Vietnam Geopolitical Affairs

By Tùng-Phong

In 1965, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Tùng-Phong reached out to the Vietnamese leaders in the North and South.

He wanted to inform his contemporaries about the short-term needs of Vietnam as a whole and opine on long-term goals. The result was the book he published in October 1965: Chính- Vit-Nam or Vietnam Geopolitical Affairs.

His daughter, Elizabeth T. Le, offers the first English translation of the landmark book in this text composed of three parts:

Part one offers a history of Vietnam from the year 938, when Ngo-Quyen reclaimed An-Nam’s (then Vietnam) independence after one thousand years of Chinese domination.
Part two contains what led to the general uprising, the revolt in the nineteenth century, communism, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam War (called the American War in Vietnam).
Part three is the translation of her father’s book.

What made her father’s book powerful is he explored where Vietnam stood on the world stage and the historical baggage it carried. Moreover, he sought to find out how Vietnam could propel itself forward for the sake of future generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Sep 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665708234

Tùng-Phong

Elizabeth T. Le, M.D., earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science from the University of New Orleans. She worked for NASA during the space shuttle project. She received her doctorate in medicine from the University of Louisiana in New Orleans, specializing in internal medicine and rheumatology from Indiana University and Duke University, North Carolina. She enjoys world history—especially Vietnam culture and history. She is the daughter of Tùng-Phong, who wrote the book she translates in this text.

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Copyright © 2021 Tùng-Phong.

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-0822-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0821-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0823-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021911906

Archway Publishing rev. date:    08/30/2021

To you,

fellow traveler,

laden with a lifelong yearning

to understand

where you came from.

Truth is not what you want it to be;

It is what it is

And you must bend to its power

Or live a lie.

—Miyamoto Musashi

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Contents

Preface

Part 1: TÙNG-PHONG: RISING WIND

Chapter 1 Un Coup de Grâce

Chapter 2 The World and the West

Chapter 3 The West in Asia

Chapter 4 A Land with Many Names: History of Annam, Tinh-Hai-Quan, Dai-Co-Viet, Dai-ngu, Dai-Viet, Vietnam

Chapter 5 In Search of a Future

Part 2: MODERN TIMES: INDOCHINA’S LIBERATION FROM COLONIALISM

Chapter 6 Ho Chi Minh: Struggle of the North

Chapter 7 Indochina War: France vs. Viet Minh, 1946–1949

Chapter 8 The Viet Minh Guerrilla Warfare

Chapter 9 The West and the Indochina War: The Cold War

Chapter 10 The Struggle of South Vietnam

Chapter 11 Third Force: South Vietnamese Nationalists and Ngô Dinh Diem

Chapter 12 Chaos in the South

Chapter 13 Nation Building

Part 3: VIETNAM GEOPOLITICAL AFFAIRS

Introduction

Part 1: THE WORLD

Chapter 1 The World

Part 2: VIETNAM IN TODAY’S WORLD

Chapter 2 Vietnam in Today’s World

Chapter 3 Vietnam in Need of Westernization

Chapter 4 What is a High-Level Westernization?

Chapter 5 Religion and Nation Development via Westernization

Chapter 6 Two Opportunities for Development

Part 3: VIETNAM’S DOMESTIC AFFAIRS

Chapter 7 Domestic Conditions

Chapter 8 Relations with China

Chapter 9 The Southern March of the Vietnamese People

Chapter 10 Historical Liabilities

Chapter 11 The Division of Our Country

Chapter 12 Other Assets

Chapter 13 Natural Resources

Part 4: A POLICY BEFITTING THE EXISTING CONDITIONS

Chapter 14 The Balancing Forward Forces of the Universe

Chapter 15 Leadership

Chapter 16 Mass Organization

Chapter 17 Economy and the Right of Private Property

Chapter 18 Cultural Domain

Conclusion

Reference Works

Acknowledgments

Notes

Preface

THE QUEST

The darkness shall be the light,

And the stillness the dancing.

—T. S. Eliot

In the darkest of the dark hours, I felt so lost when the door slammed shut behind me, and I could not see where to go. I was nineteen. My family was bussed from one refugee camp to another, from Guam to Camp Pendleton, California, month after month.

Lying in the dark in our tent, I felt numb, a cold sensation all over the body when you are in shock and have just lost everything in the blink of an eye, from clothes, belongings, and family members to identity, dignity, and your humanness. I was so numb that there were no tears.

The fall of Saigon, the total collapse of the South Vietnamese government, the millions of Vietnamese and the fifty thousand American soldiers dead on the battlefield, and the complexities of the whole quagmire weighed heavily on the shoulders and minds of those in positions of responsibility. Thousands and millions of North and South Vietnamese people had dedicated their lives in this thirty-year war for naught. Emotions ran rampant of abandonment, depression, fear, despair, hopelessness, and specks of courage when no one could see anything but a bleak darkness. Many succumbed to diseases and emotional, psychological breakdown. As children, we put one foot in front of the other through tearful conversations with my father. We enlisted in schools and took one day at a time as normally as possible. Yet it was far from normalcy. We were adrift on the open seas, no destination, displaced.

