Mar

24

French Colonial Diaspora (1862-1954)

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French Colonial Diaspora (1862-1954)

Before French expansion, “disasters that come flying on the wind” have been the common denominator among Vietnamese, peasants and scholars alike.  That is, a chord that reverberates the Vietnamese collective psyche is one of a people being “wronged,” punished “for crimes or sins they are not aware they have committed.”[1] 

By way of the Anglo-French rivalry in the 19th century, French aggrandizement in Vietnam was an attempt to preserve her prestige and to prevent another decline of French national power, after France’s defeat by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War.  For Vietnamese, French colonization of Vietnam was an accident of history - another misfortunate that they had to endure and eventually overcome.

Yet, it has been said that the French territorial conquest of Vietnam in the 1860s alone “may well have been less significant than the schisms in Vietnamese society that preceded it and developed along with it.”[2]

The Fragile Unity under the Early Nguyen Emperors (1800-1859)

When the country was reunified in 1802 after centuries of disunity, its new ruler, Nguyen Anh, sought to refashion the concept of unity by changing his name to Gia Long.  This was to emphasize geographical unity – “Gia” represents the newly established territory of Gia Dinh (Saigon), while ‘Long” represents Thang Long (Hanoi), which was the capital of Dai Viet under the Le dynasty (1428-1524) both before the separation of “two Dai Viets” under the overlordships of Trinh and Nguyen (1600-1788) as well as the short-lived territorial unification under the Tay Son brothers (1788-1801).
 
Nguyen Anh also sought to rename the newly unified country as Nam Viet (Nan Yueh), which was the name of a kingdom under Emperor Chao T’o who had defied the Han rulers and, therefore, had come to symbolize the antiquity and political equality of the Vietnamese state with that of China.  Not surprisingly, the Chinese emperor rejected Nguyen Anh’s request of the name change, because it could conjecture territorial ambitions since Chao T’o’s Nam Viet had included two Chinese provinces.  It was, nevertheless, resolved by simply reversing the order of the two words into: Viet Nam.
 
These symbolic measures were needed to combat the centrifugal trends, including the various provincial socioeconomic discontents of the peasantry and the separate geopolitical entities, though in practice Nguyen Anh sought to address the above situation through ruling the country as three different regions.   On the one hand, “regionalism” was probably very real, but it did not necessarily connote or amount to “separatism” on the other.  
 
As noted by Michael Cotter, it cannot be assumed that “Vietnamese from one region could easily move into another region, for differences in psychological disposition, religious beliefs, and dietary habits cause tensions and problems of adjustment.”[3]  However, at the same time, this fact should not be overemphasized since there were key characteristics from north to south that have been maintained through the village-oriented society, a common family system, and a common memory of folk tales and folk heroes.[4]  Also of significance is the Vietnamese language, of which is fairly standard.  So that there was no significant obstacle to the rapid growth and strength of “quoc ngu” (the Vietnamese writing system based on the roman alphabet) and its popularization throughout Vietnam by the turn of the 20th century.[5]
 
Perhaps, more accurately, the period preceding the Nguyen dynasty lacked significant “technically advanced, culturally unifying forces.”[6]  However, under the early Nguyen rulers, the central government in Hue strived to integrate the region more closely to the center and implemented policies in attempts at peacefully horizontal integration.[7]  Indeed, the Nguyen dynasty tried to bridge the distance between regions and among social strata “through revitalization of a national school system that appeared to reward merit, regardless of class origins (this rarely was the case),” promoting both horizontal and vertical dimensions of national integration, although less than entirely successful.[8] 
 
On the one hand, the power of the Nguyen court in Hue was enhanced, in part by Gia Long’s alliance with the western individuals who served for a time as political advisors, engineers, and soldiers of fortune.   Artistic achievements of the imperial city of Hue were admired by foreign visitors, expressing great admiration of the beauty and splendor of the new capital as well as new provincial towns.[9]  In addition, the Nguyen bureaucracy was probably superior to any found in neighboring societies.  Its effectiveness, in part, was due to the newly established communication system. For example, in the early 1800s, the officially specified rates of travel were 13 days between Saigon and Hue and five days between Hanoi and Hue.[10] 
 
Despite these achievements, there were “sighs and grievances” and compulsory labor services that weighed heavily upon the peasants, who were conscripted to construct irrigation canals, city walls, roads, bridges, walls, and new palaces.[11]  That is, such achievements were not accompanied by an adequate standard of living or security for its villagers.[12]  By some accounts, there had been more than 100 or so peasant uprisings during Gia Long’s rule.  
 
But, at least for particularly groups such as the old northern scholarly class, Gia Long depended on them to staff the bureaucracy and its clients.  By 1807, Gia Long had revived the civil service examination system, which permitted many families to ride above the political storms of the period and to maintain a continuity of influence and power.[13]  Moreover, under emperor Minh Mang (1820-1840), “cultivation,” while included eradicating “contaminated ethics” and “lazy literati,” was most seriously focused on persuading southerners to accept the central government and royal authority.[14]
 
This was done through the expansion of education in the villages and provincial schools throughout the southern region.[15]  As a result, a newly southern scholar class emerged, consisting of those who took the state examination, and who later rose to become local opinion leaders that enabled them “to mobilize their people under the banner of loyalty to the king when the French later advanced on southern Vietnam.”[16]
 
The “unity,” though indeed fragile, was created during the reign of the independent Nguyen rulers (1802-1862).  Importantly, the “fragile unity” was to become “an important symbol and force in Vietnamese politics after French colonialists had administratively dismembered the country.”[17]
 
