As the title states i'm looking for any data/statistics on the Vietnam war. Especially helpful would be some value over time (data series IIRC, not a native speaker) that could be used for graphs, since i have to write a paper for school and graphs can underscore a point, but any statistics are welcome.
Questions of special interest to me would be (or questions of similar kind): costs of US-involvement in Vietnam over time (per year) American govt. employees in Vietnam (not just soldiers, but beginning with the CIA) over time maps of territory with NLF-activity over time anything showing the general progression of the war
A huge problem is that often i can only find data for the hottest years of the war or only isolated data points like that US aid to vietnam in 1961 was 2 bn. $, and the total yearly cost of war was 21 bn. $ in 1967, but nothing that could be used for graphs. Examples of useful data include http://www.people-press.org/files/2015/11/Trust-1.png and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Casualties (table on the right). Whether the data can be found online or in a book doesn't matter.
tl;dr I'm looking for data series on the Vietnam war. Pls post them if u know some good sources, or interesting (non-serial) data on the war.
Thanks in advance
You may consider identifying and tightening the scope of your paper so that you can focus your search. Even pared down, this project requires going to a university or college library, hunkering down in the stacks, and searching through a lot books.
Starting with Wikipedia and online searches is great, but the second step is to follow the sources within those pages. For example, the graph linked to from wikipedia has a footnote to a publication by the U.S. government's Center of Military History. That's a good source to start with, as are their other publications on Vietnam (some of which are online), and will have much of data you're interested in. To get breakdowns on specific expenditures will take a couple days combing through government publications like that and others. For example, have you checked the Pentagon Papers (which is available online and searchable) or Congressional reports yet? Or the CIA's declassified reading room published histories?
I'm fairly certain this falls under homework help. I'm more than happy to discuss the Vietnam War, however I don't think I could give you a graph or any sources.
That said I think you can actually find the costs via a FOIA request from the government. It might take a while, but I'm fairly certain annual expenditures for the Vietnam War, at least with regards to the US side.
Now the tricky bit is the Vietnam side as the archives at Hanoi are...well frankly rather tricky and though there are English speakers, getting information will be rather difficult. Especially, well considering that it's in Vietnam.
As for another suggestion, I'll suggest that covering just the material cost of the war does not begin to cover both the human cost and the environmental cost of the Vietnam War over the course of it's duration until the capitulation of Saigon in 1975. I do hope you have some luck though, but the Freedom of Information Act request will probably yield the financial figures you want at least on the US side.
