This is a study of pacification in Vietnam from 1961 to 1963. Over these three years the Government of the Republic of Vietnam introduced and supported the Strategic Hamlet Program. This program became the Government of Vietnam's 'major ideological and institutional tool in attempting to generate popular consensus In support of its efforts to defeat the enemy.'1 The strategic hamlets were the major component of a comprehensive campaign to bring peace to South Vietnam by isolating the rural population from the Viet Cong guerillas.

While largely seen as a military activity, the most significant impact' of the Strategic Hamlet Program was intended to occur beyond the military sphere. President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother and adviser Ngo Dinh Nhu, expected that the strategic hamlets would bring about fundamental changes in the nature of South Vietnamese society. In his President's message on National Day 1962. President Diem proclaimed:

The Strategic Hamlet is Indeed also and primarily the point of impact of a political and social revolution which will serve as the foundation for our economic revolution.2