<P> During World War II, Japan invaded Indochina in 1940, keeping the Vichy French colonial administration in place as a puppet . In 1941 Nguyễn Ái Quốc, now known as Hồ Chí Minh, arrived in northern Vietnam to form the Việt Minh Front, and it was supposed to be an umbrella group for all parties fighting for Vietnam's independence, but was dominated by the Communist Party . The Việt Minh had a modest armed force and during the war worked with the American Office of Strategic Services to collect intelligence on the Japanese . A famine broke out in 1944--45 . Japan's defeat by World War II Allies created a power vacuum for Vietnamese nationalists of all parties to seize power in August 1945, forcing Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate and ending the Nguyễn dynasty . Their initial success in staging uprisings and in seizing control of most of the country by September 1945 was partially undone, however, by the return of the French a few months later . </P> <P> In September 1945, Hồ Chí Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and held the position of chairman (Chủ Tịch). Communist rule was cut short, however, by nationalist Chinese and British occupation forces whose presence tended to support the Communist Party's political opponents . In 1946, Vietnam had its first National Assembly election (won by the Viet Minh in central and northern Vietnam), which drafted the first constitution, but the situation was still precarious: the French tried to regain power by force; some Cochinchinese politicians formed a seceding government the Republic of Cochinchina (Cộng hòa Nam Kỳ) while the non-Communist and Communist forces were engaging each other in sporadic battle . Stalinists purged Trotskyists . Religious sects and resistance groups formed their own militias . The Communists eventually suppressed all non-Communist parties but failed to secure a peace deal with France . </P> <P> Full - scale war broke out between the Việt Minh and France in late 1946 and the First Indochina War officially began . Realizing that colonialism was coming to an end worldwide, France decided to bring former emperor Bảo Đại back to power, as a political alternative to Ho Chi Minh . A Provisional Central Government was formed in 1948, reuniting Annam and Tonkin, but the complete reunification of Vietnam was delayed for a year because of the problems posed by Cochinchina's legal status . In July 1949, the State of Vietnam was officially proclaimed, as a semi-independent country within the French Union, with Bảo Đại as Head of State . France was finally persuaded to relinquish its colonies in Indochina in 1954 when Viet Minh forces defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu . The 1954 Geneva Conference left Vietnam a divided nation, with Hồ Chí Minh's communist DRV government ruling the North from Hanoi and Ngô Đình Diệm's Republic of Vietnam, supported by the United States, ruling the South from Saigon . Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which resulted in significant political oppression . During the land reform, testimony from North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution for every 160 village residents, which extrapolated nationwide would indicate nearly 100,000 executions . Because the campaign was concentrated mainly in the Red River Delta area, a lower estimate of 50,000 executions became widely accepted by scholars at the time . However, declassified documents from the Vietnamese and Hungarian archives indicate that the number of executions was much lower than reported at the time, although likely greater than 13,500 . In the South, Diem went about crushing political and religious opposition, imprisoning or killing tens of thousands . </P> <P> Along with the split between northern and southern Vietnam in geographical territory came the divergence in their distinctive choices for institutional political structure . Northern Vietnam (Dai Viet) opted for a centralized bureaucratic regime while the southern is based on a patron - client mechanism heavily relied on personalized rule . During this period, due to this structural difference, the north and south revealed different patterns in their economic activities, the long - term effect of which still persist up to today . Citizens that have previously lived in the bureaucratic state are more likely to have higher household consumption and get more engaged in civic activities; and the state itself tends to have stronger fiscal capacity for taxation inherited from the previous institution . </P>

Who controlled the territory now known as vietnam prior to 1954