Category Archives: war

by | 15 July 2025 · 1:05 pm

Poland-Lithuania Shrinks

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 302-304:

The population of the Grand Duchy [of Lithuania] had demonstrated its commitment to the Commonwealth, of which they considered themselves citizens. Perhaps a creative extension of citizenship was the answer to the Cossack debacle? Not relying on divine intercession, the nobles of the Commonwealth strove to put an end to the civil war with the Cossacks via diplomatic means. They entered into negotiations with the new leader of the Cossacks, Ivan Vyhovsky. Already earlier it had become clear that his predecessor Khmelnytsky was not entirely satisfied with the outcome of Pereiaslav. Centralizing and humiliating Russian rule proved very different from the genuine autonomy the Cossacks had expected. After all, not all Cossacks were uneducated; whether they had studied at the Mohyla Academy, elsewhere in the Commonwealth, or even in the West, they had been exposed to ideas at great odds with the autocracy they now encountered. Even the Orthodox clergy of the Cossack lands, especially Kyiv, were unhappy at being subordinated to Moscow. Among other things, this dissonance and the resulting dissatisfaction led Khmelnytsky to join the other potential partitioners of Poland—Sweden, Transylvania, and Brandenburg—at the end of 1656.

After Khmelnytsky’s death in 1657, Vyhovsky reached agreement with the Commonwealth. The two parties convened in a town of the Kyiv palatinate near the border with Russia. Although lying to the east of Pereiaslav, Hadiach (Polish: Hadziacz) notably marked a move westward. The Treaty of Hadiach established the terms of the Cossacks’ return to the Commonwealth—terms that were far better than the Cossacks had ever been offered before.

Signed in 1658, this treaty has been compared to the Union of Lublin, and for good reason. The Commonwealth of Two (Both) Nations would be transformed into a Commonwealth of Three Nations—the third being a newly established Duchy of Ruthenia. Consisting of the former palatinates of Kyiv, Bratslav, and Chernihiv, the Duchy of Ruthenia would be an autonomous entity, on par with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Under the leadership of the common king, the Duchy would share a common foreign policy and send its own citizens to the Seym. A certain number of Cossacks would be accepted into the Commonwealth nobility.

The new Duchy would also retain its distinctiveness: executive power would be wielded by the hetman of the Ruthenian army, some thirty thousand strong. The Uniate Church would be disallowed on the Duchy’s territory, where the Orthodox Church would be the favored religion, its higher clergy members of the Senate. The Mohyla Academy would be treated on par with other institutions of higher learning in the Commonwealth.

In short, the Cossacks appear to have successfully won the rights and privileges they had long sought. No longer to be looked down upon, they were to be treated as an equal partner. The Cossacks would be the third “nation” of the Commonwealth—a Ruthenian/Cossack/Orthodox one.

The Seym ratified the Treaty of Hadiach the following year, marking a sea change in the mentality of the Commonwealth’s citizenry, the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. For many Cossacks back in the hetmanate, however, it was too little, too late—at least a decade too late. To be sure, power politics within the hetmanate likely helped to determine the rejection of the proposal. Vyhovsky had been acting in the name of the underage son of Khmelnytsky, Yuri, who now displaced Vyhovsky at the top of the hetmanate. Yet, might the deal still go through—be pushed through? For a moment it looked as though the Poles, who now amassed the largest army in their history—a force of some seventy to eighty thousand, and one that had a string of victories over the Russian and Cossack armies in 1660—would be able to expel the Russians from the Grand Duchy and implement the new arrangement with the Cossacks.

Ultimately, this was not to be. As a result of internal political problems, the Commonwealth was not able to profit from this impressive surge. The terms reached between Russia and the Commonwealth in the armistice of 1667 at Andrusovo were by Commonwealth accounts devastating. The armistice confirmed the Commonwealth’s loss of both the Smolensk region in the north and the Cossack lands to the south, albeit in a novel configuration. The Cossack Hetmanate itself was partitioned between the two states—the dividing line being the Dnieper River. Territories on the right bank of the Dnieper (that is, in the west) were awarded to the Poles, while the left (east) bank came under Russian rule. The Russians also reserved to themselves control over Kyiv, on the right bank of the Dnieper, ostensibly for a two-year period …. The city would never again be part of the Commonwealth. As the famous mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz observed at the time (albeit from his comfortable vantage point in the west), the “barbaric East” was on the rise.

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Filed under Baltics, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, religion, Russia, Ukraine, war

by | 25 June 2025 · 3:53 pm

Why Satsuma Invaded Ryukyus in 1609

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 358-360:

The war of 1609 had several causes, but the overwhelmingly important one was Ryukyu’s refusal to serve as an intermediary between the Tokugawa bakufu and the Ming court. At this point, we have sufficient information to understand the basic reason for what might otherwise seem like an irrational policy. Shō Nei’s bending to pressure from Shimazu and Hideyoshi probably prompted an armed revolt in 1592. The Chinese decisions to hold the investiture ceremonies in Fujian and, later, to send a military official might well have been justifiable as wartime expedients. However, from the standpoint of the Ryukyuan court—Shō Nei, his supporters, and his enemies—such measures appeared to be a reprimand for Shō Nei’s having supported Hideyoshi’s invasion. The year 1593 was a turning point. After that, Shō Nei became determined never again to appear as an agent of any Japanese polity.

The massive Ming resistance to Hideyoshi’s invasions of Korea also played a psychological role. From a Ryukyuan perspective, it appeared that the Ming court would go to war for its tributary states. As we will see, leading Ryukyuan officials apparently became convinced that China would back Ryukyu in a military conflict, that Ryukyu was too geographically dispersed and remote for Shimazu successfully to launch an invasion, and that Ryukyu’s deity, Benzaiten, would protect the kingdom.

