This discussion addresses the following outcomes:

Describe the long history of Vietnamese resistance to foreign dominion (CO#1);

Examine primary sources relating to Vietnamese communist and nationalist movements before, during, and after World War II (CO#3);

What is now called Vietnam was a French colonial holding throughout the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the years leading up to World War II, Ho Chi Minh emerged as an advocate for independence and self-determination in "French Indochina." The Japanese controlled the region during World War II, allowing for a token French administration reporting to Japanese authorities.

However, upon the surrender of the Japanese in 1945, the Viet Minh (led by Ho Chi Minh) quickly proclaimed that the Vietnamese would exercise self-determination moving forward. Of course, the French did not agree with this proclamation, and years of armed conflict followed, with the US seemingly caught between promotion of anti-colonialism and staving off communism in both Asia and Europe.

For this activity, you will examine three primary sources: Ho Chi Minh: Program for Communist of Indochina [PDF File size, 87 KB], the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence [PDF File size, 96 KB], and The Manifesto of the Laodong (Vietnam Workers') Party [PDF File size, 90 KB]. These primary sources, crafted at three distinct times, highlight Ho's persistent efforts to cause political, social, and economic change in Vietnam.

After reviewing your understanding of the difference between primary and secondary sources, and then examining each of these three primary resources, reading Chapter 1 in Herring, and viewing the Module 1 Notes presentation (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., consider the following questions in a post of at least 250 words:

In what ways is this Vietnamese Declaration of Independence similar to the US Declaration of Independence? Why?

Judging from these documents as well as what you have read in the Herring text to this point, do you believe that Ho was more of a communist or a nationalist?

Do you believe the answer to the preceding question was at all consequential in the minds of US policymakers in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations? Why or why not?