This is the first of two blogs by UoP second-year history student Gabriel Lawless, reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Vietnam. This blog, drawing on oral histories, poetry, and political writing, explores how African-American voices interpreted and responded to the My Lai Massacre and the Fall of Saigon not as isolated incidents, but as part of a wider, politically entrenched pattern of violence. The exposure of the My Lai Massacre in 1969 to the civilian masses marked a decisive turning point in public perception of the Vietnam War. Reports that American soldiers had supposedly killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians came as a shock to those in the […]
Tag Archives | memoirs
Using Personal Sources: Lost London; the memoirs of an East End detective
Emily Burgess, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on the memoirs of an East End detective, Sergeant B. Leeson, for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Emily discusses how we can use personal sources such as this to understand more about social anxieties at the time of their writing. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. Crime in the Victorian period has become significant through such cases as the Whitechapel murders. With the use of personal sources, those involved in the investigations into these murders can provide historians with an individual and […]