This lecture will discuss Vietnam during the period of French colonial rule, up to World War II and the end of the war in the Pacific in September 1945.
For more than 2000 years the name Vietnam referred to the coastal land south of China. In some periods Vietnam had been ruled as part of the Chinese Empire, but frequently the Vietnamese rebelled against their Chinese overlords. In the 1860s the French invaded and occupied Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The exact dates are beyond the purview of this course. The French administered Vietnam as three provinces or regions. Tonkin, along the Red River Valley, was in the North. It was immediately south of China (Tonkin Gulf or Gulf of Tonkin). The central region, also called the central highlands, was called Annam. The southern coastal region, where the Mekong River drained into the South China Sea, or the Mekong delta, was called Cochin-china. The administrative capital of Tonkin, in the north, was Hanoi. The northern region was quite populous. The old capital of the Vietnamese emperors was in the central highlands of Annam, at Hue. The capital of the southern region was Saigon.
The French established rubber plantations and used the Vietnamese natives as forced labor (a polite term for slave labor, although the forced laborers were not chattel or property). The French also exported rice from Vietnam, even if it meant that the peasants who were forced to cultivate it starved.
Under French colonialism the sons of the more wealthy Vietnamese landowners, and the sons of the Vietnamese lower level bureaucrats who collaborated with their French colonial masters, became "Westernized." They learned to speak and write French, they were converted to Catholicism, and some studied in Paris. They became an elite class of assimilated people who were middlemen between the Buddhist, uneducated Vietnamese peasants and the French colonizers.
Nguyen Sinh Cung (according to Stanley Karnow) was born in the north on May 19, 1890. His father was a bureaucrat and lower level official. The son was Western-educated, and went to France in 1911. There he took the name Nguyen Ai Quoc, which means Nguyen the Patriot. He traveled widely, even to the United States and Russia. This man, in 1941, would return to Vietnam and soon take the name Ho Chi Minh. This name means "The Most Enlightened One" or "Bringer of Light." In 1919, at the Versailles Conference that negotiated the end of World War I, Nguyen Ai Quoc sought admission to the conference to advocate for independence for Vietnam, just as the League of Nations would establish "trusteeships" to guide Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Namibia and other territories to eventual independence. The great Afro-American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois attended the Conference to advocate for independence for the African nations that were colonized by Britain and France (Pan-Africanism). The pleas of Du Bois fell on deaf ears.
There were small-scale unsuccessful revolts by the Vietnamese against French colonial rule, but they were easily repressed.
However in 1939 World War II was unleashed in Europe. In June 1940 the Nazis defeated France, and the Vichy government collaborated with the Nazis. In the Pacific, the Japanese demanded to occupy French Indochina. The local authorities collaborated with the Japanese. France maintained "sovereignty" over Indochina in name and on paper, but in September 1940 Japanese troops occupied the airfields and other military resources in French Indochina. The Japanese advanced from French Indochina into Thailand; into the British colonies of Burma, Malaya, and Singapore (but not India); and took over the Dutch colony of Indonesia; and ousted the British from some islands that were part of Australia (Papua-New Guinea). In the spring of 1942 they also took over the Philippine Islands from the US. The Japanese exported Vietnamese rice to Japan and to the Japanese war machine--even if the Vietnamese starved.
In the 1930s the Japanese had also begun an invasion of China, and during World War II the Chinese fought against Japanese imperialism and aggression.
In early 1941 Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam by way of China. He established an organization called the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh, or Vietnam Independence League. The followers of the Viet Minh (the shortened form of the longer name) fought against the French and Japanese. Both the French and the Japanese were foreigners. In time the Vietnamese viewed both as oppressors. The Vietminh led the struggle to drive the French AND the Japanese out of Vietnam. Their struggle was to re-establish the independence of Vietnam--independence from any and all foreign occupiers and exploiters, no matter who they might be. It was a struggle against colonialism and foreign domination.
