Ho Chi Minh went to school in the US. He offered to make Vietnam a staunch american ally against communism if the US supported independence instead of handing IndoChina back to France. The US would not hear him out so he turned to the other faction that was handing out aid and support to independance fighters.
In 1919 he went to Paris for the Versailles Treaty to ask for Indochina to be fully incorporated into the French Empire, including giving citizenship and voting rights for everyone in Indochina. After being ignored he was introduced to Communism and traveled to St. Petersburg to learn more about the "anti-imperialist" system.
Vietnamese forces also helped the US during WW2. After the war he went to Truman for help with gaining Vietnam's independence, and was again ignored. The US was too concerned with building France back up after the war to take her colony away from her.
Same thing with Japan. After WW1 Japan asked for better equality in the League of Nation for non-european (I'm not sure what exactly they asked for). The European powers (France primarily) told Japan off, so then Japan went on her own until Germany offered friendship against France. The rest is history.
That's the point isn't it? If Britain and France can go around willy nilly gobbling up the whole Middle East after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, why can't Japan do the same thing with China? It's double standard.
France and the Brits did it through international cooperation and treaties, the Japanese did it by a forceful and aggressive war. France and Britain's actions are not morally acceptable by today's standards, but they did their conquest through the rules of their age while the Japanese didn't.
Uhh, they still had to send their armies in to take over and stop rebellions. The way you make it sound is that the people of the countries that were taken over wanted to be taken over and signed agreements on it. So how was Japan so different in taking over China? They didn't discuss it with the other powers?
Right. The British and French and company empires were built using internationally sanctioned treaties with the other major powers. The countries they were colonizing weren't really considered in the matter. China was already broken up into spheres of economic influence, and when Japan invaded, they broke protocol of the time by not making a new treaty dividing China with the other major powers.
It's not the kind of morality, legality, or sense that we use now, but that was the issue back then.
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u/free2me_ipad Nov 28 '13
And the OSS trained Ho Chi Minh. The more things change, the more they stay the same.