THE REGIONAL GEOPOLITICAL SITUATION AFTER 1598

Control of piracy was an issue of much concern during the late sixteenth century. Hideyoshi, Shimazu, and the council that succeeded Hideyoshi in 1598 issued prohibitions against piracy and demanded active cooperation by Ryukyu in this endeavor. Moreover, very soon after Hideyoshi’s death, Shimazu and other powerful lords in Japan sought to establish trade relations with Ming China. Shimazu may have come close to succeeding. The domain enlisted the Bōnotsu merchant Torihara Sōan to head an expedition to repatriate captured Ming general Máo Guókē. According to Satsuma’s account, Torihara traveled all the way to Beijing in 1600, and the Chinese court promised to send two ships to Satsuma each year. In 1601, the ships sailed, but pirates attacked and destroyed them in the vicinity of Iōjima in the Satsunan islands. Key details concerning these events are not clear.

For our purposes, the main point is that after Hideyoshi’s death leaders of Japan vigorously pursued paths to reestablish good relations with China, and the Shimazu lords understood the importance of this opportunity. Ryukyu’s location made it an integral part of the process. From the standpoint of Shimazu or Tokugawa Ieyasu, the ideal option was that Ryukyu actively cooperate in suppressing piracy and restoring Sino-Japanese trade. The less desirable option was to use coercive force in an attempt to compel such cooperation. Ryukyu’s continued resistance to Satsuma and bakufu entreaties to assist in restoring relations with Ming China eventually tipped the scales in favor of military action.

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Filed under China, economics, Japan, Korea, military, nationalism, piracy, war

by | 20 June 2025 · 5:03 am

Gusuku Etymologies

Histories of the Ryukyu Archipelago refer a lot to important sites called gusuku, a term whose etymology is the subject of much disagreement. Here is a an admirably open-minded summary from Wikipedia:

There is no consensus about the etymology of gusuku. [Basil Hall] Chamberlain analyzed the word as the combination of gu (< honorific go 御) and shuku (宿). Kanazawa Shōzaburō also segmented gusuku into gu and suku but considered that the latter half was cognate with Old Japanese shiki, in which ki was a loan from Old Korean. Iha Fuyū proposed that suku was cognate with soko (塞, fortress). Hirata Tsugumasa considered that suku was cognate with Japanese soko (底, bottom). Similarly, Higashionna Kanjun raised doubts over the analysis of gu since older records always used honorific u (< o) instead of gu (< go). Nakahara Zenchū identified gu as go (stone).

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Filed under Japan, Korea, language, migration, military, nationalism, war

by | 17 June 2025 · 8:27 am

Ryukyu’s Golden Age

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 221-222:

Survey histories tend to treat Shō Shin’s long reign as an idyllic age. Ryukyu prospered as an international trade hub, peacefully engaging in commerce throughout a large part of the world. Trade wealth contributed to cultural vitality. Shō Shin ushered in Ryukyu’s golden age, the “Great Days of Chuzan,” in the oft-repeated words of George H. Kerr. The empire Shō Shin created was indeed larger, wealthier, and more powerful than any previous iteration of Ryukyu. The institutional framework that Shō Shin initiated and Shō Sei completed lasted until 1879 and even later. Shō Shin was Ryukyu’s most important king by almost any definition. Why, then, is the man who brought about the Great Days of Chūzan missing in Reflections on Chūzan?

Reflections is organized in de facto chapters, most corresponding to a royal reign. There are chapters for many of the actual and legendary kings before Shō Hashi, for the first Shō dynasty kings (except Shishō), one for Shō En, and even one for the brief reign of Shō Sen’i. The chapter after his jumps to Shō Sei, skipping Shō Shin. The 1701 Genealogy of Chūzan includes a brief chapter on Shō Shin, even though ostensibly the 1701 Genealogy was simply a Chinese translation of Reflections. Likewise, the 1725 Genealogy includes a chapter on Shō Shin, and there are extensive Kyūyō entries covering the events of his reign. Is it possible that his chapter was irretrievably lost in our extant editions of Reflections? Yes, but it is unlikely that a chapter of such importance would disappear without any comment or attempt to reconstitute it later from Genealogy.

Throughout his reign Shō Shin worked to consolidate power. Military conquest was essential, of course, but so too was what we might call “soft power.” The king and his officials erected temples, shrines, monuments, stands of trees, and other structures not only to proclaim the glory of royal rule but also to create a new political geography, with Shuri as the undisputed and comprehensive center of a Ryukyuan empire. Shō Shin also worked to erase, minimize, or transform the legacies of potentially problematic predecessors, of which there were several. His reign was prosperous, and it was a time of momentous change. One price for this prosperity and change was bloodshed on a scale greater than that under any predecessor. Moreover, internal family problems and questions of legitimacy dogged Shō Shin, and to some extent the entire line down to Shō Nei. These points probably explain why Shō Shin is missing, for the most part, from Reflections: his reign included too many skeletons in too many closets.

