Channels, Fall 2018

Page 66 Mach • Before Vietnam Ho Chi Minh catapulted himself onto the world stage in the name of Vietnamese independence. Born in 1890, Ho Chi Minh traveled to France where he received a Western education and involved himself with the French Socialist Party. In the 1920’s he ventured to Russia where his communist/socialist ideology continued to develop. He even served as a Comintern agent (International Communist Advocate) during his time in Russia. These sojourns helped cement his growing nationalist ideas as well as his communist leanings. In 1941 he returned to French Indochina to lead a Vietnamese independence movement known as the Vietminh. While the organization was not technically a Communist entity (progressive nationalist), the leadership of the Vietminh contained embers of the Indochinese Communist Party. The French, aware of Minh’s affiliation with Communism, grew concerned with a possible communist revolution in the region. The Second World War prohibited any decreased tension between the French and the Vietminh; the Japanese wrested control from the French Vichy government in early 1945, asserting Bao Dai as emperor of the region, an act that would last only until the end of the war in August. The Vietminh, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, continued to grow in number during the war. After the war, the Japanese surrender created significant issues for the Allies, though it did eliminate Japanese from the region, which greatly relieved the Indochinese. British troops entered Indochina to organize the surrender of the Japanese, while the Free French tried to bring control back to the region. As tens of thousands of British troops entered Indochina, Ho Chi Minh declared independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). The British did not want to entangle themselves in a French conflict and quickly left the region. The French responded to the Vietminh with violence, and the country plunged into war. The year 1946 marked a turning point for French activity in Indochina, a subject which will be addressed later. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Great Britain and the United States drastically increased their involvement. Great Britain maintained a vast but shrinking colonial empire well into the twentieth century with Malaya and Burma serving as the most profitable colonies for the British in Southeast Asia. Independence movements like those in Vietnam quickly spread to the British colonies, creating a tenuous situation for British leadership. On the one hand, British officials constantly encouraged the French to give concessions to Minh in Vietnam. The post-war world brought new opportunities for previously colonized countries to create their own governments, and the British understood this desire for self-government. Democracy needed to be the hallmark of the post-war world. The problem for British officials, however, was the post-war conditions in both Malaya and Burma. Glenn Abbey, an American diplomat in Burma, wrote to Secretary of State James Byrnes in 1946 about the situation the British faced. Though British and American leaders desired independence for Burma, the country, decimated by the war, was simply not ready for such responsibility. The economic situation simply had too much to balance. If Burma failed, the whole Asiatic region stood at risk for destabilization. In addition, Abbey showed concern for possible Communist intervention, “Unless the new Government can get off to a good start economically… [it] will be subjected to infiltrations of totalitarian methods.” The same fears dictated the Western approach to Malaya, where the Communist threat was more prominent.