Road to Independence: The Second Indochina War (or more commonly known as the Vietnam War)

Due to the sheer amount of the information on the Vietnam War, the blog posts will be split up into three different sections (it's easier to read than one ginormous block of text).

Part I: Reasons

   In May 1950, President Truman sent aid to the French in Vietnam, who were fighting to control their colony by pledging $15 million, securing U.S. as an ally to the French, and later, supporting South Vietnam. He claimed that he was preventing communist spread, which would affect U.S. economic, political, and military interests. [E] The spread of communism also “scorned democracy, violated human rights, pursued military aggression, and created closed state economies.” [G] Later, President Lyndon B. Johnson secured the U.S commitment to the Vietnam War.  In 1964, Vietnamese torpedoes bombed the U.S. ship Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. [E] Congress later approved Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin resolution, who allowed the U.S. to start bombing North Vietnam. In February 1965, the U.S. beings the relentless bombing of North Vietnam, and a month later, 3,500 Marines are stationed to South Vietnam. “Legal declaration or no, the United States was now at war.” [E] Once it was started, the momentum of the war could not be stopped to back out.

Road to Independence: The First Indochina War

   In March 1946, negotiations started between the French and the Viet Minh (headed by Ho Chi Minh) for Vietnamese political leeway. France was to recognize the Viet Minh government, give Vietnam “the status of a free state within the French Union,” and have French troops slowly fade out of Vietnam over the period of five years. While the French cooperated in the beginning, the plans fell out because it was difficult to please both sides of the agreement. France wanted to reestablish colonial rule while the Vietnamese wanted complete independence. [C]

The French public had strongly been against the war [E]:

1.       Resulted in loss of French soldier lives

2.       France was trying to rebuild her economy after World War II

3.       There was no justification for France in Vietnam in the first place

Timeline [C]:

Time	Event
1945	Ho Chi Minh declared national independence
November 1946	the French navy bombarded Haiphong, killing around 6,000 civilians, marking the beginning of the First Indochina War.
December 1946	the French demanded Vietnamese to hand over power and authority [F]
	The Vietnamese responded by attacking French installations around Hanoi [F]
May 1954	The final battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in Vietnamese victory

The First Conquest

Napoleon III, who had heard of good things of the Vietnamese area from the troops stationed there to protect the Catholic missionaries, started the initial conquest of the Vietnamese in July 1857. Rigault de Genouilly, a naval commander who advocated military action to control Vietnam, arrived at Tourane (today Da Nang) in August 1858 with 14 ships and 3,500 troops to turn the port city into a military base. They attacked on September 1^st, occupying the town a day later. The army then sailed to Saigon in February 1859 and seized the city two weeks later. By 1861, the French had occupied three adjacent provinces that Tu Dac needed to give up because the French armies were starving the country [D]. Finally, in June 1862, the French signed a peace treaty that gave them new territories, the entire colony dubbed ‘Cochinchina.’ In August 1883, the French colony expanded once more, so that by 1893, the Indochinese region was established, consisting of the Cochinchina area, Annam, Tonkin, Cambodia, and Laos. By using brute force and advanced technologies, the French had colonized Vietnam [C].

Splitting up the pie: Indochina Region ruled by the French in 1893

Timeline [C]:

Date	Event
July 1857	Napoleon III ordered the colonization of Vietnam
August 1858	Rigault de Genouilly sailed to Tourane and occupied the city
February 1859	French forces occupied Saigon
1861	French occupied three adjacent provinces to Saigon that Tu Dac resigned over
June 1862	Peace treaty signed by French and Vietnamese, entitling French to the “Cochinchina” region
1893	Indochinese area established