II.

Origins of the War

In the latter half of the 19th century, France conquered Vietnam and neighboring Laos and Cambodia. In 1887 France combined its territories in Vietnam and Cambodia to create a colony known as French Indochina. (Laos was incorporated into French Indochina in 1893.) Nationalist movements seeking to overthrow the French soon began to emerge in Vietnam, but they lacked focus and coherence and were easily suppressed by colonial authorities. Among the nationalist movements, the most effective was the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), founded in 1930 by the Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh. When Japanese military forces occupied Indochina during World War II, the ICP took advantage of the turmoil caused by the power struggle between French and Japanese administrations to create a broad nationalist alliance called the Viet Minh. The group’s goal was to seek independence for Vietnam at the end of the war.

When Japan surrendered to the Allies in August 1945, Viet Minh forces occupied northern Vietnam and founded the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), which had its capital at Hanoi. Shortly afterward, liberated French troops reoccupied territory in the south and threatened to invade the north as well. Negotiations led to an agreement under which the French government secured the right to post a military presence in the north in return for recognizing the DRV as a free state within a French federation. Neither side was happy with the arrangement, however, and after French troops arrived in the north, talks on the future of Vietnamese independence resumed. On December 19, 1946, after lengthy negotiations failed to reach a compromise, Viet Minh units attacked French installations throughout northern Vietnam. The First Indochina War had begun.