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Filed under economics, Japan, military, nationalism, piracy, publishing, war

by | 12 June 2025 · 5:13 am

Heyday of Piracy in Japan & Korea

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 84-88:

A crucial context for the development of Ryukyu was the warfare between Japan’s Northern and Southern Courts, especially in Kyushu. Wakō attacks on the Korean coast intensified in 1350 and continued for decades. Attacks occurred on a large scale, sometimes involving hundreds of ships and thousands of combatants. The most intense period of wakō marauding was from 1375 to 1388. Some scholars point to lack of agricultural productivity in the classic wakō havens as a major reason for these depredations. Paddy land, for example, comprised only 3 percent of Tsushima. Similarly, poverty was also a severe problem in Kyushu at this time. Given the massive scale of wakō attacks, however, another impetus was the need for grain to supply Southern Court armies. Prince Kaneyoshi, the court’s leader in Kyushu, actively collaborated with wakō toward this end. In other words, wakō based near the coast of Higo [Kumamoto area] and at Tsushima, Iki, and Matsuura supported Prince Kaneyoshi and his Southern Court by providing needed supplies, plundered from Korea. In return, Kaneyoshi provided protection for the wakō. In contrast, Kyūshū tandai Imagawa Ryōshun, head of the Northern Court in Kyushu, sought to suppress wakō piracy.

Envoys from Korea traveled to Japan in an effort to stem the tide of piracy, the first of whom arrived at Kyoto in 1366. The Muromachi bakufu sought good relations with Korea, but its control over Kyushu was limited at the time. The piracy problem prompted the bakufu to pursue military pacification of Kyushu. It eventually succeeded, but the Southern Court wakō became even more active during the 1370s, prompting the following 1375 message from the bakufu to the Korean court via the Tenryūji priest Tokusō Shūsa: “Kyushu is broken apart by rebelling subjects and does not pay tribute; the stubborn subjects of the Western seacoast have become pirates. But these are not the doing of the bakufu. We are planning to dispatch a general to Kyushu to pacify the area and can promise to suppress the pirates.” Success in carrying out this promise required more than fifteen years. Southern Court wakō also attacked China, albeit less frequently. While the Korean court had obvious reasons to be gravely concerned with putting a stop to the wakō attacks, the reasons for the similarly intense concern by the Hóngwǔ emperor require further explanation. …

It is possible that the Korean court misunderstood the contours of political power in Japan at the time, especially the Seiseifu–wakō connection. By contrast, the Ming court dealt directly with Prince Kaneyoshi, attempting to make him into king of Japan. Some scholars have taken this move as a sign that Ming officials did not understand Japan’s internal conditions. However, it is more likely that the Ming court knew exactly who controlled the wakō and thus initially focused on Kaneyoshi.

The basic timeline of the rise and fall of the Southern Court in Kyushu begins in 1348 with a castle on the Higo coast near Yatsushiro that had two names, Hanaoka castle or Sashiki castle. It was in the territory of the Nawa family, who provided naval forces for the Southern Court. Seiseifu [征西府 ‘subjugation of the west’] headquarters moved around Kyushu with the changing tides of war. Seiseifu occupied the same space as the old Dazaifu between 1360 and 1372, the peak of Southern Court power. It relocated to Kikuchi in the mountains of Higo until 1381. … The Southern Court reunited with the Northern Court in 1392 ….

The defeat of the Southern Court in Kyushu caused migrations of wakō into the Ryukyu islands. … The collapse of Seiseifu power during the 1380s and 1390s put pressure on the Southern Court wakō in Kyushu to migrate. Moreover, developments in Korea also pressured wakō bands to change their tactics. Analysis of the number and size of wakō attacks compared with what they obtained and the losses they incurred reveals that even during the period 1364–1374, they had begun to experience diminishing returns to scale. The trend continued. The number and size of attacks increased during the 1370s and 1380s, but Korean resistance and evasion resulted in fewer per capita gains. For the most part, the effectiveness of wakō marauding in Korea tracked the rise and decline of Seiseifu. One result of decreasing wakō gains in Korea was an increase in raids on the Chinese coast. An element in this complex mix was increasingly effective Korean defenses, including costal fortifications, coordinated signal beacons using fire, more and better ships, better commanders, and more soldiers along the coast. The founding of the Joseon (Yi) dynasty in 1392 accelerated this process.

By the 1390s Southern Court wakō lost their state sponsors and many of their bases. They could still operate from islands such as Tsushima, but a hostile Muromachi bakufu, improved Korean defenses, and lower demand for the possible spoils of their attacks on Korea had the effect of pushing wakō bands southward. By this time, the busiest harbor in the Ryukyu islands was Naha.

…

The port of Naha served as a major intersection within the East China Sea network through which “pirates, captives, fishermen, divers, envoys, monks, traders, and other people traveled” during the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. Merchants or wakō in Japan would have found sailing to Naha for trade more practical or more profitable than journeying directly to the coast of China or farther afield. The result was the creation of “a strange relationship of dependency” between Ryukyuan and Japanese merchants.

The first appearance of Ryukyu as a state in Korean records begins with a 1389 statement that an embassy from Ryukyu returned Koreans who had been captured by pirates. The repatriation of captured Koreans recurred frequently thereafter as a reason for Ryukyu-sponsored voyages to Korea. Although the Korean court granted favorable treatment to these embassies, it did not actively encourage trade with Ryukyu. In this context, Korean people were valuable commodities, whose repatriation permitted potentially lucrative trade embassies. Repatriation was not necessarily an act of benevolence. It constituted “one variety of the slave trade.”

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Filed under economics, Japan, Korea, migration, military, piracy, slavery, war

by | 1 June 2025 · 5:22 am

Zhou Enlai’s Plan for Indochina

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 739-741:

Vietnamese sources, meanwhile, suggest Zhou Enlai may also have had another motivation for the new line: a desire by the CCP to incorporate Laos and Cambodia into China’s sphere of influence, if only to keep them from falling into Vietnam’s. Better to give the two states neutral status than to allow Ho Chi Minh’s government to dominate all of Indochina.

