This page was created by Michitake Aso.
Northern Vietnam as Borderland
During the period of French colonization, Dai Nam was divided into Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin and became part of French Indochina. The name Tonkin was mistakenly derived from an older name for Hanoi, Đông Kinh (東京) or eastern capital, and mistakenly equated with the Vietnamese term Đàng Ngoài (the northern region of Vietnam). This newly created political unit was incorporated in a French imperial world. French commercial and imperial concerns continued to be interested in Northern Vietnam's potential access to the markets of China. Here is a French map from 1894 showing Indochina's waterway connections to southern China.
By the early twentieth century, the blank spaces around the Red River Delta on French maps had been filled with ethnographic knowledge relevant to military control of the delta. The following 1905 map of the military territories that ring the delta shows the presence of ethnic minorities and suggests how they can be used for military alliances.
A third depiction of Northern Vietnam's military and commercial connection with southern China comes from the Asia Pacific War. When French Indochina was incorporated into maps of the Japanese empire. The following map comes from a 1940s Japanese publication aimed at school children showing French Indochina and China. This map emphasizes the waterways and railroad connections linking China to Hanoi and to points further south.
After the 1949 victory of the Chinese communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong and the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Việt Minh gained an important ally. Starting in May 1951, supplies from the USSR also began to cross the North Vietnam-China border. Between 1952 and 1954, the Việt Minh received over 100 tonnes of medical supplies and equipment from China and the USSR.
