Background Early French encounters French–Vietnamese contacts can be traced to 1658 when
Jesuit missionaries Joseph Francis Tissanier and Pierre Jacques Albier arrived in Vietnam. Around this time, Vietnam was carrying out its
Nam tiến ("Southward"), the occupation of the
Mekong Delta, a territory being part of the
Khmer Empire and to a lesser extent, the kingdom of
Champa which they had defeated in 1471. European involvement in Vietnam was confined to trade during the 18th century, as the remarkably successful work of the missionaries continued. In 1787,
Pierre Pigneau de Behaine, a French Catholic priest, petitioned the French government and organised French military volunteers to aid
Nguyễn Ánh in retaking lands his family lost to the
Tây Sơn. Pigneau died in Vietnam but his troops fought on until 1802 in the
French assistance to Nguyễn Ánh.
19th century French conquest of Cochinchina The
French colonial empire was heavily involved in Vietnam in the 19th century; often French intervention was undertaken in order to protect the work of the
Paris Foreign Missions Society in the country. For its part, the
Nguyễn dynasty increasingly saw Catholic missionaries as a political threat;
courtesans, for example, an influential faction in the dynastic system, feared for their status in a society influenced by an insistence on monogamy. A brief period of unification under the Nguyễn dynasty ended in 1858 with French military intervention. Under the pretext of protesting the persecution and expulsion of Catholic missionaries, and following
Charles de Montigny's failure to secure concessions,
Napoleon III ordered Admiral
Charles Rigault de Genouilly to attack Tourane (present day
Da Nang). Fourteen French gunships, 3,300 men including 300 Filipino soldiers provided by the Spanish attacked the port of causing significant damage and occupying the city. After fighting the Vietnamese for three months and finding himself unable to progress further in land, de Genouilly sought and received approval of an alternative attack on Saigon. Sailing to southern Vietnam, de Genouilly captured the poorly defended city of Saigon on 17 February 1859. Once again, however, de Genouilly and his forces were unable to seize territory outside of the defensive perimeter of the city. De Genouilly was criticised for his actions and was replaced by Admiral Page in November 1859 with instructions to obtain a treaty protecting the
Catholic faith in Vietnam while refraining from making territorial gains. In 1864 the aforementioned three provinces ceded to France were formally constituted as the French colony of Cochinchina. Then in 1867, French Admiral Pierre de la Grandière forced the Vietnamese to surrender three additional provinces,
Châu Đốc,
Hà Tiên and
Vĩnh Long. With these three additions all of southern Vietnam and the Mekong Delta fell under French control. Images of the Japanese prostitutes in Vietnam were put on
French postcards by French photographers. The Japanese government tried to hide the existences of these Japanese prostitutes who went abroad and did not mention them in books on history. Beginning in the 1880s there was a rise of an explicitly anti-Catholic French administration in French Indochina. The administration would try to reduce Catholic missionary influence in French Indochinese society, as opposed to the earlier decades where missionaries played an important role in both administration and society in French Cochinchina. In a notice dated 24 August 1898, the Resident-Superior of Annam wrote: "From now on, in the Kingdom of Annam there are no longer two governments, but only one" (meaning that the French government completely took over the administration). Between 1885 and 1889, insurgents, led by
Phan Đình Phùng,
Phan Chu Trinh,
Phan Bội Châu,
Trần Quý Cáp and
Huỳnh Thúc Kháng, targeted Vietnamese Christians as there were very few French soldiers to overcome, which led to a massacre of around 40,000 Christians. The rebellion was eventually brought down by a French military intervention, in addition to its lack of unity in the movement. Nationalist sentiments intensified in Vietnam, especially during and after
World War I, but all the uprisings and tentative efforts failed to obtain sufficient concessions from the French.