After a long winding road from Saigon through several refugee camps, we settled down in New Orleans, Louisiana. The pace of life was slow but full of preparations. Work, work, and schooling for something ahead, the unknown. Many nights at the dinner table, my father recounted his life stories. He talked of his experiences in South Vietnam; of the people, famous and less well-known to the world at large; and of his interactions and collaborations with them. He spoke of Mr. Tran-Quoc-Buu, Dr. Nguyen-Tang-Nguyen, Prime Minister then President Ngo-Dinh-Diem, Mr. Ngo-Dinh-Nhu, the Ngo family, the Can-Lao party and its five bureaus, and Dr. Tran-Kim-Tuyen. He spoke of early collaboration with Mr. Edward Lansdale, Mr. William E. Colby, US ambassador Elbridge Durbrow, Mr. Wolf Ladejinsky, his meeting with then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, President Nguyen-Van-Thieu, Vietnamese senators, congressmen, and ministers of the first and second republics of South Vietnam.

I listened intensely, wanting to soak up all the details and commit them to my memory. A person’s life is so complex, yet a nation’s life is exponentially challenging. For seventeen years, he taught and instructed us about Vietnam and then died unexpectedly in 1993 of cancer. After his death, I could not make sense of this complex mosaic of names and places in Vietnam. I felt that my lessons were not complete. I had the sensation of an ill-defined, nebulous puzzle with thousands of moving pieces that defied any definitions or conclusions. Drawn to this puzzle for over twenty years after his death, I set out to understand it. Why? What happened? How did this chaos happen in this land I was born in, raised in, ran away from it like it was hell on Earth, and then found my way back to while searching for clues? I scoured the contemporary and ancient literature in English, French, and Vietnamese to shed light into this darkness.

In my quest, I discovered that I was standing on shoulders of giants, peering back into the history of my own country and the world. Without the insightful gifts from these men and women of the world, I could not clearly see the unfurling of historical events leading to the quagmire affecting millions of people of Southeast Asian nations and the priceless lessons to be learned. Yet as a species, do we learn from our own experiences?

I am deeply indebted to the authors of the following works:

– Fredrick Logevall, Embers of War, the most comprehensive analysis and synthesis of the world history in Asia.

– Edward Geary Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars, a priceless personal account of his days in the Philippines and Vietnam. I am grateful that the CIA allowed him to publish these memoirs.

– William E. Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men. I was peering into some of the CIA activities that my father spoke about.

– William E. Colby, Lost Victory.

– Pierre Brocheux, Ho Chi Minh: A Biography (translated by Claire Duiker).

– Randall Woods, Shadow Warrior: William E. Colby and the CIA.

– Cecil B. Currey, Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American.

– Cecil B. Currey, Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Vietnam’s Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.

– Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam.

– Geoffrey Shaw, The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo-Dinh-Diem, President of Vietnam.

– Larry Berman, Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham-Xuan-An.

– Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation.

– James Delgado, Khubilai Khan’s Lost Fleet.

– Arnold Toynbee, Le Monde and L’Occident; La Civilisation à L’Epreuve; L’Histoire, un Essai d’Interpretation, and A Study of History (abridgement of volumes I–VI by D. C. Somervell).

– Georges Taboulet, La Geste Francaise en Indochine.

– Hoàng-Xuân-Hãn, Lý-Thường-Kiệt.

– Đào-Trinh-Nhất, Phan-đình-Phùng.

– Foreign Relations of the United States—Vietnam, 1955–1957, Department of State.

– Foreign Relations of the United States—Vietnam 1958–1960, Department of State.

In 1965, my father took me on an outing in downtown Saigon. We arrived at the bookstore Khai-Trí on Le-Loi boulevard. The owner greeted him as an old friend, they spoke briefly, and then the owner disappeared to the backroom. Several minutes later, he reappeared holding a big heavy cardboard box and sat it on the floor. My father opened the box. Two dozen copies of a new book were stacked neatly inside. I noticed a sparkle of happiness, of something accomplished in his eyes, a smile of relief on his lips. He looked at me, one of his rare moments of joy, as I knew him in my life. Years later, I came to understand that the book he published was Chính-Đề Việt-Nam (Vietnam Geopolitical Affairs), on October 3, 1965, after toiling away for eleven years, under the pseudonym Tùng-Phong. He had explained to me the meaning of Tùng-Phong—Tùng means pine trees, and Phong means wind. Rising wind among forests of pine trees—the name was a poetic image signifying change.