Yet, while in restoring and reunifying the “dismembered country” from French colonial rule and becoming masters of their fate, Vietnamese also had to grapple with the “old but new” schisms in Vietnamese society that developed as a result of French rule.  So much so that Vietnamese had to wrestle among themselves about “what kind of life are they going to seek, what type of society are they capable of creating?[18]
 
Vietnamese Approaches to Salvation: The Heritage of The Tale of Kieu

Without question, no other literary work speaks more resoundingly of the Vietnamese human conditions across time and space than that of Nguyen Du’s The Tale of Kieu.  As translated by Huynh Sanh Thong, the themes in The Tale of Kieu of injustice and wronged innocence that have “come flying on the wind” on the Vietnamese people refer to “misfortunates wreaked on men by more powerful men, who impose their arbitrary will.”[19]   
 
There is strong assumption that Nguyen Du “saw himself as a political Kieu,” or as a parable to the main character, Vuong Thuy Kieu. Nguyen Du, whose family was impeccably associated with the Le dynasty (1427-1788), was forced in becoming an “impoverished backwoods scholar” when the Le dynasty was destroyed by and was replaced with a whirlpool of unstable, promiscuous political affiliations of Tay Son brothers.[20]  
 
Nguyen Du refused to serve the Tay Son, demonstrating his faithfulness to the concepts of Confucius – be loyal to your king no matter what.   However, in the last two decades of his life (1800-1820), Nguyen Du considered, entered into, and practiced an unenthusiastic collaboration with the new Nguyen dynasty.  Nguyen Du, along with others of the northern scholar class, decided to serve the new dynasty, since the Nguyen dynasty had not directly caused the downfall of their deeply mourned Le monarchy.[21]  As speculated by Alexander Woodside, their cooperation with the new dynasty, in fact, concealed “an inner havoc of melancholy self-discrimination, resentment of the misfortunes of the past, and doubts about the future.”[22] By one account, Emperor Minh Mang was reported to have said to Nguyen Du:
 
The Government employs men selected solely for their ability, without discriminating between Northerners and Southerners. You know that I am well-disposed of you: but a man who has reached the rank of Deputy Minister, if he is to do his job properly, should express his views, and not by perpetually hesitant and say nothing but ‘Quite so.’[23]
 
As surmised, if Nguyen Du’s reluctant service to the Nguyen was of convenience and one that was superimposed upon his memory of a true loyalty buried in the past, the reports that he was “obsequious to his superiors and seemed downcast and unhappy”[24] were the result of his personal agonies who had to come to terms with a cankered world of compromises.[25]  
 
That is, his loyalty to shield his family from harm and poverty forced him to venture into a “foreign” court that attempted his loyalty of and conviction for his beloved Le emperors.  Like many of his generation of northern/upper-class scholars, Nguyen Du probably felt that his personal morality, political obligation, personal conduct as a scholar official were comprised, which may properly called “prostitution.”  And, perhaps, because of ruthlessness of the young and insecure Nguyen dynasty to crush any sign of insubordination, he could not change his world and had to find comfort from a mixture of the popular belief in Heaven’s will and the Buddhist concept of fate:
 

Heaven appoints each human to a place.
If doomed to roll in dust, we’ll roll in dust;
we’ll sit on high when destined for high seats.
Does Heaven ever favor anyone,
bestowing both rare talent and good luck?
In talent and disaster form a pair.
Our karma we must carry as out lot—
let’s stop decrying Heaven’s whims and quirks.
Inside ourselves there lies the root of good:
the heart outweighs all talents on this earth.[26]

Indeed, his agonies, secret wishes, and dreams were channeled through the poetic story of Kieu in which they could be expressed, tested, and resolved. Wherein, various characters in the story depict the weaknesses as well as the strengths in the questing for salvation or atonement:

  • Vuong Thuy Kieu: personifies a true daughter who chooses filial piety over love, which forces her to be a whore but who attains personal salvation because of her golden heart, passively but consistently resisting and reconciling injustice and oppression.
  • Ma Giam Sinh: the scholar turned pimp who would “make his wife a whore,” and who, when caught between profit and lust, cheats and lies to have both.
  • Thuc Ky Tam, a bright young, well-intended gentleman who lacks a strong will and whose “wait-and-see attitude” causes the one who loves him to suffer.
  • Ms. Hoan: a jealous and ferocious wife who is able to present a friendly front, but when it comes time to defend her home she would give hell to any rival.
  • Tu Hai: embodies the hero who takes the law into his own hands to break the evil system, righting the wrongs and rewarding virtues.
  • Kim Trong: a noble who is Kieu’s first love but who had to temporarily leave far away, swearing to stay heart to heart and later accepting that a man can make a whore his wife in which, as fate would have it, he reunites with Kieu in (unconsummated) wedlock.

Ultimately, the legacy of Nguyen Du’s poetic story of Kieu is its ability to transcend, by accidents of history, the personal morality and political obligation to that of the national morality and political obligation. 
 
That is, after 1858, when the Nguyen dynasty was politically and militarily forced to cede three southern provinces (including Saigon) to the colonial French empire, The Tale of Kieu became a political reality for all Vietnamese, particularly the scholars and intellectuals. 
 
So that, like Nguyen Du, the loyalties and convictions of scholars and intellectuals of the 19th century were expressed and tested.  
 
