August Revolution

The August Revolution (Vietnamese: Cách mạng tháng Tám), also known as the August General Uprising (Vietnamese: Tổng Khởi nghĩa tháng Tám), was a revolution launched by the Việt Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam) against French colonial rule in Vietnam, on August 14, 1945.

Within two weeks, forces under the Việt Minh had seized control of most rural villages and cities throughout the North, Center and South Vietnam, including Hanoi, where President Hồ Chí Minh announced the formation of the Provisional Democratic Republic, Huế, Saigon, exception in townships Móng Cái, Vĩnh Yên, Hà Giang, Lào Cai, Lai Châu. However, according to Vietnamese document, Việt Minh, in fact, seized control of Vietnam. On September 2, 1945, Ho declared Vietnamese Independence. The August Revolution created a uniform government for the entire country.

Before the Japanese arrived, French colonialism in Vietnam had already lasted 87 years (1858–1945). By 1897 the French had created the Federation of Indochina, an artificial unit linking a Vietnam now broken for convenience into three separately ruled territories (Tonkin, Annam, and Cochin China) with newly acquired Cambodia and Laos. To justify their imperial domination, the French claimed that it was their responsibility to help undeveloped regions in Asia become civilized. Without French intervention, they asserted, these places would remain backward, uncivilized, and impoverished. However, in reality, French imperialism was driven by the demand for resources - raw materials and cheap labor.

It is generally agreed that French colonial rule was politically repressive and economically exploitative.The Vietnamese struggle against French colonialism was almost a century old at the end of World War II. Incursions by missionaries, gunboats, and diplomats in the nineteenth century had set off repeated periods of resistance due to the loyalty of the people to the Vietnamese monarchy and Confucian values. From the beginning of the French occupation of Vietnam, thousands of poorly-armed Vietnamese reacted to foreign control as they always had, with various rebellions. One of the famous rebellions is called Cần Vương movement(English: Aid-the-King), which was a large-scale Vietnamese insurgency between 1885 and 1889 against French colonial rule. In 1917, an eclectic band of political prisoners, common criminals and mutinous prison guards seized the Thái Nguyênn Penitentiary, the largest penal institution in northern Tonkin. The extraordinary regional and social diversity of its force makes the Thái Nguyên uprising a compelling prequel to the modern nationalist movements of the 1930s. Although all these rebellions finally failed, the rebels remained a powerful symbol of resistance for generations.

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