Word: nam
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...VIET NAM (pop. 23 million...
...Viet Nam is rich in rubber, tin, zinc, iron and coal; it has a notable surplus of rice, and a strategic 1,200-mile coastline. Viet Nam is the prize, the arena where the French and the Viet Minh have contended for the past eight years...
...Viet Nam nation is a recent French consolidation of three ancient provinces: Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China. The Chinese ruled Tonkin and northern Annam for more than the 1,000 years, until they were expelled in the 10th century by native Annamites who were themselves of part-Chinese stock. About 150 years ago, the Annamites split into warring factions, and French missionnaires and traders moved in along the coast. By 1802, the French were strong enough to install a puppet king on the imperial throne of Annam; by 1870, the French army was ashore to protect French interests...
...years before World War II, the French invested $2 billion in Indo-China, almost all of it in Viet Nam. They built 13,800 miles of roads, railroads and canals; they reduced infant mortality by 50%; their irrigation projects brought 13 million more acres under cultivation. But they were frequently overbearing, took excessive profits out of the country, and were slow about granting any kind of independence to the Vietnamese...
...Indo-China war's third year, the French installed Bao Dai, playboy descendant of old Annamite kings, as Viet Nam's chief of state. But Bao Dai usually complied with French demands, and therefore got almost no public support, while Moscow Servant Ho Chi Minh was often admired simply because he was anti-French. Not until last month did Viet Nam get a genuinely nationalist Prime Minister, Ngo Dinh Diem - probably too late to make up for France's long refusal to prepare the Vietnamese for self-government and self-defense, probably too late to save...