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Show Nationalist Movement in Indo-China Years Old French Indo-China, a colony on the China Sea coast next to China, Burma and Thailand, was once France's most important colonial possession. Administrative functions gave the colony its collective name; Indo-China never has existed as a unit. Before World War II, the rich colony of Cochin-China and four protectorates Annam, Tonkin, Laos and Cambodia made up Indo-China. France first moved into the land in 1787 when a missionary bishop effected a treaty between a native king of Cambodia and Louis XVI. It never was executed fully. In the mid-eighteen hundreds when empire-building was fashionable fashion-able Indo-China was acquired piecemeal, starting with Cochin-China. Cochin-China. Since that time it has been almost always a scene of minor trouble, civil revolts and attempts by the natives to gain their freedom free-dom from mercantile colonization. The ledger of pre-war administration adminis-tration of Indo-China by France contains both red and black entries. en-tries. There is ample evidence of exploitation of agricultural wealth rice, rubber, teak, coffee, cotton, silk and tea. A mere 50,000 Frenchmen French-men supervised the area, which is a third larger than France. On the other side, France brought to Indo-China Indo-China a continental civilization, built modern buildings, instituted unifying laws and started an educational edu-cational system. When France fell, however, only o n e of five Indo-Chinese Indo-Chinese could read or write. With France overridden by Germany Ger-many in 1940, Indo-China was delivered de-livered without a battle to Japan by agreement of the collaborationist collaboration-ist Vichy government. In 1941 Japan moved into operational oper-ational bases in the country, also dictating a peace with Siam, which ceded to it 21,000 square miles of rice lands. For many years Indo-China has had a growing nationalist movement. move-ment. By the end of the war it flourished wider than ever, and the defeatedJapariese handed the country back to the nationalists, not to the French. Annam, Tonkin and Cochin-China banded together as the Republic of Vietnam the ancient name of Annam determined deter-mined to achieve independence. Although only a tiny percentage of the people acutally were Communist, Com-munist, most of the key posts in the controlling government, the Vietminh (League for Independence), Independ-ence), were filled with Moscow followers. fol-lowers. A large number of non-Communist nationals feel that the important impor-tant battle is for freedom from France rather than the battle against communism. France, immediately after the war, determined to f a s h i o n its policies on those of the Dutch in Indonesia In-donesia rather than follow the example ex-ample of the United States and Great Britain, which gave the Philippines and India independence. independ-ence. France, with the help of the United States and Britain, managed man-aged to get back into Indo-China and has been engaged in continuous continu-ous warfare against the Communist-dominated Vietminh ever since. At first it attempted to get back in power with the support of local leaders. Then it depended on a French-educated, pro-French native na-tive population. Finally it stacked all on a government headed by an ex-kmg of Annam, Bao Dai. Bao Dai was lukewarm about accepting French support in view of vague promises about future independence. The United States and Britain recognized France's claims and the former emperor's government when Red China and the Soviet Union recognized the government set up by the Vietminh. |