On June 19, the day before the chief delegates were scheduled to leave Geneva to return home to consult with their governments, Zhou Enlai told Canadian diplomat and China expert Chester Ronning that a settlement was within reach if only France would commit herself to a political solution. China and her allies had made important concessions, Zhou said, and now the French should follow suit. The next morning he reiterated these points to Eden and also expressed his keen desire to meet the new French premier. Eden, stopping in Paris en route to London later in the day, happily passed the message on to Pierre Mendès France. He urged the Frenchman to meet with Zhou at the earliest opportunity. Mendès France, having received the same recommendation from Jean Chauvel, agreed. But where should the meeting occur? The Chinese foreign minister would not go to Paris as long as his government was not recognized by France, while Mendès France feared he would be perceived as a supplicant if he went so soon to Geneva. Dijon was suggested, but the two sides settled instead on the Swiss city of Bern, on the pretext of thanking the Swiss Confederation president for providing a locale for the negotiations. The meeting was arranged for the following Wednesday, June 23, in the French embassy.

An epic encounter it would be. Zhou Enlai, attired not in his usual blue high-collared tunic but in a gray business suit and tie, looked younger and more relaxed than he had in Geneva, and he made an immediate winning impression on Mendès France: “L’homme était impressionnant.” Zhou opened sternly—China feared neither threat nor provocation and considered both to be illegitimate means of negotiation—but then followed a conciliatory line. He had lived in France and felt an attachment to the French people, he said, and moreover his view aligned with the French view, meaning military questions should take precedence over the resolution of political issues in Indochina. Achieving a cease-fire was the first priority. Much to the Frenchman’s satisfaction and relief, Zhou then made clear that he accepted not only the view that Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam should be evaluated separately but also, indirectly, the view that there existed “two governments in Vietnam.” Following an armistice, he went on, there should be elections for reunification of that country under a single government.

Zhou declared that his government—like that of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam—intended to move swiftly toward recognition of Laos and Cambodia and to follow a policy of nonintervention toward both. He even hinted that Beijing would have no objection if one or both of the kingdoms chose to be attached to the French Union. What would not be acceptable, however, would be for the United States to misinterpret this Chinese and DRV policy as an excuse to turn the kingdoms into “bases of aggression.” In order to facilitate national reunification, both Phnom Penh and Vientiane should grant recognition to the resistance movements—Khmer Issarak and Pathet Lao—for the sake of unity. The latter, being a significant presence in Laos, should be granted a zone of administrative control, but Viet Minh forces that penetrated Laotian territory might be withdrawn after an armistice.

Mendès France liked what he heard, and he could see by the expression on Jean Chauvel’s face that the ambassador was pleased as well. The premier agreed that there should be no American bases in Cambodia or Laos, and he voiced support for elections in Vietnam. The vote could not happen immediately, though, and there was moreover the issue of what kind of temporary division to have in the meantime. Did the Chinese government support partition? Zhou Enlai initially evaded a direct answer but then said he favored a formula involving “large sectors.” Mendès France agreed that a “horizontal cut” was possible, but not as far south as suggested by the Viet Minh at Geneva. Everything else, he continued, depended on a resolution of this issue of the regroupment zones. Zhou concurred and said “this [is] also Mr. Eden’s opinion.” With hard work, he speculated, the military negotiators in Geneva ought to be able to reach agreement “within three weeks,” at which point the foreign ministers could return and be ready to sign the documents. Mendès France, finding this time limit (July 15) to be uncomfortably close to his own July 20 deadline for the settlement of all outstanding problems, replied that three weeks “should be regarded as a maximum.”

The meeting drew to a close. Both sides were pleased with the outcome and said they understood each other well, but neither doubted that tough slogging remained. Mendès France flew back to Paris, while his Chinese counterpart, having earlier held sessions with the leaders of the Cambodian and Laotian delegations (he promised them that Beijing would respect their sovereignty and independence), departed for a series of meetings in Asia, among them a two-day secret session with Ho Chi Minh.

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Filed under Cambodia, China, democracy, France, Laos, nationalism, U.S., Vietnam, war

by | 31 May 2025 · 5:52 am

U.S. & France Shift Vietnam Policy

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 727-730:

IF AMERICAN MILITARY INTERVENTION IN VIETNAM WAS AT LONG last off the table, the Eisenhower administration still could not bring itself to take the next step and support a negotiated settlement. Even as each of the other main players in Geneva gravitated toward partition as the preferred solution—Viet Minh and French negotiators made significant progress on the particulars in secret meetings on June 4, 5, and 10, even as Georges Bidault personally remained noncommittal—the administration was loath to sign on. (At least publicly; privately, Bedell Smith told Australia’s Casey on June 13 that he personally accepted the idea of partition.) In domestic political terms, it would be better for the conference to collapse than for it to agree to a compromise with Communists, especially of the Chinese variety.

Hence the equanimity with which U.S. officials greeted the splits that emerged in restricted sessions in mid-June. The disagreements concerned the authority and composition of an international supervisory commission that would monitor the peace, and the status of Cambodia and Laos. Resolution seemed impossible, and many delegates, Eden among them, concluded that a breakup of the conference was imminent. Dulles was pleased, or at least not disturbed. “It is our view,” he cabled Bedell Smith on June 14, “that final adjournment of Conference is in our best interest, provided this can be done without creating an impression in France at this critical moment that France has been deserted by US and UK and therefore has no choice but capitulation on Indochina to Communists at Geneva and possible accommodation with Soviets in Europe.”

