Chapter 5 Southeast Asian Commerical Networks of the DRV ( 1945-51 )
Chapter 5 Southeast Asian Commerical Networks of the DRV ( 1945-51 ) The Viet Minh’s ability to regain and expand its hold upon the ICP’s prewar Southeast Asian network, including its new Indochinese sub-section, was crucial to the Viet Minh’s postwar success in supplying the war effort in Vietnam via Thailand. Between 1946 and 1951, overland and maritime routes operating from Thailand channelled stocks of weapons, equipment, explosives and medicines procured in Southeast Asia and elsewhere to Vietnam. Although the aid furnished by the Chinese communists from 1950 would be much greater and in the end decisive in the Viet Minh’s victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, it was access to Viet kieu bases in eastern Thailand and a remarkably vibrant Southeast Asian arms market based in Bangkok that helped the Viet Minh survive until Chinese communist troops opened a northern rearguard. Between 1946 and 1951, not only was the Vietnamese war against the French Indochinese ...