French Failure at Dien Bien Phu

This research will examine the French failure at Dien Bien Phu. The research will set forth the historical context and background for exploring France's role in the modern history of Vietnam, which is, in the modern historical imagination, associated with Dien Bien Phu, and then discuss the causes of the encounter between French and nationalist Vietnamese military forces at the site, as well as issues surrounding the question of whether either the encounter in general or the French failure in particular could have been prevented.

The story of Western failure of culture, ideology, and military strategy in Vietnam in the 20th century is most immediately associated with the American debacle in that country in the circumstances of U.S. withdrawal and the aftermath in the mid-1970s. But a Western prelude to the American failure occurred, some 20 years earlier, when in 1954 the French colonial forces and government apparatus were decisively forced out of what had for decades been known as French Indochina, in the aftermath of a battle between the French and the communist-dominated nationalist forces known as the Vietminh, at a northern township called Dien Bien Phu.

The prelude to Dien Bien Phu began, from one point of view, in the aftermath of World War II, when the defeated Japanese forces that had occupied Vietnam during the war were obliged to withdraw from the territory. Meanwhile, the Potsdam Declaration, comprising Allied views of the postwar world, more or less guaranteed

Related Essays

The French in Vietnam .... the French legacy to America and what America did with it are important features of the "back story" of what caused the French failure at Dien Bien Phu and the .... (2185 9 )

US Vietnam Policy in Eisonhower Administration .... The Dien Bien Phu crisis did not subside immediately. .... factors entered into the ultimate failure of American .... Geneva, the legacy of French colonialism, American .... (9764 39 )

The Vietnam War .... the war reached a crisis stage when the French were soundly defeated at Dien Bien ..... .... the communists; this decision would lead to his failure to seek .... (1808 7 )

The Vietnam War .... the war reached a crisis stage when the French were soundly defeated at Dien Bien ..... .... the communists; this decision would lead to his failure to seek .... (1809 7 )

Mechanization of War in 3 20th Century Campaigns .... in the previous war against the French was directed .... To achieve decisive results, "another Dien Bien Phu," the VC .... Tet was not American military failure, but that .... (5509 22 )

was going to prevent Asia from going communist (Schutz and Kirkendall 497). By the time of the Kennedy administration, too, however, the Viet Cong, indigenous Vietnamese ideologically aligned with the Vietminh in the south, had engaged in the project of guerrilla insurgency against Diem and his corrupt government apparatus. Thomson, Stanley, and Perry (112-113) take the view that America's policy to extend itself outward in this way sowed the seeds of its own eventual decline in prestige in Asia, symbolized chiefly (though not solely) by its own failure in Vietnam. An overview of Vietnamese history in the 20th century, the French legacy to America and what America did with it are important features of the "back story" of what caused the French failure at Dien Bien Phu and the question of whether that failure could have been prevented. That is because elements that fostered defeat of France and those that fostered the shaping of Vietnam's identity, though distinct, overlap and converge in a variety of ways. The first overlap can be discerned in the nascent anti-imperialism that emerged globally in the 20th century, particularly after World War I, and the residue of commitment on the part of imperialist and colonialist powers to ha

Category: History - F