Franco-Siamese crisis (1893) Territorial conflict in the Indochinese peninsula for the expansion of French Indochina led to the
Franco-Siamese crisis of 1893. In 1893 the French authorities in Indochina used border disputes, followed by the
Paknam naval incident, to provoke a crisis. French gunboats appeared at Bangkok, and demanded the cession of Lao territories east of the
Mekong River. King
Chulalongkorn appealed to the British, but the British minister told the king to settle on whatever terms he could get, and he had no choice but to comply. Britain's only gesture was an agreement with France guaranteeing the integrity of the rest of Siam. In exchange, Siam had to give up its claim to the Thai-speaking
Shan region of north-eastern Burma to the British, and cede Laos to France.
20th century '', 1903.
Further encroachments on Siam (1904–1907) The French continued to pressure Siam, and in 1902 they manufactured another crisis. This time Siam had to concede French control of territory on the west bank of the Mekong opposite
Luang Prabang and around
Champasak in southern Laos, as well as western Cambodia. France also occupied the western part of
Chantaburi. in
Phnom Penh in 1896. In 1904, to get back Chantaburi, Siam had to give
Trat and Koh Kong to French Indochina. Trat became part of Thailand again
on 23 March 1907 in exchange for many areas east of the Mekong like
Battambang,
Siem Reap and
Sisophon. In the 1930s, Siam engaged France in a series of talks concerning the repatriation of Siamese provinces held by the French. In 1938, under the
Front Populaire administration in Paris, France had agreed to repatriate
Angkor Wat,
Angkor Thom,
Siem Reap,
Siem Pang, and the associated provinces (approximately 13) to Siam. Meanwhile, Siam took over control of those areas, in anticipation of the upcoming treaty. Signatories from each country were dispatched to Tokyo to sign the treaty repatriating the lost provinces.
Anti-French revolts in the early 20th century Although during the early 20th century calm was supposed to reign as the French had "pacified" the region, constant uprisings contesting French rule characterised French Indochina this period. "There is ample evidence of the rural populations' involvement in revolts against authority during the first 50 years of the French colonial presence in Cambodia." The French
Sûreté was worried about the
Japanese victory during the
Russo-Japanese War and its lasting impression on the East as it was considered to be the first victory of "a
yellow people over the
white", as well as the fall of the
Manchu-led
Qing dynasty to the
Xinhai Revolution which established the
Republic of China. The Peace and Duty Society was also active supporting anti-Qing insurgents in China. This new group of people consisted only of a few hundred people, with most of its members being either students or nationalists. The members of the
Duy Tân Hội would establish a network of commercial enterprises to both gain capital to finance their activities and to hide their true intentions. in the years prior to World War I the French arrested thousands of people with some being
sentenced to death and others being imprisoned at the Poulo Condore jail island (
Côn Sơn Island). Phan Xích Long claimed descent of the deposed Hàm Nghi Emperor and the Ming dynasty's emperor and declared himself to be the "Emperor of the Ming Dynasty". Though there is not extensive literature on these particular revolutionary revolts in the Bolaven Plateau, one can see that the native communities desired to rid the region of the extensive and overpowering influence of their colonisers.
