The Road to War

How did France become embroiled in Vietnam, in the first of the long wars of decolonisation? And why did the French colonial administration, in late 1946, having negotiated with Ho Chi Minh for a year, adopt a warlike stance towards Ho's regime that ran counter to the liberal colonial doctrine of liberated France? Based on French archival sources, almost all of them previously unavailable to the English-speaking reader, the author assesses the policy that emerged from the 1944 Brazzaville Conference, and the doomed attempt to apply that policy in Indochina.

Acknowledgements

ix

Note on Text

xi

Abbreviations

Map of Indochina, 1945

xiii

Introduction

1

(10)

Part I The External and Domestic Parameters of Colonial Policy Making

The Brazzaville Conference and Its Origins, 1940--1944: Policy Formulation and Myth Making on the Congo

11

(30)

The Republic Strikes Back, 1944--1945: Brazzaville Policy and the Metropolitan Critique

41

(23)

'We Are in the Midst of Colonial Crisis': The Response to International and Colonial Change

64

(20)

The Domestic Parameters of Colonial Policy Making After the Liberation, 1944--1946

84

(31)

Part II Policy Making in Indochina and Its Breakdown, 1945--1947

Calculating the Stakes: Brazzaville Policy and the 'Return' to Indochina, December 1943--September 1945

115

(35)

The Primacy of Action: From the 'Return' to Saigon, October 1945, to the Signing of the Accords of 6 March 1946

150

(27)

Who Rules: Paris or Saigon? The Dalat Conference and the Cochinchina Policy, March--June 1946

177

(23)

'A Round of the Battle We Are Fighting': The Fontainebleau Conference, June--September 1946

200

(22)

The Narrowing of French Policy Options, Autumn 1946: The Accords Policy Abandoned?

222

(26)

'The Tonkin Vespers', December 1946: Burying the Accords Policy

248

(25)

Conclusion

273

(7)

Appendix I: The Administrative Structure of the French Empire, 1945

280

(2)

Appendix II: Chronology of Events in France and Indochina, 1944--1947

282

(5)

Bibliography

287

(9)

Index

296

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