📰 Vietnam · page 2

French Indochina

Further information: Cochinchina campaign, Tonkin campaign, Sino-French War, French Indochina

In the 1500s, the Portuguese explored the Vietnamese coast and reportedly erected a stele on the Chàm Islands to mark their presence.[91]76 By 1533, they began landing in the Vietnamese delta but were forced to leave because of local turmoil and fighting.77 They also had less interest in the territory than they did in China and Japan.[91]78 After they had settled in Macau and Nagasaki to begin the profitable Macau–Japan trade route, the Portuguese began to involve themselves in trade with Hội An.[91]79 Portuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries under the Padroado system were active in both Vietnamese realms of Đàng Trong (Cochinchina) and Đàng Ngoài (Tonkin) in the 17th century.[92]80 The Dutch also attempted to establish contact with Cochinchina in 1601 but failed to sustain a presence there after several violent encounters with the locals.81 The Dutch East India Company only managed to establish official relations with Tonkin in the spring of 1637 after leaving Dejima in Japan to establish trade for silk.[93]82 Meanwhile, in 1613, the first English attempt to establish contact with Hội An failed following a violent incident involving the East India Company.83 By 1672, the English established relations with Tonkin and were allowed to reside in Phố Hiến.[94]84

Between 1615 and 1753, French traders also engaged in trade in Vietnam.[95][96]85 The first French missionaries arrived in 1658, under the Portuguese Padroado.86 From its foundation, the Paris Foreign Missions Society under Propaganda Fide actively sent missionaries to Vietnam, entering Cochinchina in 1664 and Tonkin in 1666.[97]87 Spanish Dominicans joined the Tonkin mission in 1676, and Franciscans were in Cochinchina from 1719 to 1834.88 Vietnamese authorities became concerned by increasing Christianisation activities,[98] and after several Catholic missionaries were detained, the French Navy intervened in 1843 to free them.[99]89 In a series of conquests from 1859 to 1885, France eroded Vietnam's sovereignty.[100]90 At the siege of Tourane in 1858, France was aided by Spain (with Spanish and Filipino troops from the Philippines)[101] and perhaps some Tonkinese Catholics.[102]91 After the 1862 Treaty of Saigon, and especially after France completely conquered Lower Cochinchina in 1867, the Văn Thân movement of scholar-gentry class arose and committed violence against Catholics across central and northern Vietnam.[103]92

Between 1862 and 1867, the southern third of the country became the French colony of Cochinchina.[104]93 By 1884, the entire country was under French rule, with the central and northern parts of Vietnam separated into the two protectorates of Annam and Tonkin.94 The three entities were formally integrated into the union of French Indochina in 1887.[105][106]95 During this period, the French administration imposed significant political and cultural changes on Vietnamese society.[107]96 A Western-style system of modern education introduced new humanist values.[108]97 Most French settlers in Indochina were concentrated in Cochinchina, particularly in Saigon, and in Hanoi corpus, the colony's capital.[109]98

During the early colonial period, guerrillas of the royalist Cần Vương movement rebelled against French rule and massacred around a third of Vietnam's Christian population.[110]99 Anti-Catholic violence persisted in Nam Định, Quảng Trị, and Bình Định during the 1880s.[111]100 The French strategy for pacification in Vietnam relied more on alliances with local notables than on Christian missions to establish control and manage resistance.[112]101 The French developed a plantation economy to promote export of tobacco, indigo, tea and coffee.[113]102 However, they largely ignored the increasing demands for civil rights and self-governance.103 An increasing dissatisfaction even led to half-hearted, badly coordinated, and still worse executed plots to oust the French, such as the Hanoi Poison Plot of 1908 and the Thái Nguyên uprising of 1917.[114]104

A nationalist political movement soon emerged, with leaders like Phan Bội Châu, Phan Châu Trinh, Phan Đình Phùng, and Emperor Hàm Nghi fighting or calling for independence.[115]105 This resulted in the 1930 Yên Bái mutiny by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNQDĐ), which the French quashed.106 The mutiny split the independence movement, as many leading members converted to communism.[116][117][118]107