Introduction of French education On 16 May 1906 the governor-general of French Indochina Jean Baptiste Paul Beau issued a decree establishing the Councils for the Improvement of Indigenous Education. This meeting was also recorded in the work
Hoàng Việt Giáp Tý niên biểu written by Nguyễn Bá Trác. The creation of a
ministry of education was orchestrated by the French to reform the Nguyễn dynasty's educational system to match French ambitions in the region more. This period also saw a number of uprisings in
Tonkin and
Cochinchina. French Indochina contributed significantly to the French war effort in terms of funds, products and human resources. In response, the Undersecretary of State for Artillery and Munitions proposed to hire women, European immigrants, and French colonial subjects, these people were later followed with Chinese immigrants. and the
Middle Eastern front. This exceptional human mobility offered the French Indochinese, mostly Vietnamese, the unique opportunity of directly access to social life and political debates that were occurring in contemporary France and this resulted in their aspirations to become "masters of their own destiny" to increase. In 1925, communist and anti-French activist Nguyễn Ái Quốc (later known as Hồ Chí Minh) wrote "taken in chains, confined in a school compound... Most of them will never again see the sun of their country" and a number of historians like
Joseph Buttinger and Martin Murray, treated his statement by Nguyễn Ái Quốc as an article of faith and believed that the Vietnamese men who participated in World War I were "forcibly recruited" by means of "terrorism", later historians would claim that the recruitment enterprise employed during this period was only "ostensibly voluntary". During this period, the French protectorates of Annam and Tonkin were initially ruled by the Emperor
Duy Tân. For example Dr. Nguyễn Xuân Mai, who in 1910 became one of the first indigenous auxiliaries to graduate the Hanoi medical school, hoped to gain his PhD in France so he enlisted to fight in the war. The joint Yunnanese and Laotian ethnic minority rebels spread misinformation claiming that "Paris has been crushed by the
German Army" to make the French seem weaker. The large amount of uprisings and rebellions that occurred during the war would inspire the creation of a political security apparatus that was used to find and arrest political dissidents in the post-war period. Liébert argued that French Indochinese who rebelled should be treated according or as traitors to France. In April 1916 the administrator of civil services at the Political Affairs Bureau in Hanoi launched two voluminous reports that went into great detail about the parallel histories of what he referred to as the "Annamese Revolutionary Party" (how he called the
Duy Tân Hội) and of the secret societies of French Cochinchina. These two reports proved to be very important to the Political Affairs Bureau as they would trigger a full-scale reform of the organisation making it into an
umbrella organisation. Following the communist victory in the
October Revolution the security apparatus of French Indochina was strengthened to fight the "Bolshevik danger" in the colonies. In Kopong Chang, Cambodia the French resident Félix Bardez was assassinated in the year 1925 by disgruntled indigenous people. Félix Bardez visited the village at a time when its inhabitants were frustrated with the colonial policies of the French in Cambodia as the French raised the taxes to finance the Bokor mountain resort, when Bardez visited he refused to free prisoners who were arrested for being unable to pay their debts, this agitated a crowd of around 700 angry peasants who then killed him, his interpreter, and the militiamen present during his visit. On 6 November 1925 a "Convention" (
Quy ước) was established after
Khải Định's death that stated that while the sovereign is abroad a council (
Hội đồng phụ chính) had the power to run all affairs of the
Southern court, with the signing of the convention only regulations related to custom, favours, amnesty, conferring titles, dignitaries, among others are given by the emperor. Everything else is up to the French protectorate government. Marr argues that the Vietnamese
retours de France "urbanised" and "politicised" Vietnamese nationalism during the 1920s and 1930s, inspiring more "modern" movements to take up the struggle against French domination. The VNQDĐ was the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The attack was the largest disturbance brewed up by the
Cần Vương monarchist restoration movement of the late 19th century. The aim of the revolt was to inspire a wider uprising among the general populace in an attempt to overthrow the colonial authority. The VNQDĐ had previously attempted to engage in clandestine activities to undermine French rule, but increasing French scrutiny of their activities led to their leadership group taking the risk of staging a large scale military attack in the
Red River Delta in northern Vietnam.
