The Tragedy of Vietnam

Patrick J. Hearden, Patrick Hearden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138632653
• eBook ISBN: 9781351674003
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

The Tragedy of Vietnam is a brief and accessible text providing a comprehensive overview of the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War. Patrick J. Hearden offers historical background of the conflict and examines its long-term consequences on a regional and global scale. This fifth edition includes expanded discussions of postwar American–Vietnamese relationships and outlines the ways in which the Vietnam War experience has shaped foreign-policy debates in the United States up until the present day.

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Chapter 1

The French Indochina Empire

Social stability in this industrial age clearly depends on outlets for industrial goods . . . The European consumer-goods market is saturated; it is necessary to reach into other parts of the world for new consumers, or, at the dawn of the twentieth century, modern society will be bankrupt and will suffer destruction by some cataclysm whose consequences can scarcely be imagined.

JULES FERRY, FRENCH STATESMAN, 1890

The Emergence of Vietnam

More than 2,000 years ago, the Vietnamese people emerged as a distinct ethnic group possessing a common language and a resilient culture. Their long historical journey began with the establishment of flourishing agricultural settlements on the fertile alluvial soil deposited by the Red River flowing down from the mountains to the sea. The cultivation of rice on the triangular plain at the mouth of this river provided the economic basis for the development of a social structure composed of a small number of prominent landlords and a large mass of ordinary peasants. But while agriculture served as the foundation of their feudal society, the Vietnamese did not limit themselves to harvesting the resources of the land. Since the vast majority of inhabitants of the Red River valley lived within fifty miles of the coast, they were able to supplement their basic diet of rice with fish and salt gathered from the ocean. And these three staples—rice, fish, and salt—continued to be the principal sources of food for the Vietnamese people throughout their tumultuous history.

In 111 BC, the Chinese invaded the region inhabited by the Vietnamese, and during the next 1,000 years Vietnam remained a Chinese colony. After defeating the indigenous Vietnamese population, the conquerors from China introduced new agricultural methods into the rich Red River Delta. The Chinese brought plows and draft animals to work in the rice paddies. They also brought sophisticated systems of irrigation and flood control. These agricultural innovations resulted in the intensification of rice cultivation, and the consequent increase in food production led to a population boom. As their agricultural base widened and their numbers swelled, the Vietnamese found that their very survival depended on their ability to harness the vital water of the Red River. Thus, they banded together to build the dams, dikes, and canals needed to obtain greater rice yields to satisfy their expanding nutritional requirements.

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In addition to introducing efficient agricultural techniques into the Red River basin, the imperial authorities from China established a mandarin system to administer the Vietnamese territory under their rule. The Chinese proconsuls governing Vietnam appointed a few native landlords to hold minor bureaucratic posts in the new regime. Acting as public officials and civil servants, the local mandarins helped run their country in the interest of China. These indigenous functionaries also adopted the Chinese language and embraced Confucian principles emanating from China. But while these servants of power readily absorbed the morals and aped the lifestyle of their foreign taskmasters, the great bulk of the Vietnamese people continued to toil in the rice fields, where they clung to their traditional customs and values. As a result, a fundamental division developed between the mandarins residing in the provincial towns and the peasants living in the surrounding countryside.

The upper-class members of Vietnamese society, although quick to embrace the trappings of Chinese culture, slowly began to harbor a strong desire for political autonomy. While they continued to enjoy their social and economic privileges, the mandarins gradually came to resent their political subservience to outside authorities. As their discontent steadily mounted, they began to regard the heavily taxed peasants as indispensable allies if they were ever to throw off the yoke of Chinese oppression. These urban Vietnamese leaders eventually reverted to speaking their native language and to honoring ancient practices in an effort to restore their ties with their rural neighbors. After mobilizing the masses into a powerful resistance force, the mandarins launched a determined struggle to achieve national independence. A long series of violent and bloody confrontations ensued. Finally, in 939 AD, the Vietnamese rebels defeated the Chinese imperialists and drove them out of their homeland. Henceforth, the smaller Vietnamese dragon would no longer pay tribute to the Chinese colossus to the north.

The great victory against China marked the beginning of 900 years of growth and development for Vietnam as an independent country. Shortly after winning their emancipation from foreign domination, the triumphant Vietnamese established a stable and effective government. The new Vietnamese regime revolved around a strong monarch who exercised sovereign authority over his subjects. A long line of emperors lived in the city of Hanoi, which sat strategically along the banks of the Red River, and on the death of each ruler the royal prerogative was passed on to his eldest son. Although Vietnam evolved as a unified nation with a central government based on a hereditary monarchy, the country nevertheless suffered from considerable political turmoil due to the haughtiness of the large landlords and native mandarins. These two troublesome groups did not always passively submit to the mandate of the monarchs, and they frequently rebelled when an emperor interfered with their exploitation of the peasants. As a result, Vietnam was constantly plagued by feudal dissension that sometimes erupted into full-scale civil war.