During my search, I went back and read his book again. Throughout the pages, he reached out to teach about Vietnam. Where does a small country like Vietnam stand on the world stage? What historical baggage and assets does Vietnam carry? How can Vietnam propel herself onto the path of development for the sake of future generations? He spoke about the origins of the Vietnam War, the Southern March, the division of the country, the people of Vietnam, Communism, and the South Vietnam struggle. The Southern March of the Vietnamese people started in the tenth century under the Lý kings. Under the constant threat of invasion from Song China, Lý-Thái-Tô, the first Lý king, launched the Southern March, initially led by the prominent military commander and Vietnamese hero Lý-Thường-Kiệt. From the Red River Delta, several Vietnamese military campaigns encroached on and then invaded the southern lands of Champa. Gradually, over the next ten centuries, the Vietnamese people completed the occupation of the Mekong Delta, pushing out the Khmers. This land occupation is discussed in detail in his book, due to the security weaknesses of the loose infrastructure of the rural areas of south-central and southern Vietnam. In fact, rural South Vietnam was the target of French invasion in the eighteenth century, after their failed 1858 assault onto Dà Nãng in Central Vietnam, and North Vietnam.

In 1965, he spoke of the origins and the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of China in modern times. Particularly a lot of thought and discussion were reserved for the centuries-old conflict between the West and Russia—an age-old conflict that dated back to the days of Peter the Great or even earlier. He asked questions that, to this day, are still valid. Would Vietnam’s leaders perceive the roots of this conflict between the West and Russia? Or between any other powers? And would these leaders allow their children and grandchildren to be caught in the crossfire between these superpowers? Or would they use the dynamics of this conflict to their advantage for their people’s development? How would Vietnamese leaders deal with rising, populous China, a country that dominated Vietnam for a thousand years and whose gigantic territories bordered Vietnam?

As I followed his thoughts, I realized that his teachings were beyond Vietnam, beyond Communism; there are universal truths and phases of development observed and documented in the history of human communities and nations of the world. He transformed the microscopic view of the stage in Vietnam for the last hundred years into a world stage of human development in the last ten centuries. This is a rare historical document that lifts the veil of chaos and confusion created by human ideological division to reveal the real issues faced by the people of Vietnam, then and now. Beyond the numbers used as examples in 1965, the geographical and strategic position of Vietnam is what it is.

My father dedicated his book to the people of Vietnam. He wanted its contents disseminated among younger generations of Vietnam and the world. Since he wrote in Vietnamese for a particular audience in the 1960s, the leaders of Vietnam, I stoke historical embers and bring forth this flame by translating it in its entirety into English for a wider audience. The only section that I spared the reader was his explanation of the Vietnamese language syntax, at the beginning of the book. His book was born from personal experiences in the art of self-governance and from a systematic study and research of world history and of Vietnamese history.

Tùng-Phong is Lê-Văn-Đồng. He was born and raised in the South, from Mõ-Cày, province of Bên-Tre, in the Mekong Delta. Yet he came from a long line of revolutionaries who migrated south from Huyen Dông-Son, province of Thanh-Hóa, Central Vietnam. The first known ancestors, from Dông-Son, Thanh-Hóa, were Lê-Phuoc and his son, Lê-Quân who fought alongside Nguyên-Phúc-Ánh, in the 1801 northward military campaign launched from Gia-Dinh, South Vietnam, to reunite the country. After his successful military campaign, Nguyên-Phúc-Ánh ascended as King Gia-Long (from Gia-Dinh, South Vietnam to Thang-Long, North Vietnam).

Lê-Văn-Đồng served as deputy minister of labor, with Dr. Nguyen-Tang-Nguyen as minister of labor in President Ngo-Dinh-Diem’s first cabinet and then as minister of agriculture of South Vietnam with President Ngo-Dinh-Diem. He rode through the political roller coaster with early collaboration with Ngo-Dinh-Nhu and Ngo-Dinh-Diem from early 1950 until 1963. He kept a low profile after the coup d’état hunting. Then elected as senator, he served the people of South Vietnam from 1968 until 1975, during the second republic, with President Nguyen-Van-Thieu.

This book is composed of three parts. Part 1 is the history of Vietnam from the year 938, when Ngo-Quyen reclaimed An-Nam’s (then Vietnam) independence after one thousand years of Chinese domination. Part 2 contains what led to the general uprising, the revolt in the nineteenth century, Communism, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam War (called the American War in Vietnam). Parts 1 and 2 lay the historical foundation for the discussion in part 3 and the translation of the book Chính-Đề Việt-Nam (Vietnam Geopolitical Affairs). The title Chính-Đề Việt-Nam connotes several meanings; Chính-Đề means the real, primary issues or the geopolitical issues. I feel the title Vietnam Geopolitical Affairs brings forth both meanings.

As I unraveled the historical facts, I understood where I stand. To understand is to see things as they are, for what is the future but to understand our past actions and to be fully aware of our motives for each decision in the now?