The French maintained full control of their colonies until World War II, when the war in the Pacific led to the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in 1940.108 Afterwards, the Japanese Empire was allowed to station its troops in Vietnam while the pro-Vichy French colonial administration continued.[119][120]109 Japan exploited Vietnam's natural resources to support its military campaigns, culminating in a full-scale takeover of the country in March 1945.110 This led to the Vietnamese famine of 1944–1945, which killed up to two million people.[121][122]111

First Indochina War

Further information: Civil conflicts in Vietnam (1945–1949), First Indochina War, 1954 Geneva Conference

In 1941, the Việt Minh, a communist-led national liberation movement, emerged under Ho Chi Minh's leadership.[123][124]112 Mass political mobilization intensified during the Japanese military occupation of Indochina,[125] and nationalist parties fostered a stronger sense of national identity.[126]113 After Japan's defeat in World War II, the Việt Minh seized Hanoi and Huế in August 1945, dissolved the Empire of Vietnam, and established a provisional government that declared national independence on 2 September.[124]114 In the south, Saigon's administrative services collapsed, and chaos, riots, and murder were widespread.[127]115

In August 1945, the Allies had decided to divide Indochina at the 16th parallel to allow Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China to receive the Japanese surrender in the north while Britain's Lord Louis Mountbatten received their surrender in the south.116 The Allies agreed that Indochina still belonged to France.[128][129]117

But as the French were weakened by the German occupation, British-Indian forces and the remaining Japanese Southern Expeditionary Army Group were used to maintain order and help France reestablish control through the 1945–1946 War in Vietnam, south of the 16th parallel.[130]118 The Viet Minh sought to consolidate power by terrorizing and purging rival Vietnamese nationalist groups and Trotskyist leaders.[131][132][133][134]119 In 1946, the Franco-Chinese and Ho–Sainteny Agreements enabled French forces to replace the Chinese north of the 16th parallel and facilitated a coexistence between the DRV and the French that strengthened the Viet Minh while undermining the nationalists.[135][136]120 That summer, the Viet Minh, in collaboration with French forces, eliminated rival nationalist parties.[137][138][139][140]121 Hồ chose to take a compromising stance to avoid military conflict with France, asking the French to withdraw their colonial administrators and for French professors and engineers to help build a modern independent Vietnam.[124]122 But France did not act on these requests, including the idea of independence, and dispatched the French Far East Expeditionary Corps to restore colonial rule.123 With negotiations having broken down,[141] tensions between the Viet Minh and French authorities erupted into the full-scale First Indochina War in December 1946.[123][124][142]124 Surviving nationalist partisans and politico-religious groups rallied behind the exiled Bảo Đại to reopen negotiations with France, ultimately signing the Élysée Accords and establishing the State of Vietnam in opposition to communist domination.[143]125 The defeat of French Union forces in the 1954 Battle of Điện Biên Phủ allowed Hồ to negotiate a ceasefire from a favourable position at the subsequent Geneva Conference.[124][144]126

The Geneva Accords of 21 July 1954, signed between the Viet Minh and the French, ended the colonial fighting and affirmed Vietnam's independence, while placing Vietnam under a temporary North–South division along the Demilitarized Zone, roughly following the 17th parallel north (pending elections scheduled for July 1956).[149]127 300 days of free movement were permitted, during which almost a million northerners, including at least 500,000 Catholics and approximately 200,000 Buddhists, moved south,[150] fearing persecution by the communists.128 This migration was aided by the United States navy through Operation Passage to Freedom.[151][152]129 The partition of Vietnam by the Geneva Accords was not intended to be permanent, and stipulated that Vietnam would be reunited after the elections.[153]130 In July 1955, the State of Vietnam's prime minister Ngô Đình Diệm announced in a broadcast that South Vietnam would not participate in the elections, as they had not signed the accords and therefore were not bound by them.[154][155]131 In October 1955, Ngô Đình Diệm toppled Bảo Đại in a fraudulent referendum organised by his brother Ngô Đình Nhu, and proclaimed himself president of the Republic of Vietnam.[153]132

