the authorities in Paris opened talks with nationalist representatives. But on June 1st 1946 the French admiral and local plenipotentiary Thierry d’Argenlieu unilaterally proclaimed the separation of Cochin China (the southern part of the country) from the nationalist-dominated north, sabotaging his own government’s tentative efforts to reach a compromise and breaking off government conversations with Ho. By the autumn of that same year the French had bombed Haiphong harbor, the nationalist Vietminh had attacked the French in Hanoi and the first Vietnam War had begun.
