Staging Democracy: South Vietnam's 1955 Referendum to Depose Bao Dai*

On 23 October 1955, South Vietnam's citizens took to the polls to choose between the country's obsolete emperor and its far-from-popular prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem. Government propaganda told them that Emperor Bao Dai was a treacherous, slovenly womanizer who amounted to nothing more than a shackle on Vietnam's development. Diem, on the other hand, promised to usher in a new and glorious era in Vietnam's history marked by democracy, self-determination, and individual rights. Newly available evidence from Vietnamese archives demonstrates that this referendum should be viewed as an important cultural and political moment for South Vietnam. It exerted a lasting influence on politics below the 17th parallel and on the diplomatic relationship between the United States and South Vietnam. Historians and observers to date, however, have interpreted the October 1955 vote almost exclusively from within the American lens, which has led to a series of incomplete conclusions about the nature and significance of the event. Such America-centric scholarship in the absence of similar studies on South Vietnam has prevented a thorough scholarly understanding of the complex nature of America's ally in the Vietnam War. Further research into Saigon's internal politics is therefore necessary to enable historians to conduct an informed reassessment of American officials’ perceptions and policies.