Background To The Vietnam War - The Rise of Ho Chi Minh

The Rise of Ho Chi Minh

As a colony with a long national history, France was forced to deal with a long series of civil wars and nationalist movements that marked their occupation of Vietnam, later French Indo-China.

The man who would later be named Ho Chi Minh entered the scene in a country that loathed its status as a colony. French colonialism, dependent in no small measure on profits gained from cheap labor for mining, rubber, construction and other industries, had essentially laid the foundation for national unrest in the early part of the twentieth century. Added into this formula was the growing ethnic, political, and economic division between Catholic and Buddhist Vietnamese. Vietnamese society at all levels was politically and economically divided during this period, as it was at the end of French rule.

Originally named Nguyen Sinh Cung, Ho Chi Minh, was born in 1890 in central Vietnam. In 1911 he would sign on as a stoker in a French freighter, and would spend thirty years away from Vietnam. Travelling extensively, Ho would see not only France, but also visited the United States and London where he would meet Irish Nationalists, finally ending up in Paris. where he would remain for six years.

In 1919, with the close of World War I, he would attempt to meet with Woodrow Wilson, asking for a right to self-determination for Vietnam. Meeting French socialists, who noted his attempt, and quickly sided with the Communist faction. In 1924, Ho moved to Moscow.

At the end of World War II, Japanese forces in Indochina turned over power to Vietnamese Nationalists as a way of causing trouble for the allied occupation forces operating in the postwar period. Japan had, late in the war, created a nominally independent Vietnamese government. Japan allowed this government to be displaced by the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh. In September 1945, Chinese forces as agreed at the Potsdam Conference occupied Indochina south to the 16th parallel to supervise the surrender and repatriation of the Japanese. The next month, a British force landed in Southern Vietnam and occupied Indochina south of the 16th parallel. The immediate postwar period was very chaotic with criminals, nationalists and French soldiers released from prison all fighting for power.

The French eventually gained a measure of control back over parts of Vietnam. Those parts were mostly in the British zone. In early 1946, the French began a series of dual negotiations with the Chinese and Viet Minh over the future of Vietnam. The Viet Minh were willing for nationalist reasons to agree to almost any concessions including the return of the French in order to get the Chinese army out of the country. For their part, the French traded their pre-war concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports for Chinese cooperation in Vietnam. The French landed in early 1946 outside Hanoi and quickly established themselves as the administration in the cities. After failed negotiations with the French over the future of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh retreated into remote parts of the countryside to fight a small-scale insurgency against the French.

Though the US had no direct role in the return of the French to Indochina, Washington's desire for a more uniform postwar European economy and European cooperation on a variety of other matters required French cooperation in the postwar period. And because successive French governments threatened to become more uncooperative in Europe if the United States refused to accede to their demands overseas, Washington committed itself to a policy of supporting the French in Indochina.