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Besides suffering from these internal disturbances, Vietnam also fell victim to repeated invasions from China. But the Vietnamese, taking advantage of their climate and geography, were able to repel each Chinese intrusion. “When the enemy is away from home for a long time and produces no victories and families learn of their dead,” explained General Tran Hung Dao, who defeated the Chinese in 1284, “then the enemy population at home becomes dissatisfied and considers it a Mandate from Heaven that their armies be recalled. Time is always in our favor. Our climate, mountains and jungles discourage the enemy; but for us they offer sanctuary and a place from which to attack.” The Chinese invaded once again in 1406, and after rapidly conquering Vietnam they ruthlessly exploited the vanquished population. But the Vietnamese, under the leadership of Le Loi, soon revolted against the despotic Chinese. Realizing that he lacked the manpower to engage the Chinese in large battles, Le Loi employed hit-and-run tactics to wear down the gargantuan enemy. Small rebel units under his command would make sudden thrusts against Chinese troops, then quickly dissolve into the jungle to prepare for yet another surprise attack. These guerrilla tactics ultimately proved successful, and in 1428 the Chinese withdrew their forces from Vietnam.

After winning their independence from their northern neighbor, the energetic Vietnamese embarked on their own program of empire building. They gradually began expanding beyond the Red River area, and during the next 400 years they moved southward, step by step, along the seacoast until they reached all the way down to the Gulf of Siam. This Great March to the South was propelled by an economic imperative. The Vietnamese needed more land in order to raise more rice to feed their growing population. Rice could be cultivated in abundance in only two accessible places: along the narrow strip of coastal lowlands stretching from one end of the Indochina peninsula to the other and along the floodplains of the rivers flowing from the mountains down to the ocean. Driven by their hunger for land, the Vietnamese advanced down the coast in spurts, jumping from one river valley to the next. After each move, these vigorous pioneers established new settlements and harvested more rice until they outgrew their food supply and the time came to make yet another bound to the south.

Armies of ravenous Vietnamese peasants spearheaded these recurrent imperial thrusts. Whenever an increase in their numbers created a need for additional rice fields, the pastoral Vietnamese became aggressive soldiers who pushed back weaker peoples from their expanding southern frontier. And after conquering sufficient living space, the peasants exchanged their swords for plows and settled down to farming once again. This intermittent pattern of territorial aggrandizement, repeated over and over, came at the expense of two adjoining dominions. The militant Vietnamese first attacked the kingdom of Champa, and within a few hundred years this once-flourishing state ceased to exist. The Vietnamese then pressed farther south against the sprawling empire of Cambodia, and by 1800 they had succeeded in expelling the Khmers from the coveted Mekong River basin. Thus, the Vietnamese had gained control of the second of the two great rice-producing regions of Indochina.

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After the Great March to the South had run its course, Vietnam was shaped like an elongated S extending for more than 1,200 miles between the ninth and twenty-sixth parallels. The country has often been pictured as two baskets of rice at the opposite ends of a bamboo pole carried on the back of a peasant. The baskets of rice are the two rich alluvial deltas formed by the Red and Mekong rivers, and the bamboo pole is the long chain of mountains, with peaks ranging from about 10,000 feet in the north to around 4,000 feet in the south. These mountains form a vast watershed that serves as a boundary separating Vietnam from Laos and Cambodia. Eighty percent of the geographical area of Vietnam is covered by bush, forest, or heavy jungle, and these highlands are sparsely populated by different ethnic tribes that were forced out of the fertile valleys below by the Khmers and Vietnamese. The vast majority of Vietnamese live at an altitude of less than 900 feet in the coastal lowlands and floodplains that together constitute the remaining 20 percent of the country.

The great leapfrogging movement southward, while providing the Vietnamese with essential farmland, also intensified their political difficulties. For many centuries, Vietnamese monarchs had sat on the throne in Hanoi and ruled over the people of the Red River valley. As the Vietnamese population extended farther and farther to the south, however, the emperors exercised less and less control over their migrating subjects. Settlements established at great distances from the seat of empire in Hanoi came to enjoy a considerable amount of political autonomy. Ultimately, rival factions rebelled against dynastic authority, and as a consequence Vietnam was divided into two parts. The separate governments that emerged in the northern and southern halves of the country depended on the support of the great landlords and provincial mandarins, and these two groups were therefore allowed to line their pockets by collecting high land rents and excessive taxes from the peasants. But this economic exploitation provoked a series of peasant uprisings.