Vietnam War

Main article: Vietnam War

From 1953 to 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted agrarian reforms including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which resulted in significant political repression.[156]133 This included 13,500 to as many as 100,000 executions.[157][158]134 In the South, Diệm countered North Vietnamese subversion (including the assassination of over 450 South Vietnamese officials in 1956) by detaining tens of thousands of suspected communists in "political reeducation centres".[159][160]135 This programme incarcerated many non-communists, but was successful at curtailing communist activity in the country, if only for a time.[161]136 The North Vietnamese government claimed that 2,148 people were killed in the process by November 1957.[162]137 The pro-Hanoi Viet Cong began a guerrilla campaign in South Vietnam in the late 1950s to overthrow Diệm's government.[163]138 From 1960, the Soviet Union and North Vietnam signed treaties providing for further Soviet military support.[164][165][166]139 The Republic of Vietnam in the south was supported by the United States corpus, Australia corpus, South Korea corpus, and Thailand corpus, while the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north was supported by the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China corpus,[153] Khmer Rouge, and later, Sweden corpus.[167]140

In 1963, Buddhist discontent with Diệm's perceived pro-Catholic bias erupted into mass demonstrations, leading to a violent government crackdown.[168]141 This led to the collapse of Diệm's relationship with the United States, and ultimately to a 1963 coup in which he and Nhu were assassinated.[169]142 The Diệm era was followed by more than a dozen successive military governments, before the pairing of Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu took control in mid-1965.[170]143 Thiệu gradually outmaneuvered Kỳ and cemented his grip on power in fraudulent elections in 1967 and 1971.[171]144 During this political instability, the communists began to gain ground.145 To support South Vietnam's struggle against the communist insurgency, the United States used the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident as a pretext for increasing its contribution of military advisers.[172]146 US forces became involved in ground combat operations by 1965, and at their peak several years later, numbered more than 500,000.[173][174]147 The US also engaged in sustained aerial bombing.148 Meanwhile, China and the Soviet Union provided North Vietnam with significant material aid and 15,000 combat advisers.[164][165][175]149 Communist forces supplying the Việt Cộng carried supplies along the Ho Chi Minh trail, which passed through Laos.[176]150

The communists attacked South Vietnamese targets during the 1968 Tết Offensive.151 The campaign failed militarily, but shocked the American establishment and turned US public opinion against the war.[177]152 During the offensive, communist troops massacred over 3,000 civilians at Huế.[178][179]153 Facing an increasing casualty count, rising domestic opposition to the war, and growing international condemnation, the US began withdrawing from ground combat roles in the early 1970s.154 This also entailed an unsuccessful effort to strengthen and stabilise South Vietnam.[180]155 Following the Paris Peace Accords of 27 January 1973, all American combat troops were withdrawn by 29 March 1973.[181]156 In December 1974, North Vietnam captured the province of Phước Long and started a full-scale offensive, culminating in the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.[182]157 South Vietnam was ruled by a provisional government for 14 months under North Vietnamese control.[183]158

Reunification and reforms

Further information: Re-education camp (Vietnam), Vietnamese boat people, Đổi Mới

On 2 July 1976, North and South Vietnam were merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.[184]159 The war had devastated Vietnam and killed 966,000 to 3.8 million people.[185][186][187]160 A 1974 US Senate subcommittee estimated nearly 1.4 million Vietnamese civilians were killed or wounded between 1965 and 1974—including 415,000 killed.[188][189]161 In its aftermath, under Lê Duẩn's administration, there were no mass executions of South Vietnamese who had served the defunct South Vietnamese government, confounding Western fears,[190] but up to 300,000 South Vietnamese were sent to reeducation camps, where many endured torture, starvation, and disease while being forced to perform hard labour.[191]162 The government embarked on a mass campaign of collectivisation of farms and factories.[192]163 Millions fled the country in the aftermath of the war and during the subsidy period.[193]164 In 1978, in response to the Khmer Rouge government of Cambodia ordering massacres of Vietnamese residents in the border villages in the districts of An Giang and Kiên Giang,[194] the Vietnamese military invaded Cambodia and removed them from power after occupying Phnom Penh corpus.[195]165 The intervention was a success, resulting in the establishment of a new, pro-Vietnam socialist government, the People's Republic of Kampuchea, which ruled until 1989.[196]166 However, this worsened relations with China, which had supported the Khmer Rouge.167 China later launched a brief incursion into northern Vietnam in 1979, causing Vietnam to rely even more heavily on Soviet economic and military aid, while mistrust of the Chinese government escalated.[197]168