But what if such capitulation and accommodation occurred, or what if the Communists used the failure of the conference as an excuse to try to conquer the whole of the Indochinese peninsula? Robert Bowie, the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, articulated precisely that fear at a meeting of the NSC on June 15. Here was the United States, Bowie said, withdrawing from the Geneva Conference because she found the Communist proposals unacceptable, yet she was unwilling to do anything to bolster the French position. The likely result: The Viet Minh would charge down the peninsula and get more of Indochina than they were demanding at the conference. In the wake of such a development, Nehru and other “Asiatics” would swing to the Communist side. Far better, Bowie asserted, to defend “South Vietnam,” if necessary with four U.S. divisions.

Although U.S. diplomats in Saigon had made similar noises for several weeks, this was a revolutionary idea in the halls of power in Washington.53 Bowie had not merely asserted that partition served American interests better than allowing the negotiations to fail; he had said the southern half of Vietnam was militarily defensible. The five-power staff talks had come to the same conclusion, with a consensus that a line from Thakhek (in Laos) to Dong Hoi—that is, about 17°50’ north—could be defended. For the moment, Bowie found few takers for his argument, but his advocacy gained force among high officials in the days thereafter. Already by June 17, John Foster Dulles could be heard singing a new tune at another meeting of the NSC. Seconding Eisenhower’s comment that the native populations of Southeast Asia viewed the war as a colonial enterprise, the secretary, according to the note taker, said “perhaps the time had come” to let the French get out of Indochina entirely and then try to “rebuild from the foundations.” And later in the same meeting: “For the United States or its allies to try to fight now in the Delta area was almost impossible, if for no other reason than that the French have no inclination to invite us in. They are desperately anxious to get themselves out of Indochina.… Probably best to let them quit.”

The “perhaps” and the “probably” were important. Although in hindsight Dulles’s words constituted a watershed moment—the first clear sign of a monumental policy shift, from keeping the French fighting and resisting negotiations to moving France out of Indochina altogether and “rebuild[ing] from the foundations,” without the taint of colonialism—at the time, in mid-June 1954, neither he nor President Eisenhower knew what they wanted. They still groped hesitantly for some means of reconciling the competing imperatives on Indochina: to keep the nation out of “another Korea” while avoiding any hint of “appeasement” of the Communists. Seeing danger whichever way they turned, especially in a congressional election year, the two men still saw advantages in letting the Geneva meeting collapse without an agreement. On June 12, Smith candidly told Eden that he had just received a “plain spoken” personal message from Eisenhower instructing him to do everything in his power to bring the proceedings to an end as quickly as possible. “We decided,” the president himself would recall of this period in June, “that it was best for the United States to break off major participation in the Geneva Conference. The days of keeping the Western powers bound to inaction by creating divisions of policy among them in a dragged-out conference were coming to an end.”

In Paris, however, one man had a different idea. On June 18, six days after the Laniel government failed to win a vote of confidence (306 to 296), Pierre Mendès France, who had spoken out against this war longer and more fervently than any other leading politician, became France’s new prime minister. In soliciting the National Assembly’s support, the veteran Radical deputy didn’t merely proclaim as his first objective a cease-fire in Indochina; he vowed that he would resign within thirty days of his investiture if an agreement had not been reached. His last act before resigning, he added, would be to introduce a bill for conscription to supplement the professional army in the field, which the Assembly would have to vote on the same day. Mendès France was sufficiently encouraged by the results of the de Brébisson-Ha secret discussions to make this pledge, but he knew it was a gamble. How would the delegations at Geneva respond? Would he be able to bring the Viet Minh, the Americans, the Chinese, the Soviets along? And what about Bao Dai’s State of Vietnam, which that week had had her own change of leadership, one little noticed at the time but with enormous implications for the future? Buu Loc was out as prime minister, replaced by Ngo Dinh Diem. Would Diem, who immediately announced his opposition to any settlement involving partition, upset the Mendès France timetable?

So many questions, so much to work out. And the clock was now ticking.

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Filed under Britain, China, democracy, France, military, nationalism, U.S., Vietnam, war

by | 27 May 2025 · 11:10 am

Trench Warfare at Dien Bien Phu

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 655-679:

Meanwhile, the enemy drew ever closer. Two weeks earlier Vo Nguyen Giap had abandoned mass assaults in favor of grignotage, or “nibbling away” of the French positions, in a replay of the trench warfare tactics of the Ypres salient in World War I. Hundreds of sappers were deployed to push assault trenches ever closer to the fortifications, a practice, Giap told associates, that would allow the Viet Minh “completely to intercept reinforcements and supplies.” Lead elements would dig a deep hole at the bottom of the trench and pass the dirt to the rear, where it would be immediately put in sandbags, while other workers brought forward logs and wooden beams to provide the diggers with overhead cover. It was a simple, beautifully efficient system. On most nights the defenders of Eliane could hear the clinking of picks and shovels almost under their feet, sometimes with their naked ears and sometimes using crude geophones made of a combination of wine canteens and medical stethoscopes. This too was reminiscent of Passchendaele forty years earlier, when German troops heard miners from Wales digging beneath them on Messines Ridge, in preparation for blasting them out.

Why did Giap shift tactics? With the French seemingly on the ropes in the second week of April, why did he not seek a swift and conclusive victory, a coup de grâce? Mostly because neither he nor his subordinate commanders could accept the casualty rates the French had been inflicting on them in the first month of the fighting. They needed a respite. Of the total number of dead and wounded that the Viet Minh suffered during the battle for Dien Bien Phu, close to half had been suffered already by April 5. Roughly four thousand of these were fatalities. Many of the losses occurred during intense fighting on strongpoints Dominique, Eliane, and Huguette, but French aerial attacks also could have devastating effect. C-47 transports were equipped with depth-charge racks to allow napalm drums to be unloaded swiftly. These were fused to explode twenty yards above the ground. Larger C-119s swept low, then pulled up abruptly while napalm cans slid out. The actual damage done by these attacks was often marginal, especially when poor weather and antiaircraft fire made accurate targeting impossible, but the mere anticipation that such a weapon could fall from the sky was acutely unnerving to defenders.

