THE INDOCHINA WARS VOL. 1 – FROM THE ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH PRESENCE TO THE ESCALATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT

INDOCHINA, war — these two words remain inextricably linked in the collective memory. Associated with images of violence and tragedy, and with interpretations that have frozen them into clichés, they conceal a far more complex reality, often elusive. There was the French war with its faces — Leclerc, Ho Chi Minh, d'Argenlieu, Giap, de Lattre — its battle names, its Geneva peace, and then the American war with its own — Diem, Kennedy, Minh, Westmoreland, Johnson, Thieu, Nixon, Kissinger, Khe Sanh. There was the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Paris peace, and then the war between the two Vietnams, the agony of Saigon, reunification in blood. Above all, there were the countless anonymous faces of a people torn apart, so alike in their differences: the sacrificed soldiers — French, American, Southern or revolutionary — those innocent and bewildered crowds swept away by a tempest… A monumental synthesis drawn from meticulous documentation, in part previously unpublished, and from a systematic analysis of texts and facts from both sides, The Indochina Wars charts for the first time the complete and comprehensive record of more than a century of a nation's history, from the arrival of the French in 1859 to its apocalyptic epilogue and its present-day consequences.