Older readers of this magazine probably have very vivid memories of the Vietnam War. In the UK and many other countries, young people organised huge demonstrations in support of the FNL (Front National de Libération) in its struggle against the Saigon government and its US allies.
The war ended when the US decided to withdraw its armed forces from Vietnam because Washington finally realised that this was a war that couldn’t be won. The US armed forces had suffered considerable losses, but in no way could they be compared with the human suffering the long war had caused the Vietnamese people.
FRANCE’S EARLY INTEREST
Today’s Vietnam has a very long history, but in this story, it begins in the early 1800s when France began taking a serious interest in the Indochinese region. Cochin-China in the southern part of Vietnam was made a French colony in 1861, and it was the first French possession in South East Asia. Geographically speaking, it is the area surrounding the Mekong River Delta. Saigon was the capital. This area had interested the French since the early 1800s, and
