The French Withdrawal From Indochina

Before the Vietnam war, Vietnam was in a revolution because they did not want to be ruled by France. Vietnam wanted to be independent right after World War II ended in 1945. Japan had control of them, when Japan surrendered to the Allies the French never left Vietnam and claimed it as a territory(Mintz).

The French colonization of Vietnam was the long term cause of the 1945 Declaration of Independence because it challenged Vietnamese freedom, violating their national pride and depriving them of a cultural and national identity. France colonized Vietnam for a variety of reasons, while there were extensive economic opportunities; control over Vietnam established them and a major colonizing power in Southeast Asia. Vietnam had a wealth of natural resources that

The French imperialised Vietnam and negatively reconstructed their flourishing economy. When the imperialists came to Vietnam in 1887 they immediately took control of their economy and also began stripping the Vietnamese of their resources .According to (alphahistory.com),

The authors of these texts want to show that the fall of Saigon was traumatic to the people of South Vietnam. One reason to support this idea is that in the poem Saigon is Gone, Ha and her family are on a ship heading towards safety when a helicopter begins circling the ship when Mother is seasick, “People run and scream, Communists! This is not helping Mother” (Lai 67-68). This is showing that the refugees are frightened of the helicopter, believing it to be North Vietnamese. The loss of their country and home has been a traumatic experience. Later the commander of the ship says, “Do not be frightened! It’s a pilot for our side who has jumped into the water, letting his helicopter plunge in behind him” (Lai 68). Furthermore, in the transcript

How significant was the Tet Offensive in achieving a communist victory in Vietnam by 1975?

Evaluate the effectiveness of the Strategies used by the opposing sides in the Second Indochina War (1965-1973). Why was it inevitable that the South (USA and Republic of Vietnam) would be defeated?It was inevitable that the USA and the Republic of Vietnam would be defeated in the Second Indochina war of 1965-1973 because of the effective strategies used by the North, with the use of Guerrilla warfare and the Ho Chin Minh trail. The south was defeated because their tactics like using conventional ground warfare and air warfare and their Pacification Campaigns were totally inappropriate for the war in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese victory against the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 brought about dramatic changes to Indochina. These changes took place in the Geneva Conference which shortly happened after the battle of Dien Bien Phu. General Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh who were the Vietminh’s leader had only one goal and that was to unify Vietnam and declare independence from colonial rule but however their goals were not achieved at the end of the Geneva Conference due to a number of reasons.

On May 4th, 1954 the French garison on their fortress at Dien Bien Phu finally surrendered to the Viet Minh communist revolution after many months, this was a big Conundrum to the US.

During the Indochina war, the United States aided the French, but if we inspect France

French who still wanted to keep hold of Vietnam as it was very rich in

Ho Chi Minh used the analogy of “the elephant and the tiger” frequently during his presidency. Minh applied this theory to the war between the Vietnamese and French, claiming that the French were the elephants and the Vietminh troops were tigers, reinforcing the guerrilla warfare tactics that the Vietminh used to great success. Minh stated that time and resources were not of issue, the war was a fight for nationalism and self-determination, regardless of the duration of the war or the amount of troops and resources lost, the Vietnamese would come out as victors. Ho Chi Minh said at a speech in Paris in 1946 “you can kill 10 of our men for every one we kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and we will win” and “we have a secret weapon, don’t smile when I tell you this, our secret weapon is nationalism” which emphasizes the desire and desperation the North Vietnam were willing to go to in order to self-determine. The battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was the culmination of the First Indochina War and as a result of North Vietnam’s victory, French forces left and a sense of nationalism was prevalent. The Vietnamese were at war with the French due to the Communist forces in the North of Vietnam desiring the expulsion of French forces and colonisation to promote nationalism and self-determination. In March 1954, General Giap, the principal commander of the Vietminh army at the time, ordered a siege against

In the early years of French rule, French administrators planned to change Vietnam socially, politically and economically. No respect was given to the Vietnamese people or their culture. Court officials ( called manderines ) were forced to report to colonial officials instead of the king, diminishing much of the kings power and role in society. High costs of colonial administrators caused the French to put high taxes on salt, opium, alcohol and land. Forced labour was also re introduced. French rule had left the Vietnamese people and their culture impoverished and very much opressed. By 1940 half of Vietnamese's population was landless. This is was one of the many crippling effects of French colonial rule in Vietnam.

From the 1880s until World War II, France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina, which also included Cambodia and Laos. The country was under the formal control of an emperor, Bao Dai. From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese struggled for their independence from France during the first Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French controlled the South.

---After WWII and until 1955, France fought hard to regain their former territories in the region, but with a poorly organized army and little determination among the troops, their efforts soon collapsed. The French were finally defeated at Dien Bien Phu on the 8th of May 1954 by the communist general Vo Nguyen Giap. The French troops withdrew, leaving a buffer zone separating the North and South and set up elections in order to form a government in the South. The communist regime set up its headquarters in Hanoi under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Many North Vietnamese left the country and fled south where the self-proclaimed president, Ngo Dinh Diem had formed the Republic of Vietnam.

Profit gains acted as the main factor triggering French colonization of Indochina to be in their presence. The French companies and the colonial officials engaged in the transformation of the Vietnam subsistence economy to a system that is proto-capitalist on the bases of low wages and exports, increased production, and land ownership (Kolko 7). Thus, the Vietnamese never worked for their profits, but for the benefit of the colonies of the French.