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Fluent in French, disdainful of autocracy, he had also found time to author two books, including one on the French defeat in 1940. Now, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, he found himself heading the small OSS contingent in Cochin China to find POWs and gather intelligence.
Dewey fully shared Patti’s anticolonial predilections and had helped facilitate the earlier failed negotiations between Cédile and the Viet Minh. He had sought an early audience with Gracey, but the Englishman rebuffed him. To Gracey, indeed, the troubles in Saigon could be blamed partly on Dewey and his OSS detachment, whom he declared persona non grata and labeled “blatantly subversive” for supposedly conniving with the Viet Minh.52
But the negotiations got nowhere; neither the French nor the Vietnamese were willing to make the concessions on sovereignty that the other side demanded. A fragile truce nevertheless took hold, and it was still in place when the French battleship Richelieu and the light cruiser Triomphant arrived on October 3 and began to debark Leclerc’s Fifth Colonial Regiment.
Many of these engagements were hard fought, however, as the nationalists proved resilient, showing themselves adept at withdrawing and regrouping, then, under the cover of night, striking back. Casualties were significant on both sides: The British Indian Division, for example, suffered nineteen killed and sixty-eight wounded by early November, while the Japanese lost fifty-four dead and seventy-nine wounded.
But close observers saw ominous signs of trouble. George Wickes, an American with the OSS who spent much of the fall in Saigon, thought the French would be hard-pressed to win a lasting victory.
Leclerc himself began to suffer nagging doubts or at least an awareness that the task ahead was complex. He reflected on something Mountbatten had told him in Ceylon, where Leclerc had stopped en route to Indochina: that postwar Asia was very different from the prewar variety, and there was no going back. Leclerc soon came to agree. “One does not kill ideas with bullets,” he told aides, and he warned superiors that France must avoid a large-scale war. Military action was necessary—troops had to be used to hold cities and lines of communication—but there could be no long-term military solution.
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For the high commissioner who set foot in Saigon on October 31, 1945, quickly showed himself to be a warrior monk. His policy decisions in the year that followed would set the conditions and the course for the outbreak of a full-scale war.
Whatever its source, his Gaullism was genuine and unshakable, and he took up his new charge with determination, fully sharing the general’s uncompromising ideas about maintaining the empire for the glory of France.2
Whatever the cause, by the early weeks of the new year, the high commissioner had a well-earned reputation for unwavering firmness in his dealings with Vietnamese nationalists.
Aloof, haughty, and bitingly sarcastic, he terrified his underlings and was known to reduce bureaucrats to quivering compliance. An autocrat to the core, d’Argenlieu also sought to project an air of mysticism and almost religious veneration. Largely unemotional up to a certain point, he could then launch into passionate oratory and bring himself to tears.
evil. Far-reaching compromise was out of the question. As 1946 progressed, more than a few observers, including some who shared the desire to reclaim French control over Indochina, would comment on this...
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As one wag on his staff quietly put it, d’Argenlieu had “the most brilliant mind of the twelfth century.” The problem was that he was about to be faced with one of the most delicate political and historical problems of the twentieth—decolonization—and he di...
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It moved quickly, for example, to abolish an iniquitous head tax and the land taxes on small landowners, while carefully avoiding a general redistribution of land that might antagonize Vietnamese landlords.
Not everyone embraced these measures. Ho Chi Minh personally had broad support, not merely in Tonkin and Annam but in the south as well, and the army won widespread devotion for its perceived discipline and for its stated willingness to fight wherever and whenever ordered. But many were warily skeptical regarding the new government in Hanoi as well as the local administrative committees.
But severe weaknesses in the economy and in military preparedness, more than anything, pushed Ho toward seeking some kind of deal with the French. Late in the year, another terrible famine in the north was barely averted by a range of short-term measures; thousands nevertheless starved to death. The Hanoi government’s revenues remained meager, partly because, in keeping with Viet Minh promises, various taxes had been abolished. The government had to resort to a public appeal for contributions to the treasury, a scheme that brought a pittance until Ho personally asked for the people’s help.
