The Making of the Western Version of Being Vietnamese
The Making of the Western Version of Being Vietnamese
For American observers of the Vietnam War, many are quite drawn to the question of how a third world country defeated the most technologically advanced country in the world. Some explanations focused on the communist North Vietnam’s coercion and terrorist tactics against the non-communist South Vietnam in which the former was encouraged on and supported by the Soviet Union and Communist China.
Others argue that the non-communist South Vietnam was plagued by polarization and smoldering rivalries and that its main ally, the United States, began to negotiate itself out of the war in order to save its honor, discounting the non-communist South Vietnam’s interests.
In another opinion, U.S. policies in Vietnam totally disregarding the realities of Vietnam doomed the U.S. intervention from the start. According to Joseph Buttinger, it was bad enough that US policymakers did not consider the two thousand year Vietnamese struggle against being absorbed by China and that:
Much worse still was not to know, or knowingly to disregard, the fact that as a result of French colonial policies in Indochina the whole Vietnam had become Communist by the end of the of War World II. I say the whole of Vietnam, not only the North…something which, in spite of thirty years of French and American propaganda, remains an undeniable fact. [1]
Yet, it is probably more accurate that French form of colonialism had greatly impeded and ridiculed the non-communist, nationalist road to power, while its exploitative colonial policy resulting in the “‘loss of the country,’ ‘economic exploitation,’ and ‘cultural and racial genocide’ indirectly made the communist party into an awesome and formidable revolutionary organization.” [2]
French colonial policy never seriously sought to grant national independence to non-communist, nationalist Vietnamese until French power was confronted with widespread nationalist opposition and the possibility of a communist takeover. [3] Even more so, the proposals to make Vietnam an independent state under a non-communist government “were watered down with so many compromises, mental reservations, and double entendres.” As a result, such proposals were easily ridiculed by and could not rival the communist North Vietnam’s “simple creed of total independence even at the price of long and bloody war.” [4]
Nevertheless, non-communist Vietnamese were fully aware of the failures of the French colonists to give their country full benefits of a modern civilization on the one hand, but also recognized their dependency on the West to revitalize the country’s traditions and institutions on the other. That is, non-communist Vietnamese found a refuge through western culture where a balance between the individual’s ambitions and that of state authority was possible, and where it was possible to create a cultural hybrid between the East and West.
In essence, a modern Vietnamese integration tradition emerged in which individuals could adopt and adapt foreign values and ideas, blending them with indigenous beliefs without viewing them as contradictory. In contrast, the communist nationalist movement wanted to neutralize, recast or destroy western cultural elements that “reproduced” the old order and replace them with new ideas and values to produce a new socialist culture for Vietnam. [5]
According to Vu Ngu Chieu, during the first Indochina war (1945-1954), the cultural synthesis between the East and West “was wishful thinking, too vague for any purpose at the time.” [6] What was proven to win the day was “charismatic leadership and powerful theories as well as administrative and military strength,” which the non-communist movement did not possess or lacked. [7]
In reaction to the expansion of communist rule, vast non-communist refugee movements took flight — first toward southern Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Accord partitioned the country into two zones and later, the mass exodus to the western world after the fall of Saigon regime in 1975.
Migrating and emigrating from communist expansion appeared to have solidified a western version of being Vietnamese.
The partition of the country in 1954 provided the conditions in which westernization in Vietnamese society could continue to develop in southern Vietnam. Southern Vietnam’s urban centers — which were being subsidized by American ambition’s to “win the hearts and minds of the people” from 1954 to 1975 — provided millions of migrants from the north as well as from the rural areas of the south the opportunity to synthesize Vietnamese culture and western culture.
As a result, southern Vietnamese urbanites were far more likely than anyone else in the country to have attended or had children attending newly built schools with trained teachers and printed textbooks on mathematics, chemistry and engineering. They were also far more likely to be affected by the information and communication explosion, such as owning a television set, a radio, a telephone, and a car. They were more likely to have seen English TV programs such as “Dragnet,” “Batman,” “I Love Lucy,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “Gunsmoke,” “Mission Impossible,” and “Combat.” Moreover, Vietnamese urbanites were far more likely to have been an “entrepreneur” by way of the “American consumer economy” in southern Vietnam.
With the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, these southern Vietnamese urbanites disproportionately made up the numbers of refugees who evacuated and escaped Vietnam.
According to one opinion, it was thought that the initial waves of Vietnamese refugees (1975-1978) were likely to achieve a more rapid process of assimilation than the pre-1965 Chinese and Japanese immigrants. [8] This was very possible given South Vietnam’s unique socio-historical familiarity with Western language, employment, customs, and traditions which were more likely to be the case among Vietnamese who participated in the emigration. [9] From this perspective, Vietnamese refugees had a distinct kind of “anticipatory socialization” to American society, giving them a distinct advantage over earlier Asian immigrants (pre-1965) to the U.S.
In fact, refugee studies have, in part, contributed to the relatively robust social mobility of the first generation of Vietnamese refugees to this cohort’s ability to retain aspects of Vietnamese culture. These include cultural ideals of the family such as “hieu” (filial piety) and “on” (moral debt to parents) and of the community such as welfare mechanisms of “giap” (organization with mutual aid functions) and “nghia” (the obligation to participate rather than withdraw from in societal affairs), which have been powerful forces of virtue, solidarity, self-correction, and achievement. [10] Importantly, these culture ideals could exist “with views that the American way of life was more modern, scientific, and progressive, and that many Vietnamese customs and traditions were no longer appropriate.” [11]
Ironically, such ability to negotiate and integrate a new culture both in the Vietnamese context and Western context has caught the attention of the current Vietnamese communist-led government, who once referred the Vietnamese refugees as “traitors” or those who left “illegally” (and, thus, when they return to the homeland are no longer entitled to the “privileges” of Vietnamese citizens). As noted by Nguyen Ngoc Bich:
the overseas Vietnamese can now take a certain ironic comfort if not pride in the fact that the Hanoi rulers had to revise their opinion, twist their tongue and call them in recent years “the extension of Vietnam’s innards thousands of miles away” (“khuc ruot xa ngan dam” as the expression goes in Vietnamese). But the overseas Vietnamese are not dupe, they are not about to fall into the trap because they are mindful of the The Red Riding Hood story when the wolf, imitating the grandmother, pipes lavish praise into the ears of Little Red Riding Hood as to how wonderful she is or looks. [12]
French Mission Civilisatrice: Creating Irreconcilable Vietnamese Political Communities
Facing fierce local opposition, French hegemony in Vietnam was not ensured until the turn of the twentieth century when “the cornerstone of French colonial policy was to dismantle pre-colonial form that potentially threatened French rule.” [13] This included the division of the country into three regions in which each region had different policies.
The southern region (Cochinchina) was declared a colony of France and, thus, placed under the direct and sole authority of the French. The central region (Annam) was initially to be subjected to the direct rule of the Nguyen dynasty with a French special envoy, although by the early 1900s the Nguyen dynasty was forced to sign an ordinance recognizing the right of French citizens to own land as well as the right of the colonial government to collect taxes. [14] Meanwhile, Tonkin was a protectorate and was to be fully dependent upon the monarchy of Hue, but the French removed it from imperial control to a Vietnamese viceroy that conferred its prerogatives on the French resident superior of Tonkin. [15]
In essence, French colonial policy had served to exacerbate or create regional and class tensions, undermining the Nguyen dynasty’s attempts to create both horizontal and vertical national unity.
For instance, according to Gail Kelly, Franco-Vietnamese educational institutions were created to serve different social strata of whom the French depended to aid in extending colonial hegemony. [16] Moreover, under such policy, all pretence of meritocracy was dropped as well as the pretence that schooling as a route social mobility. [17]
In Cochinchina, the education system was responsive to the demands of the monied and urban strata, who most wanted to gain access to French education but did not prevent the expansion of Franco-Vietnamese education. [18] Meanwhile in Annam, the schooling system was designed to bolster a new class of aspiring salaried workers and the low echelons of the traditional elite in order to discrediting the monarch and its retainers. [19] This class, however, did want to limit access to other groups who threatened their status. In Tonkin, the elite also wanted access to metropolitan schooling. However, French administrators in Tonkin restricted the opportunity for schooling because they feared that educated Vietnamese might qualify for their jobs or that Vietnamese elites were either revolutionaries or malcontents. [20]
The “strategy of divide and rule” was to safeguard French colonial rule in Vietnam. However, at the same time, such strategy created a fragmented Vietnamese political community in which each faction had different local responses to French colonial power, such as those who favored an “evolutionary change in society by combining a ‘modern’ mind with ‘traditional’ virtue, expressing cultural hybrid between the East and the West.” [21] Meanwhile, others saw the virtue of overthrowing French colonization of which they equated with slavery; thus there was an urgent need to dismantle and “reeducate” those who were associated with the ‘old order’ and replace that order with new ideas and values as to create a new socialist order. [22] By extension, the differentiated local responses resulted in an ideological struggle that eventually divided the country into “two Viet-Nams” that of communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam.
By contrast, American colonial policy in the Philippines differed sharply from French approaches to colonialism or French mission civilisatrice. That is, American form of colonial rule, which embraced the idea of an efficient transfer of sovereignty to the Philippines, had prepared and transferred sovereignty to the Philippines. This was done via new political institutions modeled on the American constitutional system and, because central issue was about the timing of national independence the Philippine, nationalist movement was never suppressed. In fact, the passage of Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934 provided a timetable for Philippine independence.
American “association” policy was also to maintain ‘native individuality’ and ‘native development.’ As a result, American social policy consisted of a dual purpose program of secular education to promote democratic norms and values to a mass electorate and to train indigenous elite to maintain a democratic society. In particular, the more than one million Filipino students who attended public school by 1922 were unprecedented by any Western colonial standard. [23] While the Philippine economy was largely dependent on the U.S. (American economy consumed 75 percent of the Philippine exports and providing 85 percent of its imports), American economic policy did not uproot the Philippine agrarian economy. [24]
A qualitative study by Frank Darling strongly suggests a correlation between association policy and the high-transferable political and administrative structures to transfer sovereignty back to Asian colonized societies. In other words, Darling’s study found that association models as used in the Philippines, Thailand, the Dutch East Indies, and British Malaya did provide, to a considerable degree, protection and the strengthening of the native society as well as the preparation for self-colonization. [25]
Meanwhile, assimilation models such as those used by France in Vietnam, and Cambodia were means to draw the colonized to the modern world in which they “could become Frenchmen and…aim at their integration into the homogeneous society of a single Great France revolving around Paris.[26] Outside observers thought that French policies, without any major modifications for local conditions, would result in ‘a clean sweep of all native traditions’ and bring into ‘existence a group of social half-breeds’ who had ‘lost the feeling of kinship to their old past yet [were] not completely at home in their new present.[27] In the framework of French mission civilisatrice, the colonized country was the student whose role is to study hard and follow the instructions of his French teacher, so that one day he would be ready for graduation.