For example, in the first phase of French colonial rule (1858-1898), a senior official, Phan Thanh Gian, was charged in negotiation on Hue court’s behalf both in Vietnam and in France, starting in 1862.  Phan Thanh Gian, the first southern Vietnamese to compete successfully in the state examination, had demonstrated both filial piety (as a youth he accompanied his father into exile) and loyalty to his emperor (when he was demoted to menial positions by Ming Mang for not going against his emperor’s advice but never complaining).[27]  However, by 1867, Phan Thanh Gian concluded that resistance through force would be futile against the French power and acquiesced in French’s occupation of Vietnam’s southern provinces. After acknowledging that he had failed his emperor (Tu Duc), he followed the traditional practice and committed suicide.
 
Was Phan Than Gian the Thuc Ky Tam of The Tale of Kieu because he demonstrated the wait-and-see attitude and “possessed the spirit and attitude of surrender of the court of Hue”?  Or was he the Thuy Kieu because he weighed the option between being loyal to his emperor and the concern for the well-being of those who were under his jurisdiction?
 
Another complex case of historical assessment is Nguyen Truong To (1827-1871), a provincial official who was acquainted with a French missionary priest, who taught him French and took him to Europe to see Pope Pius IX in the 1850s.[28]  Between 1863 and 1871, Nguyen Truong To sent a stream of memorandums to Emperor Tu Duc, proposing the emperor to lead a range of progressive westernized reforms.  These included the separation between administrative and judicial powers in conformity with the “separation of powers” theory, creation of military schools directed by foreign specialists, and the development of a western education system and the expansion of Vietnamese commerce.[29]
 
Was Nguyen Truong To the Ma Giam Sinh who served two masters and who would open the door for France to make Vietnam into a whore? Or was he the Tu Hai who would have been the hero that takes the law into his own hands to right the backward Confucius court into a modernized Vietnamese state?
 
As to be expected, historical assessment of how Vietnamese scholars and intellectuals dealt with French occupation of Vietnam depends, at least in part, on the values used to measure the local responses, as well as the sociopolitical contexts of the time when the assessments were rendered.

One could strongly argue, using Nguyen Du’s literary framework, that Phan Than Gian was the Thuy Kieu because he weighed different options but chose to passively resist, since he could not change the reality of the irresistible nature of French superior power in Vietnam. His passive resistance was to seek personal salvation by being moral and carrying out redemptive obligation through the act of suicide.  In many ways, Phan Than Gian’s decision appears to be in line with Nguyen Du’s emphasis that decision making should account for the inner and outer affairs of man and of society.  For Nguyen Du, military resistance, as embodied by the beloved and popular Tu Hai was not the preferred choice for personal salvation, though this may be because rebellion is the cardinal sin in the Confucian society and would be considered sedition by the Hue court at the time.  As such, because Tu Hai’s rebellion was indigenous and was not a rebellion against foreign rulers, using Nguyen Du’s framework to assess military resistance to French occupation does have its limitations.

In regard to Nguyen Truong To, he was no scholar Ma, since his recommendations were for his king to lead the necessary institutional reforms.  He was no apologist or absolutist for French colonization.  In addition, it appears that, for Nguyen Truong To, imitating the West was in the matter of utility; there were no indications from his existing writings that western influences were to transform the Vietnamese cultural core.  As noted by some scholars, Nguyen Truong To’s call for institutional revolution was “already more ambitious than any of the feeble modernizing policies the French colonialists would pursue in Vietnam,” and therefore, “the French colonial regime, in a sense, was out of date before it was created.”  However, it would be difficult to argue that Nguyen Truong To was the Tu Hai, since Nguyen Du’s conception of political decision making did not equate “passive” reforms with the ability to “revolutionize” the Vietnamese traditional institutions.

In both cases, there appear to be key limitations in utilizing Nguyen Du’s literary framework for assessing Vietnamese responses to “misfortunates wreaked on men by more powerful men” after the arrival of French colonial power in Vietnam. 

That is, the traditional Vietnamese view of the world had rendered a Vietnamese concept of its place in the world, rather than one state amongst many which are ordered by the concept of anarchic structure of world politics.  This is very relevant in light of the fact that French colonial rule presented an unprecedented problem to the Hue court: “the problem of confronting not merely superior military forces, but also a profound challenge to the whole intellectual and philosophic basis of the state.”[30]  Wherein, military resistance of the Can Vuong (Aid the King) movement and the scholar-peasant rebellions were no match against the French military power.  Moreover, the increasing perception of ‘the loss of the country’ and ‘the loss of the nation’s soul’ due to French exploitation began to challenge the traditional sense of time and political ideology.

Notwithstanding, the legacy of The Tale of Kieu is its ability to survive and gain new strength from hundreds of different contexts.

For example, in 1954, two “Tu Hais” or “two Viet-Nams” emerged from the Geneva Agreement.  One based in the North, which sought to change Vietnam through Marxist-Leninist ideas and means, while the other in the South sought change through Western mode of modernization and progress.  Some saw the North as Ms. Hoan who, despite her friendly front, was ferocious in defending the integrity her home by ”silencing” and “dismembering” Vietnamese who were her rivals.  While some believe the South had lost the war because there were too many Thuc Ky Tam who took a ‘wait-and-see attitude’ and too many scholar Ma essentially turned pimp who sold out their fellow countrymen by selling their government offices for money.
 
