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Black Flags in Vietnam (1968) examines nineteenth-century conflict between China, Vietnam and France. For the first thousand years of its history, Vietnam had been an integral part of China, and during subsequent centuries of self-rule had acknowledged Chinese suzerainty. In the 1850s, France, seeking a base for the political and commercial penetration of southern China, occupied Saigon and the Mekong Delta, hoping to navigate the river. This plan failed, and they turned instead to the Red River, which flows from China through northern Vietnam to Hanoi and the sea. China, weakened by years of domestic strife, seemed in no position to protect her vassal. Then, by a strange quirk of fortune, a band of Chinese freebooters, the Black Flags, who had crossed into Vietnam in search of pillage, defeated two French expeditions. In 1884, Peking went to war.