Cockpit of Conflict

Little besides geography links the four countries that make up modern-day Indochina--Cambodia, Laos, North and South Viet Nam. For 20 centuries, neither foreign conquerors nor home-grown dynasts have ever managed to persuade the peoples of the verdant, fertile peninsula to collect themselves into a single nation. Indeed, long before the present struggle engulfed them, their differences had led to a history of prolonged and tangled conflicts.

The most constant influence on the area's life, of course, has been China, where the forebears of most present-day Indochinese lived before migrating south centuries before Christ. On all too many occasions, the Heavenly Emperors to the North sent their representatives--sometimes soldiers, more often messengers demanding tribute. The feudal village, with its population of tax-paying peasants and aristocratic protectors, grew out of that practice, and is still the basic political unit in much of Indochina. The Chinese presence was strongest in Viet Nam, which was more or less a colony for nearly 1,000 years; its ancient name in Chinese, Annam, literally means "the pacified South."

The second great culture to reach Indochina was that of ancient India, brought by sailors and traders. Along with their commerce, the Indians carried their culture--the religion of Buddha, works of art, the concept of a god-king. The unique fusion of Indo-Asian culture that resulted reached its greatest heights in Cambodia, the seat of the once-mighty Khmer Empire. Between the 9th and the 14th centuries, the Khmers conquered all of Southeast Asia, from the Mekong Delta in Viet Nam to Burma on the Bay of Bengal, backing up their rule by building an elaborate set of canals and reservoirs and making rice a stable crop. They also left behind one of the architectural wonders of the world: the colonnaded temple of Angkor Wat.

Laos, the Land of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol, managed to conquer the northern reaches of the Khmer Empire in the 14th century. That accomplishment led to Laos' one brief period of expansion. Before long, however, both Laos and the Khmers were caught in the deadly vise of war between Siam (now Thailand) and Annam (now Viet Nam). The enmities between Indochina's present-day neighbors stem in no small part from these wars, which reduced Laos to a tiny mountain kingdom, robbed Cambodia of the rich Mekong Delta (Cochin China) and created, for the first time in history, a vigorous unity in Viet Nam between the South (Annam) and North (Tonkin).

France landed its first military expedition in Viet Nam in 1858, ostensibly to protect missionaries who were being put to death by the Vietnamese Emperor for teaching Christianity. Soon the French objective was to colonize rather than Christianize, and by 1883 Paris had established a "protectorate" in Cambodia and occupied all of Viet Nam; in 1899, it placed a resident superieur in Vientiane. Economically, the French were unabashed parasites. As one report of the time put it: "Colonial production must be limited to supplying the mother country with raw materials."

Politically, the French were not so much oppressive as inept. Administrators often knew next to nothing about the land and people in their charge, and few were in office long enough to learn; between 1892 and 1930, Paris dispatched 23 governors-general to Hanoi. Outside the major cities of Viet Nam, French secondary schools were almost nonexistent; by 1939, Phnom-Penh's only school beyond the primary level had graduated a grand total of four students.

Resistance groups flourished almost from the start. Ho Chi Minh, who was to wage the most protracted and successful struggle against the French, was forced to leave school in 1910 for anti-French opinions. The Japanese occupation of Indochina during World War II swept away the myth that the white man was indestructible. Before long, that dramatic discovery led to a place and turning point called Dienbienphu.

Engulfed in the miseries of war for 25 years--or longer--Indochina's newly independent people have not yet recaptured an identity with their past. Few Vietnamese, North or South, can find much reflected glory in the elegant red-and-gold lacquered panels of Hue's imperial city. Laotians, living in the shadow of the war next door and amid the growing misery of the one in their own front yard, take small comfort in the ancient Buddhist temples of Luangprabang. To a certain extent, Cambodians could relive the triumphs of the Khmers in the resounding rhetoric of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who at least kept the kingdom independent. Clearly, if the past sometimes seems impossibly remote and unreal to Indochina's long-suffering peoples, that is the result of an all too real present.

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