A Short History of South-East Asia

by Peter Church

  In contrast, Cochin China was the success story of French colonialism. When French rule began the Mekong Delta was still relatively lightly populated, though much of the land was still swamp. From the 1870s, water control and irrigation programmes made available vast new areas of farming land. Later the French would boast that they had boosted Vietnam's rice lands by 420 percent. By the 1920s, the development of the Mekong Delta had enabled Vietnam to become one of the world's leading rice exporters, although the absolute primacy of rice—accounting for over 70 percent of colonial Vietnam's exports—made the economy precariously unbalanced. It was also debatable, ironically, whether the southern farmers were much better off than their northern cousins. Most southerners became sharecroppers on the vast estates created out of the reclaimed lands; as such, they enjoyed little security or prosperity.

  Vietnamese histories recall with horror French taxation policies, claiming that the Vietnamese were the most highly taxed people in the colonial world. That is debatable, but French defence, administrative, and public works costs were high and so, therefore, were their taxes. The promotion of a government opium monopoly, as late as the 1930s, is remembered with particular distaste. Other imposts included a poll tax and taxes on alcohol and salt.

  CULTURE AND POLITICS IN COLONIAL VIETNAM

  Socially and culturally, colonial Vietnam was a place of ferment. The collapse of Confucian government and the triumph of the “barbarian” West had thrown all traditional Vietnamese beliefs and values into question. The Vietnamese upper and middle classes pursued modern (as against Confucian) education avidly, and more than made up for their small numbers with the intensity of their debates on the way forward for Vietnam.

  Here, too, divisiveness grew. Some opted for various Western models of thought and behaviour. Others looked to China for ways of reconstructing a shattered Confucian world, but found only conflict there, too. Still others looked to Japan. By the 1920s, however, the Vietnamese intelligentsia reached consensus on the adoption of quoc ngu, a relatively simple Romanised written form of Vietnamese invented by French missionaries, in preference to the traditional but cumbersome Chinese‐style characters (Chu Nom). Quoc ngu helped the growth of an impressive modern Vietnamese literary culture and the production of popularly accessible newspapers and political literature.

  Even so, Vietnamese political enthusiasts made little popular headway before World War II. The moderates of the Constitutionalist Party, who favoured gradual development of democratic structures, were considered too pro‐French by most Vietnamese and in any case the French were dismissive of their plans. In 1927, some radical‐thinking Vietnamese established the VNQDD (Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang), a party moulded on China's Kuomintang. However, their numbers were decimated following an abortive uprising in 1930. In the same year, some young Vietnamese attracted to the teachings of Marx and Lenin founded the Indochina Communist Party (ICP), but also became targets of French surveillance and usually severe repression, although they were able to operate semi‐openly in Cochin China during the Popular Front era in French government from 1936 to 1939. They were embarrassed, however, by the policy twists and turns in their orders from Stalin's Comintern, and many Vietnamese left‐wingers turned to Trotskyism. The extent of either Marxist group's popular appeal in Vietnam in the 1930s is debatable. The ICP's achievements before World War II are probably exaggerated by modern official histories, though certainly not the courage and determination of its pioneer members.

  The most imposing popular movements before World War II, in numerical terms, were in fact religious movements. Cao Dai, a sect founded in the south in 1925 and claiming to harmonise the East and the West and unique Vietnamese traditions, had over a million adherents by the late 1930s. A Buddhist sect, Hoa Hao, was also attracting large numbers in the south by that time. Christianity had also grown in Vietnam, by the 1930s claiming around 10 percent of the population (then about 30 million). These and other flourishing religious movements would pose problems for Vietnamese nationalism after World War II.

  WORLD WAR II AND THE FIRST INDOCHINA WAR, 1940–1954

  Japanese forces entered French Indochina in 1940 and quickly reached an agreement with the colonial government similar to that reached between Nazi Germany and the Vichy regime in France. Thus, French colonial authority survived—but only until March 1945, when the Japanese interned all French in Indochina. The Japanese then set up a nominal Vietnamese government under the emperor Bao Dai and other dignitaries.

  By early 1945, Vietnam was sliding toward chaos. The wartime disruptions to the economy, Japanese seizures of rice and other goods, plus disastrous weather which wrecked two successive harvests combined to produce famine in Tonkin and Annam. The death toll from famine possibly exceeded a million by the time the war ended precipitously on August 15 and produced what was in effect a power vacuum in Vietnam. The stage was set for the “August Revolution” of the Vietminh.

  The Vietminh (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh: League for the Independence of Vietnam) had been set up in 1941 as a front organisation of the ICP, whose leadership was then gathered at Pac Bo, an isolated spot high in the mountains on the Sino‐Vietnamese border. Here they had been joined by Ho Chi Minh, now in his 50s. Although as Comintern agent for South‐East Asia in the late 1920s and 1930s he had maintained intermittent contact with Vietnam's communists, this was the first time he had been back in Vietnam since 1911.

