DIEN BIEN PHU: Navarre and Giap
First Indochina War
Northwestern Tonkin

This paper uses a quote from Robert Ardrey's Territorial Imperative as a point of departure:

“Many a physicist or chemist, deficient not at all in the humanitarian virtues, has in our time placed at the disposal of the machinery of war the most sophisticated attainments of his discipline. All apparent conscience, all cultural instruction and religious teaching concerning the immorality of killing vanish before the higher command to defend his country and the scientist makes available to the art of murder the most intricate secrets of his trade. In the language of this inquiry we should say that he fills out from the particularity of his learning the generality of that open instinct, the territorial imperative; and, having done so, he will act according to the finished pattern with the predictability of a Capricorn beetle.”1

Leading up to this point, Ardrey discussed the notion of territory, behavior, instinct and the brain, exemplifying these notions through descriptions of animal and human behaviors. As an example, Ardrey posed the question: “Do we think because we have a brain or do we have a brain because we think?” In attempts to explore this question and link territory to behavior, behavior to the brain and juxtapose animals to humans, Ardrey describes semblances of animal and human behaviors linked to territory and space. In the above quote, Ardrey details the height of human culture being susceptible to territorial pressures and resorting to base behaviors such as warfare and self-destruction. He questions current predilections that human behaviors are far and beyond that of animal behaviors and imperatives.2


Dwelling on this question, though, could lead to rather tangent arguments: whether we are driven by the same imperatives as animals or not will not be the main concern in this essay - because it implies that there is a teleogical progression towards the human as the ultimate evolutionary end or at the very least, the latest and greatest incarnation of all God's creations.3 Instead, a further examination of Ardrey’ quote will be the focus, discussing only humans and their relation to space and territory. To this end, the essay will propose to examine the battle of Dien Bien Phu (DBP) during the First Indochina War between the French and Vietnamese in the autumn of 1953 to the summer of 1954. It will attempt to situate the territorial imperative within the tactics, environmental perceptions and spatial occupation of the two leading actors in this battle: General Henri Navarre of the French Expeditionary Corps (FEC) and specifically through the writings of General Vo Nguyen Giap of the Viet Minh. In doing so, the essay will hit other notions Ardrey mentioned such as territorial defense and proprietorship of territory. To supplement Ardrey’s framework and elucidate the difference between Navarre and Giap, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s (D&G) rhizomic organizational and perception model in their A Thousand Plateaus will overlay the discussion: anent lightly and to the best of my abilities. The point of the essay is not to compare the battle to Ardrey’s territorial imperative or D&G’s rhizome but interpret the battle through these two lenses.


A timeline has been provided to contextualize the battle of DBP within the Vietnam War so descriptions of it will be limited. Maps of the battle have been scanned from several of Giap's writings as visual supplements to the sparse and amateur descriptions in this essay.


The first section will characterize and situate Navarre and Giap within their respective contexts. The second section will spatialize the battle in hopes of teasing out positionalites towards territory, space and occupational tendencies with an attempt to link Ardrey and D&G through a discussion of the whole-to-part and biological morality.4