While French social policy promoting French culture in Vietnam was relatively higher compared to its social policy in Cambodia and Laos, its colonial school system was designed to detach the Vietnamese from the Chinese influences in order for Vietnamese to readily accept the idea that French was unique and indispensable to Vietnam. [28] In addition, French education policy was closely interlinked with the Roman Catholic Church and was politicized to discourage the spread of nationalist movements. Compared to the U.S. in the Philippines or the British colonies, the French educational system in Vietnam was meager in size with only 14 secondary schools and one university, which were overly sympathetic to French colonial rule, located largely in urban centers, and whose admission was largely based on high proficiency in the French language. [29]
Regarding economics, French policy was relatively high in terms of industrialization. However, French economic policy was not “liberal” by comparison to other colonial powers in Asia at the time, exploiting Vietnam’s raw materials and markets more or less exclusively for France domestic economic development. For example, French Tariff Law of 1891 and the Doumer program of 1895 had the effect of “producing a kind of specialization in which farming along traditional lines was reserved to the Vietnamese, while industry, trade, transport, banking, and modern farming were all in French hands.” [30] As such, the French controlled commercial monopolies which enhanced the wealth of public and private groups in France as well as for a large number of permanent French residents in Vietnam. [31] For Vietnamese laborers in these French commercial monopolies, if they:
could have left, for example, after their contracts, which were usually for three to five years, had expired they would have saved enough to return to their native village decently loaded with some ‘capital,’ they may have accepted this situation. But as it was, the owners of the plantations had designed their economics in such a way that workers could never accumulate savings. [32]
Although the idea of association and cooperation within Indochina predated World War II which was espoused by some noted governors-general such as Alber Sarraut (1911-13 and 1917-1919) and Pierre Pasquier (1928-1934), Vietnam was ruled from Paris where the tenure of the governors-general was relatively short. During 1900-1930, eleven governors — not counting the interim ones — shared the responsibility of managing the affairs of the colony.[33] It wasn’t until France was under the Vichy regime in 1940 that assimilation policy was rejected, though France never believed in full assimilation to begin with since it was too expensive. The Vichy government opted to promote a multi-tiered patriotism which included:
the love of a people for its colonial country, for the colonial federation of Indochina (the colonies and protectorates of Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Laos, and Cambodia), and for the French empire and the metropole — without stimulating an indigenous nationalist political program that pursued independence from external control. [34]
On the one hand, the French concepts of association and cooperation embraced the “blooming of sovereignties and local personalities” but such evolution had to operate within the French imperial community with proper guidance on the other. In practice, France’s solution to grant the non-communist nationalist’s call for an independent state as an alternative to the communist North Vietnam was, perhaps, best formulated by Francois Mitterand:
We have granted Viet-Nam ‘full independence’ eighteen times since 1949. Isn’t it about time we did it just once, but for good? [35]
Thus, the non-communist Vietnamese alliance with France appeared to be more of “a matter of sheer accident than design.” [36] This reality played into the communist nationalist leaders’ call for national liberation against France or any other foreigner rulers at any cost, since it was evident that negotiations with colonizers resulted only in myths of independence which “did not change the situation in the slightest.” [37]
Bao Dai’s National Solutions: Breaking Away from Monarchy and Communism
The fact that Vietnam’s national spirit and action of the past had disappeared and national sovereignty was never effectively or efficiently transferred back to the Vietnamese strengthened the communist road to power.
According to Bernard Fall, “the French had no one but themselves to blame, and most thoughtful Frenchmen recognize this.” [38]
French scholar Paul Isoart also argued that the Indochina War was made into a type of French internal political football, and that “having inherited from our Gallic ancestors their taste for anarchy and from our Latin culture for drawn-out palavers, we found [in Viet-Nam] the occasion to wallow in both†where “the fate of France or Viet-Nam had long been lost in all this.” [39]
The “lost in all this” includes the attempt of Vietnamese to create and develop a western version of being “a good Vietnamese,” while, at the same time having to play the foreign “political football” that stopped short of allowing them to actually regain complete national independence.
Perhaps, no other person than Bao Dai best represented this version and peculiar predicament.
Because Bao Dai presided during “the lost decade” from 1945 to 1954, the focus has been on his failures, such as his penchant to perfect a lavish western style, “mandarinal mentality,” or willingness to be a “prop” for the Western world’s anti-communist policies.
To be sure, Bao Dai was very astute of the country’s traditional nationalist past as well as the contemporary intellectual and evolutionary nationalists, such as Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh. In undated proclamation to Governor-General Jean Decoux during the Japanese occupation of Vietnam (1941-1945), Bao Dai issued:
Ten and a half centuries under the yoke of China could not stifle the conscience of our race, which, after many travails, crystallized to such a point that a signal by Ngo Quyen, avenging his father, sufficed to rally an entire people and to liberate the homeland…Our people can claim proudly before their neighbors that they are the descendants of those who stopped the Mongol invasion. [40]
As for the governor-general, he may have welcomed Bao Dai’s nationalist conscience in order to possibly resist a Japanese annexation of Vietnam, but the French had apparently missed the point that Bao Dai saw himself as the “keeper of [Vietnam's] greatness.” In fact, when he ascended the throne in 1932 at the age of nineteen, he dropped the name Vinh-Thuy and assumed the dynastic name Bao Dai, meaning “keeper of greatness.”
Well aware that his father, Emperor Khai Dinh, was ridiculed by Vietnamese nationalists as the worse of Nguyen emperor-puppets, Bao Dai “tried zealously to reform Vietnam along modern lines, away from the sterile intrigues of a decadent court.” [41] The reforms included transforming the judicial and educational systems as well as ending the practice mandarin custom requiring aides to touch their foreheads to the ground when addressing their emperor; [42] and in defiance of court ceremonial, he married a southern Catholic girl of humble origin, Nam Phuong (southern beauty).
The principle that had run through his various government posts was the principle of “dan vi qui” (the most precious thing is the people), and he always attempted to recruit “men of virtue” in rebuilding the country. For example, he selected Ngo Dinh Diem as the Minister of the Interior in 1933, who as a young governor of Phan Thiet Province was known for his honesty and energy; [43] and just before the 1954 partition, Bao Dai had chosen Ngo Dinh Diem again to head the South Vietnamese government, independently of the United States. [44]
His commitment to the nationalist interest was evident in his impassioned appeal to General Charles de Gaulle (the then President of the French Provisional Government) about France’s reassertion of its colonial rights of Vietnam after being “liberated” from the Japanese in September 1945. Bao Dai forewarned that:
Even if you come to reestablish a French administration here, it will no longer be obeyed: each village will be a nest of resistance, each former collaborator an enemy, and your officials and colonist will themselves ask to leave this atmosphere which they will be unable to breathe…I beg you to understand that the only way to safeguard French interests and the spiritual influence of French in Indochina is to recognize frankly the independence of Vietnam and to renounce all thoughts of re-establishing French sovereignty or administration under any form of whatsoever. We could easily be able to understand each other and become friends if you would cease to pretend that you want to again to become our masters. [45]
In late August of 1945, recognizing both that the international scene was changing and that the increased pressure to abdicate from the growing power of Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh, Bao Dai declared that: “I would prefer to be a citizen of an independent country rather than Emperor of an enslaved one.” [46]
In abdicating to the Viet Minh, Bao Dai’s government had achieved territory unification of Vietnam, sustained administrative capabilities, and reclaimed the country’s name, flag, and language. His government saw the need of political unity, since the enemy was looking for divisions in which “union means life and division means death.” [47] When Bao Dai was offered the protection against a possible Viet Minh coup by the Allied force, he dismissed the protection reaffirming “I do not wish a foreign army to spill the blood of my people.” [48]
In one opinion, Bao Dai, who had “collaborated” with both the French and the Japanese and who should have exited history after the August Revolution, was still perceived as a psychological value to the Viet Minh. [49] In fact, Ho Chi Minh had immediately made Bao Dai the “Supreme Adviser of the Republican Government” under the title and name of “Citizen Prince Nguyen Vinh-Thuy.” Such a tactic may have been to add “prestige with both the Vietnamese and foreigners” and because “the ex-emperor’s presence seemed to guarantee that the Viet-Minh were not communists.” [50]
Yet, in his imperial abdication on August 25, 1945, Bao Dai directly requested the need for Vietnamese political unity with key prerequisites:
We request the new Government to deal fraternally with all the parties and groups [including non-communist, nationalist groups] which have fought for the independence of our country even though they have not closely followed the popular movement [Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh]; to do this in order to give the opportunity to participate in the reconstruction of the country and to demonstrate the new regime is built upon the absolute union of the entire population…we shall allow no one to abuse our name [Vietnam] or the name of the royal family [the Nguyen dynasty] in order to sow dissent among our compatriots. [51]
Going West: Different Version of Being a Good Vietnamese
The importance of Bao Dai’s imperial abdication is the request that “all parties and groups’ should be recognized as a part of a Vietnamese fraternal order and should be given the opportunity to participate in the rebuilding of the country. Both of these conditions would test whether Ho Chi Minh’s new regime “is built upon the union of the entire population.”
Inexplicitly, if these prerequisites were not fulfilled by Ho Chi Minh’s government, then it would be within the rights of those who had earlier abdicated their power to the new regime to retract their abdication.
In other words, Bao Dai’s imperial abdication allowed for him and others to “break” with Ho Chi Minh’s new regime, if Ho Chi Minh’s 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…[and who may] champion the rights of peoples while neglecting to protect the rights of man. [52]
Because the new government never shared power with non-communist groups and began to assassinate key members of non-communist Viet Minh, Bao Dai left Hanoi on March 18, 1946 and, instead of going on a mission to China to obtain economic and military aid for the government of Ho Chi Minh, he went to Hong Kong. [53]
His departure coincided with that of the non-communist groups within the Viet Minh who fled to China and later regrouped with other non-communist groups in southern Vietnam, forming the National Union Front.
