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The Indochina Wars: War and Society
The Indochina Wars: War and Society
The Indochina Wars: War and Society
French Indochina
Part of the French colonial empire, French Indochina consisted of Cochinchine (Cochin China), Tonkin, Annam (which now form Vietnam), Laos and Cambodia. French Indochina was established in the 19th century, in several stages. The French first occupied Saigon in 1859, then Cochinchine (Cochin China) and Cambodia. Next the French extended their control over Hanoi (in Tonkin), Annam and the rest of Tonkin, and founded French Indochina. Laos was added in 1893, and Siam (now Thailand) ceded further territory to the French in the early 20th century. While French rule in Cochinchine (Cochin China) was direct, the French left local leaders in place in other parts of French Indochina: the Annamite emperor in Tonkin and Annam, the king of Cambodia and the king of Luang Prabang (Laos). True power was held by the French.
In June 1940, France fell to the Nazis. On September 22, 1940, following the ratification by the Vichy French regime of the Matsuoka-Henry Pact, Japanese forces occupied northern parts of French Indochina, though French colonial officials remained in post. By the summer of 1941, Indochinese Communists based in Southern China declared war against both the French and the Japanese. They formed a new guerrilla army called the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, which received some aid from the Office for Strategic Services (predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency). As part of the Japanese Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, Indochina was an important source of raw materials. In the early 1940s there was large-scale famine as Indochinese farmers were forced to grow crops for the Japanese war effort. In March 1945, following the demise of Vichy the previous year, the Japanese disarmed the French, tightening their control of Indochina. In August 1945 the Japanese surrendered.
Declaration of Independence
On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi in a declaration consciously modelled after the US Declaration of Independence (1776), and drawing also upon the Declaration of the Rights of Man of the French Revolution (1791) for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens His provisional government went underground when the Chinese nationalists invaded the North and the British invaded the South (pending restoration of Indochina to France). On March 6, 1946, Ho Chi Minh signed an agreement with the French that Tonkin would become a self-governing nation within the Indochinese Federation and the French Union. In the South the French re-established control over Annam and Cochinchine (Cochin China). In November 1946 fighting broke out in Tonkin between the French and the Viet Minh.
Piano keys trenches in the road designed to allow for Viet Minh attack on vehicles
The US Commitment
A growing US commitment to first the French war effort, and, following the French defeat, to an independent South Vietnam. Sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem policy between 1955, when Diem became president in a rigged referendum, and 1963, when he was assassinated by his generals. This policy involved massive economic aid and an increasing US military commitment, first in the shape of military advisers to the South Vietnamese campaign against opposition in the South. Southern opponents of Diems government (known as the National Liberation Front, or Viet Kong) received support from Ho Chi Minhs government in Hanoi from the late 1950s.
Bibliography
Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacoutre, End of a war; Indochina, 1954 (1969) Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (1983) Wallace Terry, Bloods: an oral history of the Vietnam War/by black veterans (1984) Stein Tnnesson, The Longest Wars: Indochina 1945-1975, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Mar., 1985), pp. 9-29 George Herring, Americas Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (1986 2nd ed.) C. DeBenedetti and C. Chatfield, An American Ordeal: Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (1990) Walter Capps (ed.), The Vietnam Reader (1990) Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam War, 1945-1990 (1991) Tom Wells, The war within: Americas battle over Vietnam (1994) Kenneth J. Heineman, Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era (1994)
Adam Garfinkle, Telltale hearts: the origins and impact of the Vietnam antiwar movement (1995) James E. Westheider, Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War (1997) Peter Lowe (ed.), The Vietnam War (1998) Harry Maurer, Strange Ground: an oral history of Americans in Vietnam, 19451975 (1998) Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Peace Now! American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War (1999) Mark Baker, Nam: the Vietnam war in the words of the men and women who fought there (2001) Michael S. Foley, Confronting The War Machine: Draft Resistance during the Vietnam War (2003) Kendrick Oliver, The My Lai massacre in American history and memory (2006) Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall (eds.), The First Vietnam War: colonial conflict and cold war crisis (2007)