  Henceforth, Ho would be free from Moscow's control and though he would always try to maintain good relations with both Soviet and Chinese communists, if only for the aid they might offer him, he would cut his own revolutionary path in Vietnam. Ho would prove to be a brilliant, if devious, revolutionary tactician, a skilled leader of the many talented young Vietnamese attracted to communism, and a hugely popular political leader, speaking and writing in terms that moved and exhilarated large numbers of his countrymen and women.

  During the war, the Vietminh developed a strategy for its cadres and guerrilla forces to seize power at the war's end, when Vietnam could expect to be in disarray. Within days of the Japanese surrender, Vietminh forces (under the banner of national independence rather than socialism) took control of most of northern and central Vietnam. They were less successful in the south where Vietminh organisers were recognised as ICP members and found themselves opposed by political, business, and religious forces. Nevertheless, on September 2 in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam's reunification and independence.

  Vietnam was fated to remain divided, however. In the north, the Allies had appointed Chinese nationalist forces to replace the Japanese. The Chinese occupied the north until May 1946, and, crucially, left the French there interned while tolerating Ho Chi Minh's government, thus enabling it to consolidate its power. By contrast, in southern Vietnam the Japanese were relieved by British Indian troops. Their commander, dismayed at the political mayhem in Saigon, released and rearmed the French. By late 1945, French forces again controlled southern Vietnam. During 1946, Ho's government anxiously negotiated with the French, buying time as both sides prepared for war, which finally broke out in December 1946.

  By early 1947, the French, fighting a conventional war, appeared to have all strategic positions in Vietnam under their control. The Vietminh, however, had settled down to an underground “people's war,” organising and educating the population to support what could turn out to be a long guerrilla campaign. The turning point came in 1950, when first the new communist government of China and then the USSR began to assist the Vietminh with arms and other material. International communist support for the Vietminh precipitated direct US aid for the French war effort but, by the early 1950s, the French were beginning to weary of the inconclusive conflict. The fall of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954—a brilliant victory for the Vietminh's military strategist, Vo Nguyen Giap—effectively signalled the end of France's attempt to hold Vietnam.

  VIETNAM PARTITIONED AND THE VIETNAM WAR, 1954–1975

  As Dien Bien Phu fell, the
great powers were meeting at Geneva to seek a settlement of the war. The result was a ceasefire and partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel. The North, to be known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), would be governed by Ho Chi Minh and his group, who since 1950 had emerged as unequivocal communists, dedicated not only to national independence but to socialist revolution. The South would be headed by Bao Dai, who had abdicated as emperor in 1945 but became nominal “chief of state” under the French in 1949. Ho's victorious forces settled for partition presumably because the Geneva conference had also heralded elections in 1956 to establish government for a reunited Vietnam. As national heroes they were confident of winning such elections.

  The elections never took place. France withdrew from Vietnam and the United States backed Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic and staunch anticommunist, as prime minister under Bao Dai. With American aid, Diem suppressed or bought off rival southern anticommunist leaders and their disparate followings. In 1955, Diem won a referendum to determine whether he or Bao Dai should head the South. Bao Dai left Vietnam and Diem declared himself president of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). With American support, Diem refused to discuss the proposed nationwide elections.

  In the North, the DRV government, appealing to long‐cherished community values, pressed ahead with its socialist agenda, including the collectivisation of agriculture. Those deemed “capitalists” and “rich peasants” suffered, sometimes brutally, but the majority—the poor—seem to have accepted socialism's promises. Popular support for Ho Chi Minh's government remained enormously high. By contrast, Diem was never to be genuinely popular in the politically and religiously fragmented South, except perhaps amongst his fellow Catholics (almost a million northern Catholics were shipped south by the US navy in 1954). Diem, as indifferent to economics as he was to democracy, offered little hope to the southern poor, and spent most of his US aid on his security forces, which were under the command of his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. Other members of his avaricious family also provoked resentment.

  In 1959, the DRV government, observing the buildup of popular opposition toward Diem, the “American puppet,” sponsored a new Vietminh‐style front organisation for the South. This was the NLF (National Liberation Front—called “Vietcong” by its opponents). Coy about its degree of control by communists, the NLF appealed to Vietnamese patriotism and morality, promising to oust American influence and to set up fair and honest government.

  By the early 1960s, NLF guerrilla forces were in command of wide areas of the southern countryside, and had won sympathisers at all levels of society. Alarmed, US President Kennedy stepped up aid to Diem and sent American military “advisers”—17,500 of them by 1963. By mid‐1963, however, Diem and his brother had antagonized almost every sector of Southern society. The world was startled when Buddhist monks began burning themselves to death in protest against the regime. Plotters within South Vietnam's military concluded that Diem and Nhu had to go and, in October 1963, they were murdered.

  Four years of unstable government followed in South Vietnam until General Nguyen Van Thieu emerged as president in 1967. A skilful manipulator of the vast patronage which American aid made possible, Thieu would remain president until 1975. Meanwhile, in the United States, Kennedy's successor, Johnson, had decided to confront the NLF directly with US power. In early 1965, the US air force began bombing targets in both South and North Vietnam and US ground troops landed in the South. What came to be called “the Vietnam War” was now unequivocally under way.