Meanwhile, in March 1946, Ho Chi Minh signed an agreement that allowed a limited number of French troops to return to northern Vietnam and to replace the Chinese non-communist troops. In exchange, the French would recognize Ho Chi Minh’s government as a “free state having its own government, its own parliament and its own finances, and forming part of the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.” [54]
However, having no desire to give up its colonial rights’ perhaps due, in part, to its reluctance to eventually relinquish power to Ho Chi Minh’s communist government — France reneged on the agreement and demanded that Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh lay down their arms. By December 1946, military conflicts broke out between the Viet Minh and the French, signaling the First Indochina War (1946-1954). In confronting a formidable adversary on a number of fronts, the French opportunely and immediately started to negotiate with Bao Dai as the figure head, along with the National Union Front, to create an alternative to Ho Chi Minh’s government in the north, which became known as the “Bao Dai solution.” [55] In response, in December 1947, a Ho Chi Minh’s court allegedly sentenced Bao Dai to death and stripped him of Vietnamese citizenship. [56]
To be sure, the “Bao Dai solution” could equally be called the Bao Dai’s solution, since any French solution was equally dependent on Bao Dai’s agreement which took more than two years before both sides authorized it.
Regardless, this solution led to the creation of the Associated State of Viet-Nam in April of 1949 in which “France solemnly recognizes the independence of Viet-Nam…[Viet-Nam now proclaimed] its adherence to the French Union as a state associated with France.” [57]
France, of course, was not about to grant full independence. However, according to one opinion, “the essential point had been gained” in which “Bao Dai had obtained from the French in two years of negotiating what Ho had not been able to obtain in two years of fighting: the word ‘independence.’”
Importantly, in Bao Dai’s going west or allied again with the French, the right of the Vietnamese non-communist, nationalists to speak for itself was born.
For many, however, Bao Dai’s road to a non-communist identity was tainted. For example, Francois Mitterrand charged that:
In 1932, [Bao Dai] ascends to the throne…and France pays him…On March 11, 1945 Bao Dai collaborates with the Japanese. Japan pays and Bao Dai obeys. On August 25, 1945 he abdicates…Ho Chi Minh appears the stronger [and] Bao Dai hopes that, on that side, too, pay will be forthcoming…But what can such a young republic offer?…This does not suit Bao Dai…[and now] we find him in Hong Kong, surrounded by emissaries of the United States and of the Bank of Indochina, and by the Reverend Father Vicondelet, Procurator General of the Missions Strangeres. [58]
But the depiction of Bao Dai as a ‘willing servant’ for the right price cannot explain all his actions and policies. In fact, Bao Dai never went back on his imperial abdication or any previous agreements that the he had signed. His new government styled itself as a “quoc gia” (state) embraced the principle of “dan vi qui” (the most precious thing is the people). As such, his new government deliberately left the character of the regime in doubt until the Vietnamese people were in a position “to freely decide upon their own institutions.”
When the Vietnamese had an opportunity to vote on October of 1955, they voted against Bao Dai and for a republican regime under Ngo Dinh Diem by a “reported” 63,017 votes to 5.7 million, respectively. [59]
In comparison to Bao Dai, Ngo Dinh Diem, at the time, had the “right” persona to lead a new republican government that could counter against Ho Chi Minh. Ngo Dinh Diem’s record as anti-communist and as anti-French nationalist was unquestionable and unrivaled. In fact, in his memoir, Le Dragon d’Annam, he admits that during the 1954 Geneva Accord, he was worried that France would hand Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh. As a result, he sought to counter this by replacing his current premier Buu Loc with Ngo Dinh Diem who showed the ability to govern a new and a free Vietnam against the communist government in the north.
Perhaps not unlike Nguyen Hoang’s going south in 1600 (who was the founding father of the Nguyen state in the 17th and 18th century and a forebearer of the Nguyen dynasty), a possible reading of Bao Dai’s going west or breaking away from Ho Chi Minh’s government in 1946 could be that of a metaphor for all the decisions that going west would make possible. That is, the creation of a non-communist state which was no longer possible to ignore the differences between communist and non-communist.
To be sure, the birth of a free Vietnam was “not in a flurry of lowering French flags and rising Vietnamese flags, but in an endless shuffle of transfer agreements, protocols, and registers that excited the imagination of no one and frittered away the psychological impact of the achievement.” [60] Moreover, Bao Dai’s proneness to serve colonial powers made it difficult for him to persuade Vietnamese to accept the terms of a free Vietnam under the French Union as a state associated with France, particularly among the non-communist and anti-French nationalists.
One the one hand, Bao Dai represented the young and westernized while retaining the “mandarinal mentality” (such as rigidity, unresponsiveness, aloofness, arrogance, and pomposity) as well as perfecting a western ego (as an adventurer who single-handedly bagged a large percentage of country’s tigers, and as a playboy that had many mistresses at his hunting lodge in the cool highlands of central Vietnam).
However, at the same time, Bao Dai had been a bridge for a number of nationalist governments to emerge and to attain the right to speak for itself, at least to some degree, including the Tran Trong Kim government, the Ho Chi Minh government, the Associated State of Vietnam, and the Republic of Vietnam.
Perhaps the most importance bridge was one that allowed for a western version of being Vietnamese to emerge and to develop. Any shortcomings of Bao Dai’s independent government of Vietnam (1949-1954) have to be balanced with the fact that it was strong enough that the decision of the Geneva Accord of 1954 led to a kind of partition that allowed for a non-communist state to exist.
Unlike Ho Chi Minh, during his transformation from being the last Nguyen’s Emperor to being a westernized Vietnamese statesman, Bao Dai’s life was always under a public microscope and who was accountable to the dissatisfactions of his national constituency. Nevertheless, he was committed and attempted to integrate and personify the Vietnamese concept of “dan vi qui” (the most precious thing is the people) and the democratic principle that national independence should be “a step in the direction of the liberation of man.”
This bridge, in many ways than not, fell in April of 1975, but such a bridge maybe the “right” one to be reconstructed as Vietnam, under a one-party communist government, is opening up and integrating with the global community.
- For a concise analysis of the impact of losing a million in-country refugees in northern Vietnam, see Louis Wiesner, “Chapter 12: North Vietnam,” in his Victims and Survivors: Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Vietnam (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988).
- For a concise analysis of the 1954 in-country refugee movement, see Louis Wiesner, “Vietnam: Exodus from the North and movement to the North,” The Vietnam Forum, Vol.11 (1988), p.214-243.
- Describe the background of the new wave of students and explain why the students already had “clear anti-French attitudes.”
- What were the perils of loving France?
- What was the spirit of separateness?
- Why was the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural”?
- How successful was the settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam?
- According to Bernard Fall, why was the Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 not considered a movement of in-country refugees?
[1]Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: The Unforgettable Tragedy (New York: Horizon Press, 1977), p.17.
[2] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia: A Comparative Political Analysis (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1979), p.336.
[3] Ibid., p.124.
[4] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1967), p.210-211.
[5] Shaun Kingsley Malarney, Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam (Honolulu, HA: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), p.52.
[6] Loc Buu, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” Pacific Affairs 25:3 (September 1952), p.305.
[7] Ibid., p.304.
[8] Darrell Montero, “Vietnamese Refugees in America: Toward a Theory of Spontaneous International Migration.” International Migration Review 13:4 (1979).
[9] Ibid, p.641.
[10] Zhou and Carl Bankston, Straddling Two Social Worlds, pp.40-51; Nathan Caplan, John Whitmore, and Marcella Choy, The Boat People and Achievement in America: A Study of Family Life, Hard Work, and Cultural Values (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1989); [10] Steven Gold, Refugee Communities: A Comparative Field Study (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992); Rutledge, The Vietnamese in America; James Rutledge, The Vietnamese American in America (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1992), pp.143-144; Nazli Kibria, Family Tightrope: The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993)
[11] Dunning, “Vietnamese in America: The Adaptation of the 1975-1979 Arrivals,†p.79.
[12] Nguyen Ngoc Bich, “Immigration and Integration: The Vietnamese Experience.†The paper was presented at the University of Metropolitan London on March 22, 2006. Available at: http://www.ncvaonline.org/archive/analysis_ImmigrationIntegration_032206.shtml.
[13] Gail Kelley, “Schooling and National Integration: The Case of Interwar Vietnam,†Comparative Education, Vol.18(2), 1982, p.178.
[14] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2003),p.16-17.
[15] Ibid., p.16.
[16] Gail Kelley, “Schooling and National Integration, p.179.
[17] Ibid., p.178.
[18] Ibid., p.189.
[19] Ibid., p.189.
[20] Ibid., p.190.
[21] Vu Ngu Chieu, “The Other side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution,†p.305.
[22] Shaun Kingsley Malarney, Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2002), p.52.
[23] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.134.
[24] Ibid., p.138.
[25] Ibid., Chapter 5.
[26] Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), p.69-70
[27] Mark Bradley, Imagining Vietnam & America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000), p.64.
[28] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.179.
[29] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.141.
[30] Ton That Thien, “A Vietnamese Looks at His Country†in Richard Linhdhol, ed., Viet-Nam: The First Five Years (Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1959), p.34.
[31] Frank Darling, The Westernization of Asia, p.137.
[32] Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced, p.42.
[33] Ibid., p.10.
[34] Anne Raffin, “The Integration of Difference in French Indochina during World War II,†Theory and Society, Vol.31(3), 2002, p.378.
[35] Cited in Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.
[36] Ibid., p.212.
[37] Nguyen Khac Vien, Viet Nam: A Long History (Ha Noi: The Gioi Publishers, 2004), p.345.
[38] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.211.
[39] Cited in Ibid., p.211.
[40] Cited in Erica Jennings, “Conservative Confluences, ‘Nativist’ Synergy: Reinscribing Vichy’s National Revolution in Indochina, 1940-1945,†French Historical Studies, Vol.27(3), 2004, p.622.
[41] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.206.
[42] Philip Shenon, “Bao Dai, 83, of Vietnam; Emperor and Bon Vivant,†New York Times, August, 2, 1997.
[43] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.206.
[44] D.R. SarDesai, Vietnam: Past and Present (Cambridge: Westview Press, 2005), p.70.
[45] Cited in Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.207.
[46] Cited in David Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p.439.
[47] Ibid., p.439.
[48] Cited in Ibid, p.444.
[49] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.207.
[50] Ibid., p.207.
[51] Cited in Marvin Gettleman and et al., Vietnam and America, (New York: Grove Press, 1995), p.25.