In the dark hours, an invisible hand plucked us from stupor into an empty dark room. No country, no identity, no home like a new babe without its outer layers. In our own isolation, we turned our light inward only to discover inner strength, an inner vision and trust in life process. In the dark, the new babe started crawling then shuffling, holding onto the walls of darkness, drawn to a flickering sunray through a window. A sunlit passage.

—Elizabeth T. Le, 2018

Part 1

TÙNG-PHONG: RISING WIND

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Early morning walk,

All quiet.

Rising wind

From the West

Rustling pine trees

Haiku

Chapter 1

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UN COUP DE GRÂCE

October 11, 1952

After repeated defeats against the French forces in the Red River Delta, General Võ-Nguyên-Giáp and his Vietminh soldiers withdrew into the northwest area of Vietnam for a new campaign. He sent three divisions into an offensive, west of the Black River and north of the Red River Delta. His goal was to destroy the remaining French outposts in the direction of Laos to allow his troops freedom of movement. His 149th Independent Regiment occupied a small village bordering Laos named Điện Biên Phủ. ¹

In the fight against colonial French to regain independence for Vietnam, the Vietminh, under Giap’s command controlled the northern part of North Vietnam, patches of the Red River Delta with guerrilla activities, patches around the Saigon Delta, and the southern tip of Vietnam, the Ca-Mau Peninsula. By the end of 1952, French control of Vietnam was but a shadow of what it had been, except for the area around Huê, Dà Nãng, in the coastal area of central Vietnam. ²

The battle of Điện Biên Phủ was the last desperate exertion of the Vietminh army. Its human forces were on the verge of complete exhaustion. Its supply of rice was thinning rapidly. The people’s support for the revolution was waning, and drafting new fighters became extremely difficult. General Giáp faced another pressure. In February 1954, foreign ministers of several nations decided to convene for a conference in Geneva in May. ³

Newly arrived French General Henri Eugene Navarre replaced Raoul Salan when the Indochina War was going badly for the French. In fact, Võ-Nguyên-Giáp faced a succession of commanders, and General Navarre was the seventh and final commander after Raoul Salan, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, Marcel Carpentier, Roger Blaizot, Jean Etienne Valluy, and Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque. ⁴

A graduate of l’Ecole speciale militaire de Saint-Cyr and l’Ecole superieure de guerre (War College), General Navarre had fought in World War I and World War II. As commander of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, he wanted to defeat the Vietminh on their own turf. ⁵ He saw the northwest of Vietnam as critical in crushing the Vietminh army and winning the war, by blocking the gateway to Laos where the Vietminh received their supplies and revenues from opium sales. After setting a fort in Điện Biên Phủ, he sent patrols out in search of Giap’s men. He chose two men for his campaign. One was Major General Rene Cogny, a trained militarist from Saint-Cyr and an artillery officer. Cogny was placed as commander of troops in Tonkin. The second man was Colonel Christian Marie Ferdinand de la Croix de Castries, who had served in the French cavalry and then armory. He was to command the forces in Điện Biên Phủ. ⁶

The American government supplied planes and heavy matériel. The French units were comprised of more than ten thousand men of the Expeditionary Corps, reinforced by paratroopers. Of these, seven thousand men were combat soldiers. One-third were Vietnamese soldiers from the Bao-Dai’s National Army, and others came from French territories, such as Morocco, Lebanon, Syria, Chad, and Guadeloupe. In November 1953, the men transformed the valley of Điện Biên Phủ into an armed camp with bunkers, trenches, mines, and barbed wire. Lying in the north-south direction, this beautiful valley was naturally surrounded by mountains on the northern end. ⁷

Colonel de Castries immediately transformed the airstrip, or anchoring point, into a fortress by setting up seven satellite positions. (Each was purportedly named after a former mistress, although the allegation may be unfounded.) The fortified headquarters, centrally located around the airstrip, were Huguette on the west, Claudine on the south, Dominique in the northeast, and Eliane in the southeast. Relative to the headquarters, the other positions were Anne-Marie in the northwest, Beatrice in the northeast, Gabrielle in the north, and Isabelle four miles south, covering the reserve airstrip. ⁸

General Giáp’s men watched the show from the northern hills as paratroopers descended into the valley; they quietly slipped away. The French forces were too great for them to confront.

French morale was soaring at Điện Biên Phủ camp, which was visited by high-ranking French and American advisers. General Paul Ely, chief of the French general staff, flew in. American General John O’Daniel, known as Iron Mike, gave his approval. They were in a celebratory mood, primed for victory. ⁹

Navarre was confident of his forces and artillery. He was ready for battle. He estimated that, if the Vietminh assaulted the camp in the open rice fields, the French fire would decimate them. He was not worried about Vietminh artillery; nor did he doubt his own supplies of weapons. Additionally, Điện Biên Phủ camp had two airstrips built for air bombers.

