Republic of Vietnam

South Vietnam is the commonly used name for the former Vietnamese state that existed from 1954 to 1976 in the portion of Vietnam that lay south of the 17th parallel. North Vietnam was situated to the north of the 17th parallel. The division of Vietnam occurred during the Geneva Conference, after the Viet Minh fought to end almost 100 years of French rule in Indochina.

South Vietnam, officially the State of Vietnam, (Vietnamese: Quốc gia Việt Nam) from 1954 to 1955, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), (Vietnamese: Việt Nam Cộng Hòa) from 1955 to 1975, and the Republic of South Vietnam (Vietnamese: Cộng Hòa Miền Nam Việt Nam) from 1975 to 1976, was a country that existed from 1954 to 1975 in the territory of Vietnam that lay south of the 17th parallel.

Unlike the other French possessions in Indochina (Annam, Tonkin, Cambodia and Laos), which were nominally protectorates, the southern part of Vietnam was the colony of Cochin-China, which had its capital at Saigon. As a colony it occupied a different legal position from the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin; it had been annexed to France in 1862, and even killed a deputy to the French National Assembly. French colonial interests were thus stronger in Cochin-China than in other parts of French Indochina. As such, during the First Indochina War the French government initially attempted to keep the status of Cochin-China separate from that of the rest of Vietnam, even going so far as constituting it an independent republic within the Indochinese Federation in 1946, but this proved unacceptable to the Viet Minh and in 1949 Cochin-China was eventually reunited with the other parts of Vietnam (Annam and Tonkin).

The State of Vietnam was created through co-operation between anti-communist Vietnamese and the French government on June 14, 1949 during the First Indochina War, and the Emperor Bao Dai took up the position of Chief of State (Quoc Truong). This was known as the 'Bao Dai Solution', and was an attempt by the French to grant partial independence to Vietnam, while still retaining substantial control over the country, and keeping it from communist rule. Such a formulation was rejected by the communist Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, who were fighting the French for full independence for Vietnam.

In 1954 it was determined by the Geneva Conference that the State of Vietnam would rule the territory of Vietnam south of the 17th parallel, of which the former colony of Cochin-China formed the heartland, pending unification on the basis of supervised elections (see Geneva Conference (1954)) in 1956. The elections and unification did not take place as planned (see below). When the territory was divided in this way, approximately 800,000 to 1 million North Vietnamese, mainly Vietnamese Roman Catholics, fled south due to the perceived danger of religious persecution in the North. The Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed in Saigon by Ngô Ðình Diệm on October 22, 1955, after the Emperor Bảo Ðại was deposed.