Independence Day, Vietnam

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Independence Day is celebrated in Vietnam on 2nd September each year. It commemorates Ho Chih Minh's proclamation of a provisional Government on 2nd September, 1945.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is the Easternmost nation on the Indochina Peninsula. It borders the People's Republic of China, Laos and Cambodia. The South China Sea lies on the country's vast East coast. With a population of approximately 85 million, Vietnam is one of the most densely populated nations in South-east Asia.

Vietnam's 900 year post-Chinese independence ended in the mid-19th century, when the country was colonised by the French. The French administration enacted significant political and cultural changes to Vietnamese society. A Western-style system of modern education was developed by the French, and Christianity, mainly in the form of Roman Catholicism, was introduced to Vietnam.

Despite developing a successful plantation economy to promote the exports of tobacco, indigo, tea and coffee, the French largely ignored increasing calls for self-government and civil rights. A nationalist political movement soon emerged, with leaders such as Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chu Trinh, Emperor Ham Nghi and Ho Chi Minh calling for independence.

The French policy of maintaining dominant control of their colonies lasted in Indochina until World War II, when the Japanese war in the Pacific triggered the invasion of Indochina. The natural resources of Vietnam were exported for the purposes of Japan's military campaigns into Burma, the Malay Peninsula, India and across the islands of the South-East Asian archipelago.

In the final years of World War II, a forceful nationalist movement emerged under Ho Chi Minh, committed to independence and communism. Following the defeat of Japan, nationalist forces fought French colonial forces in the First Indochina War, which lasted from 1945 to 1954.

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN), or less commonly, Vietnamese Democratic Republic, also known as North Vietnam, was proclaimed as a provisional government by Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi on September 2, 1945. It was recognised by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union in 1950.

The French suffered a major military and political defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, and shortly afterwards withdrew from the country. In 1954, after the defeat by the Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and as a result of the Geneva Conference, France began negotiating with the Viet Minh and Vietnam was partitioned by the Demilitarized Zone (or DMZ at the 17th parallel). France turned over power of the Northern half of Vietnam to the Viet Minh, who then established the DRVN as a true government.

Following the partition of the country, there followed a mass exodus from the North to the South, many of them Catholics who claimed they were persecuted by official North Vietnamese policy. This amounted to one million people out of a population of 13 million.

Under the Geneva Accord national elections were supposed to be held in both parts of Vietnam in 1956, with the view of unifying the nation. For the transition North Vietnam was established as a socialist state, the first in Southeast Asia. South Vietnam was established in the Southern part of the country with its capital at Saigon.

Much has been written and said about what happened in subsequent years in Indochina as a whole – Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos – and, in particular about the American involvement in the region, especially Vietnam.

There was a determined effort by the North to take control of the South, and the knowledge gained in the struggles against the French was used to great effect during the Second Indochinese War. North Vietnam largely controlled the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (the NLF, also known as the Viet Cong), who were fighting against the government of South Vietnam and the United States. From 1965 onwards, both China and the Soviet Union provided huge amounts of aid to North Vietnam for their war effort, in what became known in the West as the Vietnam War.

On the wider front, North Vietnam invaded and occupied portions of neighbouring Laos and Cambodia, and also supplied weapons to insurgent groups which eventually overthrew the governments of both countries.

Despite huge inputs into South Vietnam by the US, the Viet Minh and Viet Cong overran the South, and with the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces on 30th April 1975, political authority within South Vietnam was nominally assumed by the North Vietnamese controlled Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam. In reality, political authority rested with the North Vietnamese Army.

The Provisional Government merged with North Vietnam on 2nd July 1976, to form a single nation officially called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam - more commonly known simply as Vietnam.

The very different celebrations which were held post 1954, North and South of the 17th parallel on 2nd September each year are now universal across the reunited country. If one fact alone has been able to unite the Vietnamese it is the equal feeling (North and South) of joy at the events of this date in 1945.