This paper explains that the conquest and
colonialization by France of Vietnam began by using the Catholic Church and their
missionaries as an advance party to eliminate the threat to France's other vast southeast Asia holdings and ended with France's embarrassing military defeat in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. The author points out that the nationalist movement arose in Vietnam in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and gained momentum during the Japanese occupation of World War II; after the end of World War II, the Vietminh party (the League for the Independence of Vietnam, a coalition of nationalists and Communist groups), headed by Ho Chi Minh, established a republic with its capital at Hanoi. The paper relates that President Truman, not President Kennedy, were the first leader to entangle the U.S. in the Vietnamese malaise because Truman actually sent military forces to set up missions in Indochina to protect the United Nations troops in Korea from being attacked by Communists from both China and North Vietnam. Table of Contents Introduction and Thesis The True Beginning and the Reasons Therefore The Geography and History of Early Vietnam Religion and French Imperialism in Vietnam World War II and Post War Vietnam up to 1954 The French Indochina War The Geneva Accords and U. S. Involvement