Vietnam Emperors, in particular, the Nguyen Dynasty 

In 1558, Le Anh Tong, emperor of the ruling Le dynasty entrusted Nguyen Hoang with the lordship of the southern part of central Vietnam. In 1698, Nguyen Huu Canh, a Vietnamese noble, is often credited with the expansion of Saigon into a significant settlement. Initially called Gia Dinh, the Vietnamese city became Saigon in the 18th century.

In 1777, a rival dynasty, the Tay Son brothers attacked Saigon and eliminated almost the entire Nguyen dynasty, with the fifteen-year-old Nguyen Anh managing to escape into the far south. He took refuge at Pigneau de Behaine's seminary (a French missionary) from September to October before both were forced to flee to the island of Pulo Panjang in the Gulf of Siam. The move was a political step taken by Pigneau to align himself with Nguyen Anh, allowing himself a foray into politics. He became less of a missionary and more of a politician thereafter.

In November 1777, Nguyen Anh was able to recapture Saigon, and in 1778 pursued the retreating Tay Son as far as Binh Thuan.

Although a treaty with France (The Treaty of Versailles) was not implemented due to the French Revolution in 1789, de Behaine recruited French businessman who intended to trade in Vietnam and raised funds to assist Nguyen Anh. In 1788 he spent fifteen thousand francs of his own money to purchase guns and warships. The French purchased and supplied equipment and weaponry, reinforcing the defence of Vietnam and training Anh's artillery and infantry according to the European model.

Anh now united Vietnam after a three-hundred-year division of the country. He celebrated his coronation at Hue on 1 June 1802 and proclaimed himself emperor.

However later emperors were opposed to French involvement in Vietnam, and tried to reduce the country's growing Catholic community. The imprisonment of missionaries who had illegally entered the country was the primary pretext for the French to invade (and occupy) Indochina. 

In 1858 French Emperor Napoleon III took those steps to establish a French colonial influence in Indochina. He approved the launching of a punitive expedition over Vietnam's mistreatment of European Catholic missionaries, and to force the court to accept a French presence in the country. However, the expedition evolved into a full invasion. Factors in Napoleon's decision were that France risked becoming a second-rate power if it did not expand its influence in East Asia, and the expanding idea that France had a civilizing mission.

By 18 February 1859 France had conquered Saigon and three southern Vietnamese provinces. By 1862, the war was over and in the Treaty of Saigon Vietnam was forced to concede those three provinces in the south, which became the colony of French Cochinchina. The subsequent 1863 Treaty of Hue also saw the Vietnamese Empire open three ports to French trade, allowed free passage of French warships to Cambodia (Kampuchea), freedom for French missionaries, and to give France a large indemnity for the cost of the war.

In 1885 the French introduced a new silver Piastre to Vietnam, initially equivalent to the Mexican Peso.

In 1887, a grouping of the three Vietnamese regions of Tonkin (north), Annam (centre), and Cochinchina (south) with Cambodia formed the Union of French Indochina. Laos was added in 1893 and the leased Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan in 1898. The capital was moved from Saigon (in Cochinchina) to Hanoi (Tonkin) in 1902 and again to Da Lat (Annam) in 1939 at the start of World War 2 and Vietnam's occupation by the Japanese. In 1945 it was moved back to Hanoi.

Fighting between French forces and their Viet Minh opponents in the south dated from September 1945.

The concern of the Allies' Far Eastern Commission had primarily been to wind down the Supreme Headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army Southeast Asia, and render humanitarian assistance to prisoners of war. Major-General Douglas Gracey - a British Indian army officer - was appointed to head the Commission, and the 80th Brigade commanded by Brigadier D.E. Taunton of his 20th Indian Division, was the Allied Land Forces French Indochina (ALFFIC) which followed him to Vietnam.

In late August 1945, British occupying forces had been ready to depart for various Southeast Asian destinations, and some were already on their way, when General Douglas MacArthur caused an uproar at the Southeast Asia Command by forbidding reoccupation until he had personally received the Japanese surrender in Tokyo, which was actually set for 28 August, but a typhoon caused the ceremony to be postponed until 2 September.

MacArthur's order had enormous consequences because the delay in the arrival of Allied troops enabled revolutionary groups to fill the power vacuums that had existed in Southeast Asia since the announcement of the Japanese capitulation on 15 August. The chief beneficiaries in Indochina were the Communists, who exercised complete control over the Viet Minh, the nationalist alliance founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1941. In Hanoi and Saigon, they rushed to seize the seats of government, by killing or intimidating their rivals.

Note too that while the Allies stated that the French had sovereignty over Indochina, America opposed their return, but there was no such official American animosity towards the Communist-led Viet Minh at the time.

Upon Gracey's arrival on September 13 to receive the surrender of Japanese forces, he immediately realized the seriousness of the situation in the country. Saigon's administrative services had collapsed, and a loosely controlled Viet Minh-led group had seized power. Since the Japanese were still fully armed, the Allies feared that they would be well able to undermine the Allied position, due to the Viet Minh's lack of strong control over some of the allied groups. Furthermore, Gracey had poor communications with his higher headquarters in Burma because his American signal detachment was abruptly withdrawn by the US government for political reasons, and it was a loss that could not be rectified for several weeks.

Gracey wrote that unless something were done quickly, the state of anarchy would worsen.