Furthermore, when Saigon fell on April 30, 1975 to the communist force, thousands of Vietnamese refugees saw themselves as the Thuy Kieu.  As victims of “misfortunates wreaked on men by more powerful men,” they had to become survivors, and with time, many of them have achieved, to some degree, personal salvation in their new host country.  Even today, a Vietnam in transition to greater integration with the global economy has created dissension among communist party loyalists.  These party loyalists have turned “dissidents” because they criticized the number of government officials and their families who have enriched themselves as “red capitalists” who have sold out the revolutionary goals of Ho Chi Minh.
 
It is likely that The Tale of Kieu will be able to speak to the Vietnamese human conditions for time to come as well.  That is, if one agrees with Nguyen Du’s depiction of Vietnam as a place where “talent and disaster form a pair,” and thus, “our karma we must carry as our lot” in which there are inescapable relationships between present existences and past and future existences.

Nationalist Assessment of Local Responses to French Conquest

In many respects, French colonial power brought an end to the dynastic period in which “it was meaningful to talk of the possible ‘self-strengthening’ of Vietnam within a traditional monarchical framework.”[31]   So much so that the Vietnamese elite began to believe that, in order to regain national independence and to recover from French exploitation, they had to rely on (and in some ways depend on) new ideologies, institutions, and national outlooks. 

From the above realities emerged two distinct schools of thought that represented the “two Viet-Nams” after the French returned to Vietnam in 1946: non-communist, nationalist reformers and Marxist-Leninist nationalists.  Each of the schools of thought emphasized different ideological values and national outlooks in which both had earlier descendents.  As such, each had different values in assessing the other’s responses to French occupation.

Although the non-communist, nationalist reformers did not claim direct descent from earlier Vietnamese reformers, they shared with the latter the unwillingness to have “political subservience” to any foreign powers but acknowledged that some form of dependence was a reality which was, indeed, an opportunity to develop the country’s potential for progress.[32]  To be sure, the nationalist reformers grew out of the earlier reform movements of late 1890s led by Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh. 

Phan Boi Chau, born into a Confucian scholar family, had organized an “aid the king” military company in 1885 and, in a sense, was a bridge to the later nationalist period.[33]  In fact, he was one of the first to express the nationalistic idea that all Vietnamese were fellow countrymen who needed to unite in love of country.[34]  For Phan Boi Chau, the unifier was the French exploitation that had cultural and racial genocide elements, undermining the country’s human rights, the nation’s soul, and economic and political modernization.[35]   His responses included the creation of a Vietnamese army, drawing military cadres from Vietnamese graduates of cadet schools in China and Japan in order to liberate Vietnam, although such military actions were badly defeated by the French in 1915.[36] 

Returning to Vietnam in 1925, Phan Boi Chau diagnosed that the problem in colonial Vietnam was that the national spirit of the past had disappeared and the colonial regime had not provided the country with all the requisite institutions of ‘government by law,’ so that Vietnam was but an eccentric half-way house between two civilizations.[37]  He therefore advocated the concept of “modernization association” in which Vietnamese reformers could critique and advise the French policy of association so that Vietnam would regain her independence.  In addition, Vietnam would have the rights to learn from the West and from the East in order to modernize and revitalize Vietnamese culture and institutions.  Such modernization would be based on a desire for progress and adventure, love and trust, virtue and heroism, no obnoxious mandarins, no dissatisfied citizens, no imperfect educational system, no neglected industry, no losing commercial activities, and no protecting power.[38]  This included a modernized military force to protect and serve the country, but never to exploit or harm Vietnamese citizens, as did the French. 

Meanwhile, Phan Chau Trinh recognized dependency as a reality. “From East to West, from North to South, wherever one goes, everything points to dependence,” but “if there must be independence, then to talk about glory of depending on X or the shame of depending on Y, all that is sheer nonsense.”[39]  Thus, like Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chau Trinh differentiated himself with other Vietnamese elites, who glorified French assimilation policy in which France would civilize Vietnam were they given a chance and Vietnamese in the meantime would be expected to study hard and follow the examples of their French teacher, so that one day they would be ready for graduation.  Moreover, both men separated themselves from Confucian/communist patriots who refused to acknowledge that French colonial rule had its positive externalities and who would revile anyone who associated with colonialism.  

There were, however, some key differences between the two men.  For example, Phan Chau Trinh was a more straightforward advocate of constitutional, republican form of government in which the president could be impeached.  He was more of a “populist,” who was in “touch” with the peasant protests and who rigorously attacked the Vietnamese mandarins for taking advantage of the segregation policy to maltreat their own citizens.[40]  His attack was more focused on the Vietnamese “mandarins” than the colonial administration, since he believed the former severely caused the Vietnamese people to abandon the national spirit and action of the past.  For Phan Chau Trinh, the unifier was “socialism” to create mass mobilization for collective action.  He had thought that the French Socialist Party would play a key role in negotiating Vietnam’s independence.  However, he was no radical socialist who would advocate that ‘blood must be shed,’ discarding any idea of armed struggle.[41]

Many of the non-communist, nationalist reformers came from or supported the national movements led by Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh, as well as the Quoc Dan Dang (Vietnamese Nationalist Party) which was formed in 1927 to create a Vietnamese revolution but was to avoid rather than fulfill the class war and the internal tensions caused by French segregation policy. Some were militant in their approach to national independence but refused to link their movements to the international apparatus controlled by the Soviet Union.[42]

Thus these nationalist reformers inherited the above tradition of “modernization association” and would seek cooperation when possible, but they also saw the need for military actions to regain national independence.  For these reformers, the unifier was to refashion the spirit of community and love of country among all Vietnamese, not based on socioeconomic class or creation of a new socialist society.  Moreover, these reformers embraced an international world view and differentiated themselves among the Vietnamese elites who relied solely on France as a teacher and as a liberator, as well as the communist-Confucian patriots who viewed resistance as its sole measure of virtue. 

