France's Deluded Quest for Allies

SAFEGUARDING TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY AND THE BALANCE OF POWER IN EAST ASIA, 1931–1945

MARIANNE BASTID-BRUGUIERE

A review of French involvement in East Asia during World War II does not recast existing master narratives of the conflict in that area, viewed from China, Japan, or the United States. It can, however, illuminate how far the disappearance of France in the war in East Asia was the outcome of its 1940 defeat in Europe and its subsequent neutrality. And it does not obscure the lingering weight of French Indochina in shaping military and strategic issues in the confrontation with Japanese expansionism.

The French stakes in East Asia were seriously depleted by the First World War. The massive destruction and death toll at home, the heavy war debts, and the subsequent economic decline meant that French investment and power in the area, second only to Britain before 1914, fell. France's main stronghold in East Asia was Indochina, with a population of 20 million; in 1940, 46 percent of all French private assets in its colonial empire were concentrated there. Its assets in China and Japan, though diversified and not insignificant, were of direct concern only to a small lobby within the establishment, only some of whose members belonged to the larger coalition of interests involved in Indochina. In Korea, Thailand, and other parts of Southeast Asia, its vested interests were limited and linked to its nationals in Catholic missions and to the security of Indochina.

The fact that France's international role in East Asia rested primarily on its sovereignty over Indochina, which its military forces could not defend against any major aggression, induced France to base its policy in East Asia on safeguarding territorial sovereignty and the balance of power as conceived by the 1922 Washington conference. Though aware that Japanese expansionism threatened French dominion over Indochina, the French government was unable to win support for a consistent international stand against Japan after the coup in Manchuria in September 1931 (the Mukden Incident). It therefore decided after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 to set aside French prejudice against the Nationalist government and to provide direct help to China by allowing arms and supplies to pass through Indochina en route to southern China. The Japanese took advantage of the French military collapse in Europe to impose on Indochina demands for logistical support for Japan and for cutting aid to China. In the face of a flat refusal of help from Britain and the United States, the Indochina authorities and the home government chose accommodation with Japan while staying on speaking terms with China and impeding as far as possible Japanese attacks on southern China from Indochina. This uneasy game lasted even after Chiang Kai-shek broke off relations with Vichy in August 1943. It ended only with the Japanese takeover of Indochina on March 9, 1945. Since 1941, local supporters of the Free French, led by General de Gaulle, had been trying desperately to get recognition and arms from China and its allies for their own resistance against the Japanese. De Gaulle's first emissaries arrived in Chongqing in December 1941. Only after Roosevelt had agreed to recognize de Gaulle's provisional government of the republic on October 23, 1944, did Chongqing take this step.

Neither in East Asia nor in Europe were the French able to impress any aspect of France's East Asian agenda on the minds of the Allies. In Indochina, the Japanese surrendered to the Chinese and British without a French representative present. The French chargé d'affaires was not invited to attend the Japanese capitulation in Beiping on September 14, although General Leclerc attended the formal surrender of Japan on board the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945.

The eclipse of French political power in East Asia after June 1940 can hardly be seen as enhancing the relative status of any of the Western Allies. The fact that none of the Allies came to the rescue of France at the end of the war suggests that such an eclipse suited them. The alternative options for a peace settlement embraced by the French were brushed aside. When, belatedly, in 1946, the British government and Ho Chi Minh gave them some thought, time had passed, and opportunities had been lost.

There were three different stages in the French shadow-play in East Asia. From 1931 to June 1940, the main themes ran from collective conciliation to a single partnership with China. June 1940 ushered in the confusion over Indochina's becoming a sanctuary. The last phase, from June to September 1945, saw the helpless abandonment of what the French had once called "the pearl of empire."

From the start, the French government did not have the slightest doubt about Japanese responsibility for the Mukden Incident. Reports of the local French consul and the French minister in Nanjing stated that although the coup had been engineered by Kwantung officers, without the knowledge or direct orders from the Japanese general staff or government, many in these two bodies endorsed it. Wilden, the French minister in Beiping, wrote that this affair was, for the Japanese military, "a fuse that would explode the gunpowder, long prepared." But he recommended extreme caution to the two officers he sent to Manchuria to gather intelligence, stressing that "it is important that neither China nor Japan get the impression that we favor one or the other side."

In the view of the French government, the best response was to bring into play the principle of collective security that had so far maintained peace in Europe. Japan had accepted the principle by signing the Briand-Kellogg Pact in August 1928. With the help...