More and more, the forces of revolt in Vietnam were expressions of peasant discontent rather than articulations of elite ambition. While the peasants took up arms against their oppressors with increasing frequency, their sporadic outbursts remained unsuccessful for a long time because they lacked adequate leadership. But finally, in 1772, a local insurrection assumed the dimensions of a national revolution. The rebellion, led by three brothers from the village of Tay Son in the Mekong River valley, drew support from the upstart merchants in the nearby villages and the distressed peasants in the surrounding rice paddies. The ranks of the rebels continued to swell, and in 1786 their leaders succeeded in bringing the northern and southern parts of the country back together once more. Although the Tay Son rulers were overthrown in 1802 and a new monarchy was established at Hué in central Vietnam, the country remained united under a single government, and the Vietnamese people maintained their strong sense of national identity.

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The Establishment of French Rule

Despite their long history of militant nationalism, the Vietnamese had already become a target of Western imperialism. The European economic penetration began during the sixteenth century, when Portuguese ships brought enterprising traders to Vietnamese ports, and following closely in their wake were commercial adventurers disembarking from Dutch and British vessels. After establishing several trading posts in Vietnam, these agents of empire gradually turned their attention to more lucrative areas of exploitation elsewhere in Southeast Asia. But the French exhibited a more persistent determination to harvest the wealth of Vietnam when they entered the scramble for Asian riches during the seventeenth century. The French were driven by a potent mixture of economic ambition and religious enthusiasm. Gallic merchants, spurred by a desire for profit, and Catholic missionaries, stirred by a sense of piety, joined forces, and in 1664 they organized both the French East India Company and the Society of Foreign Missions. Hoping that trade would follow the cross, the merchants offered to pay the cost of transporting men of the cloth to Vietnam. The transaction proved to be mutually satisfying. Besides introducing French commodities throughout Vietnam, the missionaries preached their Christian gospel wherever they could find an audience.

The Vietnamese, however, often responded with suspicion and hostility toward the proselytizing endeavors of the missionaries from France. Their negative reaction was rooted in the fundamental tension that exists between the Christian commitment to individual sanctity and the Confucian concern for social stability. While the teachings of the Christian church stress personal salvation and devotion to biblical precepts, the philosophy of Confucius places greater emphasis on communal welfare and respect for parental authority. Vietnamese leaders feared that it would be difficult to maintain control over peasants who fell under the spell of Catholicism. Convinced that the spread of Christianity would disrupt their community, government officials in Vietnam frequently jailed Catholic converts and deported French missionaries. These measures of religious repression had a dampening effect, and as a consequence, in 1800 there were less than 30,000 Christians living in Vietnam.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Catholics in France began urging their government to take military action to prevent religious persecution in Vietnam. Their propaganda campaign drew support from an aggressive group of naval officers who were more interested in extending the reach of French sea power than in expanding the bounds of Christendom. But the government in Paris paid little attention to pleas for the deployment of military force in Vietnam until growing numbers of French merchants and manufacturers started to demand protection for their overseas commerce. Adding their voice to this mounting expansionist chorus was a new breed of nationalists who began promoting the idea that France had a mission to bring the blessings of civilization to backward areas around the world. But while these cultural chauvinists were moved by impulses of national pride, the influential business interests were motivated more by desires for personal enrichment. And their appetite for Asian trade intensified after the Opium Wars ended in 1842 and China was forced to open its doors to British and American exports.

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Succumbing to the pressure exerted by the commercial imperialists, the French government decided to authorize a military assault on Vietnam. Fourteen warships and 2,500 soldiers left France in 1858 with orders to take the city of Tourane on the coast in the central part of Vietnam. The French forces encountered only limited native resistance, but when many of the invading troops died from the scourge of tropical diseases, policymakers in Paris quickly withdrew their beleaguered warriors. Yet the undaunted French attacked Vietnam again three years later with even greater military strength. This time, the French struck with seventy gunboats and 3,500 men against the city of Saigon and the surrounding area in the southern part of Vietnam. After breaking the local resistance in a succession of bloody battles, the French extracted a very favorable treaty in 1862 from the humiliated Vietnamese government. Emperor Tu Duc agreed not only to give the French possession of three Vietnamese provinces adjacent to Saigon but also to open three ports in Vietnam to French trad...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Tragedy of Vietnam
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Fifth Edition
• Acronyms
• Map of Southeast Asia
• 1 The French Indochina Empire
• 2 The Dream of a Pax Americana
• 3 America’s Mandarin
• 4 The Summons of the Trumpet
• 5 The Master of Deceit
• 6 The Escalating Military Stalemate
• 7 Withdrawal Without Victory
• 8 The War that Nobody Won
• Selected Bibliography
• Index