By mid-April, various reports indicated growing despondency among Viet Minh troops. Fiery speeches by political commissars about sacrifice, duty, and the need to stamp out Franco-American imperialism were duly given, but these worked best on new recruits anticipating quick success; they rang hollow to weary veterans of the frontal attacks who had witnessed comrades being slaughtered all around them and who themselves might have sustained wounds. French radio intelligence picked up agitated dispatches from lower-unit commanders reporting that some units were refusing orders, and a Viet Minh deserter told the French on April 20 that new recruits were despondent about the difficulties of the struggle. The commissars had to press all the harder, especially at recovery stations where soldiers were convalescing, insisting that the fight must go on as long as necessary, regardless of losses.

Many of the new recruits had walked to Dien Bien Phu, often in groups of about a hundred, usually for long distances through difficult terrain, only to find conditions worse after they arrived. Though the People’s Army had the luxury of rotating units between the trenches and rest areas in the surrounding jungle, this brought only limited relief. Even in the rear areas, men generally slept only on bamboo mats or banana leaves on plastic mats. Few had mosquito nets, and malaria was endemic. Quinine to treat the illness was in short supply, so much so that soldiers would have to pass around a cup of water containing one dissolved tablet, take a sip, and send it on. When the rains started for real about April 25, the conditions deteriorated, and not only for those in the trenches. Sickness increased, and the situation for the wounded, deplorable to begin with, deteriorated further. Gangrene cases proliferated. Ton That Tung remained the only real surgeon on his side, and along with his six assistants he waged a hopeless struggle to treat the wounded, lacking modern drugs and instruments and sometimes forced to operate while standing knee-deep in water. As before, head injuries were a particular problem, and Tung taught the assistants his method of removing foreign bodies by suction and then closing the skull. With no electrocoagulators at their disposal, the team resorted to touching the blood vessels with white-hot platinum wire.

…

THE ASSAULT BEGAN ON MAY 1, AT THE USUAL TIME: LATE AFTERNOON. All day long evidence had accumulated in General de Castries’s command bunker that something was afoot, and by early afternoon the deadly smell of all-out assault hung in the air. Probing attacks down the trench lines were being made in greater strength, and radio intercepts detected the presence of Viet Minh battalions in concentration. The previous three nights had seen more downpours, and on April 29 some parts of the garrison reported three feet of standing water in the trenches. Their boots and clothing perpetually soaked, the men were also hungry, for everyone was now on half rations. April 30 brought a modicum of good news, in the form of an agreement by the American crews from CAT to resume their C-119 flights, in exchange for a promise from the French Air Force to do a better job of suppressing enemy flak (a promise it failed to keep). Supply drops increased dramatically that day and on May 1, and when the assault began, there was again three days of food available, along with desperately needed ammunition.

Just before five o’clock in the afternoon, the artillery barrage commenced. More than one hundred Viet Minh field guns opened up over the whole area of the camp. Bunkers and soggy trenches collapsed under the bombardment, many of their occupants buried alive. After three hours, the firing slackened, whereupon the entire 312th and 316th Divisions stormed up the eastern hill positions of Eliane and Dominique and the 308th targeted Huguette. Dominique 3, defended by a motley mix of Algerians and Tai, fell quickly, and by 2 A.M. Eliane 1 had succumbed as well. In nine hours of fighting, the garrison had lost 331 killed or missing. Was this the beginning of the end? Senior French commanders feared it was. Colonel Langlais wired Hanoi soon after the assault began: “No more reserves left. Fatigue and wear and tear on the units terrible. Supplies and ammunition insufficient. Quite difficult to resist one more such push by Communists, at least without bringing in one brand-new battalion of excellent quality.”

…

What a task they faced! Giap’s attacking force consisted of four infantry divisions, plus thirty artillery battalions and some one hundred guns. In response, the defenders could offer very little except the courage and fortitude borne of desperation. In this respect it was to their advantage that their perimeter had shrunk: It now consisted mostly of portions of Huguette, Claudine, and Eliane, perhaps one thousand yards square, plus the isolated Isabelle three miles to the south. To cover the approach to the hospital, which that morning held more than sixteen hundred wounded, and improvised strongpoint christened Juno had been created between Claudine and Eliane. Total troop strength stood at roughly 4,000, though in terms of infantry in the central sector it was closer to 2,000. There were Foreign Legion and Vietnamese parachutists, Moroccan Rifles, Tai from various dissolved units, French paratroop battalions (half of them Vietnamese), Arab and African gunners, and, down on Isabelle, still some Algerians. The greatest concentration of men, some 750 parachutists, was deployed at the point of maximum import and danger, the top of Eliane.

At four P.M., the Viet Minh artillery bombardment began. Its purpose was mostly to cover the assembly of assault infantry in forward positions, and it featured the unleashing of a wholly new weapon in the 351st Heavy Division’s arsenal: the “Stalin Organs.” Modeled on the twelve-tubed Katyusha rocket launchers that the Red Army had used with devastating effect against the Wehrmacht in World War II, these projectors announced their presence with the terrifying screeching noise of their rockets, which one legionnaire likened to the sound of a passing train. The explosions that followed were louder and often more destructive than those of shells of larger caliber, for the explosive made up a greater proportion of the rocket’s weight. Several of the rockets scored direct hits, destroying munitions stores, pulverizing sodden earthworks, and doing serious damage to the medical supplies depot. That night the garrison’s senior medical officer cabled Hanoi: “Situation of the wounded extremely precarious due to flooding and collapse of several dugouts.… Urgent need of all medical supplies; my stocks are destroyed.”

