Evidence
policy; in the majority of cases, requests without evidence cannot be considered.

To allow for processing time, any extension requests must be made at least three days
in advance of the submission deadline. Students should complete the form provided
on the course Moodle page, gather supporting documents or other evidence, and email
the form and the evidence to ih.pgadmin@lse.ac.uk. You will be notified by e-mail as to
whether your extension is granted by the Chair of the Exam Sub-Board. Please do not
assume that your extension has been granted until you have received such an e-mail.
Unfortunately, the Department cannot consider extension requests made less than three
days before the submission deadline. If you experience adverse circumstances after this
time but before the submission deadline, you should consult the Exceptional
Circumstances procedures.

Unless late submission has been authorised, 5 points out of 100 will be deducted
from the grade for unauthorised late submissions received during the first 24
hours after the deadline, and a further 5 points will be deducted for each
subsequent 24-hour lateness period or fraction thereof (working days only). In
accordance with Departmental policy, computer theft and computer hardware,
software or printer failures or malfunctions will not be accepted as valid reasons
for late submission. Please therefore be sure to keep back-up copies of all your
work.

You are expected to save your material other than on a single computer hard drive
throughout. Leave enough time to proof-read your work thoroughly, particularly if
English is not your first language.

Plagiarism: As the essay is part of your examination, plagiarism is regarded as cheating

and, if evidence for it is strong enough, the essay will be marked ZERO. In addition,
you are likely to find yourself in front of the LSE Misconduct Panel, where harsher
punishments are available. For further details, please see:
https://info.lse.ac.uk/Staff/Divisions/Academic-Registrars-Division/Teaching-Quality-
Assurance-and-Review-
Office/Assets/Documents/Calendar/RegulationsAssessmentOffences-Plagiarism.pdf

All students are asked to tick a declaration on all work submitted on Moodle as part of
the formal assessment for their degree other than work produced under examination
conditions, to the effect that they have read and understood the School’s rules on
assessment offences and that the work submitted is their own apart from properly
referenced quotations.

Feedback: Feedback on assessed essays is offered in the form of a summary of the

examiners' comments by the TRC. Your essays will not be handed back, since they
must remain in the Department so that they can be accessible to the external examiners.

QUESTIONS

1. Account for the emergence of the Communist insurgency in South Vietnam in the
late 1950s.

2. Why did a major international crisis develop over Laos in early 1961?

3. How relevant was the so-called ‘domino theory’ to the situation in Vietnam and
South East Asia by the end of 1963?
4. How influential was the PRC in the development of the insurgency in Vietnam
between 1961 and 1965?

5. Why did the Johnson administration reject the idea that the conflict in Vietnam
could be settled around a political solution based on ‘neutralization’?

6. Why did efforts to bring about Vietnam peace negotiations between 1965 and 1968
prove so unproductive?

7. How did the Sino-Soviet dispute influence the pattern of relations between the
Soviet Union, China and North Vietnam between 1965 and 1969?

8. Examine the international ramifications of the course and outcome of the Tet
Offensive of 1968.

9. What was the relationship between the US policy of détente with the Soviet Union
and the Vietnam War?

10. What tensions were caused in Sino-Vietnamese relations by the final stages of the
Vietnam peace negotiations?

11. To what extent were the Paris peace accords of January 1973 a compromise
settlement?