Which country ruled indochina

In the s, he made repeated requests for American aid and campaigned for independence. By the time of the Korean War armistice in , the United States was already irrevocably committed to defending the French against the increasingly aggressive Viet Minh forces. In early , the French Army was encamped at Dien Bien Phu, a heavily fortified base located deep in a valley and near communications links on the Laotian border.

By mid-March, it was clear that the French were struggling under a Viet Minh seige and that only outside intervention in the form of fresh troops or airstrikes could save them. Though President Eisenhower was determined to prevent a communist victory in Vietnam, the U. Congress and officials in the Administration were equally determined not to intervene unless they could do so as a part of a larger coalition.

Britain and other members of NATO declined to participate in rescuing what they thought was a lost cause. In the wake of the French defeat, the French and Vietnamese, along with representatives from the United States and China, met in Geneva in mid to discuss the future of Indochina. They reached two agreements.

First, the French and the Viet Minh agreed to a cease-fire and a temporary division of the country along the 17th parallel. The second agreement promised that neither the North nor the South would join alliances with outside parties, and called for general elections in Laos and Cambodia were to remain neutral. The peace also recognized the independent nations of Cambodia and Laos in Southeast Asia. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Kallie Szczepanski. History Expert. France soon became a leading producer of rubber through its Indochina colony and Indochinese rubber became prized in the industrialized world.

The success of rubber plantations resulted in an increase in investment in the colony. These new factories produced textiles, cigarettes, beer, and cement which were exported throughout the French Empire. Unlike in Algeria, French settlement in Indochina did not occur at a grand scale. By , only about 34, French civilians lived in French Indochina, along with a smaller number of French military personnel and government workers.

The fact that Indochina was the economic colony as opposed to settlement colony and its distance from France were the principal reasons why French settlement did not grow in a manner similar to that of French North Africa which had a population of over 1 million French civilians.

Despite this limited presence of the French in the colony, the French language was the principal language of education, government, trade, and media. It became widespread among urban and semi-urban populations and was the principal language of the elite and educated.

However, local populations still largely spoke native languages. In , France was swiftly defeated by Nazi Germany and colonial administration of French Indochina passed to the Vichy French government, a puppet state of Nazi Germany.

Keeping the French colonial administration, the Japanese ruled from behind the scenes in a parallel of Vichy France. The United States, concerned by this Japanese expansion, put embargoes on exports of steel and oil to Japan. Indochinese communists had set up hidden headquarters in , but most of the Vietnamese resistance to Japan, France, or both, including communist and non-communist groups, was based over the border in China.

As part of the Allied fighting against the Japanese, the Chinese formed a nationalist resistance movement, the Dong Minh Hoi, which included communists but was not controlled by them. When the movement did not provide the desired intelligence data, Ho Chi Minh was released from jail and returned to lead an underground centered on the communist Viet Minh. Free French intelligence also tried to affect developments in the Vichy-Japanese collaboration.

This agreement defined the Franco-Japanese relationship for Indochina until the Japanese abrogated it in March It gave the Japanese a total of eight airfields and allowed them to have more troops present and use the Indochinese financial system, in return for a fragile French autonomy.

After the Japanese removed the French from administrative control in Indochina, they made no attempt to impose their own direct control of the civilian administration. Primarily concerned with the defense of Vietnam against an Allied invasion, the Japanese were not interested in Vietnamese politics.

However, they also understood the desirability of a certain degree of administrative continuity. It was to their advantage to install a Vietnamese government that would acquiesce in the Japanese military presence. Three conflicting visions of post-war French Indochina emerged: Western anticommunists saw the French as protectors of the area from communist expansion; nationalists and anti-colonialists wanted independence from the French; and communists focused on the expansion of communism.

Lines between the movements that promoted these three visions were not always clear, and their co-existence shaped the post-war fate of French Indochina. When the Japanese surrendered, the Viet Minh immediately launched the insurrection, which would be known as the August Revolution.

On August 19, the Viet Minh took control of Hanoi, seizing the northern Vietnam in the next few days. However, the Viet Minh faced various problems in the southern part of the country. The south was politically more diverse than the north and the Viet Minh had been unable to establish the same degree of control there that they had achieved in the north.

There were serious divisions in the independence movement in the south, where different nationalist groups competed for control. The committee took over public administration in Saigon, but followed Allied orders that the Japanese maintain law and order until Allied troops arrived. However, in the north, occupation period became a critical opportunity for the Viet Minh to consolidate and triumph over domestic rivals.

In March , the two sides reached a preliterate accord. For their part, the French agreed to two provisions they had no intention of honoring: French troops north of the sixteenth parallel would be limited to 15 thousand men for a period of five years, and a referendum was to be held on the issue of unifying the Vietnamese regions.

