“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
While the new dawn of a peaceful promise arose after the horrors of WWII for the world, the south-east Asian nation of Vietnam was on crossroads of reform, and reinvention.
One can say that a good newspaper is a nation talking to itself. Riddled in the chaos between the North and South of Vietnam, The Times of Viet Nam emerged in the anti-communist South Vietnam. In a war-torn nation, the geopolitical cartoons published by the newspaper appear as a window into an overlooked past. A string of serialised cartoons, published during the violent events of the Vietnam War spanning two decades, is honoured and preserved in Conferro’s collection.
Not solely resting as a piece of war humour, and 20th century media, these cartoons serve a bigger purpose: they act as historical artefacts of a bygone era that shaped the political picture of both the major West, as well as the Orient.
From local commentaries, to a glimpse of global ideological warfare, the cartoons capture stills from a world that now no longer exists. A common theme runs through a satirical poke at the global communist powers of then-USSR and China, with jests at the Cuba crisis and Josip Tito’s vision of a united nation, Yugoslavia. While leaders like Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev were the common stars of the illustrations, the South-ally US was hardly criticised. The communist ideologies adopted by the Ho Chi Minh-led North Vietnam were depicted as poor, dysfunctional and often a target of the jokes.
While the world was being shaped and reshaped around its war-trodden axis, the cartoonists of The Times of Vietnam continued to speak to its people, and their beliefs. The newspaper was officially discontinued, following the President coup in 1963.
In 2025, in a new century where a unified Vietnam stands before the world, these cartoons remain as witness of an age that Vietnam survived, and waged its rebirth through. A part of Conferro’s prized collection; we shared this rare, documented peek into history with the world.