This chapter makes the point that there is no need to go as far back as pre-modern Cambodian and pre-modern Vietnamese and Chinese histories to describe the well-documented hostile feelings between the Cambodians and Vietnamese, and that of Vietnam and China. The narrative thus begins during the period in which many of the main protagonists in the Third Indochina War were already active in the arena of the conflict.

The expansion of empires in the late nineteenth century prompted leftists to invent a new kind of internationalism targeting what they called “imperialism.” Although there were many ways to combat imperialism, one approach soon came to dominate: the Leninist problematic of the right of nations to self-determination. The ideas that formed the basis of this problematic grew out of highly contingent debates in the twentieth century, but after Lenin’s death in 1924 were codified as the only radical way to change the world on a global scale. It was embraced by millions across the globe, especially by Vietnamese revolutionaries, who soon distinguished themselves as the leading force in the larger anti-colonial struggle in Vietnam. In fact, Vietnam emerged as a kind of test case for the Leninist problematic. It helped Vietnamese revolutionaries score many victories, but the experience of revolution in Vietnam revealed some of Leninism’s core tensions, the most important of which was the contradiction between nation-building on the one hand and universal communist emancipation on the other.

This chapter shifts the view from the metropole to overseas France. It shows how French officials focused on restoring their empire in the immediate postwar era. The empire was crucial to France’s quest to regain its status as a Great Power; it was also a salve for domestic unrest. The empire provided raw materials and markets crucial to recovery; it also gave a struggling French government a luster of strength. Agitation in North Africa and Indochina threatened to undermine this enterprise. As in the metropole, French officials abroad sought to outmaneuver and delegitimize rivals who threatened their authority through their contacts with U.S. intelligence. They began to tie nationalist agitation in North Africa and Indochina to local communist action and PCF activity inside France. In North Africa, they also traced an apparent evolution in local communist rhetoric from criticism of nationalist activity, to collusion aiming for electoral gains, to support for independence by the end of 1945. And in Indochina, French officials employed the same methods used to discredit de Gaulle’s government in 1944 and 1945. In the months after the war, it also became a crucial component of the basic formula they used to influence American policy.

An Epilogue traces the main legacies for Southeast Asia of its wartime occupation. For most of the region, occupation resulted in revolution or civil war and often a fundamental societal shift, opening the way for post-war social and political transformations. Recovery to pre-war levels of per capita GDP was slow for several countries. Only by the 1990s did the long-term trajectory of an outward-looking, export-oriented Southeast Asia reassert itself.

This chapter examines planned revolutions, which emerge from deliberately organized and orchestrated rebellions. Planned revolutions contain several key, interrelated elements. First, regardless of their declared ideological beliefs, all self-declared revolutionaries are essentially nationalist. Two other, related elements characteristic of planned revolutions are those of leadership and the party. Planned revolutions will not appear unless several highly dedicated individuals commit themselves to planning, organizing, and leading a takeover of power. Sooner or later, the cabal gives rise to a political party or a guerrilla organization whose chief, often only, mission is to lead a revolution. The party sees itself as the revolution’s vanguard. Among the planners involved in this vanguard, usually an individual with greater ambitions, or better organizational skills and opportunities, or through sheer chance, emerges as its leader. While planned revolutions cannot succeed without the work of an organized revolutionary party, the party’s leader becomes the face of the revolution, and, if the revolution succeeds, he then becomes the leader of the country. The October 1917 Russian revolution, and the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions belong in this category. As starkly evident by Che Guevara’s failed movement in Bolivia, not all attempts at revolutionary capture of power succeed.