[52] Loc Buu, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,†p.245-246.
[53] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.208.
[54] D.R. SarDesai, Vietnam: Past and Present, p.60.
[55] Bernard Ball, The Two Viet-Nams, p.209.
[56] Ibid., p.209.
[57] Ibid., p.212.
[58] Cited in Ibid., p.208.
[59] Ibid., p.209.
[60] Ibid., p.216.
Posts
In the midst of this agitated and politicized climate the rate of Vietnamese Student migration to France began to climb. The unrest in the colony transformed the voyage to France into something more than the means to higher French diploma and remunerative employment back in Indochina. For some of the students who ad been expelled form school in the 1926 student strikes, going to France was a way of continuing their schooling, as education officials in France were unwilling and unable to cooperate with their counterparts in Indochina in disciplining and punishing students.
For generation of Vietnamese youth, particularly those from the Saigon area study in France came to be seen as sort of patriotic gesture. Not only did France represent science and modernity but some of the best known leaders of the new nationalism had recently returned from France themselves; embarking on the long steamer trip across the ocean thus came to be seen as a sort of daring sacrifice that one would make for one’s country. Students from wealthy families set out for France with tourist visas, while poorer ones hired themselves out as cabin boys on the ships. Many students arrived in France already committed to what the French authorities would habitually describe as “clear anti-Frenchâ€
In a young Vietnamese writer, Nguyen Manh Tuong’s stories: there is a Vietnamese student commits a crime of passion, because a French father tries to break up his daughter’s engagement with him. A student dies from tuberculosis while his friends gather round. Another student stays in Paris, walking the streets in poverty, because his parents, trying to force him to return, stop sending him an allowance. Pham Giao is an editor of the literary journal Nam Phong worried most about the dangerous political consequences that would flow from a Vietnamese generation growing up with out a solid sense of its own cultural and national mornings. According to him, Vietnamese youth was growing up without cultural bearings. He recommended that young Vietnamese immerse themselves in both the Confucian and the French classics.
The young man complained that foreign education had completely separated him from his country and his people; he fells shame that he no longer felt any “instinctive solidarity†with the broad masses of his people. The style of being a Vietnamese rebel in France involved rejection of French society, French mores, and even social interaction with the French. More than the repetition of Marxist slogans, these attitudes reveal the emotional sensibility that grew up within the Vietnamese students in France. The experience of France did not begin the road to rebellion for many of the students: Vietnamese radical nationalism was rooted in the many anomalies of the colonial situation in Vietnam, and in the Vietnam’s own past. But the years in France did more to inflame the nationalist passions of Vietnam’s youth than to calm them
Why was the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural�
I thought the migration of Vietnamese was unnatural because it seemed to work so well with such a large number of people. You would think this because of what the author says about the people being connected to their ancestors and China. However, he goes on to make you understand that the Vietnamese people as a whole have been “on the move for that past two thousand years… century after century, thousands of Vietnamese left the tombs of their ancestors and the familiar northern countryside for the fertile lands of the south. †From the movement from China towards the central plains to defeating Chams and Cambodians, the Vietnamese are used to moving and adapting for their own advantage.
How successful was the settlement of in country refugees in southern Vietnam?
The movement from Red Vietnam to Free Vietnam was considerably successful due to the help of outside countries putting an effort into relocating refugees. Aid such as the resettlement programs, CARE, COMIGAL, ect… established subprojects, giving money, food, and housing to refugees. From there, the programs were willing to help them until they were able to establish themselves on their own. As of 1957, 319 resettlement villages were created for farmers, fishermen, and artisans. All in all, 317 schools, two hospitals, clinics, infirmaries, distribution of agriculture increased, sewing machines, boats, chemical fertilizers, ect… were contributed into helping refugees.
According to Bernard Fall, why was the Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 not considered a movement of in-country refugees?
According to Bernard Fall, the Viet-Minh’s return to the north was not considered a movement of in-country refugees because “evacuation was a matter of military and party discipline, and rarely left for the individual to decide.†Movement to the South was intended to escape communism and corrupt government treatment. The move from the South back to the North was pressured and done so because of fear and propaganda.
1. They had clear anti-french attittudes because they furthered their education there when they couldn’t do so in Vietnam. Also, the French had better everything than Vietnam did during those days. Also, because this was happening, it evolved a climb in French. Moreover, the kids who needed to be disciplined or have a higher education needed to be in France.
2. People like the French more because of the wealth and resources. France had great everything, from their leaders to the way their life was. Life over in France was great and had tranportation (visa cards) with easy jobs in a higher standard than the poor of Vietnam as to which were busboys and those who had to ride in boats.
3. Separatedness was represented, according to the man in the article, that he wasn’t fully educated of the Vietnamese culture and language. Being a rebel in France encountered him from learning about his roots. Also, he had complained about the way French did things better than those in vietnam did about the aspects of learning.
Extra Credit
1. I think that is “unnatural” due to the fact that the author stated that many asians in large populations travel thousands of miles to defeat Chams and Cambodians. I can believe that is true but it is unnatural because it is unrealistic to many readers because it is not likely to happen all of the time..large groups migrating as so.
2. It was extremely succesful. Thanks to the many organizations and other countries that helped along the way. All of the money, food, and shelter helped the refugees dramatically.
3. “…evacuation was a matter of military and party discipline, and rarely left for the individual to decide.” is the main quote that can represent why Viet-Minh’s return to the north is not considered a movement. Vietnamese residents moved to the South because they were running away from the government and communism, but returning back to the North was due to the fact of fear with the others and many had no other choice.
Assignment
1. During the midst of political and social turmoil in and around 1925-1926, France began to witness an exponential increase of student migration pour into their country from Vietnam. For some of the students who had been expelled from school in the 1926 student strikes, going to France was a way of continuing their schooling, as education officials in France were unwilling and unable to cooperate with their counterparts in Indochina in disciplining and punishing students. Students during this time already had a “clear anti-French attitude†because many well educated youth lacked job opportunities that were commensurate to their skills and diplomas, and tops jobs were always reserved to only French citizens. To top it all off, the incident of 1926 further fueled students’ animosity towards the French. The first of these outbursts which would later lead to the expulsion of many students was the arrest of an aging revolutionary Phan Boi Chau by a French agent in Shanghai which led to strikes and petition for clemency along the streets. This was a catalyst to the second incident which was the death of Phan Chu Trinh, a scholar and intellectual whom returned to Saigon in 1925, after being exiled in France of fifteen years. Phan Chu Trinh funeral procession was an occasion for student to bait school authority by wearing black armband and paint the graffiti “A.B.L.F†(A bas les Francais) on the walls and blackboards. Disciplinary actions followed, and in spring of 1926 a student boycott spread around Cochinchina, which lead to the expulsion of more than a thousand students for disciplinary reason and an increase in the “clear anti-French attitudeâ€.
2. French life is very striking to many people because one was treated with respect, dignity and the absent of racial prejudice. Although loving France and embracing its culture isn’t necessarily bad, for many, leaving it behind in order to fulfill and obligation to come home causes an overwhelming feeling of sadness that starts to take over these individual. As mention in Nguyen Manh Tuong’s stories, the risk of loving France comes into play when a student dies of tuberculosis while his friends gather around. Another incident was when a student, staying in Paris had to walk the streets in poverty because his parents, trying to force him to return, stop sending him an allowance. There are huge risks with loving France and many of the character from Nguyen’s story lost their cultural roots and sense of belonging with their own Vietnamese people.
3. The spirit of separateness is the process of slowly yet surely drifting away from one’s culture and heritage in which one was raised because one can no longer relate and find a common ground with other among one’s own people. In Pham Quynh’s essay he clearly proves this point about a young French-educated Vietnamese complaining that foreign education had “completely separated us from our country and our people†and admitted “shamefully†that he no longer felt any “instinctive solidarity†with the broad masses of his people.
Extra Credit
1. The migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 was considered to be “unnatural†because the whole Vietnamese nation has been on the move for the past two thousand years, in which the reasons were to occupy the particular region and make it as our own such as defeating the Cham and Cambodian. Therefore, this move of in-country Vietnamese is unnatural because we weren’t moving in order to take it over land for our own advantage but to escape communist “Red†Vietnam.
2. The settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam was extremely successful due to the help of foreign aid such as the United States, France and Great Britain through welfare organization such as COMIGAL, N.C.W.C and CARE. Through these resettlement programs it established subprojects for housing, money and food to accommodate the refugees until they can stand on their own and provide for themselves. By mid-1957, a total of 319 resettlement villages were built and distributed among farmers, fishermen and artisans. In the end, the accomplishment of the subprojects resulted in numerous educational, agricultural, healthcare and fishing facility for the refugees.
3. According to Bernard Fall, the Viet-Minh returning to the north in 1954 wasn’t considered a movement of in-country refugees because it clearly states in the text that “evacuation was a matter of military and party discipline, and rarely left for the individual to decideâ€. Many of refugees found themselves going to free Vietnam because in the midst of the long war they found themselves, at least temporarily, on the losing side. Treatment from the Viet-Minh and propaganda effort was in favor of the massive influx of individual to leave the north.
Extra Credit-The Role of Friendly Nations
1. The migration of one million in-country refugees considered something “unnatural” because century after century for the past two thousand years the whole Vietnamese nation has been on the move insearch of more land. They fought their way south in victory defeating the Cham and Cambodian in which these regions became part of vietnam. However, the movement phase in 1954 was not due to the same reason of finding more land but rather to escape communism and seeking for freedom.
2. The settlement of in-country refugees in Southern Vietnam was quite successful due the helping hands of foreign aids. United States supported approximately 97 percent of the refugee aid. France comes next as the largest contributor of financial aid. Numerous countries and welfare organizations made the resettlement possible for refugees. By the mid-1957 all refugees villages were absorbed into the local administrative stucture.
3. According to Bernard Fall, the Viet-Minh returning to the north in 1954 was not considered of in-country refugees because they did not flee for refuge or safety but simply following their orders to go north. Stated in the text ” Viet-Minh troops and dependents chose to go north and ordered to go north…Communist commanders had strict orders as to who was to remain in place and who was to go to north.”