Despite warning from his air transport commander that aircrafts could not maintain a steady flow of supplies to the camp, Navarre persisted with his plans. ¹⁰ General Giáp studied the French weaknesses—supplies.

His plans were to cut off Điện Biên Phủ supplies by destroying the airstrips in the early phase and limiting enemy planes with antiaircraft guns. His Chinese advisers urged him to use human-wave tactics. Giáp, the Vietminh camp, and their Chinese advisers decided that the attack should be carried out on January 25, 1954. But Giáp was consumed with the agony of indecision. Something about the plans carried loads of worries for him, despite the tonnage of military supplies, cannon, gasoline, rifles, artillery rounds, and bullets from China. He wanted 100 percent certain victory, but his men and his Chinese advisers could only come close to a 50 percent victory. That night, against his advisers, Giáp called off the offensive. ¹¹

He changed his tactics. Instead of a rapid attack and decimation, Giáp wanted a slow and sure-footed guerrilla infiltration and elimination. He later wrote, We strictly followed the fundamental principle of the conduct of a revolutionary war: strike to win, strike only when success is certain. If it is not, then don’t strike. ¹²

With the approval of the Pathet Lao allies, he immediately launched an offensive toward Luang Prabang to divert the attention of the French air force, while he withdrew his troops from Điện Biên Phủ area. Then he went over the plans with his officers over and over again to make sure they knew the plan. They needed a network to transport goods from China and Russia. So the peasant laborers built roads from China for heavy trucks, making sure they were covered from air patrol. They cleared trails in the jungles to transport artillery pieces, including sixteen Katyusha rocket launchers. These pieces would be reassembled when they reached their destination, positioned under camouflage on the slopes of Điện Biên Phủ. Thousands and thousands of laborers loaded all the heavy equipment. They dismantled pieces of artillery onto their Peugeot bicycles and then walked, rode, or pushed them in the jungles and up the hills to the front line. All this backbreaking labor was carried out under enemy fire day and night, rain or shine. ¹³

He also ordered the digging of trenches around the perimeter of the French camp in Điện Biên Phủ.

In the meantime, Giáp put more pressure on the French by thinning their forces. He attacked the Central Highlands in Dakto, Kontum Province. The French had to move their forces in the Red River Delta to defend Laos. Along with his diversion and preparation for the main offensive, he sent his men to destroy the French air resupply machinery. Under the cloak of night, Giáp’s spies infiltrated Hanoi to sabotage seventy-eight French airplanes at Cát Bì and Gia Lâm airfields. Another unit of spies sank French ships in Saigon Harbor.

The French military command was on the defensive and in disarray, while Giáp called his men back to Điện Biên Phủ for the great offensive. ¹⁴

In the early morning of March 11, 1954, Vietminh artillery shells began raining down onto the Điện Biên Phủ airfield. Giáp held his forces by restricting his firing batteries from using any piece larger than a 75 mm howitzer, until two days later, when they started firing 105 mm howitzer.

His siege plans were divided into three phases:

1. Destroy the airstrip on the northern sector and capture the French strongholds at Beatrice, Gabrielle, and Anne-Marie.

2. Tighten the encirclement of the French camp and destroy the central subsector, the main airstrip, and the village.

3. Launch the final attack on Isabelle stronghold at the south end.

Very early on, Giáp’s artillery warriors pockmarked the northern airstrip, rendering it unusable. As the artillery shells rained down on Điện Biên Phủ, General Cogny was inspecting the camp. He left in a hurry, ordering his pilot to take off while there was still time. ¹⁵

With heavy casualties on both sides, Giáp’s men captured Beatrice and Gabrielle. As they attacked Anne-Marie, the Vietminh used psychological warfare to convince the mostly Thai battalion to give up fighting and to save themselves instead of fighting for the French. Most Thai soldiers deserted, and the remaining handful retreated to Huguette post. Using the network of trenches, Giáp launched his human-wave attacks against the French.

They destroyed the second airstrip by March 17. Supplies and reinforcements to the French camp could only be done by airdrops, which would be captured by Vietminh soldiers. Plane drops became more hazardous, with the Chinese antiaircraft guns manned by Chinese Communist volunteers. ¹⁶

The Vietminh encirclement drew tighter. On March 23, General Navarre spoke with Giáp on an open radio and, for the first time, addressed his enemy as general. He asked Giáp not to attack the medical aircraft evacuating the wounded. His request was met with stony silence. ¹⁷

Despite French reinforcements as paratroopers dropped into camp, by March 30, General Giáp ordered a front assault to Dominique in the northeast. The fighting continued viciously at Dominique, Eliane, and Huguette for four continuous days, exhausting the men on both sides. Navarre was counting on the monsoons to slow down supplies to Giáp’s side, yet it did not happen. He realized his miscalculations and the mistakes he’d imposed upon his men at Điện Biên Phủ. Giáp’s war plans had no provisions for prisoners of war. There were high rates of dead among POWs and injured on both sides.

