France was a country which controlled Vietnam prior to the Vietnam War as their protectorate.
Explanation:
After WWII, Vietnam won independence but France still controlled the country until Nguyễn Tất Thành took over in 1954. In 1959, North Vietnam launched and forced a system to reunify the country, which pointed to an outbreak of the American War in Vietnam in the early 1960s. It was a close result of the First Indochina War (1946–1954) within France, which maintained Vietnam as a colony, and the communist forces .In 1973 a “third” Vietnam war began a continuation, actually within North and South Vietnam but without significant U.S. preoccupation.