The fall of French Indo-China precipitated the collapse of the last of the French coalition governments that had tried to hold it, and the succession to the premiership of Pierre Mendès-France. Led by ‘PMF’ the French negotiated an agreement, signed at Geneva on July 21st 1954, under whose terms France withdrew from the region, leaving two separate entities—‘North’ and ‘South’ Vietnam—whose political relationship and institutions were to be determined by future elections. Those elections were never held, and the burden
