A ‘Total War’ of Decolonization? Social Mobilization and State-Building in Communist Vietnam (1949–54)

Abstract

By choosing to transition to modern, set-piece battle during the second half of the Indochina War, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) created one of the most socially totalizing wars in order to meet that ambitious goal. This article argues that, while the DRV did indeed create a remarkably modern army of six divisions, the lack of a mechanized logistical system meant that it had to mobilize hundreds of thousands of civilian porters to supply its troops moving across Indochina. To do this, the communist party undertook a massive mobilization drive and simultaneously expanded its efforts to take the state in hand. The DRV made war, but war also directly shaped the nature of this state. This article also shows why this transition to modern war rapidly collapsed the line between civilians and combatants in ways more ‘totalizing’ than many have previously thought.

Keywords:

• totalizing
• civilians
• modern war
• state-making
• logistics
• decolonization
• Indochina War

This article is a revised version of Chapter 10 of Vietnam: Un État né de la Guerre, 1945–54 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2011), which first appeared in French. My thanks to Shawn McHale, François Guillemot, Vatthana Pholsena, Agathe Larcher, Alec Holcombe and Heonik Kwon for their helpful comments and critiques.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher Goscha

Christopher Goscha is Professor of International Relations at the Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada. He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945–1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press/Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2011) and Vietnam: Un État né de la Guerre, 1945–54 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2011).