Ho's Effect in Other Nations
Superpowers: France and the United States
France
"The French conquest of Vietnam...Driven by a desperate search for cheap raw materials and consumer markets for their own manufactured goods...turned to military force to establish their hegemony throughout the region." -William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life. Losing Indochina strained France's economy. Rice and rubber were major cash crops. France earned 600 million francs (5 billion U.S. dollars) from just selling rice wine, salt, and opium. |
"Cochinchina [Southern Vietnam] had 25 gigantic rubber plantations. By the 1930s, Indochina was supplying 60,000 tons of rubber each year, five per cent of total global production."
- Jennifer Llewellynn on France's economy. alphahistory.com Ho and the Viet Minh's victory was another step of decolonizing France's empire. Losing Vietnam was an embarrassment. |
U.S.A.
Ho's communist ideology created the fear of Communism's spread. The impact was a chain reaction. As the Vietnam War grew, "Hawks" and "Doves" argued over the continuation of war and peace. |
Atrocities made Americans question the U.S. government's morality. "My mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers on each side...but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now."
-Martin Luther King Jr. Speech "Beyond Vietnam". Vietnam War: Primary Sources. Americans started distrusting the government because of events like the My Lai Massacre and the Kent shooting.
"I shall never forget the spectre of my friends lying dead on the field...shooting without warning...this is a "national tragedy", one that will, when history is written, be on of the hallmarks of a leadership disinterested in and unconcerned with the pulse of its people." -"Tragedy at Kent" Vietnam War: Primary Sources. The unveiling of the classified Pentagon Papers made Americans distrust their government.
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The Communist Community
"Promoted by lofty sentiments of international brotherhood, our comrades have come to take part in our Congress and to bring to us the friendship of the fraternal Parties. So, though frontiers and mountains stand between us, Proletarians of the whole world come together as one family."
-Ho Chi Minh, in his speech opening the Third National Congress of the Vietnam Workers' Party. Ho Chi Minh: On Revolution.
"You have come from distant countries but we make up one family, proletariats from the four cardinal points, we are all brothers.... preserve the solidarity within the party, between all Communist Parties and all nations of this great Socialist family."
-Ho Chi Minh calming the opposing Communist sides during the Vietnam Third Party Congress, 1960. Ho also helped dissolve agreements between Russia and China, and got both to support North Vietnam in the Indochina Wars.
"'He was the man who kept Moscow and Peking[Beijing] in balance.' said Jean Lacouture, a French biographer of Ho, '...His death is a loss to Moscow... They [Soviets] noted that Ho's great prestige had enabled him to tread a neutral course between Peking and Moscow, and that his successors may find it more difficult to do so.'"
-Time Magazine "The Legacy of Ho Chi Minh" issued Sept. 12, 1969. |
Ho supported the whole communist community. He sent letters, visited communist countries, and met their leaders.
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