…

Sometime before eleven (accounts differ on the exact time), a massive explosion shook the earth under Eliane 2. In a tactic reminiscent of the Union at Petersburg in 1864 and the British at the Hawthorn Redoubt in 1916, the Viet Minh had driven a mine shaft under Eliane 2 and loaded it with three thousand pounds of TNT. Veterans recalled a muffled rumbling under their feet, followed after a pause by a giant geyser of earth and stones thrown into the air. The garrison suffered massive casualties, but the key French blockhouse did not fall, and the Viet Minh foolishly paused before advancing. This delay gave the defenders under Captain Jean Pouget precious time to man the lip of the crater and open a murderous fire on the approaching infantry. Three hours later, with Pouget’s men still holding out, he asked for reinforcements. He could hold Eliane 2, he told HQ over the wireless, with just one additional company. None was available, replied the major on the other end. “Not another man, not another shell, my friend. You’re a para. You’re there to get yourself killed.”

Pouget did not die. After acknowledging the major’s message, he announced his intention to sign off and to disable the radio. A Viet Minh operator who had been eavesdropping broke in and told him not to wreck the set just yet—a song was coming on. Through the static Pouget could hear the strains of “Chant des Partisans,” a wartime anthem of the French Resistance. “The swine,” he grumbled, grasping the irony. He put three bullets through the radio and went out to join his men. A few minutes before five o’clock, he and his last handful of soldiers were surrounded and captured.

The end was near. On May 7, the sun went up for the last time on the fortified French camp. Eliane 4 and 10 were still holding out at daybreak, but by midmorning both were gone.

…

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was over. The Viet Minh had won. Vo Nguyen Giap had overturned history, had accomplished the unprecedented, had beaten the West at its own game. For the first time in the annals of colonial warfare, Asian troops had defeated a European army in fixed battle.

This last paragraph seems to be an astounding claim. Has the author never heard of the 1905 Siege of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War? Or the 1842 Retreat from Kabul and other British defeats during the many Anglo-Indian wars. Did the Russian Empire suffer no defeats as it expanded across Central Asia? Did the Dutch VOC suffer no defeats in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia, and Formosa? The colonial era and its many wars started long before the 20th century.

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by | 26 May 2025 · 4:09 pm

Wide Support for Dividing Vietnam

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 662-666:

Keeping the United States out of Vietnam meant cultivating support for the DRV internationally, and that too argued for being open to diplomacy. Alienating world opinion by forswearing the chance for peace would be unwise. “We have always followed the situation in the world” and “coordinated with the wishes for peace of the people of the world,” one official said. A negotiated agreement would therefore be a “victory” as it met “the pressing needs of the world’s peace lovers.” In the view of deputy prime minister and foreign minister Pham Van Dong, the DRV needed “the sympathy and the support of all peoples” to contain its enemies and protect its sovereignty.”

Party officials were less keen to talk about yet another possible consequence of a prolongation of the fighting, namely that the struggle would become increasingly fratricidal over time. Already now, Vietnamese were killing other Vietnamese in larger numbers. Viet Minh strategists remained confident they had the vast majority of people on their side, and they were as contemptuous as always of what party documents habitually referred to as the “puppet army” created by the French, but in quiet moments they expressed concern about the changing nature of the war. The revolutionary cause they championed was based on the principles of national unity and derived its legitimacy from its status as the only real representative of the populace. In the spring of 1954, the revolution was not yet seriously threatened, but how would things look in six months or a year, or in two years?

Above all, Ho Chi Minh knew, negotiations for an end to the war would have to be attempted in Geneva because his patrons in Moscow and Beijing said so. Repeatedly since the end of the Berlin conference in February, the Communist giants had made clear their desire for a political solution in Indochina and had even made their continued material and rhetorical backing of the war effort contingent on the DRV declaring a willingness to seek peace. The Soviet Union still sought improved relations with the West and also hoped to induce France to agree to a tacit quid pro quo—Moscow’s help in facilitating a settlement in Indochina in exchange for Paris saying non merci to the proposed European Defense Community. China, for her part, viewed the Geneva meeting as an opportunity to solidify her membership in the great-power club and to forestall an American military intervention near her southern borders. Both Communist powers perceived as well a chance to drive a wedge between the Western powers. Said premier and foreign minister Zhou Enlai on February 27, during a meeting with his associates in the Foreign Ministry: “While France seems interested in reaching a peaceful solution to the Indochina issue, the United States is not. Therefore, it seems that France is reluctant to let the United States put its nose into Vietnam.”

But how to reach such a “peaceful solution”? The Kremlin came down early on the side of partition, a Korea-type solution that would temporarily divide Vietnam in half. Such a solution would respect France’s continuing strength in Cochin China while also acknowledging the Viet Minh’s effective control of large areas of Tonkin and Annam. It would serve China’s security needs as well, by forestalling an American intervention and by giving her a friendly “buffer” state on her southern frontier. And it would stop the war, if not forever, at least for a time. Already in late January 1954, Moscow instructed its ambassador in Paris to float the partition idea with French leaders. “There would be a provisional armistice line drawn at the 16th parallel,” a U.S intelligence assessment said of this Soviet overture, and “the French would evacuate Hanoi and the Tonkin Delta.” The French reacted with caution but did not rule out the idea, and the Soviets were further encouraged when the British government in subsequent weeks began making supportive noises about partition.

