The Road to Vietnam: America, France, Britain, and the First Vietnam War

273 Pages·2020·2.583 MB·English

by  Pablo de Orellana

Th e Road to Vietnam
i
ii
Th e Road to Vietnam
America, France, Britain, and the First
Vietnam War
Pablo de Orellana
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I.B. TAURIS
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published in Great Britain 2020

Copyright © Pablo de Orellana, 2020

Pablo de Orellana has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identifi ed as Author of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this
copyright page.

Cover design by Charlotte James
Cover image: French parachutists, Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam, 1953.
(© Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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Đ ể d à nh t ă. ng cho nh ữ ng đ ứ a con ch ư a ch à o đ ờ i
c u᾽ a tôi và đ ể xua tan m o. i m ô´ i h â. n thù.

To my unborn children, against hatred.
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He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole aff air’s about, and
you gave him money and York Harding’s books on the East and said, ‘Go ahead.
Win the East for democracy.’ He never saw anything he hadn’t heard in a lecture
hall, and his writers and lecturers made a fool of him. When he saw a dead body
he couldn’t even see the wounds. A Red menace, a soldier of democracy.
Graham Greene, Th e Quiet American
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xii
Figures xiii
Prelude 1
Part I Ouvertures
1 Th e Road to Vietnam: historical debates and the question
of representation 11
Historical debates 11
Constructing diplomatic understanding of France and Vietminh 21
Understanding representation in diplomacy: historical and
conceptual requirements 25
2 Reading diplomatic knowledge: analytics and sources 29
Conceptual developments: Postructuralism, identity, and text 30
Analysing representation of identity in diplomacy: from
concepts to methods 32
On the archival trail of the First Vietnam War: sources 38
3 Diplomatic pathways 41
Part II Diplomatic Text and the Words of Identity
4 Th e Vietminh rebel alliance: universal rights and
self-determination 59
5 Th e French Empire strikes back: aggression against Đ ô․ c L â. p 65
6 Vietminh as Fascists: Vietnam does not exist 73
7 Vietminh as Communists: ‘Moscow’s interest in Indo-China’ 79
8 A ‘united front’ and ‘the left -wing trend of the Viet-Minh’ 85
9 D’Argenlieu’s ‘sudden raising of the Communist bogey’ 91
10 Meeting ‘radical Annamese opponents of both France
and Japan’ 99
11 Creating Pyle’s “Th ird Force”: ‘a truly nationalist government’ 105
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viii Contents
Part III Diplomatic Struggles Over Identity 1948–45
12 Late 1948–September 1947: the year of the Stalinist domino 123
France 124
Britain 129
US 136
Vietminh 140
13 August 1947–September 1946: French intransigence and
Anglo-Saxon antipathy 143
France 145
Britain 152
US 158
Vietminh 161
14 August 1946–April 1945: Second World War ghosts and
rethinking colonialism 167
France 169
Britain 174
US 179
Vietminh 184
Epilogue: onto war made unavoidable 191
Learning from the history of representations in Vietnam
War diplomacy 192
On the power of diplomacy and identity 199
Notes 205
Bibliography 233
Index 243
Acknowledgements
Th e author of this book has incurred enormous intellectual, material, ideational
and emotional debts to so many. Th is project, with research in archives in Paris,
Aix-en-Provence, London and Washington, has benefi tted from the help of kind
academic, intellectual and friendly fellow-travellers, friends, colleagues and
mentors without whom it would not have been possible. I am grateful to:
Professor Vivienne Jabri of King’s College London, my doctoral supervisor
and mentor, who led me in the ways and means of Poststructuralist philosophy,
corrected my numerous mistakes and guided me with patience. Perhaps just as
importantly, her great conceptual, political and disciplined mind and friendship
indulged and furthered my many intellectual fi shing trips: from my love for
poetry and the arts to the tragedy of identity politics which determine that the
Other can be killed. Her intellectual power and rigour have been an inspiration.
Dr Peter Busch, the most patient historian whose critical and practical advice
gave legs to this project on the diplomacy of the First Vietnam War. I thank him
for the many occasions when he allowed me to bounce ideas off his historical
wisdom and imparted advice for archival research. His constructive insistence
and expertise of the Vietnam Wars was key to this project and its inclusion of
Britain’s role in the diplomacy that led to US involvement in Vietnam.
My family has been crucial to making this project possible. My sister Tally de
Orellana helped me with her friendship, patience and mirth in this long journey
of philosophical and historical research. As sisterly assistant she is responsible
for the diagrams and charts in this book. My parents, Gaston Orellana (Dad) and
Isabel de Calles (Mum), are responsible for a lifetime of inspiration in the
intellectual, artistic and political world. Th eir intellectual courage as art
practitioners, their limitless patience as parents of a son living far from home,
their indulgence of my curiosity and endless conversations are in no small way
responsible for my work. When I was draft ing this book, they hosted me, gave
me love, calm space and a view of the sea.
In their kindness, the heavens lent me the help of loving friends that held me
when I fell and listened to me rant. Beloved Oxonians, you saved me with dry
humour, regular friendship, and far too few unforgotten moments: Jeff , Dwiar,
Jojo, Conan, Jean, Brian, Rach, Flora, Dutton, and so many more Catz! Aft er long
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