Left opposition and the 1940 uprising in Cochinchina In Cochinchina where French rule had the distinction of being direct and therefore more sensitive to political shifts in Paris, it was punctuated by periods of relative liberalisation. The most significant was during the 1936–1938
Popular Front government led by
Leon Blum which appointed as governor-general of Indochina
Jules Brévié. Liberal-minded, in Cochinchina Brévié tried to defuse an extremely tense political situation by amnestying political prisoners, and by easing restrictions on the press, political parties, and trade unions. Saigon witnessed growing labour unrest culminating in the summer of 1937 in general dock and transport strikes. In April of that year the
Vietnamese Communists and their
Trotskyist left opposition ran a common slate for the municipal elections with both their respective leaders Nguyễn Văn Tạo and
Tạ Thu Thâu winning seats. The exceptional unity of the left, however, was split by the lengthening shadow of the
Moscow Trials and by growing protest over the failure of the Communist-supported Popular Front to deliver constitutional reform. Colonial Minister
Marius Moutet, a Socialist commented that he had sought "a wide consultation with all elements of the popular [will]," but with "Trotskyist-Communists intervening in the villages to menace and intimidate the peasant part of the population, taking all authority from the public officials," the necessary "formula" had not been found. In April 1939 Cochinchina Council elections Tạ Thu Thâu led a "Workers' and Peasants' Slate" into victory over both the "bourgeois" Constitutionalists and the Communists' Democratic Front. Key to their success was popular opposition to the war taxes ("national defence levy") that the Communist Party, in the spirit of
Franco-Soviet accord, had felt obliged to support. Brévié set the election results aside and wrote to Colonial Minister
Georges Mandel: "the Trotskyists under the leadership of Ta Thu Thau, want to take advantage of a possible war in order to win total liberation." The Stalinists, on the other hand, are "following the position of the Communist Party in France" and "will thus be loyal if war breaks out". With the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the local communists were ordered by Moscow to return to direct confrontation with the French. Under the slogan "Land to the Tillers, Freedom for the workers and independence for Vietnam", in November 1940 the Party in Cochinchina obliged, triggering a widespread
insurrection. The revolt did not penetrate Saigon (an attempted uprising in the city was quelled in a day). In the Mekong Delta fighting continued until the end of the year.
World War II File:Thống-Chế đã nói - Đại-Pháp khắng khít với thái bình, như dân quê với đất ruộng.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=Thống-Chế đã nói – Đại-Pháp khắng khít với thái bình, như dân quê với đất ruộng [Thống-Chế said: Dai-France clings to peace, like peasants with lands]|A
propaganda painting in
Hanoi, 1942 In September 1940, during
World War II, the newly created regime of
Vichy France granted Japan's demands for military access to Tonkin following the
Japanese occupation of French Indochina, which lasted until the end of the Pacific War. This allowed Japan better access to China in the
Second Sino-Japanese War against the forces of
Chiang Kai-shek, but it was also part of Japan's strategy for dominion over Southeast Asia and later on, the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Thailand took this opportunity of weakness to reclaim previously lost territories, resulting in the
Franco-Thai War between October 1940 and 9 May 1941. The Thai forces generally did well on the ground, but Thai objectives in the war were limited. In January,
Vichy French naval forces decisively defeated Thai naval forces in the
Battle of Ko Chang. The war ended in May at the instigation of the Japanese, with the French forced to concede territorial gains for Thailand. The general disorganization of French Indochina, coupled with several natural disasters, caused a
dreadful famine in Northern and Central Vietnam. Several hundred thousand people – possibly over one million – are believed to have starved to death in 1944–1945. On 9 March 1945, with
France liberated, Germany in retreat, and the United States ascendant in the Pacific, Japan launched a
coup d'etat against the French Indochina colonial administration to prevent a potential uprising by the colonial forces.
Vietnam,
Cambodia and
Laos were established as independent states, members of Japan's
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese kept power in Indochina until the news of their government's surrender came through in August. Both Vichy French and Japanese authorities encouraged nationalism in Indochina for their own purposes. Disillusioned Vietnamese nationalists redirected this sentiment toward self-determination. Despite Japanese and French efforts to manipulate identities, profound societal changes occurred in the early 1940s, with Vietnam’s right-wing nationalist groups, particularly the
