Franklin Roosevelt and Indochina

Abstract

THE response to political change and nationalism in Southeast Asia ranked among the important challenges encountered by the United States during World War II. The disruptions caused by the war forced America to define its interests in the struggles of Asian peoples to end European imperialism. The Japanese overthrew European predominance in Southeast Asia. Within Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia, French Indochina received the greatest American attention because President Franklin D. Roosevelt was determined to prevent resumption of French rule and to establish instead an international trusteeship which would lead to eventual independence. The trusteeship plan was Roosevelt's most conspicuous postwar goal for an area that had been part of a European empire. The pledge of the Atlantic Charter to recognize the rights of peoples to self-determination, augmented by occasional assurances that this applied to all areas of the world, stood as the basic policy on imperialism, but for most areas of the colonial world that policy remained a vague and platitudinous goal rather than a basis for specific policy and action. For example, in 1942 Roosevelt took an active interest in the impasse between the British government and the Indian National Congress, but he restricted his role to that of a concerned third party and avoided any direct intervention., Yet, in Indochina, which had its own complexities and about which Roosevelt, the state department, and the American public had scant knowledge, Roosevelt embraced a postwar plan. The Indochina policy resulted in large part from Roosevelt's attitude toward the French. The collapse of the French resistance against Germany in 1940