Independent, United at Last

                Decades before the establishment of the National Liberation Front by Ho Chi Minh, Minh’s great uncle allied himself with De Tham, a fellow revolutionary fighter, in the hopes of freeing Vietnam from the rule of the French.  Many years later, the hope of reaching this goal drove nationalists such as Ho Chi Minh to take a stand in what became known as the First Indochina War, which culminated in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.  His ultimate goal, the unification of North and South Vietnam, separated in 1954, would be reached, but not until years after his death. (14)

                Between 1946 and 1954, an eight year conflict raged between revolutionaries backed by Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Cong and the French, (15) who wanted to stay in power as the colonial ruler of Vietnam. (16)  However, the revolutionaries defeated the French in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, proving that a third-world Asian nation could overthrow a Western civilization. (17)  After nearly 90 years of French rule, the Vietnamese were finally independent from France, but they were not totally united in their independence.  Vietnam, while free of French control, was split at the 17th parallel into a communist, Viet Cong-run North and a United States-backed South. (18)  Beginning in 1959, the Second Indochina War, known as the Vietnam War to the Americans when they became involved in 1964, intended to unite the country under one communist rule.  It did just that in 1975, but unfortunately, Ho Chi Minh was unable to see his dream come to fruition.

                With the end of the Vietnam War and the defeat of all foreign adversaries, the North and South were finally united under one communist government.  Despite its involvement, the United States left the conflict, humiliated having never lost a war, and all outside governments were now gone.  Vietnam was independent and united together at last.

De Tham: A Vietnamese Resistance Leader

Throughout the occupation of Vietnam by France, small resistance leaders and groups sprang up to gather the people against the ruling French authority.  As the French suppressors became more and more ignorant of the problems of the common Vietnamese citizens, organizations were formed with the hope of overthrowing the foreign rulers. (8)  One leader, De Tham, led a thirty year resistance effort against the French, and although he was assassinated in 1913, his goal of Vietnamese independence was eventually realized decades later. (9)

                Although the French conquest of Vietnam was never readily accepted by the Vietnamese people, decades of misrule only strengthened the desire for Vietnamese independence.  As time went on, organizations like the National Liberation Front (NLF, or the Viet Cong) gained support and grew in size. (10)  The number of revolutionists grew steadily during the turn of the century, during a time when De Tham, considered a legend in both his culture and in France after his time, operated. (11)   The son of two revolutionist parents who were killed (directly or indirectly) by the French, De Tham was raised by his uncle and learned to despise the foreign government.  The French began to fear De Tham as a tactician, organizing guerilla units and proving himself and his band a threat to the colonists.  However, despite his success as an anti-French fighter, he would eventually bite off more than he could chew and would pay the price. (12)

                More than a decade after gaining a considerable land holding in 1894, De Tham and other Vietnamese nationalists conspired to execute French guests at a banquet being held.  He was unsuccessful and was hunted by the French and eventually assassinated by a group of three of his Chinese followers.  Although he died in 1913 and his guerilla warfare group disbanded, his ideology lived on.  Decades later, Ho Chi Minh, the great-nephew of one of De Tham’s allies, rallied troops with the anti-French ideology as De Tham had done with the ultimate goal of Vietnamese independence. (13)

Napoleon III and His (Not So Peaceful) Conquest of Vietnam

With the British gaining territories worldwide and expanding their dominance to greater regions, the French became hungry for a piece of the colonial pie.  Napoleon III was ready for his piece when, halfway through the 19^th century, he sent a fleet to the Vietnamese harbor of Da Nang at the urging of the mercantilists and missionaries.  Napoleon’s goal was to eventually reach Hue, but several factors, ranging from devastating diseases to Vietnamese rebellions, kept this goal out of sight. (1)  Napoleon decided to hold off on the colonization of Vietnam for the moment, but he was not willing to let it slip away so easily.

                In a speech given at Bordeaux in 1852, Napoleon III stated, “The Empire means peace.” (2)  While this may have been the case with Algeria, whom he treated very kindly, as if it were a fellow European nation, it was not the case with Vietnam.  While Napoleon III was against the encroachment of the African lands by any European power and granted immense freedom to the Algerians under his rule, (3) his position on Vietnam was just the opposite.  Napoleon used strict military force against the Vietnamese because he thought it was necessary that retaliatory measures be taken against the country for their abuse toward French Catholic missionaries. (4) He used Vietnam as a precedent and a trophy to display France’s authority in foreign affairs, and his treatment of the Asian country contradicted his declaration of peace several years before.

Admiral Rigault de Genouilly of France, under Napoleon III’s orders, sailed to the region north of the Mekong Delta where Vietnamese resistance was met, but this time squashed.  The area around present-day Saigon was captured; the new leadership had paid off and the French were beginning to make an impact on the new lands.  In the Treaty of Saigon of 1862, Vietnamese Emperor Tu Doc ceded three important provinces in the southern region of the country.  Two years later and three provinces more, France was beginning to make a name for itself in the region. (5)  The land under Napoleon III’s rule was soon consolidated and officially named Cochinchina, yet there was still more to be gained by France (and lost by Vietnam).

                While Cochinchina was being formed, the French were also busy in neighboring Cambodia, eventually taking it from the Vietnamese’ hands.   Their influence spread to all of Vietnam going into the 1880s, and, in 1884, Vietnam handed over the last remaining pieces of the empire France had yet to conquer. (6)  This colonial bond between the French and the Vietnam lasted roughly 70 years and ended when, like the Vietnamese had done 7 decades earlier, the French lost all power in Vietnam, but the man who started it all, Napoleon III, would not live to see that day. (7)