Assignment-The Heyday of the Vietnamese Student Migration
1. From the perspective of the new generations of Vietnamese youth, the opportunities of studying in France came to be seen as sort of a “patriotic gesture”. The New Wave of Students were originated from three distinguished groups. Found in the reading, the first involved a class of Vietnamese who had been coming to France to study since before the war. These were the sons and daughters of Vietnamese notables who were employed by the Frence administration in the colony;their parents had mandarin backgrounds, and were part of the former Vietnamese ruling class which had come to terms with French rule. The second group derived from the accelerated immigration after 1924 was fueled by two new elements both from Cochina. The third stream of the migration was made up of the second generation of the rich of Cochinchina. The students already had a “clear anti-French attitude” due to the unfairness in job offerings. Numerous well educated students lacked a job and their knowledge and abilities were disinterested in top positions. However, the most important point to be mentioned was that much of the student migration took place in the wakke of the 1925-1926 events in Cochinchina and this further made an establishment in the clear anti-french attitudes.
2. The sweetness of life in France came with the perils of loving France. Dramatic stories were told of a Vietnamese student commits a crime of passion, because a bourgeosis French father tries to breaak up his daughter’s engangement with him. A student dies from tuberculosis while his friends gather round. Another student stays in Paris, walking the the streets in poverty because his parents, trying to force him to return, stop sending him an allowance. An obsession of loving France led to an emotional breakdown for those that got closed to the French. Severe sadness took place when they were forced by circumstances or filial obligation to return home.
3. The spirit of seperateness is when one feels cultural and heritage homelessness. When there is a barrier to relate to those of the same origin. This process of heritage and cultural drift was described by Nguyen Manh Tuong and Pham Quynh’s writing in the moderate student newspaper. “Their sense of national identity was fragile and complicated. ” They adapted french style of life, and education that they no longer knew what they wanted for their people-the vietnamese.
1. The new wave of students arrived to France during 1925-1930 during the period of agitated and politicized climate in Vietnam. Some of these students went to France as a way of continuing their education. France represented some of the well known leaders such as Phan Chu Trinh and Nguyen An Ninh. These students went to France to get the education that they were refused in Vietnam which was also a reason that they had anti French attitudes. These anti French attitudes also arose from France’s material wealth which made them “disinterested†and how great of a role they played in Vietnamese politics.
2. The perils of loving France were that they had a wealth of opportunities that included intellectual and artistic opportunities. Some felt that France was the only country that actually acknowledged their intelligence. France provided them with a freedom they had never felt in Vietnam.
3. It is the spirit of when a person feels that he or she is drifting away from their true heritage because they don’t live in that country or they are slowly adapting to another culture.
1. The new wave of students was “fed by three streams.†The first stream consisted of sons and daughters of “Vietnamese notables who were employed by the French administration in the colony.†The second stream comprise of students who came from a wealthy or lower middle class families but were expelled from their school in Vietnam because they participated in the strike against the French rule. The third stream was made up of offspring of the richest class of Cochinchina, who were usually uneducated. These students viewed the continuation of their education as a “patriotic gesture.†These students already had an anti-French attitude because leaders like Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh gave the students these anti-French ideas. The death of these two beloved leaders raised the tension between the French and these students to a new level.
2. Those Vietnamese students who love France would lose their emotional, political, and cultural connections with Vietnam. Because of this lose of connections, these students can no longer be “understood by their countrymen, their parents, [and] their future wives.†The students would also feel guilty for “embracing France†at the expense of losing “contact with… [their]… own people.”
3. The spirit of separateness lays in the feelings of “self-doubt, self-questioning, and self-division.†Self-doubt is when you doubt whether or not you actually belong in the new culture that you are trying so hard to fit into. This cause you to question, hence self-questioning, if you are doing the right thing by embracing the new culture because accepting the new culture causes you to abandon your old one. This then leads to self-division, when you are divided between two cultures because you cannot completely assimilate into either one.
1. The migration of one million in-country refugees is not considered “unnatural†because for the last two thousand years the Vietnamese have been on the move. They started in China but fought their way farther and farther south century after century. The reason for migrating south was not always the same and not always by choice, the reasons varied from moving south to acquire more fertile lands to being forced south by “opposition to an odious dictatorial regime.â€
2. The settlement phase was very successful and the “deactivation of the COMIGAL on December 31, 1957, is proof†of this. Not only was it successful in helping refugees settled in South Vietnam but it was also successful at helping them sustain this new life. Proof of this lays in the fact that the government of Free Viet-Nam still abided “its policy of national economic reconstruction†after the deactivation of COMIGAL.
3. The Viet-Minh returned to the north was not considered a movement because they were not migrating to an unfamiliar place but rather just following orders. Their “evacuation was a matter of military and party discipline†so they are not considered refugees.
1. The older generations of Vietnamese nationalist leaders were fading away, the young men who have studied and exposed to the Western education and ideas are taking their place into a revolution against the French. Nguyen An Ninh is an example of young activist, where he translated The Social Contract into Vietnamese, so everyone in Vietnam could gained a little knowledge about Republican. He also pressed for more freedom in Vietnam against the general. The students already had “clear anti-French attitudes†because they grew up with anticolonial leaders, and thought that study in France is some sort of patriotic gesture.
2. Liberty, gaiety, tolerance, absence of racial prejudice. France is place for intellectual, no racism, or cultural condensation, and France is described to be a realm of art. Unfortunately, those Vietnamese that have lived in France for a long time tend to lose their roots when they returned to their homeland. Those Vietnamese lost their roots, contact with their people, and the most important was the national Vietnamese language where it defines a people’s national identity. Also the young Vietnamese knew neither Vietnamese nor French, and they had a hybrid thought and lacked of concrete sense to understand the meaning of the word.
3. The spirit of separateness was between the group of young Vietnamese that interact with the French and the group of young Vietnamese that anti-French. For those interact with the French were subject to harsh attack from their fellow students. Militant nationalism was used to rejecting the French and those getting along with the French. The educated Vietnamese are anti-French and hostile against the French. Separateness was like a civil war in Vietnam.
Extra Credit
1. The migration of one million refugees in 1954 was considered unnatural because the Communist defeated the France from colonial, but they also spread Communism ideas to the civilians. The refugees migrated to the South since they did not want to be control by the Communist party.
2. The settlement of refugees in South Vietnam was successful due to the help of France, the United States, and other nations. When the refugees got into the South, they were divided into profession groups which later to help the South. For farmers, each of the farmer family gets a house in the rice field to cultivate crops. Other refugees were put in the large hangars or camps. More than 319 resettlement villages have been created for the migration of one million refugees.
3. The Viet Minh returned to the north in 1954 was not considered a movement because the Communist leaders strictly ordered them to become civilians or guerrilla fighters or Communist agents if they choose to stay in the north. Viet Minh also tried to broadcast in native tongue to the highland tribe and convinced them to join the Communist.
Scott McConnell
1. The educational system domestically at the time within Vietnam was at best under par when compared to the education that can be receive overseas in France itself. Bettering one’s self means expanding one’s education. But even for well-educated vietnamese students, acquiring jobs was rather difficult since higher positions were ultimately reserved. Most overseas students came from wealthy families, some received scholarships, and a few even snuck aboard the voyage as cabin boys. The Anti-French attitude was ultimately derived from the 1926 incidents in which students were expelled from school for their rebellious strikes. The voyage to France to continue one’s education quickly became viewed as a patriotic action because it consolidates the Vietnamese opposition of the French ability to deny them
education.
2. We being human as we are, behave and react to our environments in particular ways. Overseas Vietnamese students made sacrifices to be away from home to further their education. In the long run, these students were expected to return home and fulfill their obligation to Vietnam and were expected to do so without question. The result of this saw many Vietnamese native born students losing their roots and culture. Who could blame them? They were treated with greater respect then in colonial Indochina. There are some who walk the streets of Paris in rags due to withdrawals of financial support from their parents. Ultimately, loving Paris resulted in enduring these perils.
3. Isolation from one’s native roots and culture develops the spirit of separateness. When one is place in a position far away from the Native land and is force to cope with a different culture and environment, this spirit of separateness slowly pulls its victim further away barricading them from their country’s heritage.
Extra Credit
1. The definition of movement throughout the history of Vietnam was due to the purpose of conquest and expanding. This “unnatural” movement of the people through different parts Vietnam in 1954 was not due to these factors. The definition of the word has changed, no longer is movement considered conquest. It was now a movement for freedom.
2. With the help foreign aid the majority of which was the United states, the settlement of in-country refugees in the south was considered to be a success. Expanding on this fact, the help from welfare organization helped in the several resettlement projects involving education, healthcare, and agriculture.
3. The Viet-Minh returning to the north was not to seek safety or refuge, their reasons for returning were due to orders or fear. According to Bernard Fall these reasons does not qualify the Viet-Minh under the category of in-country refugee. Most in-country refugees were considered so due to their movement for freedom and also to escape communist rule.
Heyday of Vietnamese student migration
1.Studying in France would be a patriotic gesture to their country since education could help their country rise. The surge was a result of easing in visa procedures that the French initiated in 1924. Students no longer needed a written authorization to leave the colony. In addition, other circumstances such as the spread of French lagnuage instruction, a growing middle and lower class, relaxd bureaucratic regulations, and a rebellious attitude cultivated a surge in Vietnamese students to france. There are three main classes of students: sons daughters of Vietnamese notables, wealthy students who were expelled for disciplinary/scholastic reasons, and low income stowaways. The anti-French attitudes were due to revolutionary leaders such as Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chu Trinh, and the Vietnamese Constitutionalists, all of which refused to co-opt with co-opt with the French colonial regime.
2. Pro-French Vietnamese were intimidated into an apolitical silence and lose the influence they once had within the Vietnamese student organizations. Also, those who loved France began a loss of “roots” and loss of identity, feeling stifled and haunted by guilt.
3.The spirit of separateness is a condition that many Vietnamese students experienced in France. It is a feeling of unrootedness from their culture and history. It is a type of self division and sense of cultural homelessness that was tended to be exclusively the problem of the collaborators.
-Week 2 Assignment
Scott McConnell, “Chapter 4
* Describe the background of the new wave of students and explain why the students already had “clear anti-French attitudes.â€
The new wave of students were a group of international students who seeked for expanded education and “going to France was a way of continuing their schooling.” These students already had “anti-french attitudes” because they lacked skills, diplomas and jobs; and the top job opportunities were unfairly opened to only French citizens. In 1926 student strikes, some students were expelled from school; education administers of France refused to accept their “counterparts in Indochina” and students were disciplined.
* What were the perils of loving France?