As the tide of World War II began to turn, the Japanese imprisoned the French soldiers in Vietnam on March 9, 1945. Emperor Bao Dai, who had been the puppet of the French for decades, now became the instrument of the Japanese. At the behest of the Japanese, Bao Dai proclaimed the independence of Vietnam from the French, and proclaimed that Vietnam was under the protection of the Japanese, in March 1945.
During World War II the US had some OSS personnel (special services) in Vietnam. One of them was Peter Dewey. Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh assisted the US in locating American fliers (pilots and crews) who had been shot down over Vietnam by the Japanese, as Americans flew missions to assist the Chinese (our allies against the Japanese).
Meanwhile, in 1945, the Allies were closing in on Berlin. On April 12, 1945 FDR died and Harry Truman became president. A few weeks later Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. On May 8, 1945 the Germans surrendered. In August the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the beginning of September 1945, Japan formally surrendered (battleship Missouri).
On September 2, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of Vietnam. His declaration of independence quoted from the American Declaration of Independence.
When Truman came into office, two different factions within the State Dept. advocated two different policies toward post World War II Southeast Asia. The Europeanists wanted to prop up Britain and France. Therefore they wished to restore British rule over the former British colonies that had been occupied by the Japanese, and wanted to restore French and Dutch rule over Indochina and Indonesia respectively. The Asian specialists, including American OSS operatives who had worked with Ho Chi Minh, favored independence for Vietnam. The Europeanists won.
The US and Britain agreed that the Nationalist Chinese would receive the surrender of the Japanese troops in Hanoi, in the parts of Vietnam north of the 17th parallel. The British would proceed to Saigon to receive the surrender of the Japanese forces in Vietnam south of the 17th parallel.
For better of worse, the US sided with British and French colonialism against the aspirations of people of color in Africa and Asia who sought freedom from white, European colonialism and imperialism. The motives on the part of the US may not have been consciously, deliberately and intentionally racist. The effect was just the same regardless.
The stage was now set for the Vietminh to turn to armed struggle and guerilla war to drive the French colonizers out of Vietnam, much as the Algerians would have to fight to drive the French out of Algeria. The Vietnamese and the Algerians would fight for many years to teach the French that God had not appointed them the masters of the world, and the French had no God-given right to rule over non-white, non-European peoples.
After World War II elections were held in Britain. The British people were tired of war, and voted for the Labor Party. Churchill was voted out of office. The Labor Party, which is a socialist party, responded to the rising tide of anti-colonial sentiment and unrest in the British Empire. Britain could not realistically hope to send armies to repress and kill hundreds of millions of brown people in India. In 1947 the British faced up to reality. They agreed to grant independence to India and Pakistan. The alternative would have been war and mass rebellion.
The new Labor Government in Britain, which was beginning to dismantle the British empire, had no love for France or the French Empire. In time (by 1954) Britain would not support efforts to maintain French rule in Indochina. The French were now "on their own." The French turned to the United States for help. In the context of the emerging Cold War and Soviet-American rivalry, the US (Truman administration) provided money and weapons and material support to the French. The Eisenhower administration would continue this policy.
In late September, early October 1949 Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists triumphed. China was opposed to Western, European colonialism and racism, and began to provide aid to the Vietminh.
But a crucial question remained unanswered. What if American money and weapons and material support were not enough to save French colonialism in Vietnam? What if the French suffered military defeat and only American intervention, in the form of air strikes or ground troops, could save the French? But by 1954 the Soviets and the Chinese accused the US of backing the racist, colonialist, imperialist regimes of Britain, France, Holland and Portugal. By 1954 brown people in India and Pakistan and Egypt were aroused against European colonialism. Could the US compete for influence in the "Third World," against the Soviet Union, and succeed, if it was "in bed" with the colonialist regimes of Britain and France? By 1954, the US faced that very scenario. The French were losing in Vietnam. Eisenhower would have to make a tough decision.