By May 1 to May 7, 1954, the French held no more than one square kilometer of ground, plus Isabelle to the south. Giáp ordered no covering barrages; Vietminh soldiers rushed toward the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. All outposts were overrun or abandoned. On May 7, de Castries was seized by Vietminh soldiers, who burst into his bunker while he radioed his last message: Our resistance is going to be overwhelmed.

A subdued de Castries and his staff were paraded before Giáp. After fifty-five days and fifty-five nights, Điện Biên Phủ fell under Vietminh control. ¹⁸

The news from Vietnam rocked the world and the foreign ministers preparing for the Geneva conference in May 1954.

The hardships and the ultimate sacrifice of lives on both sides weighed heavily on the Vietminh. But why such a ferocious battle between France and the Vietminh to the last man standing? What drove France to engage in such a battle far away from the motherland? How did French colonialism of Vietnam evolve, why, and when?

After a long saga of domination by outsiders, Vietnam’s sons and daughters fiercely wanted her independence at any cost.

Chapter 2

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THE WORLD AND THE WEST

The Early Voyagers

Exploration is as old as mankind; early peoples spread out

From Africa and ultimately populated most of the world.

—Beau Riffenburgh

For ancient civilizations, exploration was usually a byproduct of military conquest or the establishment of trading routes. From a European perspective, much of the world’s exploration started with the Phoenician traders in the Mediterranean or the conquests of Alexander the Great in Asia. But exploration was not initiated in Europe. Long before the westerners traveled to distant lands, the Chinese, the Muslims, and the Norsemen had opened the human boundaries of geographical knowledge.

Around 138 BC to 116 BC, Zhang Qian traveled as far as Samarkand, in present day Uzbekistan. ¹⁹ Samarkand is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. Due to its strategic location, on the Silk Road, halfway between China and the West, Samarkand had sustained numerous invasions by foreign armies—Alexander the Great in 329 BC, the Mongolian army of Genghis Khan in 1220, and Khan Baraq and Russian ruler, Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman in 1868. ²⁰

Exploration also flourished in the Islamic world, which extended at its height from Spain and West Africa to Central Asia and beyond. In 850–851, Suleiman the Merchant sailed from the Persian Gulf to India, the Spice Islands, Vietnam, and onto China. In the next century, Ibn Fadlan reached the kingdom of the Bulgars on the Volga River.

From far north, the Vikings or Norsemen plied the waters of the North Sea far and wide from the eighth century. They settled in Normandy and conquered Sicily, the Shetlands, the Faeroes Islands, and Iceland in the ninth century. In 982, Erik Thorvaldsson (Eric the Red) sailed from Iceland, rediscovering a land reported by Gunnbjorn Ulfsson a century earlier and naming it Greenland. Thus started the Vikings colonization of Greenland. In 986, the Vikings sighted the coastlines of Newfoundland, Labrador, and Baffin Island. Leif Erikson, in 1001/02, reached the areas that he named Helluland, Markland, and Vinland.

Perhaps the greatest European traveler before Christopher Columbus came from a family of Venetian merchants. Nicolo Polo and his brother Maffeo Polo had traveled for commerce as far as Samarkand, Mongolia, and the city of Beijing, China. Upon their return to Venice in 1271, they set out again, taking along Nicolo’s seventeen-year-old son, Marco Polo. ²¹

Several East-West trade routes were established on land, but changing times proved difficult for communications.

In the fourteenth century, the Yuan dynasty in China, which had been receptive to European missionaries and merchants, was overthrown. The new rulers of the Ming dynasty showed intransigence to religious proselytism and commerce from the West. In 1453, the Muslims sacked Constantinople and controlled the eastern Mediterranean and Northern Africa. Commerce and communications channels between Europe and Asia rapidly deteriorated, leaving only a few terminals under the control of Muslim traders. ²²

This global state of affairs presented a challenge to several Western countries in need of spices, precious metals, and silk from the Orient. Among these countries were Spain; Portugal; the Netherlands; and, later in the game, France. If the land routes were blocked, then maritime exploration was still a mysterious and fearsome calling.

Oceanic Voyages to Asia

Nothing in the world

Is as soft and yielding as water.

Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,

Nothing can surpass it.

—Tao Te Ching

Vasco Da Gama and Infante D. Henrique

On May 20, 1498, Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut on the southwest coast of India by sea route—the first European to set foot in Asia from his ship. He led a fleet of four ships and 170 men, leaving Lisbon on July 8, 1497. The four ships were built in Portugal—a caravel, Berrio, and three carracks or cargo ships, the São Gabriel, the São Rafael, and the São Bras.

Behind this legendary explorer was an equally legendary figure—the founder of the art and science of maritime navigation, Infante D. Henrique, known as Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal. Prince Henry was born in 1394 as the third son of King John I (King Joao I) and his English wife, Philippa of Lancaster.