Though it may seem that many have fell in love with france, there were disasters. There were many perils in this passage that included: “a vietnamese student who commits a crime of passion, because a bourgeois French father tries to break up his daughter’s engagement with him; a student dies of tuberculosis while his freins gather round; another student stays in Paris, walking the streets in poverty because his parents, trying to force him to return, stop sending him an allowance, and other tragedies in france.
* What was the spirit of separateness?
The Spirt of separateness is the feeling of an individual’s heritage is drifting away due to the adaption of a different society and culture.
-Extra Credit
Bui Van Luong, “The Role of Friendly Nations†and Bernard Fall, “Commentary on Bui Van Luong,â€
* Why was the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural�
This migration was considered something unnatural because in the historical facts from Bernard Fall’s Commentary: “The Vietnamese are known to have moved from China to what is now north Viet-Nam around 400 to 250 B.C. and ever since one generation after another of Vietnamese has fought its way south, from the Red River Delta to the plains of Than Hoa and central Viet-am, defeating the Cham and Cambodian kingdom, which bared its migration to the open plains of the Mekong-Saigon was first occupied in 1698, and the Vietnamese reached the Gulf of Siam at Ha Thien in 1714.”
According to this explanation, there should have already been plenty of vietnamese individuals long ago on the south side because they had aready gained full territory before the french ruled.
* How successful was the settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam?
It was fairly successful because there were still plenty of free space and there were opportunities for many refugees because South Vietnam was still undeveloped. Farm families were given shelter, animals, seeds and fertilizers.
* According to Bernard Fall, why was the Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 not considered a movement of in-country refugees?
The return of the Viet-Minh to the north was not considered a movement of in-country refugees because they weren’t escaping or looking for safety; they returned because they were ordered or feared their officials. The main point of movement were for in-country refugees to escape from the communists and to seek freedom.
Assignment
1. The wave of students came to France to study
make up of three group. The first group was
children of Vietnamese notables who were
employed by the French administration in the
colony. The second group was students come
from wealthy families but get kick out from their school in Vietnam for participated in the strike against the French rule. The third group was children of the rich families of Cochinchina. For the young generation, came to France to study had became a “patriotic gestureâ€. The students already had a clear anti-French attitude because the systems under the French was unfair about job opportunities, only french citizens can get top jobs. Another reason was that they had been giving the ideal of anti-French by anti colonial leaders (Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chu Trinh).
2. Vietnamese students came to France to study were expected to come back to Vietnam to serve their country because that was the main reason why their parents or themselves sent them to France. But after a long time they were in France, they had forgotten that reason because they have a totally different life in France. They were treated with respect and have lots of freedom. And because they were refused to come back to Vietnam, their families were not really happy. Many of them live in poverty because their parents stop sending them money to make them comeback to Vietnam.
3. The spirit of separateness was for the students who live and study in France for a long time. And because of they were educated in France for a long time, they found that they were not belong or connect to Vietnam anymore. They are Vietnamese but in they think and act like a French.
Extra credit
1. The migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 was considered to be “unnatural†because in the past two thousand years, Vietnamese had moved down South to discover new land and defeated the Cham and the Cambodian to take over their land to expand Vietnam. But he migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 was not for discovering new land but to run away from the communist.
2. He settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam was successful because of the help of lots of nations around the world and welfare organizations such as COMIGAL, N.C.W.C and CARE. The United States was the biggest supporter and second was the French. By mid-1957, a total of 319 resettlement villages were created. Every farmer got a house in rice fields for their family to live and grow crop.
3. According to Bernard Fall, the Viet-Minh returning to the north in 1954 wasn’t considered a movement of in-country refugees because in the text it said: “Viet-Minh troops and dependents chose to go north and ordered to go north.Communist commanders had strict orders as to who was to remain in place and who was to go to north.â€
The new wave students included people from rich families who had money to travel to France with a trouris visa, some came from poor families who had to hire themselves as cabin boys on the ships, some were entrolled in franco-indigene schools. There were students from Vietnam’s lower middle class who were the sons of teachers and small merchants that also went on the voyage and had received financial assistance from wealthy Vietnamese families in returning the favor by promising to marry their daughter. Atleast 15% of these students were Catholic. These students had “clear anti-french attitudes” because around 1924, there were a lot of Vietnamese students who were attracted to communism. The Vietnamese students saw the French men as large sweaty figures who was always demanding something and saw them as a disgrace for the Vietnamese.
The peril of loving France is that it affects the students mentally and physically. Some of the people who were deeply connected to France felt haunted by guilt over chosing the freedom of living in France over their family. Some students had to go live off the street because their family stopped sending them money due to their refusal of coming back home. As mentioned in the reading, once Nguyen Man Truong’s characters returend to Vietname, they begin to die within, their spirit weakened by the feeling that they cannot be undderstood by their countrymen, parents, and future wives. Some of these men, by loving France, had lost their connection to their fatherland.
The spirit of seperatness is through the Vietnamese students, they all acquire something of their own and use it to their ability as a way of defining themselves against the Frnech. Although there were Vietnamese students who were greatly tied to the French culture, there were also a number of students who did not feel the same way. In order to have an intellectual life, these studnets must be able to perform well in a French university or had a solic academic background. The lack of language silkis kept most Vietnamese students apart from the French.
EXTRA CREDIT
The migration of the refugees in 1954 was considered unnatural due to the large amounts of aid from other countries. For example, the move from South to North was aided by the Polish, who supplied ships to help move the migrants who chose to leave South Vietnam. Likewise, the refugees who moved from North to South were aided by the English, French, and Americans. The number of people who escaped on their own are much less, out of nearly a million refugees, only about 100,000 of those people performed the movement on their own without another country’s aid. This is perhaps the reason why the migration in 1954 was unnatural or certainly unusual.
The resettlement of refugees into South Vietnam was something of a success. With the new manpower that the million or so extra refugees provided, there was a large increase in the progress of many areas including resource production and public works. For example, an increase in the number of places for education and healthcare was cited by the book. More schools and hospitals were created, more agricultural produce and manufacturing items were created during this time thanks to the labor of the incoming workforce. In terms of increasing societal living conditions, the entry of refugees into South Vietnam was a big success.
The return to the north in 1954 of a thousand or so people was not necessarily a movement of refugees because the people have chosen to move back due to various personal reasons, rather than being driven back by communistic ideology. These people, Fall cited, often missed their homes and their loved ones rather than being forced to flee by politcal or social reasons. For this reason, the author of this book does not consider the migration to be one of refugees.
1/ For some of them students, they had been expelled from the student strikes in 1926 so the only way for them to continue their educations was France. The France education system was not related to Indochina back then so all the punishments couldn’t be effected. On the other hand, most of students looked at studying in France was the way of being patriot, just like the late Phan Chu Trinh and Nguyen An Ninh.
2/ At first, to live in France, ones should master the languages and second was to get more involve in French culture and society. But somehow during the way of learning and adapting to the new life, some Vietnamese students lost. They were too adapted or maybe got in too deep with France that they forget what the reason for their arrival in France was. They scared to come back to An Nam. They scared to faces life back to their home country.
3/ Some French educated Vietnamese felt that the life and the education in foreign made them separated from their country and their people. They didn’t feel the connection anymore. I guess the difference between Western and Eastern cultural was too much back then. Vietnamese students strike to adapt to the life in France, but when they get on to it, they lost their old life.
Extra credit:
1/ 1 million refugees was rushing from the north to south of Vietnam immediately after the Geneva Agreement. It considered unnatural because Vietnam supposed to be one union country after the retreat of France from Vietnam, but people want to come to the free south and escape the red north. It separated the country into 2 direction: Communist in the north and Republic in the south, the in-war after the long decades under the palm of France colonial.
2/ The settlement of in country refugees in southern Vietnam was really successful due to how well the south government and friendly country support them. They were received generous aid from U.S, British, French and numerous welfare organizations such as N.C.W.C, CARE etc. Refugees were accommodated and housed. Food was given. Help was offered. In mid 1957, 319 resettlement villages had been created. Education, healthcare was brought. Everything came to help refugees get used to their new life and stand on their own.
3/ The Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 simply the strict order from above commanders so it couldn’t be considered as a movement of in-country refugees. As is state on page 5:†According to the available information, the Communist Commanders had strict orders as to who was to remain in place to become a civilian; who was to remain behind in hiding as guerrilla fighters or Communist agents; and who was to go north etcâ€
Online writing assignment:
• Describe the background of the new wave of students and explain why the students already had “clear anti-French attitudes.â€
1. The new wave of students were those that attended overseas schools in France to expand their knowledge and to better themselves. The anti-french attitudes were because the top job opportunities were reserved to French citizens only which excluded all of these students.
• What were the perils of loving France?
2. These students or citizens that lived in France essentially loss their true origins of Vietnam. Many could not even speak their native language which is what the Vietnamese identity is mainly about. They lose their culture and the people back in Vietnam can no longer connect with them on the same level. Also, on another note, students were treated with more respect in France, which made a lot of people want to stay and not go back to the motherland and make a change with their new education.
• What was the spirit of separateness?
3. I believe that the “sprit of separateness†spawns from students not being connected to their homeland any more. Here they are in a new country that has a whole different way of living, culture, language and so many more things that are distant to their homeland. The students eventually assimilated or got use to the French life and were no longer “connected†to the Vietnamese that were still back at home.
Online Extra Credit Writing Assignment:
• Why was the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural�
Well, in the past, the Vietnamese were known to move South in order to conquer more land and expand in number of volume for more resources, etc. This movement in 1954, however, was considered “unnatural” because it was not for this same reason anymore, it was because the people were trying to escape areas where there were communist rule enforced. They were moving for freedom this time around.
• How successful was the settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam?
The in-country refugees in Vietnam were considered to be a success. The reason being is because the United States along with other countries provided these people with organizations and groups that helped them in term of aid for everything that they needed. For instance, the farmers in these refugees were provided with animals, seeds and all else required to run a proper farm.
• According to Bernard Fall, why was the Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 not considered a movement of in-country refugees?
The reason why this was not considered an in-country refugee because those who fled back to the North were complying with the communists. They left in fear that death or other consequences may come their way if they did not flee back to the North. In order for it to be a in-country refugee, the refugees have to be escaping from the communist and be a part of the movement towards freedom.
1. The new wave students came from different backgrounds. There were many of them came from wealthy families got set out to France with tourist Visa while poorer ones hired themselves as cabin boys. There were three main streams of this movement: The first groups that came before the war to study. The second made up from two elements both Cochinchina, whose families usually wealthy as well as student came from modest background. The third group were the offspring of the rich Cochinchina. Many of the new wave students had a clear anti-French attitudes because much of the student migration took place in the wake of 1925-1926 events in Cochinchina.
