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The rise of the French nation
France in the 18th century
The rise of the French nation
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Unlike many other European countries that sought out the territory in Southeast Asia merely for increasing their power through trade, the French first began interactions with the region as early as the 17th century. Alexandre De Rhodes began an expedition to the Southeast Asia region with the desire to expand the Jesuit missionaries throughout the region to further their belief. For many years until the 18th century, the Jesuits expanded and created many missionaries throughout the region. The 18th century had brought an astronomical expansion in the trading markets throughout Europe and Asia as all the European superpowers began colonizing all of Southeast Asia to further their trading “empires.” The French would also begin to participate, not at the same level as countries such as the Netherlands or Great Britain, but more in moderation. At that time the French believed to confine their participation in Southeast Asia to religious advancement and moderate trading. It wasn’t until the 19th century until things would begin to take a turn and the French would become a major participant in Vietnam’s history.
As the missionaries began to expand across the region, the Nguyen Dynasty who was in control of Vietnam began to view them as a threat. The Vietnamese under the rule of the Nguyen Dynasty began to burn down the missionaries and murder anyone who was associated with them. In order to assist and protect the Paris Foreign Missions Society who was in charge of the religious advancement in the region, Napoleon III ordered French Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly to attack Da Nang on 1858. This was the first of many assaults the French would perform all over Vietnam, the next being the largest as a joint strike with t...
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...ence of 1957 would support the cession of foreign involvement in Vietnam. However the French would not relinquish any territorial claims until the electoral conference in 1956. It was there that the French finally gave up its remaining control in Vietnam, however, the United States and South Vietnam rejected the decisions made between the two conferences and thus began a new chapter in Vietnam’s history with American involvement and further wartime.
Works Cited
11. Smitha, Frank E. "French Colonialism and Vietnam to the Massacres of 1908." French Colonialism and Vietnam to the Massacres of 1908. Macro History, 1998. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
12. "Vietnam's French Colonization through Western Colonization of South-East Asia." Vietnam's French Colonization Through Western Colonization Of South East Asia Timeline. Lightstone, 4 June 2012. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
After World War II, the French began a fight for their former colony of Indochina, which included Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The French and other countries failed to see at that time the will and desire of the Vietnamese people to gain independence from foreign rule and to have their country unified. Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese nationalist, fought the French and overtook the North Vietnam capital of Hanoi with his followers, the Viet Minh, declaring the area the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. (Anderson, 2002) The French were unwilling to give up their colony and drove the Vietminh from many of the larger cities in the south. The United States entered the Vietnam struggle in 1950 when $15 million in aid was pledged to France in order to fight the Vietminh. (Anderson, 2002) The rationale was to align with France and keep the Soviet Union from expanding in Europe and to keep another country from falling into communist rule.
Lawrence’s purpose in writing this book was concise and to the point. In recent history, due to the fall of the Soviet bloc, new information has been made available for use in Vietnam. As stated in the introduction, “This book aims to take account of this new scholarship in a brief, accessible narrative of the Vietnam War… It places the war within the long flow of Vietnamese history and then captures the goals and experiences of various governments that became deeply embroiled in the country during the second half of the twentieth century” (Lawrence, 3.) This study is not only about the American government and how they were involved in the Vietnam conflict, but highlights other such countries as France, China, and the Soviet Union. Lawrence goes on to say that one of his major goals in writing this book is to examine the American role in Vietnam within an international context (Lawrence, 4.) Again, this goes to show that the major purpose of Lawrence’s study included not only ...
JOHN F. KENNEDY IN VIETNAM There are many critical questions surrounding United States involvement in Vietnam. American entry to Vietnam was a series of many choices made by five successive presidents during these years of 1945-1975. The policies of John F. Kennedy during the years of 1961-1963 were ones of military action, diplomacy, and liberalism. Each of his decision was on its merits at the time the decision was made. The belief that Vietnam was a test of the Americas ability to defeat communists in Vietnam lay at the center of Kennedy¡¦s policy. Kennedy promised in his inaugural address, Let every nation know...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty. From the 1880s until World War II, France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina, which also included Cambodia and Laos. The country was under the formal control of an emperor, Bao Dai. From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese struggled for their independence from France during the first Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French controlled the South. For this reason the United States became involved in Vietnam because it believed that if all of the country fell under a Communist government, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and further. This belief was known as the domino theory. The decision to enter Vietnam reflected America¡¦s idea of its global role-U.S. could not recoil from world leadership. The U.S. government supported the South Vietnamese government. The U.S. government wanted to establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which extended protection to South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in case of Communist subversion. SEATO, which came into force in 1955, became the way which Washington justified its support for South Vietnam; this support eventually became direct involvement of U.S. troops. In 1955, the United States picked Ngo Dinh Diem to replace Bao Dai as head of the anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam. Eisenhower chose to support Ngo Dinh Diem. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29, 1917. Kennedy graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and joined the Navy the next year.