The Mediterranean Sea was and is the cradle of Western civilization, expanding in commerce, invasion, and territorial expansion from the Phoenicians to the Moors.

A small country in Western Europe, Portugal has no coastline along the Mediterranean Sea, so the fourteenth-century nation advanced in worldwide exploration by focusing on its Atlantic Ocean access.

At the age of twenty-one, in 1415, Prince Henry commanded a military force that captured the Muslim outpost of Ceuta, located on the North African coast across the straits of Gibraltar. While in Ceuta, he had learned from traders about gold routes across the Sahara, thought to originate in Guinea on the African west coast. His obsession to push back the boundaries of the known geographical world, coupled with his zeal to banish the Muslims from North Africa, led to the founding of the School of Navigation in Sagres. ²³

The site of Sagres was accepted to be the most southwestern point of Portugal or Europe.

From research, Sagres was described as a fifteenth-century research and development facility, including libraries, an astronomical observatory, a ship-building facility, a chapel, and housing for staff.

The mission of Sagres was to teach navigational techniques to Portuguese sailors, to collect and disseminate geographical information about the world, to invent and improve navigational and seafaring equipment, to sponsor expeditions, and to spread Christianity around the world.

Prince Henry brought the contemporary leading geographers, cartographers, astronomers, and mathematicians throughout Europe to teach and to study at the institute.

Nautical knowledge about currents and winds, brought by captains of successive voyages, were accumulated, correlated, and instructed to younger generations of captains. Charts and maps were systematically updated. A product of this intense research and exploration site was a revolutionary, lighter, and faster vessel designed and built in Portugal—the caravel.

From Sagres, Prince Henry began directing the exploration of the West African coast on a grand scale. Expedition after expedition, Portugal was moving south along the Atlantic coast, with the primary goal of searching for a sea route to Asia, the land of spices.

From 1424 to 1434, fifteen expeditions returned fruitless. The reason? The dreaded Cape Bojador, southeast of the Canary Islands. Finally, in 1434 Prince Henry sent Captain Gil Eannes south. On his second attempt, he sailed west prior to reaching the cape and then headed eastward once passing the cape. He returned to Portugal lauded as the first victory, for none of his crew saw the dreadful cape.

In1441, Prince Henry’s caravels reached Cape Blanc, at the junction of Mauritania and the Western Sahara. In 1444, Captain Eannes’s expedition brought home a boatload of two hundred African slaves. A dark age began for Portuguese history. In 1445, Portuguese ships reached the mouth of the Gambia River.

In 1460, at the age of sixty-six, Prince Henry died. But the southward journey of Portugal progressed. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope. ²⁴

On July 17, 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed out of Lisbon and pushed through the sea route to India. The expedition set sail from Lisbon, following the route pioneered by previous explorers along the coast of West Africa via Tenerife and then the Cape Verde islands. Then da Gama pushed south at around latitude 8.484 north and veered into the open ocean, crossing the equator in search of the South Atlantic westerlies discovered by Bartolomeu Dias. The expedition made landfall on the African coast—an immense success.

By December 1497, the ships sailed into waters unknown to Europeans. The East Coast of Africa was revealed to be Arab-controlled territory, part of an Indian Ocean trade network. After a botched impersonation as Muslims in Mozambique, the expedition resorted to piracy, attacking unarmed Arab merchant vessels in Mombasa and then continued north to friendly Malindi, where the explorers noticed the presence of Indian traders. Da Gama contracted the services of a pilot with monsoon winds knowledge to lead the expedition all the way to Calicut on the Southwest Coast of India, on May 20, 1498.

Though Vasco da Gama presented to the king of Calicut the gifts from Dom Manuel (King Manuel I), he failed to impress the Zamorin, for the king of Calicut was expecting gold or silver. Having failed to secure a trade treaty between Portugal and Calicut, an annoyed da Gama took several locals, by force, back to Portugal. Nevertheless, the expedition was deemed victorious, bringing back a cargo of spices worth sixty times the cost of the expedition and discovering a new sea route to Asia. And foremost, the East African coast proved to be essential to Portugal’s interests, for several ports were crucial for provisions, fresh water, timber for vessel repair, and refuge during unfavorable weather. This led to the Portuguese colonization of Mozambique.

The 2nd Portuguese India Armada was launched in 1500, under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral, with the specific mission of securing a commerce treaty with the Zamorin of Calicut and establishing a Portuguese factory in Calicut. Unfortunately, a conflict between the Portuguese and the local Arab merchants led to a riot, killing seventy Portuguese and destroying the Portuguese factory. War broke out.

Infuriated, Vasco da Gama invoked his 1501 royal letter giving him the right to intervene in any India-bound fleet and prepared to set sail commanding the 4th India Armada, determined to retaliate and to force Calicut to submit to Portuguese terms.