2. The perils of loving France was a situation that Vietnamese fell in love with the language, culture and artistic of French with the risk of losing their families roots. For example, a Vietnamese student committed a crime passion because a bourgeois French father tried to break up his daughter’s engagement or students walking the streets in poverty because his parents forced him to return and stop sending him allowance. Therefore, the misunderstood of their parents and their own countrymen were the biggest perils for them.
3. Spirit of separateness was a mix confusion emotion that many of Vietnamese youngsters felt during that time. They felt separate from their root because of the new life style in foreign country that they adapted to. In the reading, Pham Quynh expresses: “ foreign education had completely separated us from our country and our people and admitted shamefully that he no longer felt any instinctive solidarity.
Extra Credit
1. The movement of migration of one million refugees 1954 was unnatural because Vietnamese escape from their own country to their own country. In the other mean, immigrants tend to move to the new land and build up their lives. That was what the Vietnamese 2000 years ago when they moved South and defeat Chams and Cambodian for more lands.
2. I think the settlement of in-country refugee was successful. People started building up their new life immediately. With the help of foreign aids, people have an ability to build their individual houses, public building, roads and bridges. Farmers clear their land, plowed sowed the field. Fisherman built up their boat made net. Artisans set up their shop. Children resumed their study. There were almost half of the immigrant was able to live on their own. The result of successful was soon came: “ 92 ,442 individual housing units have been constructed. In education, 317 element school have been build with 1636 classrooms and 66176 pupils in attendance, 18 secondary school started with 49 classrooms and 1521 pupils in attendance. Progress in health and sanitary construction figures: 2 hospitals, 143 infirmaries,55 maternity clinics. There were many accomplishment of the artisan and famers as well.
3. I think The Viet Minh return to the North not considered as the movement of in country refugees because it’s more of the military party choice not individual choice. The moved to North for more advantages in controlling and building a stronger military party so it can’t be consider as the movement of refugees.
Part 1:
1. o The new wave of students came from wealthy and poor families from the middle and lower class of Vietnamese families. The majorities of them, however, were from the south and were wealthy. They came to France with “clear anti-French attitudes†because they all came around 1925-1926 which was a period of time where they started to get a little restless and wanting more freedom and independence from the French colons.
2. The perils of loving France for the young Vietnamese students were that when they began to “love†France it changed their values about being Vietnamese. Some drifted away from their cultures and lost their sense of identity or roots and became divided among the Vietnamese students who knew that they wanted to come to France to better educate themselves to get rid of the French Colons.
3. The spirit of separateness was the separation that the students felt with their culture, country, and peers back home. When the students would return home, they were very different. They had been exposed to a different way of life in France. They had become more intellectual and were used to having freedoms that they did not have in Vietnam. Some found it hard to communicate when they were talking to their own parents.
Extra Credit:
1. The migration of the one million in-country refugees in 1954 was considered very “unnatural†because it was such a large number of civilians organized into evacuating within a year as compared to evacuating soldiers who are trained and organized.
2. o The settlement was of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam was successful. There was space and plenty of resources to be taken advantage of in the south. Before there were not enough people to do so. The refugees were put in specific villages for their trades and the refugees received a lot of assistance from the other nations such as the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Western Germany, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. The United states supported the refugees with the most financial aid.
3.The Viet-Minh returning to the north in 1954 was not really considered a movement, according to Bernard Fall, because they were ordered to go North and also because it was easy for them to settle in the North because the Catholic provinces were empty from their resettlement to the south.
The Heyday of the Vietnamese Student Migration:
1. Studying in France was a new aura that was “seen as sort of a patriotic gestureâ€. The number of migrants came in three types of “streamsâ€, the ones that came to study before the war, the ones that derived from the immigration after 1924, and the ones that made up of the “offspring†of the rich Cochinchina. It states in the article that since most of the
Migration had taken place between due to the “wake of the 1925-1926 events in Cochinchina, many of the students arrived in France already committed to what the French authorities would habitually describe as “clear anti-French attitudesâ€. This was because the years that the French has spent in Indochina have caused a “trend of student politics†which in turn caused radicalization. The students had a “clear anti-French attitudes†due to the fact that they had grown up with leaders that assimilated their minds with notions of attitude.
2. The perils that face these students who had fallen in love with France were definitely more apparent over time. This article mentions Nguyen Manh Tuong’s stories, and describes his collection of short stories and how it takes a “bitter turn†for his characters whenever they came back to the mother country (Vietnam). Since they “embraced†their love for France, it had caused them to lose contact with their own people. When the time had come for those to go back to Vietnam, the ones that had accepted and loved the life of France were completely torn because the life that they were living in France could not be understood by “their countrymenâ€. It seems as though that that by falling in love with France, the students faced many “emotional difficulties†that causes their “loss of rootâ€.
3. The students that studied in France “shared certain experiences in common†that caused them to live “in a mental universe quite different from that of their parentsâ€. It is definitely evident that when one leaves their home country, and goes on to study aboard, a sense of separation and being homesick will be exposed. This spirit of separation was due to the fact that they “no longer felt comfortable speaking†to their parents and they were also “out of tune with the rhythms of life†their parents were living. All this can be a contributor factor that the spirit of separation was suitable due to their state of mental “feelings of uprootedessâ€.
Extra Credit:
1. The movement of one million refugees’ from North Vietnam to South Vietnam may have seemed “unnaturalâ€, but to the Vietnamese refugee’s it was definitely attainable. The reason for this was because the Vietnamese were known for their movement from China to the present day of what is now North Vietnam and South Vietnam. These tales of “heroic feats accomplished during those migrations†have given them the courage, and although they endured physical hardships, it was not an “unnatural†because this migration was for a purpose.
2. In my opinion, the settlement of in-country refugees was definitely a success due to the aid of friendly nations, (US, France, Great Britain, Australia, Western Germany, New Zealand, and the Netherlands), numerous Welfare Organizations (N.C.W.C, Junior Chamber of Commerce, CARE, and the United Nations Children’s Fund) , and the COMIGAL. The accomplishments that came out were: 319 resettlement villages, progress in education, progress in health/sanitation, progress in agriculture, progress in artisan industries, and the progress in the fishing industries.
3. The reason why Viet-Minh’s return to the north in 1954 was not considered a movement of in-country refugees because as stated in the article the Viet-Minh troops and dependents had “strict orders as to who was to remain in place and who was to go to northâ€. The Viet-Minh’s belief was that “evacuation was a matter of military and party discipline, and rarely left for the individual to decideâ€.
• Describe the background of the new wave of students and explain why the students already had “clear anti-French attitudes.â€
Among the new wave of students migrated to French for education during the period is a group of the capable students was children of the ruling class whose parent has mandarin background and employed by the French administration. The other group includes expelled students from French Lycee in Saigon and Franco-Indegine schools because of the student strike of 1926. These students ranged from moderate background to wealthy. O smaller group from middle-lower class. Most students were wealthy male came from the southern part of Vietnam. These students had “clear anti-French attitudes†for many reasons. Vietnamese is deeply rooted with anti-foreigners (chong ngoai xam)throughout history and literature. Another reason is that many students had association with many anti-French movements such as Äông Du (“Go East”) Movement started in 1905 and movement Duy Tân (“Modernization”) either through the new means of available printing or through cohesive older family generation. The sentence of Phan Boi Chau which lead to the student strike of 1926 selected a students who are already supported Phan Boi Chau’s ideas about reclaiming independent through modernizations. Even for the wealthy and the ruling class of students, they wants to secure their status and have voices in the French administration. For the less wealthy students, “anti-French†is a good opportunities to advance themselves.
• What were the perils of loving France?
The students witness the life in French which is high living standard, modern architecture and transportation, advance medicine. Moreover, French are highly culture. People are well manner and little impartial . At least that are what it seem like compare to the life in colonized country.
• What was the spirit of separateness?
Alienated socially in French had pushed the students to a stronger sense of nationalism. Students without anti-French attitudes would fit in with other Vietnamese with difficult. In other instance student who consider mix marriage would be afraid of being call “nourish an enemy of his raceâ€. The situation is worse because Vietnamese was kept from highest administration positions which in turn from the power to rule. Furthermore, traditional Vietnamese values of family members are closely tied verse individual life style of the French spitted the separation event father apart.
1. Between 1920 and 1930s, the new wave of students started to increase. The Vietnamese students who studies in France from 1925 to 1929 grew tremendously. Due to the student strikes in 1926, going to France is a way for them to escape, to continue their education. For those that particularly came from Saigon, study in France is a “patriotic gesture.†As young generation, these students want to follow the steps of their older generation such as Phan Chu Trinh, Nguyen An Ninh. The students already had “clear anti-French attitudes†because after so many years of studies, they didn’t get the opportunity to show their talent, bring what they have learned into real life, for all of these opportunities had already been reserved.
2. Overseas Vietnamese students came to France to further education, and hopefully in the long run return home to fulfill the responsibility as a student, a child, and a Vietnamese citizen. Everyone was treated with respect, dignity, and absence of racial prejudice in France. Vietnamese students soon adapted to the new environment, and therefore find it hard to leave France behind to fulfill the obligation to come home. These causes incidents and emotional breakdown upon the students such as students walk the streets in poverty because their parents stopped sending allowance, forcing them to return.
3. The Spirit of separateness is the separation that was drifting away from the young generation in France. They adapted to the new environment and no longer feel connected to their own people, intellectually to the language itself. Open up to new ideas and system in France, they now find it hard to readjust into their mother country’s system.
Extra Credit:
1. The migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural†because these people no longer moving South for the same reason they had years ago. They were no longer moving south to expand lands but rather to escape the communist hoping to find freedom or a sense of freewill down South.
2. The settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam was considered to be a success, due to the help of United States, France, and other nations. They received more opportunities and benefits such as shelter, healthcare, and education. Therefore, they were able to build 319 resettlement villages by the mid-1957.
3. The Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 was strictly due to orders of the commanders. They were not returning to seek shelter, and/or freedom. For that, by definition of Bernard Fall, the Viet-Minh returning to the north in 1954 were not considered a moment of in-country refugees.
Many students in Vietnam were seeking to expand their education in France. Studying in france would be a patriotic gesture because education could help rise their country. The clear anti-French attitude was due to the unfair job position that was offered to well educated students. Some students were expelled from school due to the student strikes in 1926. Education administers of France refused to accept their “counterpart in Indochina†and students were disciplined.
