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The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. The Vietnam War was perhaps the most significant event that took place in the latter half of the 20th century. It had profound impacts on the United States and, of course, Vietnam. However, many people have a very simplistic view of the causes of the war. They assume it was just a result of Cold War politics. While that certainly was a cause, the roots go back much further. Learn more about the origins of the Vietnam War and how and why it happened on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Fiji Water. You've probably heard of Fiji Water and have seen it in stores. Well, Fiji Water really is from the islands of Fiji. Drop by drop, Fiji Water is filtered through volcanic rock 1600 miles away from the nearest continent and all its pollution protected and preserved naturally from external elements. 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With Mint Mobile, you can keep your same phone, use your same number, and use the same towers and network that you do now. All you do is save money and that's why I recommend Mint Mobile this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your 3 month unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at mintmobile.comed that's mintmobile.comeed upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time. New customer offer for first 3 months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabits on unlimited plan, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. This episode is not about the Vietnam War per se. I'm not going to be talking about Troop movements, battles, or even the events that occurred in the United States during the war. This episode is about the long lead up to the war and why it ever happened in the first place. The short explanation that most people have regarding the Vietnam War is that the United States was trying to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. And to be sure, that is a big part of the story. But as we'll see in a bit, there is more to it than that. The events that unfolded in Vietnam did not appear out of nowhere in the 1950s. They were the result of a long line of events that began almost a century beforehand. The war's origin can probably be traced all the way back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when French Jesuits arrived in Vietnam. The Jesuits, as they did in so many places, tried to convert the local people to Christianity. Notable among them was Alexander de Rhodes, a French Jesuit who is credited with creating the Vietnamese Alphabet known as quoc Nh, which which uses the Latin script. Over time, the French began to have a larger and larger presence in Vietnam. During the 18th century, some French adventurers and missionaries provided military and political support to the Wen lords, who were one of the rival factions vying for control of Vietnam. This early involvement set the stage for later French intervention. It wasn't until the mid 19th century that the French involvement in Vietnam became more formal. In particular, France's formal involvement began with a military expedition in 1858, ostensibly to protect Catholic missionaries who were facing persecution. French forces, alongside their Spanish allies, launched an attack on Da Nang, but it was not immediately successful. It wasn't until 1862, after several years of conflict, that the French forced the Nguyen dynasty to cede three provinces in southern Vietnam, marking the beginning of French colonial rule in a region that they called Cochin China. Over the next few decades, the French gradually expanded their control over the rest of Vietnam. By 1884, after defeating the Vietnamese forces and their Chinese allies in the Sino French War, the French had effectively taken control of the entire country. Vietnam was divided into three Cochinchina, which was directly ruled by France Annam, a French protectorate in central Vietnam, and Tonkin, a French protectorate in North Vietnam. In 1887, the French established the Indo Chinese Union, which included Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This marked the formal establishment of French colonial rule in the region. The French colonial administration exploited Vietnam's natural resources and its labor. They introduced cash crops such as rubber and rice for export, built infrastructure to serve colonial interests, and imposed heavy taxes on the Vietnamese population. Population the French also sought to impose their culture and language on the Vietnamese through their educational system, while simultaneously suppressing traditional Vietnamese culture. French became the language of administration, and many Vietnamese elites were educated in French schools. Needless to say, this did not sit well with the Vietnamese people. The French were attempting to undermine their culture and replace it with a completely foreign one. From the outset of French rule, there was resistance from various Vietnamese groups. The most notable early resistance leader was Fan Ding Fu, who led a rebellion in the 1880s and 1890s. By the early 20th century, modern nationalist movements began to emerge. Figures such as Fan Bo Chao and Fan Chaoqing advocated for reform and independence. However, it was the rise of the communist movement under Ho Chi Minh that would pose the most significant challenge to French colonial rule. Ho Chi Minh, the future leader of North Vietnam, was a central figure in the struggle for Vietnamese independence. He was born Nguyen hsing Kung in 1890. He was born in a small village in Central Vietnam. His father, a Confucian scholar and teacher, instilled in him a strong sense of Vietnamese identity and resistance to French colonial rule. In his early 20s, Ho left Vietnam to work as a cook on a French steamer which took him to various countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Ho became a leader in the Vietnamese independence movement and in 1919 he attended the Versailles Peace Conference where he petitioned for Vietnamese self determination. At the Versailles peace Conference in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson advocated for the right of people to choose their own governments, which was a cornerstone of his vision for a new world order. Ho, along with many others in Southeast Asia, was deeply moved by the words of President Wilson. Ho Chi Minh issued a document titled the eight Demands of the Annamite People, which called for greater rights and freedoms for the Vietnamese under French colonial rule. Ho was not given a response, and despite his lofty rhetoric, President Wilson never bothered to meet with him. The Versailles Conference was about European powers, not their colonies. This became known in some circles as the Wilsonian moment. A missed opportunity by the United States to appeal to nationalist movements that became disillusioned with respect to this episode. A lost chance to make an ally of a leader who was otherwise actually rather pro American. After Versailles, Ho Chi Minh began to work more closely with socialist and communist groups that were willing to give him support. Historians have debated as to how much Ho Chi Minh was a communist versus how much he was a nationalist and and whether his rejection at Versailles resulted in embracing communism or if he was committed beforehand. But regardless of how and when he embraced communism, embrace communism he did. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the resistance movement in Vietnam grew, but never achieved Critical mass what changed everything was the invasion of Vietnam by the Japanese in 1940. While the Japanese physically occupied the country, it was very different than how they occupied the rest of the countries in Southeast Asia that they invaded. After Germany had invaded France. France was ruled by the German puppet Vichy government. The Vichy government continued to administer Vietnam with the support of the Japanese military. The Vichy government's use of the Japanese to pacify the country. Weakened French control and increased nationalism amongst the Vietnamese. In one of the odd twists to this story. During the war, Ho Chi Minh worked with the United States Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, in Operation Deer Team. The OSS sent military advisors to Vietnam to provide assistance to the Viet Minh. After the war, when the Japanese left, there was a power vacuum in the country. And on August 1945, the communist Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, launched the August Revolution. Seizing control of Hanoi and declaring Vietnam's independence. France attempted to reassert its control over Vietnam, leading to the First Indochina War between the French and the Viet Minh. The conflict was characterized mostly by guerrilla warfare. Perhaps more importantly, it became one of the first conflicts in the new Cold War between the west and the Communist bloc. In the context of the emerging Cold War, United States President Harry Truman viewed the Viet Minh as a communist threat aligned with the Soviet Union and China. Consequently, his administration decided to support France in its efforts to regain control of Vietnam. This decision by Truman had profound implications for the United States. During and after the Second World War, the United States was largely in favor of France and Britain giving their colonies independence. However, in Vietnam, Truman made an exception due to the fact that the Viet Minh were Communists. In 1950, Truman authorized sending military advisors to Vietnam as part of the Military Assistance Advisory Group, which helped the French fight the Viet Minh. A competitor state, simply known as the State of Vietnam. Was established in 1949 as part of the Indochinese Union. The First Indochina War raged on for eight years until 1954, when the Viet Minh achieved a significant victory over the French forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. This was a stunning defeat for the French that marked the end of French colonial rule in Vietnam. The Geneva Accords of 1954 officially ended the First Indochina War. Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel with North Vietnam controlled by the communist Viet Minh and South Vietnam by a non communist government supported by the West. Both countries were no longer colonies of France. Ho Chi Minh became the leader of North Vietnam. And the person who was selected to lead South Vietnam was Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem was staunchly anti communist and anti colonialist and was a member of the Catholic minority in the country. He was supported by the Eisenhower administration and Diem pursued American support because they were stronger and more reliable than France. Diem suspended the elections that were promised in the Geneva accord and soon began eliminating his potential political rivals. Diem was a dictator and he behaved as such. He was deeply unpopular in South Vietnam. He managed to eliminate or suppress all political opponents except for the communist insurgents, which were funded by the North. That being said, many communist sympathizers in the south, which Diem called the Viet Cong, were arrested. Over 100,000 people were imprisoned, tortured or executed. The United States, for their part, was well aware that Diem was a dictator. But he was their dictator, which was all that mattered during the Cold War. One of the reasons why the United States was so concerned about Vietnam and supportive of Diem in the late 1950s and early 1960s was something called the domino theory. The domino theory posited that if one country in a region fell to communism, others would soon follow. Thus, communism in Vietnam had to be stopped, lest it spread to other countries in the region. The problem was that supporting an unpopular dictator in Diem only increased support for the Viet Minh, who were the only real alternative. This was especially true in rural areas. Diem also cracked down on Buddhists in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country and favored his fellow Catholics. Nonetheless, through the 1950s, the number of American military advisors in the country remained relatively small. As of 1960, there were only 900. The number of American military personnel began to increase, however, in 1961 with the inauguration of President John Kennedy. Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of South Vietnam, was assassinated on November 2, 1963, following a military coup. The coup was orchestrated by a group of South Vietnamese generals who had grown increasingly frustrated with Diem's autocratic rule, his repressive policies and and his inability to combat the communist insurgency effectively. Diem was found hiding in a Catholic church in Saigon. After he was captured. He and his brother were executed while in transit. The United states, via the CIA, approved the removal of Diem as president. Finally, in 1964, North Vietnam supposedly attacked American naval vessels in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. The resulting uproar in Congress, which I had covered in a previous episode, led to the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and its signing by President Lyndon Johnson. This was the event that ushered in the dramatic increase in American military personnel which resulted in the start of a full scale war in Vietnam. There were many steps that led to the Vietnam War in some cases decades in advance, which would have totally changed the direction that history took. If President Wilson had acknowledged the grievances of Ho chi Minh in 1919, or if President Truman had taken a different approach, or if the Indochina War had taken place before the start of the Cold War, things might have turned out very different and the Vietnam War might never have happened. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible and I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast and links to those are available in the show Notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read in the show.