On February 12, 1502, the 4th India Armada set sail for India. Along the route, da Gama subdued the East African gold port of Sofala, extracting a substantial amount of gold, and then attacked any Arab vessel crossing in the Indian waters, most cruelly a Muslim pilgrim ship, whose passengers were mercilessly massacred in open waters.

The violent reentry into Calicut kingdom brought the commerce along the Malabar Coast of India to a standstill. Yet the Zamorin rejected the Portuguese demands, stood his grounds, and entered into battle against the Portuguese, with the help of corsair warships. The Zamorin lost. Vasco da Gama loaded his carracks with spices from Cochin (south of Calicut) and Cannanore (north of Calicut) and then returned to Portugal in early 1503.

He left behind a small squadron of caravels to patrol the Indian Coast and to protect the Portuguese factories in Cochin and Cannanore from the Zamorin’s attacks.

Again, da Gama failed to bring to fruition a long-awaited commerce treaty with Calicut.

In 1505, Vasco da Gama was overlooked, and the title of viceroy of Portuguese-India was bestowed upon D. Francisco de Almeida.

In 1518, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese, defected to serve the Spanish crown. Vasco da Gama threatened to follow suit. King Manuel I hurriedly appointed da Gama as count of Vidigueira, the first count not from royal blood.

In 1521, King John III succeeded to the throne after his father, King Manuel I died. Looking for a fresh start, King John III replaced the current governor of Portuguese India, Duarte de Menezes, and appointed Vasco da Gama to the post, naming him viceroy.

In April 1524, Vasco da Gama led an expedition of fourteen vessels with two of his sons—Estêvão da Gama and Paulo da Gama. He commanded the flagship, the famous carrack, Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai. The armada arrived in India in September. Shortly after, da Gama contracted malaria and died in Cochin on Christmas Eve of 1524. ²⁵

A man of genius and vision, Prince Henry founded an institute that became the launching pad for European exploration of the world. Numerous sea explorers, both famous and unknown, spent their formative years at Sagres, among them Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, and Cristopher Columbus.

Through his mix of adventure, warring in foreign lands, and negotiations in his homeland, Vasco da Gama propelled a small European country into higher orbit—the stage of international commerce, where Portugal became a superpower, dealing with Asia by trade and force. Out of necessity, in maintaining its trade route to India, Portugal became a colonizing power, stabilizing its outposts in Goa and Calicut, thereby securing a spice trade monopoly over the Indian Ocean commerce sea route.

Over time, the Portuguese consolidated a presence in Africa, with its African slave trade, and controlled the narrow Strait of Malacca, through which most Far Eastern trade moved. From Malacca, they sailed to the southern coast of China, established trading posts in Canton and a permanent base in Macau in 1557. The Portuguese sailed south along the Vietnamese coastline and established a permanent post in Dà Nãng in 1535 but preferred Macau, seeing it as a better base. They traded with, rather than conquered Vietnam, until its maritime empire disintegrated a century later.

In 1543, Portuguese ships reached Tanegashima, Japan, causing a cultural shock wave that penetrated the Japanese society until 1614.

Ferdinand Magellan

On March 17, 1521, the year Vasco da Gama was appointed viceroy of Portuguese India, Ferdinand Magellan’s ships reached the island of Homonhon, the Philippines. He was the first man to lead an expedition to circumnavigate the Earth, completed by one of his captain’s Juan Sebastián Elcano.

Born around 1480 in Douro Litoral province, Portugal, son of Rodrigo de Magalhaes and his wife Alda de Mesquita, at ten years old, Ferdinand Magellan became a page to Queen Leonor of the Portuguese court, at the death of both of his parents.

In 1505, at the age of twenty-five, Magellan enlisted in the fleet of twenty-two ships sent to host Dom Francisco de Almeida, as the first viceroy of Portuguese India. He spent eight years in Goa, Cochin, and Quilon, India. At age thirty-one, in 1511, Magellan and a friend, Francisco Serrao, participated in the conquest of Malacca. After the expedition, Magellan returned to Portugal, and Serrao was sent to find the Spice Islands in the Moluccas (present day Maluku), where he remained and married a local woman and became a military advisor to the Sultan of Ternate. He wrote to Magellan giving tips on the spice-producing countries.

In 1517, after a disagreement with King Manuel I, Magellan left for Spain. He proposed to King Manuel I that he commandeer an expedition via a different route to the West from Portugal to reach the Spice Islands from the East.

With Vasco da Gama reaching India in 1498, the Treaty de Tordesillas in 1494 spelled out Portugal’s exclusive rights to India through the Cape of Good Hope.

In a trade race, Spain launched westward expeditions to urgently seek another commercial route to Asia. Spanish explorer, Vasco Nunez de Balboa reached the Pacific Ocean in 1513, after crossing the Isthmus of Panama. Juan Diaz de Solis