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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
Vietnam: History
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Background Notes: Vietnam
History
</hdr>
<body>
<p> In BC 111, ancestors of the present-day Vietnamese,
inhabiting part of what is now southern China and northern
Vietnam, were conquered by forces of China's Han dynasty.
Chinese rule lasted more than 1,000 years (until 939 AD) when
the Vietnamese ousted their conquerors and began a southward
expansion that, by the mid-18th century, reached the Gulf of
Siam.
</p>
<p> Despite their military achievements, the Vietnamese
continued to suffer from internal political divisions.
Throughout most of the 17th and 18th centuries, contending
families in the north and south struggled to control the
powerless kings of the Le dynasty. During this period, Vietnam
was effectively divided near the 17th parallel, just a few
kilometers above the demarcation line established at the 1954
Geneva conference.
</p>
<p>French Rule
</p>
<p> Vietnam was reunited following a devastating civil war in
the 18th century but soon fell prey to the expansion of
European colonialism. The French conquest of Vietnam began in
1858 with an attack on what is now the city of Danang. France
imposed control gradually, meeting heavy resistance, and only
in 1884 was Vietnam officially incorporated into the French
empire.
</p>
<p> Fiercely nationalistic, the Vietnamese never truly accepted
the imposition of French rule. By 1930, the Vietnamese
Nationalist Party had staged the first significant armed
uprising against the French, but its virtual destruction in the
ensuing French repression left the leadership of the
anti-colonial movement to those more adept at underground
organization and survival--the communists. In that same year,
the recently formed Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) took the
lead in setting up short-lived "soviets" in the Nghe An and Ha
Tinh Provinces in northern Vietnam, an action that identified
the ICP with peasant unrest.
</p>
<p> The ICP was formed in Hong Kong in 1930 from the
amalgamation of the Vietnamese and the nascent Lao and Khmer
communist groups, and it received its instructions from the
Moscow-based Communist International (Comintern).
</p>
<p>Communist Movement
</p>
<p> The Vietnamese communist movement began in Paris in 1920,
when Ho Chi Minh, using the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc, became a
charter member of the French Communist Party. Two years later,
Ho went to Moscow to study Marxist doctrine and then proceeded
to Canton as a Comintern representative. While in China, he
formed the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, setting the
stage for the formation of the Indochinese Communist Party in
1930. French repression of nationalists and communists forced
some of the insurgents underground, and others escaped to China.
Other dissidents were imprisoned, some emerging later to play
important roles in the anti-colonial movement.
</p>
<p> Ho Chi Minh was abroad at that time but was imprisoned later
in Hong Kong by the British. He was released in 1933, and in
1936 a new French government released his compatriots who, at
the outset of World War II, fled to China. There they were
joined by Ho, who organized the Viet Minh--purportedly a
coalition of all anti-French Vietnamese groups. Official
Vietnamese publications state that the Viet Minh was founded and
led by the ICP.
</p>
<p> Because a Vichy French administration in Vietnam during
World War II cooperated with occupying Japanese forces, the Viet
Minh's anti-French activity was also directed against the
Japanese, and, for a short period, there was cooperation between
the Viet Minh and Allied forces. When the French were ousted by
the Japanese in March 1945, the Viet Minh began to move into the
countryside from their base areas in the mountains of northern
Vietnam. By the time Allied troops--Chinese in the north and
British in the south--arrived to take the surrender of
Japanese troops, the Viet Minh leaders had already announced the
formation of a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and on
September 2, 1945, proclaimed Vietnam's independence.
</p>
<p> Deep divisions between Vietnamese communist and
non-communist nationalists soon began to surface, however,
especially in the south, and with the arrival of Allied forces
later in September, the DRV was forced to begin negotiations
with the French on their future relationship. The difficult
negotiations broke down in December 1946, and fighting began
with a Viet Minh attack on the French in Hanoi.
</p>
<p>Civil War
</p>
<p> A prolonged three-way struggle ensued among the Vietnamese
communists (led by Ho Chi Minh), the French, and the Vietnamese
nationalists (nominally led by Emperor Bao Dai). The communists
sought to portray their struggle as a national uprising; the
French attempted to reestablish their control; and the
non-communist nationalists, many of whom chose to fight
alongside the French against the communists, wanted neither
French nor communist domination. Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh forces
fought a highly successful guerrilla campaign and eventually
controlled much of rural Vietnam. The French military disaster
at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 and the conference at Geneva, where
France signed the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in
Vietnam on July 20, 1954, marked the end of the eight-year war
and French colonial rule in Indochina.
</p>
<p>1954 Cease-Fire Agreement and Partition
</p>
<p> The 1954 cease-fire agreement negotiated in Geneva provided
for provisional division of the country at approximately the
17th parallel; a 300-day period for free movement of population
between the two "zones" established thereby; and the
establishment of an International Control Commission--representatives of Canada, India, and Poland--to supervise
its execution. The cease-fire agreements also referred to
"general elections" that would "bring about the unification" of
the two zones of Vietnam. The agreement was not accepted by the
Bao Dai government, which agreed, however, to respect the
cease-fire.
</p>
<p> Following the partition of Vietnam under the terms of the
Geneva agreements, there was considerable confusion in the
south. Although Bao Dai had appointed a well-known nationalist
figure, Ngo Dinh Diem, as prime minister, Diem initially had to
administer a country plagued by a ruined economy and by a
political life fragmented by rivalries of religious sects and
political factions. He also had the problem of coping with
850,000 refugees from the north. The communist leaders in Hanoi
expected the Diem government to collapse and come under their
control. Nevertheless, during his early years in office, Diem
was able to consolidate his political position, eliminating the
private armies of the religious sects and, with substantial US
military and economic aid, build a national army and
administration and make significant progress toward
reconstructing the economy.
</p>
<p> Meanwhile, the communist leaders consolidated their power in
North Vietnam and instituted a harsh "agrarian reform." In the
late 1950s, they reactivated the network of communists who had
stayed in the south (the Viet Cong) with hidden stocks of arms,
reinfiltrated trained guerrillas who had been regrouped in the
north after 1954, and began a campaign of terror against
officials and villagers who refused to support the communist
cause. The communists also exploited grievances created by
mistakes of the Diem government as well as age-old shortcomings
of Vietnamese society, such as poverty and land shortages.
</p>
<p> By 1963, the North Vietnamese communists had made
significant progress in building an apparatus in South Vietnam.
Nevertheless, in 1964 Hanoi decided that the Viet Cong (VC)
cadres and their supporters were not sufficient to take
advantage of the political confusion following the overthrow of
Diem in November 1963. Hanoi ordered regular troops of the North
Vietnamese army (People's Army of Vietnam--PAVN) into South
Vietnam, first as "fillers" in VC units, then in regular
formations. The first r