Indo-China: End of an Epoch

The Geneva agreement which brought the fighting in Indo-China to an end wrote finis to the French Empire in Asia. France is the last of the European powers to have been driven out of Asia, and with its defeat a whole epoch of Asian history—the struggle for national independence—seems to be coming to an ambiguous close. The implications of this are enormous, but here it may be possible merely to sketch a few suggestive and rather speculative notes.

Except for Malaya, where nationalism is not yet a full-fledged political force, and a few minor enclaves which exist mainly as outposts for European flags but do not decisively influence Asiatic politics, the European powers are through. It is customary to wonder how this will affect the future of Asia, but it is at least as interesting to wonder how it will affect the future of Europe. What kind of economy can West Europe work out without the buttress of colonies? Can the economic well-being of England and France, which rested at least in part on their extensive imperial holdings, now be recaptured once they have been rendered poorer by Asia?

Conversely, what kind of society can the former colonies develop in a world that is increasingly lop-sided and uneven in its distribution of economic power and resources, that is driven by an irreconcilable conflict between two social systems, that cares least of all to help the nations of Asia industrialize, vitalize their agricultures and human resources and thereby step onto the modern stage as truly independent forces? By and large, the present economics of the Asian countries have been fashioned during the last three centuries to the needs of their European rulers; now that the Europeans have been driven out, or have beat a retreat, what can fill the socio-economic vacuum? Regardless of who takes over Indo-China —and at the moment the odds are it will be the Communists—this will be a key problem in attempting to reestablish any sort of political and economic order.

It also points to a special problem in the case of Indo-China, which did not exist in China. If the Communists capture all of Indo-China, would it not be to the interests of China to keep its southern neighbor in approximately the same kind of subordinate status—at least economically —in which France kept it, i.e., as a source for coal, tin and rice?

The people of Asia have paid a heavy price for freedom from foreign rule but they succeed to their own national states in a world in which sovereignty is devalued, nationhood brings few automatic advantages, and the extent of control that new states are able to exercise even on development within their domestic domains depends on vast uncontrollable world forces. If these are some of the elements in the price that must be paid by India, Burma, etc., for emerging now as nations, how can we measure the cost in Indo-China where the commitments to the Communist power bloc are made in advance by Ho Chi Min...