The controversial French admiral named by General Charles de Gaulle on 16 August 1945 to serve as High Commissioner for Indochina. Thierry d’Argenlieu served in the French Navy during World War I. In 1920, he entered the Carmelite order as a friar until he joined Free French forces under Charles de Gaulle in 1940. A devout Gaullist and Catholic, Thierry d’Argenlieu became the Free French high commissioner of the French Pacific in 1941, head of French naval forces in 1943, and then the new high commissioner to Indochina after the Japanese coup de force of 9 March 1945. He arrived in Indochina on 31 October 1945 and, on 6 June 1946, he attained the rank of full admiral.
Thierry d’Argenlieu vigorously applied de Gaulle’s instructions to retake and rebuild colonial Indochina piece by piece. He was successful in achieving accords with Lao and Cambodians allowing the French to return to western Indochina. Negotiations with the Vietnamese were much more difficult, especially as he adopted a more aggressive policy towards the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) following the Accords of 6 March 1946. While he accepted the necessity of this accord, Thierry d’Argenlieu objected to the idea that the French would have to begin withdrawing their army within five years and that a referendum would be held to determine whether Cochinchina would be unified with the rest of “Vietnam”, that is the DRV. At a deeper level, Thierry d’Argenlieu found it difficult to reconcile his determination to create a federal Indochinese colonial state based on Cochinchina with the DRV’s national claim to all of eastern Indochina – meaning colonial Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina.
From April, he began to adopt policies that effectively sought to roll back the sovereignty of the DRV in favor of that of the Indochinese Federation. To that end, on 1 June 1946, as Ho Chi Minh was visiting France and a DRV delegation was preparing to resume negotiations with the French in Fontainebleau, Thierry d’Argenlieu announced the creation of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Cochinchina. For the high commissioner, Cochinchina had to remain a separate “free state” within the federation, not a regional part of “Vietnam”. He supported the violent take-over of Lang Son and Haiphong in November 1946, pushing the DRV into a corner as he effectively assumed control of French policy towards Indochina. Ho Chi Minh hoped that the imminent creation of a new socialist government led by Léon Blum – known to be keen on reaching a negotiated solution to the Franco-Vietnamese dispute – would allow Paris to regain the reins on its Indochinese policy and its high commissioner. Instead Thierry d’Argenlieu successfully blocked Ho Chi Minh’s last-minute attempts to contact Blum to head off war. On 19 December 1946, with their backs against the wall, the Vietnamese lashed out at the French forces, setting off full-scale war. The Paul Ramadier government recalled Thierry d’Argenlieu and relieved him of his position on 4 March 1947; but it did little to change policy.
Significantly, “containing” Vietnamese communism was not the major concern for Thierry d’Argenlieu in his brinksmanship towards the DRV in 1946; regaining France’s colonial control over Indochina as instructed by de Gaulle was. In January 1947, he circulated internal orders forbidding the use of the term “Vietnam”. After leaving his position in Indochina, Thierry d’Argenlieu returned to the religious life in Avon. General Charles de Gaulle attended his funeral in 1964.