Nevertheless, when the nationalist reformers assessed Vietnamese elites (such as Nguyen Van Vinh and Pham Quynh) who gloried France’s assimilation policy, they were able to reconcile by acknowledging the latter contribution to the growth and vitality of “quoc ngu” (Vietnamese romanized script) as a literary language, the development of Vietnamese literature, and academic and intellectual studies.  However, the national reformers found it most difficult to reconcile with the Confucian/communist patriots.  While some of the national reformers had cooperated with the communist forces to regain national dependence (i.e. the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh), they were anguished at the extreme doctrine of communism which was willing to shed blood to any rivals, including Vietnamese.  Furthermore, the Confucian/communist patriots’ emphasis of independence above all else was the anti-thesis of the nationalist reformers who saw that national independence and the need to modernize the country’s agriculture, commerce and trade, and education went hand-in-hand.   They were also hostile to the communist’s campaign to “uproot” and “re-channel” traditional loyalties to that of the communist party; for the nationalist reformers, modernization required the need to restore particular traditional institutions and values.

In April 1945, Bao Dai was emplaced by the Japanese overlords who were occupying Vietnam from 1941-1945 and who wanted to salvage Japan’s prestige and prolong the return of Western powers in Asia as it was becoming clear that it was losing its war.  Bao Dai’s role was to declare Vietnamese independence from France, abrogating only the 1884 treaty regarding the French “protection” of Annam and Tonkin, and to form a “conditional independent” government to direct state affairs.[43]  Notwithstanding the short-lived government led by Tran Trong Kim (April 17 – August 25, 1945), this event provides general views about non-communist nationalist reformers (some of whom later served in later non-communist regimes), particularly how they would have “Vietnamized” French colonial policies or “de-Franchified” Vietnam.[44]   

Corresponding to the ideals of Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh, Tran Trong Kim’s government espoused an evolutionary change in society, so as to prevent breakdown of social and moral order and to bind its factions and social strata together.[45]  Importantly, it saw “the ideal citizen as a man who combined a ‘scientific’ mind with ‘traditional’ virtue, expressing cultural hybrid between the East and the West.[46]  Still, at the same time, it promulgated decrees to reclaim the country’s cultural and intellectual rights, including changing the national name to Viet-Nam (former Annam that connotes the humiliation as the “Pacified South”) and renaming the three regions of the country as Bac Bo (former Tonkin), Trung Bo (former Annam), and Nam Bo (former Cochinchina).  These symbolic measures were to restore national culture, integration, and unity.  Moreover, the government adopted the Vietnamese romanized script as the official language, abolished the forced sale of rice and capitation tax, and sponsored mass political participation.[47]  Not surprisingly, Tran Trong Kim – a reputable scholar who believed leaders must possess talent and virtue and if they lacked such virtues and tried to maintain their rule, “the more people will feel it is unreasonable and intolerable”[48] – refused proposals advanced by several Japanese overseers to crush the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh.[49]  But, in part, this allowed the Viet Minh, who were militarily far more superior to overrun the Tran Trong Kim’s government in late August.

However, by 1946, the non-communist groups within the Viet Minh were angst about the communist’s assassinations of non-communist leaders in order to create a communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam.   They fled to China and later regrouped with other non-communist groups in southern Vietnam with the former Nguyen emperor, Bao Dai, as the head figure of the National Union Front; however, there were non-communist nationalists who still stayed on with Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh, if by so doing it could dethrone French militarily.    This diverse coalition negotiated with France for the southern half of the country as an Associated State of Vietnam with the (vague) condition that in due time, it would gain complete independence (1949-1954). 

This Associated State was the precursor of the Republic of Vietnam (1954-1975) and represented a struggle to secure for Vietnam a nationalist, noncommunist, and democratic nation-state.

For example, in 1952, Buu Loc of the Bao Dai government argued that nationalism by itself to throw off French colonialism is not enough.  “As soon as independence has been won,” nationalism does not “indicate how, after that burden has been unshouldered, a new national society is to be created.”[50]   Thus, nationalism could be a force of injustice “if nationalism were to free the people from the former mother country only to place them at the mercy of a handful of their own fellow-countrymen,” who may “champion the rights of peoples while neglecting to protect the rights of man.”[51]  On the question of whether Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist, a communist, or both, Buc Loc argued that “the important thing is to know how he acted and whether his actions” had served the nationalist interests.[52]  For Buu Loc, Ho Chi Minh’s greatest strength was his ability to symbolize “hope for a better future.”  However, Buu Loc predicted that such “revolutionary hope” would only lead to despair and would need another kind of hope: “hope for social and economic reforms undertaken within a truly democratic society.”[53]

The Road to Socialist Revolution and Back

The Marxist-Leninist nationalists grew out of the Confucian patriot movements of the 1860s and of the peasant protest movements, populist and social realist movements before and after World War I. 