This agreement entangled the French and Vietnamese in joint military operations and fruitless negotiations for several months. However, the status of southern Vietnam remained the sticking point. The March accord, which called for a referendum to determine whether the south would rejoin the rest of the country or remain a separate French territory, left the fate of former Cochinchina in flux.

The preliminary accord was but the first step toward an intended overall and lasting agreement. However, almost immediately after the signing of the March accord, relations began to deteriorate. Negotiations broke down over the issue of the fate of southern Vietnam.

As talking failed to bring results, both sides prepared for a military solution. Provocations by both French and Vietnamese troops led to the outbreak of full-scale guerrilla war on December 19, Nearly one year after the August Revolution, Vietnam and France were at war.

In October , supporters of Laotian independence announced the dismissal of the king and formed the new government of Laos, the Lao Issara. However, the Lao Issara was ill-equipped and could only await the inevitable French return.

In , the French forced the Lao Issara leadership to flee into exile in Thailand and formally endorsed the unity of Laos as a constitutional monarchy within the French Union.

The Japanese occupation of Cambodia ended with the official surrender of Japan in August and the Cambodian puppet state lasted until October King Sihanouk reluctantly proclaimed a new constitution in May Viet Minh forces fought against the French Union from until the Geneva Conference of that forced France to abandon all claims to the colonies of Indochina, including Laos and Cambodia.

Japanese forces located south of that line surrendered to him and those to the north surrendered to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. The British refused to do likewise in Saigon and deferred to the French, against the ostensible support of the Viet Minh by American Office of Strategic Services representatives. The DRV ruled as the only civil government in all of Vietnam for about 20 days after the abdication of Emperor Bao Dai, who had governed under Japanese rule and thus was considered by Viet Minh a Japanese puppet.

Guerrilla warfare began around Saigon immediately. The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the northern border of Vietnam in , the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States and the Soviet Union.

French Union forces included colonial troops from the whole former empire Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese ethnic minorities , French professional troops, and units of the French Foreign Legion. The use of metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the government to prevent the war from becoming even more unpopular at home. The strategy of pushing the Viet 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 Na San.

The French efforts were made more difficult due to the limited usefulness of armored tanks in a jungle environment, lack of strong air forces for air cover and carpet bombing, and use of foreign recruits from other French colonies. On the other hand, General Vo Nguyen Giap, the military leader of the Viet Minh considered to be one of the greatest strategists of the 20th century, used efficient and novel tactics of direct fire artillery, convoy ambushes and amassed anti-aircraft guns to impede land or air supply deliveries together with a strategy based on recruiting a sizable regular army facilitated by wide popular support, a guerrilla warfare doctrine, instruction developed in China, and the use of simple and reliable war material provided by the Soviet Union.

The Geneva Accords promised elections in to determine a national government for a united Vietnam. It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the United Nations, but was rejected by the Soviet delegation. With American support, in Diem used a referendum to remove the former Emperor and declare himself the president of the Republic of Vietnam.

When the elections failed to occur, Viet Minh cadres who stayed behind in South Vietnam were activated and started to fight the government. North Vietnam also invaded and occupied portions of Laos to assist in supplying the guerrilla fighting National Liberation Front in South Vietnam. In , under Japanese pressure, King Sisavangvong declared the independence of Laos.

The move allowed the various independence movements in Laos to coalesce into the Lao Issara or Free Lao movement, which was led by Prince Phetsarath and opposed the return of Laos to the French. Undeterred, Prince Phetsarath staged a coup in September and placed the royal family in Luang Prabang under house arrest. In October , the Lao Issara government was declared under the civil administration of Prince Phetsarath but the French were able to reassert control over Indochina in April The Lao Issara government fled to Thailand, where they maintained opposition to the French until , when the group split over questions regarding relations with the Viet Minh and the communist Pathet Lao was formed.

With the Lao Issara in exile, in August France instituted a constitutional monarchy in Laos headed by King Sisavangvong and Thailand agreed to return territories seized during the Franco-Thai War in exchange for representation at the United Nations.

The Franco-Lao General Convention of provided most members of the Lao Issara with a negotiated amnesty and sought appeasement by establishing the Kingdom of Laos a quasi-independent constitutional monarchy within the French Union.

In additional powers were granted to the Royal Lao Government, including training and assistance for a national army. By , the defeat at Dien Bien Phu brought eight years of fighting with the Viet Minh during the First Indochinese War to an end and France abandoned all claims to the colonies of Indochina.

On March 9, , during the Japanese occupation of Cambodia, young king Norodom Sihanouk proclaimed an independent Kingdom of Kampuchea following a formal request by the Japanese. Shortly thereafter the Japanese government nominally ratified the independence of Cambodia and established a consulate in Phnom Penh. After Allied military units entered Cambodia, the Japanese military forces present in the country were disarmed and repatriated. The French were able to reimpose the colonial administration in Phnom Penh in October the same year.

