Jean Lacouture | |
|---|---|
 Jean Lacouture in 2010 | |
| Born | 9 June 1921 |
| Died | 16 July 2015 (aged 94) Roussillon, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Journalist, historian |
Jean Lacouture (9 June 1921 – 16 July 2015) was a journalist, historian and author. He was particularly famous for his biographies. [1]
Jean Lacouture was born in Bordeaux, France. He began his career in journalism in 1950 in Combat as diplomatic redactor. He joined Le Monde in 1951. In 1953, he worked in Cairo for France Soir , before returning to Le Monde as director for the overseas services, and grand reporter (one of the highest titles in French journalism) until 1975.
Politically engaged on the Left, Lacouture supported decolonisation, and Mitterrand from 1981. He worked for the Nouvel Observateur , and L'Histoire . He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film about the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig .
Lacouture was also director for publication at Seuil, one of the main French publishers, from 1961 to 1982, and professor at the IEP of Paris between 1969 and 1972.
He was mainly known to the public because of his biographies, including the lives of Ho Chi Minh, Nasser, Léon Blum, De Gaulle, François Mauriac, Pierre Mendès France, Mitterrand, Montesquieu, Montaigne, Malraux, Germaine Tillion, Champollion, Jacques Rivière, Stendhal and Kennedy.
A dedicated music lover, Lacouture was also president of a society of devotees of Georges Bizet. In 2015 he died in Roussillon, France. [2]
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François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand was President of France, serving under that position from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he was the first left-wing politician to assume the presidency under the Fifth Republic.
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French army officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to restore democracy in France. In 1958, he came out of retirement when appointed President of the Council of Ministers by President René Coty. He rewrote the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position to which he was reelected in 1965 and held until his resignation in 1969.
Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, is the largest city in Vietnam, situated in the southeastern region. The city surrounds the Saigon River and covers about 2,061 km2 (796 sq mi). The city was the capital of South Vietnam until the end of the Vietnam War. In 1976, the government of reunified Vietnam renamed Saigon in honour of Hồ Chí Minh, who was Chairman and founder of the Labours' Party of Vietnam.
Hồ Chí Minh, commonly known as Bác Hồ or simply known as Bác, also known as Hồ Chủ tịch, Nguyễn Tất Thành, Nguyễn Ái Quốc, Người cha già của dân tộc, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as Prime Minister of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1955 and as President from 1945 until his death in 1969. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, he served as Chairman and First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam.
The First Indochina War began in French Indochina on December 19, 1946, and lasted until July 20, 1954. Fighting between French forces and their Việt Minh opponents in the south dated from September 1945. The conflict pitted a range of forces, including the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps, led by the government of France and supported by the former emperor Bảo Đại's Vietnamese National Army against the People's Army of Vietnam and Việt Minh, led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.
The French Fourth Republic was the republican government of France from 27 October 1946 to 4 October 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution. It was in many ways a revival of the Third Republic that was in place from 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War to 1940 during World War II, and suffered many of the same problems. France adopted the constitution of the Fourth Republic on 13 October 1946.
Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France, known as PMF, was a French politician who served as President of the Council of Ministers for eight months from 1954 to 1955. He represented the Radical Party, and his government had the support of a coalition of gaullists (RPF), moderate socialists (UDSR), christian democrats (MRP) and the liberal-conservative CNIP. His main priority was ending the war in Indochina, which had already cost 92,000 dead, 114,000 wounded and 28,000 captured on the French side. Public opinion polls showed that, in February 1954, only 7% of the French people wanted to continue the fight to regain Indochina out of the hands of the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh movement. At the Geneva Conference of 1954 he negotiated a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the seventeenth parallel, and allowed him to pull out all French forces. The United States then provided large-scale financial, military and economic support to South Vietnam.
The August Revolution, also known as the August General Uprising, was a revolution launched by Việt Minh against the Empire of Vietnam and the Empire of Japan in the later half of August 1945. The Viet Minh Front, led by communists, was created in 1941 and designed to appeal to a wider population than the Indochinese Communist Party could command.
Events from the year 1945 in France.
Events from the year 1946 in France.
The city now known as Ho Chi Minh City has gone by several different names during its history, reflecting settlement by different ethnic, cultural and political groups. Originally known as Prey Nôkôr while a part of the Khmer Empire, it came to be dubbed Sài Gòn informally by Vietnamese settlers fleeing the Trịnh–Nguyễn War to the north. In time, control of the city and the area passed to the Vietnamese, who gave the city the name of Gia Định. This name remained until the time of French conquest in the 1860s, when the occupying force adopted the name Saïgon for the city, a westernized form of the traditional Vietnamese name. The current name was given after the Fall of Saigon in 1975, and honors Hồ Chí Minh, the first leader of North Vietnam. Even today, however, the informal name of Sài Gòn remains in daily speech both domestically and internationally, especially among the Vietnamese diaspora and local southern Vietnamese. Both the names Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City appear on the official seal (logo) of the city.
On December 19, 1946, Viet Minh soldiers detonated explosives in Hanoi, and the ensuing battle, known as the Battle of Hanoi marked the opening salvo of the First Indochina War.
Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai was a Vietnamese revolutionary and a leader of the Indochinese Communist Party during the 1930s.
Marius Moutet was a French Socialist diplomat and colonial adviser. An expert in colonial issues, he served as Minister of the Colonies for four terms in the 1930s and 1940s and was president of the General council of the Drôme department after the war until 1951. He was sympathetic to Ho Chi Minh and advocated the independence of Vietnam. At the age of 92, Moutet was the oldest member of the Senate of France and the French Assembly.
Claude Dulong-Sainteny or Marguerite-Claude Badalo-Dulong or Claude Dulong was a French historian.
Paul Henri Romuald Ély was a French General and former Chief of the Defence Staff.
1940—1946 in French Indochina focuses on events that happened in French Indochina during and after World War II and which influenced the eventual decision for military intervention by the United States in the Vietnam War. French Indochina in the 1940s was divided into five protectorates: Cambodia, Laos, Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina. The latter three made up Vietnam. In 1940, the French controlled 23 million Vietnamese with 12,000 French soldiers, about 40,000 Vietnamese soldiers, and the Sûreté, a powerful police force. At that time, the U.S. had little interest in Vietnam or French Indochina as a whole. Fewer than 100 Americans, mostly missionaries, lived in Vietnam and U.S. government representation consisted of one consul resident in Saigon.
The Haiphong Incident or the Haiphong Massacre occurred on November 23, 1946, when the French cruiser Suffren and several avisos bombarded the Vietnamese coastal city of Haiphong, killing some 6,000 Vietnamese people. The incident, also known as the Shelling of Haiphong, is thought of as the first armed clash in a series of events that would lead to the Battle of Hanoi on December 19, 1946, and with it the official outbreak of the First Indochina War.
Eric Rouleau was a journalist, writer, and diplomat. He served as French ambassador to Tunisia from 1985 to 1986, and to Turkey from 1988 to 1991.
The Consulate-General of France in Ho Chi Minh City is a diplomatic mission of France to Vietnam. Located in Ho Chi Minh City, it previously served as an official residence for French leaders (1872-1945), the home of the French High Commissioner (1945-1954) and the embassy to South Vietnam. As a consulate, it opened in 2003. It has been noted for its historical architecture and artifacts.
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