One of the Confucian patriots held in high regard by the communist nationalists was Phan Van Tri (1825-1877), who symbolizes the patriot that rejects colonialism and collaboration with a foreign power and who supports the use of force to expel the French.  Phan Van Tri argued that “Confucianism, properly learnt and properly practiced can be completely effective and aware of time, its immediacy and its duration from the perspective of success.”[54]  But his popularity with the communist nationalists was from his observation that Vietnamese collaborators’ search for wealth and honors is “age-old” and will inevitably lead to corruption and “prostitution.”  By contrast, Phan Van Tri asserted that with proper spirit of resistance and a keen sense of time to bring back the opportunity to unify, peace and national independence would be restored.[55]  As such, the communist nationalists were very ready to accept Phan Van Tri’s conclusion that: “The nation, one tomorrow, will change its destiny to one of peace. The South in common will enjoy reunion in peaceful equilibrium.”[56]  Likewise, Confucian intellectuals could accept Marxist’s universal dogma that history “was optimistic, scientific, impregnated with moral fervor, and staunchly anti-imperialist…without great difficulty as a modern equivalent of Confucianism.”[57]  

Communist nationalists’ overall assessment of the nationalist movements by Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh was that their promises and their expectations of the French colonial administration to grant Vietnamese independence “were never fulfilled.”[58]  This was the weakness of earlier nationalist movements, and those who carried on after, such as the social realists who were “new and still embryonic social forces” and who represented the initial stage of communism. Not until these forces came to rely on self reliance, self righteousness, and radical solutions (i.e. the overthrow of imperialist capitalist system) will the nationalist movement bring about “happier effects than the so-called policy of association, which notwithstanding all the eloquent speeches, remains a bloodless reality!”[59]

Simply, what was needed was for the nationalist movement to be revitalized on a new basis.  Enter the father of the communist nationalist movement: Ho Chi Minh.  In 1921, Ho Chi Minh argued that colonization did carry a special king of civilization to its colonies, that being the “bourgeois, civilization of the scaffold, the prison, and exile” which was exploited by French capitalists and only benefited a few sharks and where ordinary citizens played the role of buffaloes in order to feed their exploiters.[60]  Therefore, the communist nationalists declared, “let no one be permitted to oppress us and to deprive us of daily rice while advising us to work hard in order to regain our independence…No, no, and no…Before all else, we want our independence!”[61]

But to fulfill these tasks, there was a need for new ideas and innovations.   This was supplied by way of the Soviet Union starting after 1918 in which Lenin, much more than Marx, justified the use of violence against the declining imperialist order as well as a call for world-wide communist movement.[62]  Through the Cominterm in the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese communist revolution, along with that of China and Korea, had gained practical benefits in the form of ideological training, political tutelage, and new clandestine skills.[63]  Central elements of the Marxist-Leninist ideology included the dual concept of nationalism-communism.  Nationalism is defined as national liberation from foreign rule and communism as the people’s power to establish a worker-peasant government but must be led by a Marxist-Leninist party.[64]  Importantly, this dual concept contrasted with other Western colonial concepts in the sense that the Soviet Union did not perceive the immediate physical control over distant colonial territories and peoples.[65] 

Another imported concept was the “democratic revolution” that was to be the first stage of the communist revolution in which non-communist parties and groups were necessary at various times to form the “united fronts.”[66]   These “fronts” were a necessary expedient to oppose new forms of foreign oppression.   As noted by Nguyen Khac Vien, given the semi-feudal society in colonial Vietnam, the Vietnamese revolution had to start as a “bourgeois democratic revolution” and when the conditions were ripe an armed uprising would be launched to establish a worker-peasant state, forwarding the path of socialist revolution.[67]  Furthermore, the political culture of the communist revolutions had to take on tentative conciliation, persuasion, and intrigue when confronting obstacles from a position of weakness.[68]  But when confronting obstacles from a position of strength, its political behavior must act with aggression and maintain a winner-take-all attitude.[69]   In fact, the communist nationalists were very successful in creating the “united fronts” when confronting from a position of weakness (i.e. Viet Minh in 1941) and exerted military assertiveness in a creating a socialist revolution when confronting from a position of strength (i.e. dismembering the non-communist Viet Minh in late 1945 and the confiscation of all land into the right of ownership by the worker-peasant government beginning in 1954). 

However, at the same time, because these concepts and their communist-oriented responses were deficient in terms of having direct and deep historical roots, Ho Chi Minh and his cadres had to “localize” them in order for these concepts to become benchmark for the movement.  As a result, a cultural and ideological revolution was launched to redefine, purify existing cultural elements, and/or create new ones. 

For example, in Ho Chi Minh’s “Correcting the Way We Work,” he enumerated five cardinal virtues of revolutionary ethics: benevolence (nhan), righteousness (nghia), knowledge (tri), courage (dung) and incorruptibility (liem).[70]  The first three were the classical Confucian virtues but all were recast to have a different meaning.  Benevolence meant compassion for one’s comrades, righteousness meant an unwavering commitment to carry out one’s orders, and knowledge involved the ability to carry out one’s work.[71]  Similarly, the communist nationalists also had to “localize” culture, literature, and arts with Marxist-Leninist concepts in order to rally the mass to the revolution, such as “art for life sake.”  For instance, communist scholars, on the one hand, acknowledged the cultural contribution of The Tale of Kieu, but recast its meaning on the other.  That is, the Tale of Kieu was said to have criticized the feudal society of the 18th century, Kieu’s misfortunates sprang directly from the greedy mandarins, and that Nguyen Du was a realist who turned away from Confucianism because it no longer offered sufficient explanation and had little faith in Buddhist ideas, suggesting that he would have supported the socialist revolution.[72]