A partial agreement was struck in October Sihanouk then declared that independence had been achieved and returned in triumph to Phnom Penh. As a result of the Geneva Conference, Cambodia was able to bring about the withdrawal of the Viet Minh troops from its territory and withstand any residual impingement upon its sovereignty by external powers. Its goal was to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina as the First Indochina War fighting was still going on when the Conference first gathered.

These included the countries that contributed troops to the United Nations forces in the Korean War and countries that participated in the resolution of the First Indochina War between France and the Viet Minh. The part of the conference on the Korean question ended without any declarations or proposals.

On Indochina, the conference produced a set of documents known as the Geneva Accords or Geneva Agreements. The last plenary session on Indochina in the Palais des Nations. In the foreground North Vietnamese delegation. Although the eventual Geneva Accords were presented as a consensus view, the settlement was not accepted by the delegates of either the State of Vietnam or the United States.

While the delegates began to assemble in Geneva in late April, the discussions on Indochina did not begin until May 8. The Western allies did not have a unified position on what the Conference should achieve in relation to Indochina.

The British delegation favored a negotiated settlement to the conflict. The Unites States had been supporting the French in Indochina for many years and the Republican Eisenhower administration wanted to ensure that it could not be accused of having lost Indochina to the communists.

Its leaders had previously accused the Truman administration of having lost China when the communists successfully dominated the country.

On May 10, Pham Van Dong, leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam DRV; North delegation set out their position, proposing a ceasefire, separation of the opposing forces, a ban on the introduction of new forces into Indochina, exchange of prisoners, independence and sovereignty for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, elections for unified governments in each country, withdrawal of all foreign forces, and the inclusion of representatives of the independence movements from Laos and Cambodia, Pathet Lao, and Khmer Issarak in the Conference.

On May 12, the State of Vietnam South rejected any partition of the country and the United States expressed a similar position the next day. Although behind the scenes the U. Unwilling to support the proposed partition or intervention, by mid-June the United States decided to withdraw from major participation in the Conference. The Soviet and Chinese representatives also argued that the situations in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were not the same and should be treated separately.

Consequently, Pham Van Dong agreed the Viet Minh would be prepared to withdraw their forces from Laos and Cambodia provided no foreign bases were established in Indochina. After lengthy negotiations, on July 20 the remaining issues were resolved as the parties agreed that the partition line should be at the 17th parallel and that the elections for reunification should be in July , two years after the ceasefire.

Free movement of the population between the zone would be open for days and neither zone was to join any military alliance or seek military reinforcement. The International Control Commission ICC , comprising Canada, Poland at the time under the communist rule , and India as chair, was established to monitor the ceasefire.

The unsigned Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference called for reunification elections, which the majority of delegates expected to be supervised by the ICC. In October , the last French Union forces left Hanoi. Many communist sympathizers viewed South Vietnam as a French colonial and later American puppet regime. Simultaneously, many viewed North Vietnam as a communist puppet state.

After the cessation of hostilities, a large migration took place. North Vietnamese, especially Catholics, intellectuals, business people, land owners, anti-communist democrats, and members of the middle-class, moved south of the Accords-mandated ceasefire line during Operation Passage to Freedom.

The ICC reported that at least , North Vietnamese were processed through official refugee stations, while journalists estimated that as many as 2 million more might have fled. Around 52, people from the South went North, mostly Viet Minh members and their families. The mass emigration of northerners was facilitated primarily by the French Air Force and Navy.

American naval vessels supplemented the French in evacuating northerners to Saigon, the southern capital. The operation was accompanied by a large humanitarian relief effort, bankrolled in the main by the United States government in an attempt to absorb a large tent city of refugees that had sprung up outside Saigon. Diem refused to hold the national elections, citing that the South did not sign and thus was not bound to the Geneva Accords and that it was impossible to hold free elections in the communist North.

He went on to attempt to crush communist opposition. North Vietnam violated the Geneva Accords by failing to fully withdraw Viet Minh troops from South Vietnam, stifling the movement of North Vietnamese refugees, and conducting a massive military build-up that more than doubled the number of armed divisions in the North Vietnamese army while the South Vietnamese army was reduced by 20, men.

Guerrilla activity in the South escalated, while U. The year-long Vietnam War between the communist North and pro-Western South backed by the United States has had tragic consequences for the entire region, including the victory of communists in Vietnam, the rise of the Khmer Rouge to power in Cambodia, a massive refugee crisis, and the lasting impact that the use of chemicals by the U.

Following the Geneva Conference, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel and civilians were given the opportunity to move freely between the two provisional states for a day period. Elections throughout the country were to be held in to establish a unified government. In , independent observers from India, Poland, and Canada representing the International Control Commission ICC stated that fair, unbiased elections were not possible, with the ICC reporting that neither South nor North Vietnam had honored the armistice agreement.