The Geneva Conference (April 26 – July 20, 1954) was a conference which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to unify Vietnam and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina. The Soviet Union, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the People’s Republic of China were participants throughout the whole conference while different countries concerned with the two questions were also represented during the discussion of their respective questions, which included the countries that sent troops through the UN to the Korean war and the various countries that ended the First Indochina War between France and the Việt Minh. The part of the conference on the Korean question ended without adopting any declarations or proposals. Some participants and analysts blame the U.S. for having obstructed movements towards the unification of Korea as a Communist state. On Indochina, the conference produced a set of documents known as the Geneva Accords. These agreements separated Vietnam into two zones, a northern zone to be governed by the Viet Minh, and a southern zone to be governed by the State of Vietnam, then headed by former emperor Bảo Đại. A "Conference Final Declaration", issued by the British chairman of the conference, provided that a "general election" be held by July 1956 to create a unified Vietnamese state. Although presented as a consensus view, this document was not accepted by the delegates of either South Vietnam or the United States. In addition, three separate ceasefire accords, covering Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, were signed at the conference.

Ngô Đình Diệm ( listen; 3 January 1901 – 2 November 1963) was the first president of South Vietnam (1955–1963). In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a 1955 plebiscite that was widely considered fraudulent. A Roman Catholic, Diệm pursued biased and religiously oppressive policies against the Republic's Montagnard natives and its Buddhist majority, epitomized in Malcolm Browne's Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức in 1963.

Amid religious protests that garnered worldwide attention, Diệm lost the backing of his U.S. patrons and was assassinated, along with his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu by Nguyễn Văn Nhung, the aide of ARVN General Dương Văn Minh on 2 November 1963, during a coup d'état that deposed his government.

Diệm was born in Huế, the original capital of the Vietnamese Nguyễn Dynasty. His family originated in the central Vietnamese village of Phú Cẩm. Portuguese missionaries had converted his family to Roman Catholicism in the 17th century, so Diệm was given a saint's name at birth, following the custom of the Catholic Church. His full name was Jean Baptiste Ngô Đình Diệm. He would often claim that he had descended from a blue-blooded family of mandarins who were so revered that people believed that it was a great honour and good luck to be buried alongside his ancestors. Most historians dismiss this as false and believe that his family were of low rank until his father passed the imperial examinations.^{[citation needed]}

John Foster Dulles (February 25, 1888 – May 24, 1959) served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world. He advocated support of the French in their war against the Viet Minh in Indochina and it is widely believed that he refused to shake the hand of Zhou Enlai at the Geneva Conference in 1954. He also played a major role in the Central Intelligence Agency operation to overthrow the democratic Mossadegh government of Iran in 1953 (Operation Ajax) and the democratic Arbenz government of Guatemala in 1954 (Operation PBSUCCESS).

Born in Washington, D.C., he was one of five children and the eldest son born to Presbyterian minister Allen Macy Dulles and his wife Edith (Foster). His paternal grandfather, John Welsh Dulles, had been a Presbyterian missionary in India. He attended public schools in Watertown, New York. After graduating from Princeton University (Phi Beta Kappa, 1908), where he competed on the American Whig-Cliosophic Society debate team, and graduating from The George Washington University Law School, he joined the New York City law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, where he specialized in international law. He tried to join the United States Army during World War I but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Instead, Dulles received an Army commission as Major on the War Industries Board.

Bảo Đại (lit. "keeper of greatness", 22 October 1913 – 30 July 1997), born Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thụy (阮福永瑞), was the 13th and last emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, which is the last dynasty of Vietnam. From 1926 to 1945, he was king of Annam under French ‘protection’. During this period, Annam was a protectorate within French Indochina, covering the central two-thirds of the present-day Vietnam. Bảo Đại ascended the throne in 1932. The Japanese ousted the French in March 1945 and then ruled through Bảo Đại. At this time, he renamed his country “Vietnam”. He abdicated in August 1945 when Japan surrendered. He was the chief of state of the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam) from 1949 until 1955. Bảo Đại was criticized for being too closely associated with France and spending much of his time outside of Vietnam. Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm ousted him in a fraudulent referendum vote in 1955.

Bảo Đại was born Prince Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thụy in the Palace of Doan-Trang-Vien, part of the compound of the Purple Forbidden City in Huế, the capital of Vietnam. He later was given the name Nguyễn Vĩnh Thụy. His father was King Khải Định of Annam. His mother was the king's second wife, Tu Cung, who was renamed Doan Huy upon her 1913 marriage. She held various titles over the years that indicated her advancing rank as a favored consort until she eventually became Empress Dowager in 1933, with style of Her Imperial Majesty added in 1945. Vietnam had been ruled from Huế by the Nguyễn Dynasty since 1802. The French government, which took control of the region in the late 19th century, split Vietnam into three areas: the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin and the colony of Cochinchina. The Nguyễn Dynasty was given nominal rule of Annam.^{[citation needed]}

Dai De (simplified Chinese: 戴德; pinyin: Dài Dé), also known as Da Dai, (simplified Chinese: 大戴; literally: "Big Dai"), birth and death unknown, was a Confucian scholar of the Former Han Dynasty. He was active during the reign of Emperor Yuan of Han (48–33 BC).

He was the son of Dai Ren (戴仁) and the elder brother of Dai Sheng. He was a native of Liang (now Shangqiu, Henan) and a founder of the Former Han Dynasty Jinwen Jingxue (今文经学, School of Confucianism).

He helped compile the Book of Rites (礼记), editing the 214 books that made it up in the 1st century AD down to 85. His brother Dai Sheng further reduced it to 46, to which were added three books, giving the 49 that have come down to us today. Dai De's version of the Rites is known as 大戴礼记.