Month

May 2020
At the end of World War II, Ho Chi Minh, as leader of the Viet Minh, declared Vietnam’s independence in a speech that invoked the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In August 1945, after the Japanese surrendered, the Viet Minh quickly took...
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Vietnam and most of Southeast Asia was occupied during most of World War II by the Japanese. The Japanese captured Southeast Asia very quickly but had not planned very well for occupying it. In many ways the Japanese ruled through violence and repression rather than reasonable and humane governing. Southeast Asians that might have welcomed...
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