The French initially attempted military colonization of Vietnam. When France pulled out of Vietnam, it was the United States that became bogged down in a war that caused the loss of thousands of U.S.

From 1902 until the Japanese conquest during World War II, Vietnam was under French colonial rule. The subsistence production of the Vietnamese peasantry was used to support a class of landlords ...

The resulting media attention proved very embarrassing for the defeated French. The outcome of this defeat was formalised in the Geneva Agreement of July 1954 and temporarily separated Vietnam ...