Đại Việt parties, embracing a firm national identity. The
Viet Minh launched a resistance campaign against Japanese occupation. The Viet Minh had begun fighting in 1944, when the French were attacked on Dinh Ca in October 1944 and in Cao Bang and Bac Can French were attacked by Viet Cong in November 1944 and the French and Japanese fought each other on 9 March 1945, so in Tonkin the Viet Cong began disarming French soldiers and attacking the Japanese. In Quang Ngai, Ba To, Yen Bai and Nghia Lo political prisoners escaped Japanese were attacked din Son La by Meo (Hmong) tribesmen and in Hoa Binh and Lang Son by Muong tribesmen. The Viet Minh took control of 6 provinces in Tonkin after 9 March 1945 within 2 weeks. The Viet Minh led a brutal campaign against the Japanese where many died from 9 March 1945 to 19 August 1945. On 26 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter calling for struggle against the French mentioning they were returning after they sold out the Vietnamese to the Japanese twice in 4 years. The Japanese forced Vietnamese women to become
comfort women, as they did with Burmese, Indonesian, Thai, and Filipino women. In the
Vietnamese famine of 1944–1945, one to two million people starved to death in the
Red River Delta of northern Vietnam due to various factors. In Phat Diem the Vietnamese farmer Di Ho was one of the few survivors who saw the Japanese steal grain. The North Vietnamese government accused both France and Japan of the famine and said 1–2 million Vietnamese died. Võ An Ninh took photographs of dead and dying Vietnamese during the great famine, which were introduced in some foreign books, say, a Japanese book by
Katsumoto Saotome published in 1993. Starving Vietnamese were dying throughout northern Vietnam in 1945 due to the Japanese seizure of their crops by the time the Chinese came to disarm the Japanese and Vietnamese corpses were all throughout the streets of Hanoi and had to be cleaned up by students. Although the death toll of 1945 famine is generally said to be 1 million to 2 million, the estimated value ranges effectively from 2 hundred thousand to 2 million. Especially 2 million is often cited, which is insisted by the
Communist Party of Vietnam, but is not based on academic research since Ho Chi Minh's assertion in the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam on 2 September 1945 has just been repeated. Speaking precisely, Ho Chi Minh mentioned over 2 million in the Declaration but 2 million is the official perspective of Communist Party of Vietnam for decades. On the other hand there are Vietnamese considering other numbers, for instance, the
Imperial Commissioner in Hanoi , who later joined
Viet Minh, insisted four hundred thousand. Based on his research of the joint field works conducted in the northern Vietnam in early 1990s, of which official report was published in the title
Nạn đói năm 1945 ở Việt Nam: Những Chứng tích Lịch sử (edited by Văn Tạo and Furuta Motoo), Japanese professor Furuta Motoo concluded that the death toll would be likely larger than 1 million but seems skeptical of 2 million. The South fractured between the Stalinist front Viet Minh and rival groups including the
Trotskyists,
Hòa Hảo,
Cao Đài, and
Bình Xuyên. American President
Roosevelt and General
Stilwell privately made it adamantly clear that the French were not to reacquire French Indochina after the war was over. He told Secretary of State
Cordell Hull the Indochinese were worse off under the French rule of nearly 100 years than they were at the beginning. Roosevelt asked
Chiang Kai-shek if he wanted Indochina, to which Chiang Kai-shek replied: "Under no circumstances!" Following World War II, the Allied powers agreed to return Indochina to French administration. during the Indochina War After persuading
Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate in his favour, on 2 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared independence for the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The Viet Minh tried to negotiate with the French in order to gain independence, but the
Ho–Sainteny Agreement and
Fontainebleau Agreements of 1946 failed to produce a satisfactory, lasting solution. After the close of hostilities in WWII, 200,000 Chinese troops under General
Lu Han sent by Chiang Kai-shek entered French Indochina north of the 16th parallel to accept the surrender of Japanese occupying forces, and remained there until 1946. This was in accordance with the instructions made by General
Douglas MacArthur in
General Order No. 1, of 2 September 1945. Working with the
VNQDĐ (broadly the Vietnamese equivalent of the Chinese
