When was vietnam colonized

His strong anti-communist stance was popular with the Americans who helped him rise to power. In May , eight Buddhist protestors were killed by government officials in Hue. President John F. Kennedy would be assassinated less than three weeks later. The coup was followed by a chaotic succession of 12 different governments in South Vietnam between and The Gulf of Tonkin Incident , also known as the U.

Maddox incident, marked the formal entry of the United States into the Vietnam War. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. On August 2, the U. The Maddox fired what it described as warning shots and was met by torpedo and machine gun fire. Too often they responded by treating any Vietnamese villager as a threat to be liquidated. At least 25, civilians were killed and 50, more injured every year.

In the short term it failed: nowhere did the local population rise up in support and the rebels suffered devastating losses. But the Tet Offensive was a long-term success.

The US anti-war movement gathered momentum and the will to fight began to evaporate. US forces were steadily reduced and a peace agreement was eventually signed on 27 January The Americans withdrew as planned within 60 days but both Vietnamese armies carried on fighting. The US withdrawal devastated South Vietnam's economy. The North launched another major offensive on 10 March and routed their demoralized opponents; on 30 April Saigon was liberated and Vietnam reunited.

The new Government of all Vietnam hoped for Western aid in reconstruction - and particularly for three billion dollars in war Leparations which Nixon had promised.

No money came and the prospect of rapprochement receded even further in when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and deposed the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. Vietnam paid a triple price for this service to humanity: its own troops stayed for ten years, draining the domestic economy of material and human resources: China invaded Vietnam as 'punishment' for the attack on their Cambodian ally; and the Western nations imposed an economic embargo which wrecked any hope of reconstruction and is still in place today.

Isolated, ground down by decades of war, lost in economic stagnation, the Vietnamese Government had no alternative but to change course. The first concessions to market economics came in The reforms are gathering pace all the time and it cannot be long now before the West stops shunning Vietnam as an enemy - and starts trusting it as a friend.

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China, which borders Vietnam to the North, is "the Dragon," and has repeatedly invaded Vietnam for over half of the small country's existence. The story of Vietnam is one of an ongoing struggle against foreign domination.

Throughout that time the Vietnamese followed heroes like "Madam Million" and the Trung Sisters in rebellions. During the Ly Dynasty, in A. A period of great development, including the founding of the nation's first university, the Temple of Literature, ensued. During the Le Dynasty of the 15thth centuries Vietnam extended its territory and formed its own identity and culture, breaking from many of the influences of China. Many call it the "Golden Age of Vietnam.