Economy of Vietnam
Until the French colonization in the mid-19th century, Vietnam's economy had been mostly agrarian, subsistence-based and village-oriented. French colonizers, however, deliberately developed the regions differently as the French needed raw materials and a market for French manufactured goods, designating the South for agricultural production as it was better suited for agriculture, and the North for manufacturing as it was naturally wealthy in mineral resources. Though the plan exaggerated regional divisions, the development of exports—coal from the North, rice from the South—and the importation of French manufactured goods stimulated domestic commerce.
CIA activities in Vietnam
The people of Vietnam were completely against the return of the French in Vietnam. The Vietnamese experienced a lot of abuses by the French during their colonization of Vietnam in the mid 19th century. The people of North Vietnam especially rallied around revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh and looked to him to gain at long last, their independence.