Unheralded Victory The Defeat Of The Viet Cong And The North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973

Two Different Countries, Many Different Wars Most Americans seem accustomed to using the term "the Vietnam War" to describe the period of American involvement there. In so doing, Americans ignore the centuries of conflict before America became involved and the decades of continuing conflict after America withdrew in 1973. In fact, the recorded history of what is now known as "Vietnam" began in 207 B.C. when a Chinese warlord named Trieu Da established the kingdom of Nam Viet, extending from the area now known as Da Nang northward to southern China. In 111 B.C., the Chinese under Han emperor, Wu Ti, laid claim and ruled for the next thousand years. The separate kingdom of Champa lay to the south running from Nam Viet to the Mekong Delta.1 While the Chinese dominated the northern kingdom of Nam Viet, the southern kingdom of Champa was Hindu and influenced by India. Further to the west, and also on the extreme southern tip, lay another Hindu kingdom, Funan, conquered by the Mon-Khymer people of the Cambodian empire in the 6th century. The southern kingdom of Champa was often at war with the northern kingdom of Nam Viet, but maintained a separate identity until being conquered by Nam Viet in 1471. Saigon and the Mekong Delta were taken from Cambodia during the period 17001760. Although nominally ruled by the Le dynasty, this area, which occupies the rough geographical boundaries known today as "Vietnam," continued to be divided, ruled by the Trinh family in the north and the Nguyen family in the south. Throughout the 17th century, the animosity between the people of the north and the people of the south was so great that a long and bloody war ensued between them. Between 1627 and 1673, the aggressive Trinh emperors of the north tried seven different times to invade the south, but each time they were stopped by the Nguyens' defenses. The southerners had constructed two 20-foot-high walls, one of them six miles long and the other twenty miles long at the point where the coastal plain was at its narrowest: the 17th parallel. In the late 1700s, the northerners briefly prevailed but a survivor of the southern family, Nguyen Anh, occupied Saigon and the Mekong Delta. After a 14-year struggle, the southerners seized Hue and Hanoi with French military aid. In 1802, Nguyen Anh assumed the throne as Emperor Gia Long of a united Vietnam. Gia Long's successors, however, distrusted the French and, more specifically, their Christianity and, by 1820, they were expelling French missionaries and imprisoning or executing Vietnamese converts to Christianity. The French responded militarily and, with Napoleon III on the French throne, set about establishing French colonial rule. This French intervention superseded domestic, north-versus-south politics for over 100 years, commencing in 1847. Although occupied by the Japanese in World War II, the French quickly reestablished control at the end of the war. The Communist Viet Minh forces, which had fought against the Japanese, now turned their attention to the French. Weapons captured by the Communist Chinese in Korea began to flow to the Viet Minh in the early 1950s. The French and their Vietnamese allies fought a seesaw battle with the Viet Minh forces. In France itself, the French Communist Party was a major political force committed to the support of the Viet Minh. America, concerned about the Soviet threat to Europe and keen to have a strong, non-Communist France, increasingly financed the French effort but stayed out of direct involvement. The French eventually tired of the struggle, disheartened by their defeat in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, which took place deep in the north of the country. A cease-fire was signed in Geneva in 1954, establishing the 17th parallel, that sameWoodruff, Mark W. is the author of 'Unheralded Victory The Defeat Of The Viet Cong And The North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973', published 2005 under ISBN 9780891418665 and ISBN 0891418660.