Perhaps what compensated for the lack of communist concepts’ direct link to Vietnamese past were that they inspired self-confidence, hope, morality, and a future-orient vision of reunion and peaceful equilibrium for thousands of Vietnamese working class and peasants that had been exploited and maltreated in the factories, mines, towns, and in the villages.  In one opinion, “it is safe to say that if the French had chosen a less disastrous approach to the land question and employed all available means for eliminating rural poverty, the Communist movement of Vietnam would never have gained its extraordinary strength.”[73]  That is, the brutalities of foreign rulers, including the Japanese overlords, “indirectly made the communist party into an awesome and formidable revolutionary organization.”[74]  Also indirectly, the communist nationalists were assisted by many unplanned international events over which they had no control, including the relentless suppression of non-communist militants by French colonial authorities in the early 1930s and the decision of the Japanese overlords not to suppress any strong Vietnamese nationalist groups in order to prevent the return of western powers in Asia.[75]

Notwithstanding, the communist nationalists had some clear advantage over their counterparts.  Following Lenin’s principle of democratic centralism, the political culture of the communist nationalists was further enhanced by their skillful ability of “coalition building.”  In pursuit of power, organizations such as the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party in northern Vietnam and later the National Liberation Front in southern Vietnam were permitted to exist, but their political role was controlled and monitored by the communist party and were eventually dismantled when national independence was completely attained.[76]  Moreover, since the communist party formation, it was made up of different coalitions, which had enabled them to accommodate and co-opt new ideas to their revolutionary core or to serve the revolutionary movement in conditions of duress.  This essentially made the revolution dynamic, being able to exhibit coercion, the art of compromise or co-option – depending on what the conditions call for.

The self-reliance and self-righteousness of the communist nationalists were the values that were used to assess the non-communist reformers. That is, the former detested the latter dependency on, as well as negotiation for independence with, colonial or foreign powers.  The communist nationalists deemed the above as masks for the mere agents of colonial powers and myths of independence that “did not change the situation in the slightest,”[77] only to produce opportunities for men who seek wealth and honors. From this perspective:

From 1954 onwards tens of thousands of Sai Gon officers were trained and indoctrinated by the Americans. Most of them were adventurers hungry for dollars, who amassed fortunes and influence thanks to American aid and the war. They had grown enormously rich through plunder in the course of military operations…and had placed in the hands of their parents and relatives the most lucrative businesses such as import-export, hotels and prostitution.  It was to this military, bureaucratic and trafficking oligarchy that Washington entrusted the management of the Sai Gon regime and its neo-colonial society.[78]

Interestingly, in one opinion, while the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in 1989 questioned the very foundation of the Vietnamese state socialist system, the communist party “appears to have been successful, at least for the moment, in coping with the crisis and in renewing its legitimacy at both the leadership and society levels.”[79]
 
In many respects, the communist leaders today – while acknowledging their errors of assuming the socioeconomic backwardness could be corrected by “large-scale socialist production,” by skipping the state of capitalist development, and by liquidating as quickly as possible all forms of private, family, and capitalist economic activity – have reverted back to their revolutionary strategies to cope with crises.
 
That is, in confronting conditions from a position of weakness (1978-1985), communist leaders saw “international economic fronts” as necessary to address the socioeconomic crises, as well as securing new foreign relations “in the immediate future to firmly maintain peace, expand relations of friendship and cooperation.”[80]  This is done in a way that would “legitimize” the party’s ability to “ask questions and recognize one’s mistakes,” and not in a way to undermine the perception that the party’s lack inexperience in economic managements or the party’s social leadership.  The party does this by staying “silent about errors and mistakes” until it is in a position of strength “which would be clearly recognized some years later.”[81]
 
With the needed installation of a market economy, communist leaders launched a reform program to redefine, purify and/or create new elements of Vietnamese socialism in order to continue on the socialist path to development.  Redefining concepts include greater internationalization, rather than following faithfully the Soviet model or the Chinese model of development. New concepts include the acceptance of various forms of ownership and private economic development.  Purifying concepts include Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts as “the country’s ideological foundation and guiding point for its actions” and that “democratic centralism as its basic organization principle.”[82]
 
The “doi moi” economic reform program was, in fact, pressured by the reformist party members of southern Vietnam, who would be able to “co-opt” the southern economic historical processes and economic resources in order to accommodate with non-state market relations; and, by doing so, southern members “have it both ways,” tapping “northern concentrations of power and southern economic resources in a wealth-creating equation unrivalled by any others within or beyond the region.”[83]
 
Like the past, in pursuing economic development, communist leaders will permit numerous organizations to minimize the negative externalities or maximize the positive externalities of the socialist-oriented economy managed by the communist party.  For example, there have been state-run anti-corruption campaigns to oust government officials that lacked Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ethics.  At the opposite end, there is a desire to maximize the remittances and investments from the Vietnamese diaspora communities, but with the understanding that “we should counter the arguments and plots made by hostile forces and opportunists to attack, negate and distort the Marxism-Leninism.”[84]
 
Yet unlike the two resistance wars, the communist party’s socialist path of the future lacks the inspiration of self-confidence, hope, morality, and a future-orient vision of peaceful equilibrium.  Instead, the current socialist path is seen a necessity and one that will have “unexpected and unpredictable events.”[85]  That is, communist leaders will have to make further adjustments and re-interpretations because economic liberalization has led to the birth of “wild capitalism.”  According to one of the country’s reputable socialist historians, Nguyen Khac Vien:
 

‘Wild’ capitalism has mobilized in its own interests important areas of the State apparatus, transforming it into a veritable mafia, inimical to all forms of democracy, of social justice and ecological protection. Can the Vietnamese people, if not able to prevent the rise of this will capitalism, at least limit its destructive nature? The battle will certainly be fierce and prolonged. Does it bring the risk of armed confrontations?[86]

Further Reading 

Online Reading and Questions
  

Truong Buu Lam, “The Vietnamese Description of Colonialism” in his Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2003).

