Cochinchina uprising (Nam Kỳ khởi nghĩa) was an armed uprising against the French and Japanese by the South Vietnamese (at that time known as Cochinchina) in 1940, led by the Indochinese Communist Party.
Historical background
In June 1940, France was invaded by the Nazi troops. Given this opportunity, in September, the Japanese invaded the colonised-by-France Indochina peninsula. From here, Vietnam was controlled by two foreign powers, the French and the Japanese. The Vietnamese appear to have expected Japanese support for the uprising, given the fact that the Japanese had been aiding most other Southeast Asian nations with the hope that they would support the plan for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Instead, the Vietnamese denounced the Japanese as traitors for not helping them achieve independence from French colonial rule. With the anti-French spirit and the Bac Son Uprising, many people from South Vietnamese provinces revolted against the French and Japanese. In Southern Indochina, the French had to deal with claims from Thailand which, backed by the Japanese, demanded territories situated to the Northwest of Cambodia's Tonle Sap and on the right bank of the Mekong River in Laos. Units of Vietnamese troops were sent to the front to fight the Thais. Some of these units stationed in Saigon decided to rebel against being sent to the front. This plan was part of the program of the Party Committee for Cochin-China which from June 1940 on had actively prepared for an uprising. A plan of action was worked out with the aim of combining the actions of military units in revolt with those of worker and peasant organizations throughout Cochin-China. As it so happened, the French did not go to war with Thailand, and thus they could devote their whole strength against the insurgents and easily decimated the South Vietnamese ICP. With this, it can be said that the insurgents who carried out the uprising had initially believed that Thailand would involve themselves in the conflict, causing a distraction to the French, which would help them, unfortunately for them, this would not happen.
Preparation
In March 1940, the Standing Committee of the Party, headed by Võ Văn Tần, drafted the outline to prepare for an anti-French movement, and then prepared for armed uprising. Many demonstrations occurred during that time.
Self-defense forces and guerrillas which directly led by Võ Văn Tần, Phan Đăng Lưu were formed in big factories in Saigon such as Ba Son, FACI, pier, Cho Quan lamp. In rural areas, most communes had a squadron or even a guerrilla platoon.
Popular discontent was on the rise in the South and provided, at least momentarily, an opportunity for the ICP to release its frustration at the events since the previous September. At the root of the unrest in the South was economics. High taxes, a fall in the price of rice, and an increase in unemployment all served to cut the standard of living for the average Vietnamese. Throughout the spring and summer of 1940, peasant riots against French conscription for military service along the Cambodian-Thai border, where the threat of war was high. Peasant protests against conscription took place in several towns and villages throughout the delta.
As the wave of discontent in the South rose, the Party's Regional Committee for Cochin China attempted to ride the crest, concentrating its propaganda on peasants and newly drafted Vietnamese troops. Since the restoration of the Party apparatus in Cochin China in the early 1930s, the regional Party organization under the direction of Stalin School graduate Tran Van Giau had possessed a unique degree of autonomy and under Giau's autocratic leadership was somewhat inclined toward making decisions independent of the national party leadership. Now, with almost all members of the ICP central Committee in the South in jail, regional leaders took matters in their own hands and began to plan for a general uprising in response to the decisions reached at the Sixth Plenum the previous November. After the French surrender to Nazi Germany in June, they hastily convened an expanded Party conference in My Tho, deep in the heart of the Mekong delta and agreed to initiate preparations for the insurrection. By autumn, half the indigenous troops in Cochin China were allegedly sympathetic to the Communists, with ICP sources estimating that up to 30 percent of the entire population of the colony was on its side.