On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, Dr Sean Fear's work informs a new exhibition.

Dr Fear has been working with the Independence Palace Museum since 2019.

50 years ago, on 30 April 1975, Communist tanks smashed through the gates of Saigon’s Presidential Palace, forcing the surrender of the American-backed South Vietnamese state and bringing the Vietnam War to an abrupt end.

Originating as a civil war between rival Vietnamese nationalist parties, the Vietnam conflict evolved over the course of three decades into one of the Cold War’s most violent and formative clashes, ending in defeat for the United States and in Vietnam’s unification by force under the authority of the Communist Party.

Fifty years later, Vietnam’s Independence Palace Museum – housed in the former South Vietnamese Presidential Palace – will mark the anniversary of the end of the war by inaugurating a landmark new exhibit on the political, social and cultural history of South Vietnam, the state which ultimately ceased to exist following its defeat in the Vietnam War. With 92 rooms and over 1.3 million annual visitors, the museum is one of the most significant historical sites in Southeast Asia.

Dr Sean Fear has been working closely with the museum design and curatorial teams for several years as a primary historical advisor for the exhibit. “The proposed exhibit,” he notes, “will be unparalleled in terms of its scale, detail and transparency, presenting a dispassionate overview on the history of South Vietnam for the first time at any museum in postwar Vietnam. We hope the exhibit will represent a significant contribution to public history in Vietnam, and that it will encourage dialogue and reflection on the complex and turbulent political history of the South”.

Learn More

Find out more about Dr Fear’s work with the Independence Palace Museum.

Dr Fear’s work is featured, along with that of Professor Simon Hall, in the newly-published Cambridge History of the Vietnam War (Cambridge University Press, 2024). This three-volume work has recently won two prizes from the Association of American Publishers: best book in world history and best multivolume reference work.

Image credit

Communist forces seize the Palace, the seat of the South Vietnamese government, bringing the Vietnam War to a close on 30 April 1975. Image used by permission of the Independence Palace Museum.