Vietnam has a very rich and cultural diverse background dating all the way back to 1066 when William the Conqueror invaded and paved the way for English colonization. The French had been colonizing since the 19th century. The French role in Vietnams history is critical; they started out by bringing these simple peasants to the latest technology of farming and hunting (Yancey 37). The French helped these people out greatly in the beginning, but like all stories of occupation go they just got worse. They started forcing rules and laws on the people of Vietnam. Thus started the First Vietnam War, also known as the Indochina War between France and Vietnam. "The French possessed military superiority, but the Vietnamese had already the hearts and minds of the country. (38). Even from the beginning the Vietnamese had the odds to there favor. The French looked at the wars in numbers and how many lost on each side. They gathered from all the battles that they were winning because the Vietnamese casualties far outweighed the French; nonetheless they were wrong. To a certain point the French were fighting a game that they could not win at any cost. The French had the military superiority but the Vietnamese had the manpower and the Guerilla tactics. The Indochina War ended with French loosing terrible at Dienbienphu, where a whole French garrison was wiped out.
At the end of World War II, Japanese forces in Indochina turned over power to Vietnamese Nationalists. Japan had created an independent Vietnamese government. Japan allowed this government to be displaced by the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh. (The History Place, Beginner’s Guide)
President Dwight Eisenhower conditionally pledged to support South Vietnam’s new nation in 1955. In the time period between 1955-1961 the United States pumped seven billion dollars in aid so that Vietnam would not “go over quickly” like a “row of dominoes” (McNamara 31). In the next 6 years Vietnam would cost America billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and the disaffection of much of the United States public. Yet in the end, South Vietnam would fall to the North less than 2 years after the United States military involvement ceased.
(4)The U.S. used realpolitiks in The Geneva Conference because the United States negotiated with a communist country over another country. (5) On April 27, 1954, the Conference produced a declaration which supported the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Indochina thereby granting it independence from France. In addition, the Conference declaration agreed upon the cessation of hostilities and foreign involvement (or troops) in internal Indochina affairs. Northern and southern zones were drawn into which opposing troops were to withdraw, to facilitate the cessation of hostilities between the Vietnamese forces and those that had supported the French. The Viet Minh, awaited unification on the basis of internationally supervised free elections to be held in July 1956. Most of the French Union forces evacuated Vietnam, although much of the regional governmental infrastructure in the South was the same as it had been under t...
Part two section three focuses on South Vietnam. Japan had occupied and controlled Vietnam during the world war. After the Japanese surrender, the partisan leader, Ho Chi Minh, declared in country’s independence.
However, many problems still remain in Vietnam. After the war there was a conference to discuss the troubles in Vietnam and all of the other troubles in Asia. That conference was called the Geneva Conference. Vietnam sent two delegations to the conference. One of the delegations represented Viet Minh (which was Communist in their leanings) and the other represented Bao Dia's government, which was backed by the United States.
“In July 1965, Lyndon Johnson chose to Americanize the war in Vietnam.” Although Johnson chose to enter America into the war, there were events previous that caused America to enter and take over the war. The South Vietnamese were losing the war against Communism – giving Johnson all the more reason to enter the war, and allowing strong American forces to help stop communism. There were other contributing factors leading up to the entrance of the war; America helped assist the French in the war, Johnson’s politics, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and the 1954 Geneva Conference. President Johnson stated, “For 10 years three American Presidents-President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present President--and the American people have been actively concerned with threats to the peace and security of the peoples of southeast Asia from the Communist government of North Viet-Nam.”
The Cambodian Genocide took place from 1975 to 1979 in the Southeastern Asian country of Cambodia. The genocide was a brutal massacre that killed 1.4 to 2.2 million people, about 21% of Cambodia’s population. This essay, will discuss the history of the Cambodian genocide, specifically, what happened, the victims and the perpetrators, and the world’s response to the genocide. The Cambodian Genocide has the historical context of the Vietnam War and the country’s own civil war. During the Vietnam War, leading up to the conflicts that would contribute to the genocide, Cambodia was used as a U.S. battleground for the Vietnam War.
Siciliano talks about how La Haine explores the lingering effect of French colonialism. She talks about the the influx of immigrants from colonies to Paris in search of employment after World War Two. Banlieues was introduced to meet the increasing demand for housing shortage. Many of these immigrant are low skilled industrial worker. During the process of French deindustrialization, those workers are unable to find alternative employment. Therefore, these workers and their children become trapped in the banlieues. Siciliano also points out that while many activists seek to fight the system of oppression using a notion of “ a collective French identity”, they fail to realize that to self identify as French for the immigrants is to identify
Indochina, modernly known as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is located on the border of the eastern Indochinese peninsula and it occupies, according to the online encyclopedia (encyclopedia.com), about 331,000 kilometers squared, where in 1987, 25% of that land was under cultivation. Vietnam is bordered by the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, and Gulf of Tonkin; and it is alongside China, Laos, and Cambodia. Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital since the nation’s reunification, is located in the northeast; and Vietnam’s largest city, Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon, is located in the southeast of Vietnam. However, before becoming independent from Imperial China in 938 AD, Vietnam’s capital was “Đại La”, where it was located in present-day Hanoi. Additionally, the northern part of Vietnam is mainly composed of highlands and the Red River Delta; and the southern part of Vietnam is divided into coastal lowlands, large forests, and mountains of the “Annamite Range”. Vietnam’s official language is Vietnamese, and their largest ethnic group in Vietnam is the Kinh people, which takes about 86% of the nation’s population.
Vietnam was a struggle which, in all honesty, the United States should never have been involved in. North Vietnam was battling for ownership of South Vietnam, so that they would be a unified communist nation. To prevent the domino effect and the further spread of communism, the U.S. held on to the Truman Doctrine and stood behind the South Vietnamese leader, Diem.