But how to supply these various units with weapons and ammunition? The problem was acute, perhaps even insoluble. The government had managed to accumulate some firearms from various sources, including the surrendering Japanese troops, but not nearly enough. Many units had to train only with sticks, spears, and primitive flintlocks turned out by local blacksmiths.
Better by far to put up with the French for a time. True, it meant delaying full national independence for some time to come, and retarding the progress of the revolution in the south, but what real alternative was there?
He came to see what others saw in the Frenchman (in addition, that is, to his matinee-idol looks): a deep intelligence that was matched by a personal modesty and capacity to listen. No doubt it helped that Sainteny also possessed a thorough knowledge of Indochina, having been a colonial official in the interwar period. For his part, Sainteny found Ho to be a “strong and honorable personality” who was “not basically anti-French.”
In his book Histoire d’une paix manquée (Story of a Lost Peace), published in 1953, Sainteny would speak of “his vast culture, his intelligence, his incredible energy, his asceticism,” and the incomparable prestige this gave him among the Vietnamese people. But Ho was also patient, Sainteny stressed, willing to maintain an association with France for some specified period: “He had struggled towards [independence] for 35 years; he could certainly wait a few years more.”11
whose sister taught at the Lycée Albert Sarraut in Hanoi, developed a grudging respect for the Viet Minh leader and did not dispute Sainteny’s characterization of Ho as a man of moderation who favored compromise over violence.
Where Sainteny and Pignon perhaps most differed was in the relative weight they gave to Ho’s humility and pride: Sainteny emphasized the former, Pignon the latter.12
Back and forth they would go, two men with considerable mutual respect and even affection, debating the meaning of particular French and Vietnamese words and phrases. They made little headway.13
At the same time, however, General Leclerc continued to strengthen the French military position in Cochin China, to the point that by February he seemed poised to turn his attention northward. Diplomatically too, Ho had reason to worry, as the parallel Sino-French negotiations to secure a Chinese withdrawal from Tonkin were beginning to show real promise. The French, it now seemed clear, were advancing north, come what might. Yet to fight them on the battlefield was quite out of the question: Giap’s forces were too ill equipped and too undertrained. To remain intransigent in the talks, on the
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De Gaulle’s departure, unrelated to the empire and caused by his frustration with parliamentary squabbling in Paris, removed what Ho took to be a major obstacle to an acceptable deal, and he had some reason to believe that the new government under Socialist Félix Gouin would be less intransigent.
He did not advocate wholesale concessions to the Vietnamese, and he continued to affirm the righteousness of the French cause. (Leclerc was never as conciliatory, never as moderate, as many historians have suggested.)14 But he grasped that the military means at his disposal were limited and that he faced not one but two potential foes in Tonkin—the Viet Minh as well as the Chinese occupying forces under Lu Han.
Inside, however, he feared that the task in the north would be infinitely larger and that even in the south his success could prove fleeting. He needed no reminder that he had benefited from the presence of Japanese as well as British forces in the early clashes, and that this assistance was now ending.
On the pesky question of Cochin China’s future, Sainteny should offer a compromise: A plebiscite would be held in all three regions of Vietnam to determine whether the population wished to affiliate with the new state or make a separate deal with France.16
Chongqing on February 28, in which the Chinese agreed to return home in exchange for significant economic concessions from France, reduced his maneuverability further—the agreement, Ho knew, paved the way for a French invasion of Tonkin.
The new National Assembly in Hanoi, which had been elected in January, approved the deal, with the understanding that it was preliminary and that additional negotiations would follow in short order. Some Vietnamese militants condemned the accord as a sellout, but Ho reiterated his conviction that the first order of business was to be rid of the dread Chinese. “As for me,” he told aides, “I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life.”19
French forces had put up embarrassingly little resistance. Yet now, twelve months later, France was back, well on the way to reclaiming control south of the sixteenth parallel and seemingly ready to do the same north of the line.
