French Indo-China

French Indo-China comprised the French protectorates of Cambodia, Laos, Annam, Tongkin, and the French colony of Cochin-China, the last three being previously known as Vietnam, as they are now. Except in Cochin-China, which was ruled directly by the French, the original royal houses remained in place, though subordinated to a French governor-general. All but a fifth of the 25 million inhabitants, mostly Buddhists, lived in Vietnam.

By February 1939, when the Japanese seized Hainan Island from China (see China incident), their threat to French Indo-China and its 40,000 Europeans had become substantial. Appeals to the French government brought few reinforcements, but extra finance enabled General Catroux, who had been appointed governor-general in August 1939, to raise the local army to 100,000 which included 20,000 Foreign Legion troops. In June 1940 the Japanese demanded the presence of a military mission in the country to ensure the closure of the Haiphong–Yunnan railway, the principal route for supplying Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese forces fighting the Japanese (but see also Burma road). Catroux, despite his increased forces, felt he was in no position to oppose them. The new Vichy government disagreed and replaced him with Vice- Admiral Jean Decoux (1884–1963), but when the Japanese made further demands Decoux was ordered to negotiate not to fight.

In fact, the Japanese had no desire to replace the French administration so long as they had full access to French Indo-China's resources, and these they proceeded to acquire with a mixture of threats and astute diplomacy. On the day Decoux signed one agreement, 22 September 1940, the Japanese, feigning ignorance of it, attacked from southern China. They captured two Tongkinese towns and killed more than 800 French troops before expressing their regrets over the ‘mistake’, and withdrawing. They even turned a French naval victory against Thailand, which claimed Laotian and Cambodian border territory, into a defeat when they forced the French to sign a peace treaty in May 1941 which gave Thailand the territories it wanted. In July 1941, after their demands for bases had been met, the Japanese occupied Saigon and entered Cambodia.

By the end of 1941 Decoux, outgunned, outmanoeuvred, and browbeaten, ostensibly ruled an IndoChina which had become part of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, was garrisoned by 35,000 Japanese troops, and was having its industrial and agricultural wealth systematically stripped. Rice—Indo-China was the world's third largest grower of it—corn, coal, and rubber were all shipped to Japan or put at the disposal of the Japanese garrison, and all local enterprises were obliged to work for the Japanese. The economic chaos that followed led to inflation and shortages which caused immense hardship. And when the Japanese garrison became isolated from external supplies, troops used rice needed by the population for fuel, and planted rice fields with jute and cotton to obtain the textiles they needed. As a result between 1.5 and 2 million people died of starvation in Tongkin in 1945.

Though Japanese policy was to retain the French administration, the Japanese Army did its best to undermine it. But as long as the Japanese could extract what they wanted the French, underpinned by the police and the army, retained their power over the local population. Decoux tried to improve relations with them, but also ensured they could not challenge him politically. A nationalist insurrection in Tongkin in September 1940 was therefore suppressed with great severity, as was one by the communists in Cochin-China that November. Of all the factions working for independence from the French, only the communist guerrilla organization the Viet Minh, aided by the American Office of Strategic Services, managed to build up an effective internal organization after its formation by Ho Chi Minh in May 1941. From 1943, with US support, the Viet Minh also attacked from China into Tongkin, and by October 1944 had established its own administration in its northern areas.

By early 1945 Decoux had become subject to a body organized by de Gaulle and the Free French. Called the Free French Council of Indo-China, this decided that confrontation with the Japanese, not collaboration, was the best way of retaining the country for France. The Kempei were quickly alerted to Free French resistance and the Japanese, fearing US invasion after Manila fell in February 1945, decided that Decoux's administration and his forces had to be neutralized. On 9 March 1945 Decoux, after refusing a Japanese ultimatum to put his forces under Japanese command, was arrested and the French garrisons surrounded, and in the fighting that followed about 1,700 French troops were killed or simply massacred.

The Japanese now persuaded the Emperor of Annam, Bao Dai (b.1913), to declare Annam and Tongkin independent, which he did on 11 March 1945, though the Japanese retained control in Cochin-China until they ceded it to Bao Dai on 16 May. King Sihanouk of Cambodia (b.1922) was cajoled into declaring his country independent on 13 March, but the King of Laos, Sisavang-vong (1885–1959), who was friendly with the French, proved more obdurate and did not declare his country's independence until 8 April—the day after Japanese troops had arrived in his capital. Bao Dai formed a Vietnamese government under Tran Tong Kim, but this soon resigned when it proved incapable of sending sufficient rice to those starving in Tongkin. On 13 August, Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader of the Viet Minh, formed the National Liberation Committee of Vietnam which assumed power when the Japanese surrendered on 15 August. Five days later Hanoi was in Viet Minh hands; Bao Dai's abdication and assistance (he became the administration's supreme adviser) were obtained; and on 2 September the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was declared.

Throughout the war Roosevelt's policy was to ensure that the French did not regain colonial power in Indo-China. After the Cairo conference in November 1943 (see SEXTANT), at which Roosevelt's offer to hand over French Indo-China to China had been refused by Chiang Kai-shek, the president raised the possibility of an international trusteeship. This led to an agreement at the Potsdam conference in July 1945 (see TERMINAL) in which China temporarily occupied Vietnam north of the 16th parallel and troops of South-East Asia Command occupied the rest. However, French colonial rule was soon re-established in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and though the Chinese were eventually persuaded to withdraw from North Vietnam, the French then became committed to the long, bitter, and fruitless struggle against the Viet Minh which ended in Dien Bien Phu ( May 1954) and defeat. See also anti-imperialism and nationalism.