Kuomintang), to increase their influence in Indochina and put pressure on their opponents. Chiang Kai-shek threatened the French with war in response to manoeuvering by the French and Ho Chi Minh against each other, forcing them to come to a peace agreement. In February 1946 he forced the French to surrender all of their concessions in China and renounce their extraterritorial privileges in exchange for withdrawing from northern Indochina and allowing French troops to reoccupy the region starting in March 1946. General Lu Han's 200,000 Chinese soldiers occupied north Vietnam starting August 1945. 90,000 arrived by October, the 62nd army came on 26 September to Nam Dinh and Haiphong. Lang Son and Cao Bang were occupied by the Guangxi 62nd army corps and the Red River region and Lai Cai were occupied by a column from Yunnan. Vietnamese VNQDD fighters accompanied the Chinese soldiers. Ho Chi Minh ordered his DRV administration to set quotas for rice to give to the Chinese soldiers and rice was sold in Chinese currency in the Red River delta. Lu Han occupied the French governor general's palace after ejecting the French staff under Sainteny. Chinese soldiers occupied French Indochina north of the 16th parallel while the British under the South-East Asia Command of Lord Mountbatten occupied the south. Vietnamese civilians were robbed, raped and killed by French soldiers in Saigon when they came back in August 1945. Chiang Kai-shek deliberately withheld his crack and well trained soldiers from occupying Vietnam since he was going to use them to fight the Communists inside China and instead sent undisciplined warlord troops from Yunnan under Lu Han to occupy French Indochina north of the 16th parallel for the purpose of disarming the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh confiscated gold taels, jewelry and coins in September 1945 during "Gold Week" to give to Chinese forces occupying northern Vietnam. Rice to Cochinchina by the French in October 1945 were divided by Ho Chi Minh, and the northern Vietnamese only received one third while the Chinese soldiers were given two thirds by Ho Chi Minh. For 15 days elections were postponed by Ho Chi Minh in response to a demand by Chinese general Chen Xiuhe on 18 December 1945 so that the Chinese could get the Dong Minh Hoi and VNQDD to prepare. The Chinese left only in April–June 1946. Ho Chi Minh gave golden smoking paraphernalia and a golden opium pipe to the Chinese general Lu Han after gold week and purchased weapons with what was left of the proceeds. Starving Vietnamese were dying throughout northern Vietnam in 1945 due to the Japanese seizure of their crops by the time the Chinese came to disarm the Japanese and Vietnamese corpses were all throughout the streets of Hanoi and had to be cleaned up by students. Ho Chi Minh sent a cable on 17 October 1945 to American President Harry S. Truman calling on him, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Premier Stalin and Premier Attlee to go to the United Nations against France and demand France not be allowed to return to occupy Vietnam, accusing France of having sold out and cheated the Allies by surrendering Indochina to Japan and that France had no right to return. Ho Chi Minh dumped the blame on Dong Minh Hoi and VNDQQ for signing the agreement with France for returning its soldiers to Vietnam after he had to do it himself. Ho Chi Minh's Việt Minh tried to organize welcome parades for Chinese soldiers in northern Vietnam and covered for instances of bad behavior by warlord soldiers, trying to reassure Vietnamese that the warlord troops of Lu Han were only there temporarily and that China supported Vietnam's independence. Việt Minh newspapers said that the same ancestors (huyết thống) and culture were shared by Vietnamese and Chinese and that the Chinese heroically fought Japan and changed in the 1911 revolution and was attacked by western imperialists so it was "not the same as feudal China". Ho Chi Minh forbade his soldiers like Trần Huy Liệu in Phú Thọ from attacking Chinese soldiers and Ho Chi Minh even surrendered Vietnamese who attacked Chinese soldiers to be executed as punishment in the Ro-Nha incident in Kiến An district on 6 March 1946 after Hồ Đức Thành and Đào Văn Biểu, special commissioners sent from Hanoi by Ho's DRV examined the case. Ho Chi Minh appeased and granted numerous concessions to the Chinese soldiers to avoid the possibility of them clashing with the Việt Minh, with him ordering Vietnamese not to carry out anything against Chinese soldiers and pledging his life on his promise, hoping the Chinese would disarm the Japanese soldiers and finish their mission as fast as possible. Chinese communist guerilla leader Chu Chia-pi came into northern Vietnam multiple times in 1945 and 1948 and helped the Việt Minh fight against the French from Yunnan. Other Chinese Communists also did the same.
