Richard Nixon once said “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.” The Vietnam War was certainly a seminal event in world history. It effectively ended centuries of European imperialism in Southeast Asia and marked the beginning of Chinese hegemony in the region. The war saw a profound level of human suffering. Countless millions lost their lives because of the conflict, were traumatised, impoverished, imprisoned or ended up as homeless refugees. Within the United States, it sparked some of the most divisive social strife since the Civil War and its memory still haunts America today. Examine the war from the collapse of French colonial power in 1955 through to the calamitous defeat of the United States twenty years later. Lecture style with question and answer time.