  A process of escalation followed: China, the USSR, and the Eastern Bloc raised their aid to the DRV, which raised its commitment of materiel and men to the NLF. In turn, the United States raised the stakes further, increasing the number of its troops to a peak of 525,000 by 1967. The United States received some support from Australia, New Zealand, and some anticommunist Asian governments, but its major allies stayed aloof from the conflict.

  In 1968, at Tet, the lunar new year, NLF/DRV forces launched a massive offensive throughout the South. This was repelled, but its strength shocked both the Johnson administration and the American public, which had been led to believe that the war was being won. Richard Nixon, elected president in 1968, and his special adviser, Henry Kissinger, had to find alternative strategies. They pursued what could be called “Vietnamisation” of the war, reducing US troop levels and encouraging the South with ever‐increasing aid to increase its own levels. By 1973, the South's armed forces numbered 1.1 million—half the country's male population between the ages of 18 and 35.

  The Nixon/Kissinger strategies also included increased aerial warfare. American bombing of both North and South and of Cambodia wreaked social, economic, and ecological devastation. By the end of the war, 60 percent of southern villages would be destroyed or rendered unsafe; only 35 percent of an essentially peasant population would still live in rural areas. However, the bombing never proved decisive to the course of the war. It even failed to interdict the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail, the network of mountainous trails down which the DRV supplied its war effort in the South. Some American opinion consistently urged the expansion of the ground war into the North, but neither Johnson nor Nixon was ever willing to take that course, fearing that it might precipitate full‐scale American confrontation with the USSR and China. Thus, the DRV, despite the bombing, always remained a secure base for the DRV/NLF war effort in the South.

  Meanwhile, Nixon and Kissinger also pursued diplomacy. Talks between United States and DRV/NLF representatives had begun in Paris in 1968. For years they dragged on inconclusively but, in January 1973, the Paris Peace Agreements were signed by the United States, the Saigon government (reluctantly, under intense US pressure), the DRV, and the PRG (the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the NLF).

  Crucially for the DRV/NLF, the first article of the agreements recognised the “independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity” of Vietnam. Other articles called for a ceasefire, at which point the contending Vietnamese forces could claim whatever territory they held in the South, pending elections to determine the South's future government. The agreements also called for the total withdrawal of US troops and military personnel within 60 days. This article proved in fact to be the only one of the Paris Agreements which was fully carried out. The American troops went home, but in South Vietnam war continued unabated.

  The morale of the Southern forces began to slide, particularly after Nixon's resignation in August 1974 over the Watergate scandal. His successor as president, Gerald Ford, had little influence over a Congress now disillusioned with the war and reluctant to sustain US aid to the Saigon regime. In contrast, the DRV/NLF forces, legitimately ensconced in the South under the Paris Agreements, were increasingly confident that victory was in sight. Guerrilla war had long since given way to conventional military tactics. By now the amount and sophisticated nature of their weaponry, supplied by their allies, matched that of the Southern forces.

  Even so, the speed with which the war ended stunned both sides. DRV/NLF forces launched a limited offensive in the South's central highlands in mid‐March 1975. RVN forces panicked when ordered to retreat, creating a countrywide rout which was slowed by Southern detachments in only a handful of places. The Southern government collapsed, and DRV/NLF forces entered Saigon on April 30. The last Americans remaining in South Vietnam had been evacuated just hours before, along with some southerners closely identified with the American presence.

  VIETNAM SINCE 1975

  The major question in April 1975 concerned the speed with which Vietnam would be reintegrated. Since the 1950s, the historic differences between north and south had been hugely magnified. The northerners had existed under an austere, disciplined socialism which reemphasised their traditional regard for social hierarchy and community obligation. The southerners had been introduced to a quasi‐capitalist consumer economy, sustained by American aid, and to the trappings of American popular culture.

  In 1975, the victorious DRV government revealed a p
rofound distrust of even pro‐communist southerners, and moved swiftly to subordinate the south. The NLF and its provisional government were disbanded, and administrative control was imposed directly from Hanoi. In 1976, the country was renamed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), though in practice it was a “greater DRV,” dominated by northerners. In the same year plans for the collectivization of southern agriculture were announced, and the reorganization of the south's entire economy along socialist lines, integrating it with the northern economy, proceeded swiftly in the next two years.

  Heady from their military triumphs perhaps, Vietnam's leaders envisaged equally dramatic results from their decisive action in the economic sphere. Instead, the organisation engendered acute economic crisis, made worse by flood and other natural disasters in 1977 and 1978. Ambitious industrial targets were not met. Most seriously, rice and other agricultural outputs plummeted and food rations had to be slashed.

  In late 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ousted the socialist but virulently anti‐Vietnamese Pol Pot regime. In retaliation, China attacked Vietnam's northern frontier zone. Traditional regional antagonisms and rivalries had quickly reasserted themselves over the apparent international socialist comradeship of the years before 1975. In Vietnam, these hostilities exacerbated the domestic crisis. In the early 1980s, many Chinese and Sino‐Vietnamese fled Vietnam, either to China or as “boat people” to overseas countries, sharply boosting the statistics on people fleeing Vietnam since 1975.