This book examines the history of communist Indochina, from the foundation of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1929-30 to the end of the 1970s. It explores the impact of the Japanese invasion of Indochina in 1940, and the subsequent relationship between the Japanese occupiers and the Vichy French colonial regime. It considers why, following the Japanese surrender, the cause of Vietnamese independence was championed by the Communist-led Viet Minh movement headed by Ho Chi Minh, culminating in the August Revolution and the Viet Minh seizure of power, and analyses the record of the Viet Minh Pr.