The Chinese too were attracted to the idea. Beijing’s ambassador in Moscow, Zhang Wentien, told Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov on March 6 that a division along the sixteenth parallel would be “very advantageous” for Ho Chi Minh and as such “should be accepted if it is put forward officially.” A few days later Zhou Enlai told Ho via telegram that conditions were ripe for a greater emphasis on the diplomatic struggle, and that, no matter what the likely outcome of the Geneva Conference, “we should actively participate in it.” Partition should be seriously considered, Zhou went on, because “if a ceasefire is to be achieved, it is better that a relatively fixed demarcation line be established so that [the Viet Minh] can control an area that is linked together.” As for where the line ought to be, the Chinese statesman singled out the sixteenth parallel as “one of our options.”

The VWP Politburo met three times in March to discuss negotiating strategy for Geneva, more specifically the notion of partition. Details from the meetings are sketchy, but we can guess that the sessions were stormy. Earlier in the month, the DRV ambassador in Beijing, Hoan Van Hoang, had shown little enthusiasm for partition when his Soviet counterpart brought up the matter. How can you find a demarcation line, Hoang asked, when there are no front lines? Over time, though, as the early assault on Dien Bien Phu failed to yield a decisive victory, the thinking in the Politburo swung in favor of partition, or at least against outright opposition. Members agreed to consider the possibility, so long as the division was temporary. The demarcation line would reflect the balance of military forces and would be as far south as possible. A party statement avoided mention of partition but extolled Geneva as “a victory for the forces of democracy” that, “together with big victories in the military field,” would make “our people in the occupied areas happy, and the puppets confused and concerned.” VWP instructions concerning the May Day celebrations stressed the need to encourage the people to write petitions to the government to express their “support of the Geneva Conference with a view toward finding ways for peacefully solving the Korean problem and putting an end to the war in Indochina.”

Still, it must have been with mixed feelings that Ho Chi Minh in late March arrived in Beijing, accompanied by Pham Van Dong, the DRV’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, for a pre-Geneva strategy session. His powerful allies were telling him to take half a loaf rather than the whole thing, even though his forces were winning on the battlefield. This was hardly what he wanted to hear, even if he had his own reasons for exploring a compromise diplomatic settlement. He and his comrades had not fought for seven-plus years to gain only partial control of the country. Now he had to listen as Mao and Zhou urged him to score a victory at Dien Bien Phu and thereby achieve results at Geneva, but they also cautioned him to have “realistic expectations” regarding how much could be achieved in the negotiations—shorthand, in all probability, for the estimation that the DRV would not come away from the conference with control over all of Vietnam. The Vietnamese, according to Chinese sources, agreed on both points.

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by | 25 May 2025 · 3:11 pm

UK Doubts About French Vietnam

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 641-643:

[John Foster] Dulles produced a draft letter, addressed to [George] Bidault, stating that while U.S. intervention at Dien Bien Phu was now impossible, Washington was nevertheless ready to move “armed forces” into Indochina, provided France and other allies so desired, for the purpose of defending Southeast Asia. The letter was handed to Eden, who skimmed it and passed it on to Bidault. Several minutes ticked by as he read it and considered his options. He was still primarily interested in Dien Bien Phu, and he remained leery of internationalization, but perhaps this was a way to salvage something out of the wreckage. He cleared his throat and said yes, he would be prepared to receive the letter formally.

Suddenly events stood at a new watershed: United Action was back with a bang, and the war seemed about to be internationalized. [Anthony] Eden quickly interjected that his government did not feel bound by the Dulles-Eden communiqué of April 14 [1954] to intervene in the Indochina War. He could promise no more, he said, than to return to London at once to consult with his cabinet colleagues. But the foreign secretary understood that the crucial moment had arrived; as he noted in a cable to the Foreign Office just before heading to the airport: “It is now quite clear that we shall have to take a decision of first-class importance, namely whether to tell the Americans that we are prepared to go along with their plan or not.” Just prior to departure, he received a call from Maurice Schumann, the French secretary of state for foreign affairs, advising him that both Laniel and Bidault hoped he would gain approval from his colleagues to proceed “on the lines desired by Mr. Dulles.”

The dilemma was acute, as [Sir Evelyn] Shuckburgh observed in his diary that evening: “If we refuse to cooperate with the US plan, we strain the Alliance. If we do as Dulles asks, we certainly provoke the bitterest hostility of India and probably all other Asiatic states and destroy the Commonwealth. Also, a war for Indo-China would be about as difficult a thing to put across the British public as you could find.”

Eden and his team landed at 10:20 P.M., got into two waiting cars, and drove straight to Churchill’s country estate, Chequers, arriving shortly before midnight. There to greet them was the prime minister, wearing a silken two-piece suit covered by a dressing gown. Drinks were distributed, whereupon Eden laid out the essentials of the situation. Churchill heard him out, then ruminated on “our glorious Empire, our wonderful Indian Empire, we have cast it away”—the implication being, thought Shuckburgh, why should Britain fight for a decrepit French colonial effort after that? Then a cold supper, during which general agreement was reached that Britain should reject the American request. In London the following morning, the cabinet, in a rare Sunday meeting to which the chiefs of staff were also summoned, needed little persuasion to confirm the rejection. The chiefs of staff said the proposed action would be ineffective and added that even a total collapse in Indochina would not decisively affect the British position in Malaya. The domino theory did not hold.

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