  • Compare and contrast the meaning of colonialism as a form of slavery and colonialism as a necessary evil.
  • Compare and contrast the concepts of assimilation and association.  How do Vietnamese communists view these concepts?
  • Under French colonial rule, what does “loss of the country” entail?

Buu Loc, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” Pacific Affairs 25:3 (September 1952).

  • How does the author respond to the argument that Ho Chi Minh is and has been a nationalist and the champion of Vietnamese independence?
  • How does the author define nationalism?
  • Why does the author believe that the Bao Dai government has better solutions for Vietnam than Ho Chi Minh?

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[1] Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu. A Bilingual Edition. Translated by Huynh Sanh Tong (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p.xxxii
[2] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), p.129.
[3] Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History of the Vietnamese Southward Movement,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 9:1 (1968), p. 256.
[4] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.125; Michael Cotter, “Towards a Social History,” p.256.
[5] Maurice Durand and Nguyen Tran Huan, An Introduction to Vietnamese Literature (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1985), p.111.
[6] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.125.
[7] Gail Kelley, “Schooling and National Integration: The Case of Interwar Vietnam,” Comparative Education, Vol.18(2), 1982, p.176.
[8] Ibid., p.177.
[9] Gabriele Fahr-Becker, The Art of East Asia (Cologne: Koenemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Cologne, 2006), p.445.
[10] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.124.
[11] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.124.
[12] Ibid., 124.
[13] Ibid., 123.
[14] Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mang (1820-1841): Central Policies and Local Response (New York: Cornell University, 2004), p.194.
[15] Ibid., p.127.
[16] Ibid., p.128.
[17] Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p.3.
[18] Loc Buu, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” Pacific Affairs 25:3 (September 1952), p.245.
[19] Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu, p. xxxii.
[20] Ibid., p. xiv.
[21] Ibid., p. xiv.
[22] Ibid., p. xiv.
[23] Maurice Durand and Nguyen Tran Huan, An Introduction to Vietnamese Literature, p.92.
[24] Ibid., p.92.
[25] Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu, p. xvi.
[26] Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu, lines 3241-3251.
[27] Milton Osborne, “Truong Vinh Ky and Phan Thanh Gian: The Problem of a Nationalist Interpretation of 19th Century Vietnamese History,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.30(1), 1970, p.88.
[28] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.131.
[29] Ibid., p.132.
[30] Milton Osborne, “Truong Vinh Ky and Phan Thanh Gian,” p.92.
[31] Ralph Smith, Viet-Nam and the West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), p.29.
[32] Ibid., p.29.
[33] David Joel Steinberg et al., In Search of Southeast Asia, p.303.
[34] Ibid., p.303-304.
[35] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2003), p.75-87.
[36] Ibid., p.306.
[37] Ibid., p.306.
[38] Chau Boi Phan, “The New Vietnam (1907),” in Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.105-123.
[39] Phan Chau Trinh, “Letter to Governor-General Paul Beau (1907), in Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.139.
[40] Ibid., p.126.
[41] Ibid., p.126.
[42] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia: A Comparative Political Analysis (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1979), p.360.
[43] Vu Ngu Chieu, “The Other side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution: The Empire of Viet-Nam (March-August 1945), The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.45(2), 1986, p.296.
[44] Ibid., p.303.
[45] Ibid., p.316, 304.
[46] Ibid., p.305.
[47] Ibid., p.315.
[48] Neil Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p.95.
[49] Vu Ngu Chieu, “The Other side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution,” p.315.
[50] Loc Buu, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” p.245.
[51] Ibid., p.245-246.
[52] Ibid., p.239.
[53] Ibid., p.247
[54] Jeremy Davidson, “Collaborateur versus Abstentioniste (Tuong versus Tri),” in Vladimir Braginksy, ed., Classical Civilization of Southeast Asia (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), p.233.
[55] Ibid., p.233.
[56] Ibid., p.235.
[57] William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), p.290. 
[58] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam: A Long History (Ha Noi: The Gioi Publishers, 2004), p.174.
[59] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.98.
[60] Ibid., p.72, 78.
[61] Ibid., p.97.
[62] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.335
[63] Ibid., p.335.
[64] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.197, 189.
[65] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.124-125.
[66] Ibid., p.335.
[67] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.195-196.
[68] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.336.
[69] Ibib., p.335-336.
[70] Shaun Kingsley Malarney, Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2002), p.54.
[71] Ibid., p.54.
[72] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.128.
[73] Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: A Political History (New York: Praeger, 1968), p.174-175.
[74] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.336.
[75] Ibid., p.324, 345.
[76] Ibid., p.341.
[77] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.345.
[78] Ibid., p.345.
[79] Thaveeporn Vasavakul, “The Changing Models of Legitimation,” in Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia: The Quest for Moral Authority (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p.289.
[80] Report of the Central Committee of the Documents of the 7th National Congress. Cited in Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.441.
[81] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.383-384.
[82] Report of the Central Committee of the Documents of the 7th National Congress, p.440.
[83] Philip Taylor, Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity in Vietnam’s South (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), p.88.
[84] Report of the Central Committee of the Documents of the 7th National Congress, p.440.
[85] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam, p.407.
[86] Ibid., p.407.