Hanoi served as the political capital of French colonial Indochina between the end of the 19th century and the Japanese coup de force of 9 March 1945 that brought it down. Following the Allied defeat of the Japanese in mid-August 1945, the Viet Minh came to power and on 2 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh announced the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), with its capital based in Hanoi. Within a few weeks tens of thousands of Chinese troops fanned out across the country, including Hanoi, to disarm the Japanese and maintain order. They brought with them non-communist Vietnamese nationalist parties, such as the Vietnamese Nationalist Party and the Alliance party of the Dong Minh Hoi, hostile to the Viet Minh and its hold on power. Against this backdrop a severe famine was on its way to killing some one million Vietnamese, filling the city with emaciated souls searching for food and the cadavers of those who died trying. It was in Hanoi the the DRV government led by president Ho Chi Minh operated until the outbreak of full-scale war on 19 December 1946 pushed it deep into the northern hills. In 1943, Hanoi’s population was about 120,000 though the famine must have increased the number greatly between 1944 and 1945.
Having moved to retake southern Vietnam since the outbreak of hostilities in Saigon on 23 September 1945, the French negotiated an accord with the Chinese in late February 1946 and the Accords of 6 March 1946 with the Vietnamese, allowing for the stationing of 15,000 French troops in northern Indochina, including Hanoi. With the withdrawal of the last Chinese troops in September 1946, tensions rapidly increased as French authorities led by Admiral Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu adopted a more aggressive policy towards the DRV and challenged its sovereignty in Haiphong and then in Hanoi, leading to the outbreak of war. However, in order to allow the government to make it to the countryside, the DRV high command decided to take a stand in Hanoi, giving rise to the first and only true urban battle of the Indochina conflict.
The task of fighting the French in Hanoi fell to the Capitol Regiment led by Vuong Thua Vu and a motley crew of militia forces. The government ordered the evacuation of the city and the barricading of streets in order to bog down the French. In all, some 2,000 militia men and women, including 200 children working as guides and scouts, stayed on in the city to fight for two months. The battle for the city turned out to be a violent one, forcing French troops to take the city street by street, often house by house. As in Haiphong a month earlier, colonel Jean Debès received authorization from General Jean Valluy to shell and bomb militia strongholds in the Hanoi old quarter. On 17 February, the capitol regiment withdrew from the city leaving much of it in rubble.
The destruction and continued insecurity were such that much of the civilian population remained reluctant to return. As late as 1948–1949, according to William Turley, the population of inner Hanoi may have still been as low as 10,000. During this time, the DRV created something of an “underground” city. Indeed, no sooner had the battle of Hanoi ended in February 1947 than the DRV police forces returned to the city to maintain an eye on the French, their military movements, and political actions. The security services were responsible for tracking down and on some occasions assassinating those Vietnamese who would collaborate with the French.
However, this did not stop people from returning to Hanoi from 1949–50, as the Bao Dai solution got off the ground and the growing French military presence gave rise to a boom in commercial, administrative, and service functions. By 1951, the estimated population of Hanoi numbered 217,000 of whom 80,000 lived in the inner city. The French and the State of Vietnam maintained their hold on the capital. From 1950, the police and the armed forces drove much of the DRV’s “underground city” out of the capital or into hiding. French armed forces controlled much of the Red River delta. And by defeating Vo Nguyen Giap during the battle of Vinh Yen in 1951, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny made it clear that the DRV would not be taking Hanoi from the French any time soon. Nor would the Viet Minh be able to encircle and starve the city into submission as Mao Zedong’s troops were often doing in China.
During the second half of the Indochina War, increased security, the surge in the French military presence, the growth of the Associated State of Vietnam’s administration, and the augmentation of the civilian population led to the development of small-scale industries and retailers. By the time the war ended in mid-1954, some 40,000 market stallkeepers, shop owners, peddelers and hawkers served an urban Hanoi population of 400,000. Part of this increase came from the countryside. As the war intensified in its violence from 1950, many rural families sent their loved ones to live with friends or relatives in the city. Moreover, as the DRV embarked upon a revolutionary agenda that shifted from national union to one based on class struggle many land owners and traders flooded into the capital city. Land reform and the violence accompanying it also sent thousands into Hanoi in 1953 and early 1954. While many of the Europeans left Hanoi for the south at the end of the conflict (around 2,000 Europeans resided in Hanoi following World War II), the overall population did not decline that noticeably. However, the war left the returning DRV authorities with a city of divided loyalities, some of whom welcomed the return of the nationalist government but many of whom feared its revolutionary agenda. The war also left the DRV authorities with 15,000 prostitutes and 19,000 abandoned or orphaned children. See also COLLABORATION; CROSSOVER; DESERTION.