First Indochina War Bitter fighting ensued in the
First Indochina War as Ho and his government took to the forests and mountains. In 1948, France recognized nominal independence of Vietnam with the Hạ Long Bay Preliminary Agreement. In 1949, in order to provide a political alternative to Ho Chi Minh, the French favoured the creation of a unified
State of Vietnam, and former Emperor Bảo Đại was put back in power. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia became
associated states of the
French Union and were granted more autonomy. The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against the French. In 1949 the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States, China and the Soviet Union. French Union forces included colonial troops from their colonial empire – Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian Arabs/Berbers; Laotian, Cambodian and
Vietnamese ethnic minorities; Black Africans – and French professional troops, European volunteers, and units of the
Foreign Legion. The use of
metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the government to prevent the war from becoming even more unpopular at home. It was called the "dirty war" (
la sale guerre) by leftists in France. Vietnamese women were also raped in north Vietnam by the French like in Bảo Hà,
Bảo Yên District,
Lào Cai province and Phu Lu, which caused 400 Vietnamese who were trained by the French to defect on 20 June 1948. Buddhist statues were looted and Vietnamese were robbed, raped and tortured by the French after the French crushed the Việt Minh in northern Vietnam in 1947–1948 forcing the Việt Minh to flee into Yunnan, China for sanctuary and aid from the Chinese Communists. A French reporter was told by Vietnamese village notables "We know what war always is, We understand your soldiers taking our animals, our jewelry, our Buddhas; it is normal. We are resigned to their raping our wives and our daughters; war has always been like that. But we object to being treated in the same way, not only our sons, but ourselves, old men and dignitaries that we are." The strategy of pushing the Việt Minh into attacking well-defended bases in remote parts of the country at the end of their logistical trails was validated at the
Battle of Nà Sản even though the base was relatively weak because of a lack of concrete and steel. French efforts were made more difficult due to the limited usefulness of armoured tanks in a forested and mountainous environment, lack of strong air forces for air cover and
carpet bombing, and use of foreign recruits from other French colonies (mainly from Algeria, Morocco and even Vietnam).
Võ Nguyên Giáp, however, used efficient and novel tactics of direct fire artillery, convoy ambushes and massed anti-aircraft guns to impede land and air supply deliveries together with a strategy based on recruiting a sizable regular army facilitated by wide popular support, a guerrilla warfare doctrine and instruction developed in China, and the use of simple and reliable war material provided by the
Soviet Union. However, 1950 was the turning point of the war. Ho's government was recognised by the fellow Communist governments of China and the Soviet Union, and
Mao's government subsequently gave a fallback position to Ho's forces, as well as abundant supplies of weapons. In October 1950, the French army suffered its first major defeat with the
Battle of Route Coloniale 4. Subsequent efforts by the French military managed to improve their situation only in the short term. Bảo Đại's State of Vietnam proved a weak and unstable government, and
Norodom Sihanouk's Cambodia proclaimed its independence in November 1953. Laos became independent in October 1953 and the State of Vietnam became independent on 4 June 1954 (although they were still members of the
French Union). Fighting lasted until May 1954, when the Việt Minh won the decisive victory against French forces at the gruelling
Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
Geneva Agreements On 21 July 1954, the
Geneva Conference produced the Geneva Agreements between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and France. Provisions included supporting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Indochina, reaffirming its independence from France, declaring the cessation of hostilities and foreign involvement in internal Indochina affairs, and delineating northern and southern zones into which opposing troops were to withdraw. The Agreements mandated unification on the basis of internationally supervised free elections to be held in July 1956.
United States involvement In 1954 the French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ renewed the United States interest in intervening, including some senators who called out for large scale bombing campaigns, potentially even nuclear weapons.
President Dwight Eisenhower, even though he did not believe a military victory, believed in the
domino theory, where if Vietnam were to fall to communism then there would be multiple other countries that would fall to the ideology in Southeast Asia, from Vietnam to India there would be a dramatic shift in global power. Eisenhower chose to not put boots on the ground, but his decision to start to get involved likely is more important to the countries eventual step into the country than Johnson's decision to take that last step. Eisenhower had a further impact in that he would continue to provide support for future presidents policy in the country, Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald Ford both used him to large extents, Kennedy did have several meetings with him in the White House, and Nixon was mostly on his own, but considering their familial ties there was inevitably some ideas that were considered that otherwise would not have been. As he was so involved the United States policy in French Indochina his influence is hard to underestimate. == Administration ==