Because of all this, the French were able to persuade Gracey - in a move which exceeded the authority of his orders from Mountbatten - to rearm local colonial infantry regiments who had been held as prisoners of war, about 1,000 French prisoners of war. Then, with the arrival of the newly formed 5th Colonial Infantry Regiment (RIC) commandos, they could evict the Viet Minh from what hold they had on the Saigon administration. Gracey saw this as the quickest way to allow the French to reassert their authority in Indochina while allowing him to proceed in disarming and repatriating the Japanese.

Gracey faced another problem in his relations with Mountbatten which had occurred on Gracey's arrival in September. He drew up a proclamation that declared martial law and stated that he was responsible for law and order throughout Indochina south of the 16th parallel. Mountbatten, in turn, made an issue of this, claiming that Gracey was responsible for public security in key areas only. The proclamation was published on September 21 and, although Mountbatten disagreed with its wording, the Chiefs of Staff and the Foreign Office supported Gracey.

During the following days, Gracey gradually eased the Viet Minh grip on Saigon, replacing their guards in vital points with his own troops which were then turned over to French troops. This procedure was adopted because the Viet Minh would not have relinquished their positions directly to the French.

By September 23, most of Saigon was back in French hands, with less than half a dozen vital positions in Viet Minh control. The French subsequently regained total control of Saigon. On that day, former French prisoners of war who had been reinstated into the army together with troops from the 5th RIC ejected the Viet Minh in a coup in which two French soldiers were killed.

On the night of the 24th a Vietnamese mob (though not under Viet Minh control) abducted and butchered a large number of French and French-Vietnamese men, women, and children. On the 25th, the Viet Minh attacked and set fire to the city's central market area, while another group attacked Tan Son Nhut Airfield. The airfield attack was repelled by the Gurkhas, where one British soldier was killed along with half a dozen Viet Minh. The British now had a war on their hands, something which Mountbatten had sought to avoid.

For the next few days, parties of armed Viet Minh clashed with British patrols, the Viet Minh suffering mounting losses with each encounter. The British soldiers were experienced troops who had just recently finished battling the Japanese, and many officers and soldiers had also experienced internal security and guerrilla warfare in India and the North West Frontier. In contrast the Viet Minh were still learning how to fight a war.

On 3 January 1946 the last big battle occurred between the British and the Viet Minh. About 900 Viet Minh attacked the Frontier Force Rifles camp at Bien Hoa. The fighting lasted throughout the night, and when it was over about 100 attackers had been killed without the loss of a single British or Indian soldier. Most Viet Minh casualties were the result of British machine-gun crossfire.

End of the Campaign

In mid-January, the Viet Minh began to avoid large-scale attacks on the British, French, and Japanese forces. They began to take on fighting characteristics which later became common: ambushes, hit-and-run raids, and assassinations, while the British, French, and Japanese constantly patrolled and conducted security sweeps. This was the first modern unconventional war, and although the Viet Minh had sufficient manpower to sustain a long campaign, they were beaten back by well-led professional troops who were familiar with an Asian jungle and countryside.

By the end of the month, the 80th Brigade handed over its theatre of operations to the French, and the 100th Brigade was withdrawn into Saigon. Gracey flew out on the 28th January. Before his departure, he signed control over French forces to Leclerc. The last British forces left on March 26, so ending the seven-month intervention in Vietnam; and on March 30, the SS Islami passenger liner took aboard the last two British/Indian battalions in Vietnam. Only a single company of the Punjab remained to guard the Allied Control Mission in Saigon, and on May 15 it left, the mission having been disbanded a day earlier as the French became responsible for getting the remaining Japanese home. The last British troops to die in Vietnam were six soldiers killed in an ambush in June 1946.

Aftermath

Casualties
For Britain's involvement in the First Vietnam War, the officially stated casualty list was 40 British and Indian soldiers killed and French and Japanese casualties a little higher. An estimated 2,700 Viet Minh were killed. The unofficial total may be higher, but given the methods with which the Viet Minh recovered their dead and wounded, the exact number may never be known. About 600 of the dead Viet Minh were killed by British soldiers, the rest by the French and Japanese.

Significance
Main articles: First Indochina War and Second Indochina War
Three more bloody decades of fighting lay ahead which would end in defeat for two major world players, France and US. From March to July, 1946, the Viet Minh systematically set about, as Ho's lieutenant Le Duan said, "(to) wipe out the reactionaries." Known as the "Great Purge", the goal was to eliminate everyone thought dangerous to the Communist Party of Vietnam, and tens of thousands of nationalists, Catholics and others were massacred from 1946 to 1948.

Between May and December, Ho Chi Minh spent four months in France attempting to negotiate full independence and unity for Vietnam, but failed to obtain any guarantee from the French. After a series of violent clashes with Viet Minh, French forces bombarded Haiphong harbor, captured Haiphong and attempted to expel the Viet Minh from Hanoi, a task that took two months.

December 19, 1946 is often cited as the date for the beginning of the First Indochina War, as on that day 30,000 Viet Minh under Giap initiated their first large-scale attack on the French in the Battle of Hanoi.
The War in Vietnam of 1946 - 54, had begun.

The Indochina Wars are generally numbered as three: the first being France's unsuccessful eight-year conflict with the Vietminh nationalist forces (December 19, 1946 - July 20, 1954). 

The second being the war for control of South Vietnam, featuring an unsuccessful US intervention, ending in 1975.

Finally, the conflict in Cambodia, sparked by the Vietnamese invasion in 1978.

** End of notes