Little wonder that when Sainteny, after the signing ceremony, raised a glass and exulted to Ho that they had ended the possibility of major war, the veteran revolutionary demurred.
but admitted that his people were as yet unprepared to assume their full duties of citizenship. That was why Vietnam was eager to get advice and counsel from France, from Britain, from the United States—provided it was granted in a spirit of cooperation and not in the form of “master” to “slave.” The French seemed to want to retain their full sovereignty over Vietnam, and this, Ho vowed, nationalists in his country would never accept.
The visitors came away impressed. “When you talk to him he strikes you as quite above the ordinary run of mortals,” Wickes wrote in a letter home. “Perhaps it is the spirit that great patriots are supposed to have. Surely he has that—long struggling has left him mild and resigned, still sustaining some small idealism and hope [that war can be avoided]. But I think it is particularly his kindliness, his simplicity, his down-to-earthness. I think Abraham Lincoln must have been such a man, calm, sane, and humble.” To the Briton, meanwhile, Ho was an “outstanding character” with “excellent
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For while Paris recognized Vietnam’s “independence,” it also won entry for French troops into the north, which gave it the means to revoke what it had promised. The Viet Minh, meanwhile, secured precious time to build up their military strength. No less important, through her recognition of the “free state” of Vietnam, France in effect made the DRV the sole legitimate Vietnamese voice in the entire country.22
The January resignation of Charles de Gaulle, it’s clear, gave a boost to those, like veteran colonial official Henri Laurentie, who believed that the old colonial order could not be restored in toto, that the world had changed, that it was now essential to give substance to the vague promises of liberalization made during the war.
The Communist Party (Parti communiste français, or PCF), as we have seen, counseled moderation and generally sought to steer clear of colonial issues but claimed to stand for far-reaching reform in Indochina and elsewhere.
Even the Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP), the centrist Catholic party that was destined to dominate Indochina policy during much of the decade that followed, and that would in short order adopt a hard-line stance, made noises in February seeking a revamped French Union that would allow more autonomy for the Indochinese and other colonial peoples.24
Little by little the admiral set about retracting the concessions France had made.
It all set an ominous tone for the next round of negotiations, set to take place in France later in the spring. On June 1, a mere twenty-four hours after Ho left Vietnam bound for Paris, d’Argenlieu, in clear violation of the March 6 Accords and without informing Paris, “recognized” the autonomous “Republic of Cochin China” in the name of France.
Whenever he ventured out among people, whether in Biarritz or in Paris, Ho enjoyed a warm reception. He charmed most everyone, not least the press corps. Reporter after reporter found him engaging, witty, and winningly self-deprecating. To
One has to admire the mastery of this self-taught man, his language skills, his ability to make his views accessible, to make his intentions seem moderate, and his politeness. His entourage is nervous, fanatical, and reckless, while he plays the wise and insightful one.”30
Ho knew that this personal success and his reassuring rhetoric would count for little in the end. The bilateral negotiations were what truly mattered.
he was dismayed to see no prominent figures in the French delegation, merely midlevel colonial officials and three obscure politicians, all of them unsympathetic to the Vietnamese position.
AND SO LECLERC, NEVER AS FAR FROM D’ARGENLIEU’S HARD-LINE position as some authors have claimed, now stood more or less right beside him.
In subsequent weeks, the French strengthened their posture in various spots north of the sixteenth parallel, and though huge tasks remained and fighting continued in the south, the French commander may have noted the progress made and opted to see the glass as half full.33
policy on Indochina for much of the next eight years, and to many of his ministers, war was unthinkable, but the alternative, giving away independence to the “yellow men” (les jaunes), who in the past had been so easily dominated, was even more unimaginable.
To no one’s surprise, therefore, the old problems immediately resurfaced as the discussions began.
On Cochin China, the Vietnamese held steadfast to the line that it was part of their country, but the French refused to budge.
The hoped-for support from the Socialists and Communists never materialized, notwithstanding the gushing praise that the respective party newspapers heaped on the Vietnamese.
The two sides eventually returned to the table, but the deep divisions remained. Provisional agreements were drawn up on a range of economic issues, but the stubborn refusal of the French to discuss political issues—notably the status of Cochin China—rendered these agreements worthless to the Vietnamese delegation.