The peril of loving France had greatly affected students. Many of these students have disconnected their to their motherland. Those who love France began to lose their root and identity, feeling stifled and haunted by guilt. In the article Nguyen has mentioned a student was walking in the streets of poverty because his parents tried to force him to return home by stop sending him allowance.
The spirit of separateness is being described when one’s cultural is has been neglecting by its own people. According to the article, many Vietnamese in France did not fully understand their culture. Therefore, they have distant their homeland. The students are used to a whole new way of living and culture that they eventually felt disconnected. Pham mentions that foreign education had completely separated us form our country and our people and admitted shamefully that he no longer felt any instinctive solidarity.
Extra credit
Thousands of years the Viet nation has been on the move in searching for land and escaping from china. They fought their way south defeated the Cham and Cambodian. However the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 was not unnatural because communist defeated the France. The refugees migrated to the south in order to escape from the communist ruling.
The successful settlement for the Southern Vietnam was helped by foreign aids. The United States supported approximately 97 percent of the refugee aids. France had help out on the financial side. Many other countries and welfare organizations made it possible for the refugees. By mid-1957 all refugees’ villages were absorbed into local administrative structure.
According to the Bernard Fall, Viet-minh returned to the north in 1954 was not considered a movement of in-country because they weren’t escaping or looking for safety. They were ordered to return to the north by their leader.
Extra Credit
1. The mass migration in 1954 is considered unnatural to the Vietnamese because it represents a shift in reason for migration. In the past, the Vietnamese people typically migrated southward in an effort to conquer and overtake fertile lands from indigenous peoples. In 1954, the Vietnamese people instead migrated to escape war and oppression. In this kind of migration, the Vietnamese were refugees rather than usurpers.
2. The settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam was deemed successful. Several friendly countries of the Free World such as Poland, Britain, U.S., and France, lent ships, planes, and other methods of transportation for the operation. Refugees received great treatment and dignity in their migration. Once in the south, each refugee family was given provisions and necessities to become productive members of the community in the South. COMIGAL helped refugees locate according to profession.
3. Of the Migrants who came North, the majority were forced to go. Migration to the North was a matter of military and party discipline, and rarely left for the individual to decide. Thus, the migration was not a true movement of in-country refugees as many did not go out of their own volition. Rather, the movement bore out of mass propaganda and coercion.
Scott McConnell
1)Migrating and residing in France have expanded these students’ point of view. France gave these students a chance to explore and express their opinions base on what they feel, not on what they are told. In Vietnam, these students had to contain their thoughts. Every word would have to be carefully considered before spoken because it could lead a person or his family to exile. To these students, the French have liberated and given them freedom. Therefore anti-French attitude had been erased.
2)The perils of loving France are that people back in the native land view these students who study abroad as traders. The Vietnamese government felt that the French are brainwashing the Vietnamese students into their culture and ideas so that when these students return home, they will incorporate their thinking into the Vietnamese government.
3)The students in France felt as though they are in a foreign land, they were home. Whereas when they return back to their home land, they felt as if they were the foreigners there. Students who have study abroad felt that people back home doesn’t understand and can’t relate to their new ways of thinking. One student expressed that when they attempt to speak their opinions towards their parents, they were taken as rude. Hence, the spirit of seperateness deprived because a relationship with the students’ and his/her own culture could not be established.
Bui Van Luong
1)The migration was considered to be “unnatural†because they had to leave behind what was familiar them. It seemed as though the migration have separated the people from their mother’s land. When they had to migrate, rice fields, ancestors, and basically their entire life-savings were left behind. It is understandable for these immigrants to have felt this way because they were emotionally and physically displaced from their secure environment.
2)Because of the many giving and caring organizations available, it had made the settlement of the in-country refugees in southern Vietnam easy to adapt. The funds to help aid these refugees enable them to survive and regain hope. By the end of the settlement, it had even created an improved educational as well as agricultural system.
3)When the Viet-Minh returned to the north in 1954, it was not considered a movement because they were told to return by their Communist leaders. The leaders controlled who were to stay and who were to return. For this reason, the movement, according to Fall, was not considered a movement. The migration back north was strictly an order that had to be follow. It was neither voluntary nor driven by any ideology.
• Online Extra Credit Writing Assignment:
Bui Van Luong, “The Role of Friendly Nations†and Bernard Fall, “Commentary on Bui Van Luong,†in Richard Linhdhol, ed., Viet-Nam: The First Five Years (Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1959).
• Why was the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural�
The Author believse that the one million in-country refugees in 1954 †was not something ‘unnatural’ to the Vietnameseâ€. The history of Vietname in the past two thousand years is about migration. The author give several examples such as migration from China to now North Vietname 400 to 250 B.C, , occupied Saigon by 1698, and Ha Tien by 1714. I agree with the author for the most part. It is naturally for the Vietnamese to continuously expansion to the fertile south along Mekon River until reaching the cape of Ca Mau while fighting off the much more advance Chinese from the North. Even in myth of Au Co evolve around migrations.
• How successful was the settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam?
Even though some hardship is unavoidable due to the nature of migration and resettlement of civilian, close to 1 million civilians from the North Vietnam resettle in many parts of south Vietnam. New schools and Hospitals were built. Land was located to the farmers. Fisherman was relocated near rivers and sea to suite there occupations. Many religious groups was settle as a group separately from other religious group to avoid conflict. Overall, the in-country migration is a success.
• According to Bernard Fall, why was the Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 not considered a movement of in-country refugees?
Many returned to the North is not my choice but rather a military movements. Other return because they miss their family. These are not the main purpose of the in-country migration.
Assignment
Describe the background of the new wave of students and explain why the students already had “clear anti-French attitudes.â€
Vietnamese students who get expelled from school went to France to continue their education.
Wealthy Vietnamese students are travel by tourist visas and the poor students had to work for the wealthy students as cabin boys in order to get an opportunity to travel to France. They were clear anti-French attitude because France can effect on the students willingness to accept the existing arrangement in the colonial Indochina. In 1924, Vietnamese students in French, has protest because the French doesn’t treat them well. For example, “many were businessmen and doctors and owned land..were naturalized French citizen†this shows France people has more opportunity to had better job than the Vietnamese people who live in French.
What were the perils of loving France?
Vietnamese students who became adapted to the French environment are tending to forget about their roots. Some of their parent has to stop sending their allowance to them to force them back. But they don’t want anything but stay in French. Toward the end, those who tends to forgot their roots has nothing when they lost contact with their family and friends.
What was the spirit of separateness?
The spirit of separateness is students who live in French for a long period of time, began to forget their roots. Because of the word “freedom†they began to lost contact with their own people which shows that they are no longer belong part of the Vietnamese heritage.
Extra Credit
Why was the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural�
The reason for millions of people migrated from North to South in 1954 to be consider unnatural because, in the Vietnamese culture, it is rarely for the people the “abandon their rice lands and the tombs of their ancestors.†However, the “distaste of the refugees for communism†made the people move away from their homeland.
How successful was the settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam?
The settlement program considered to be successful despite the fact that the people struggled to settle into their new lives. COMIGAL was able to find “land suitable for cultivation for farmer; favorable points along the coastline for fishermen; and areas near cities or population centers for artisans.†Overtime, the people were able to adapt to new lives and away from communism.
According to Bernard Fall, why was the Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 not considered a movement of in-country refugees?
The movement of Viet-Minh return to the north was not considered in country refugees because it was not individual choice. In the text, it stated that the evacuation was a matter of military and party discipline. It was rarely for the people decided to move by their will.
Describe the background of the new wave of students and explain why the students already had “clear anti-French attitudes.â€
The background of the new students was that of primarily wealthy Vietnamese families. However, there were also a large number of students that were also from poor families. These young students would work on the transport boats to France in order to gain access to the education system. The anti French sentiment came from a lack of action taken by the French side to give Vietnamese citizens more freedoms. Many of the young Vietnamese students once educated begun to see how the French are just using the Vietnamese society for their gain.
What were the perils of loving France?
Once in France, many of the Vietnamese students begun to enjoy their time learning and indulging in the French culture. This was a peril because if the students begun to take on the French culture to much they could be labeled in a negative way once they came home. Another consequence like stated in the article some students didn’t want to come home even after they had been cut off financially by their parents. However, these consequences seem small compared to what Pham Quynh experienced by the hands of Viet Minh in 1945 for being considered a traitor.
What was the spirit of separateness?
The spirit of separateness occurred once the students had assimilated into the French culture. The students felt they could relate to one another very well but, once they came home they had a difficult time identifying with their past cultural values.
Why was the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural�
I believe the migration of one million refugees in 1954 to be unnatural because they were only going to another part of their country. The mass migration was seen as a unnatural also because they only had a very short time to do this.
How successful was the settlement of in-country refugees in southern Vietnam?
The settlement of the in-country refugees was successful because the operation had many support branches. The operation was being helped along by many agencies and governments. The operation to settle everyone down was done with the implementation of villages, also the area being settled was able to be harvested to support the refugees.
According to Bernard Fall, why was the Viet-Minh return to the north in 1954 not considered a movement of in-country refugees?
The movement was not considered an in-country movement because it was primarily a military movement. They were given orders to return and because they were not refugees and were not seeing refuge but obeying orders, this is why it was not considered an in-country move.
Assignment 2:
1) The new wave of students who have different ideas with clear anti-French attitudes because they were more educated and realize the position Vietnam was enduring by the French. There were incidents where Vietnamese students were expelled in from universities in France in 1926 which impacted their opinion of the French colonial rule in Vietnam. Many of the students who came to France for an education wanted better careers for themselves. With the incident with the students, the French employers are unfair with the Vietnamese who could not access many job opportunities.
2) The perils of loving France were the luxury of having an expanded education with more opportunities that arise towards them but there were some drawbacks since not every Vietnamese person was treated the same. Some had emotional attachment with the country and others had to deal with racial prejudice with the French people. There were stories of a student who loved France so much but died from a disease staying too long and many students feel that they have the obligation to go back to their home land to teach and show what they learned in France. So, there are good and bad consequences that come towards the lavish education and different environment especially affecting the younger generation.
3) The spirit of separateness is the apprehension of oneself who are losing their own heritage to another country. I believe that this is more being a victim of their own country because they are acknowledge their culture anymore. Students who migrated to France for education and feel more connected in the schools are less likely to go back to Vietnam because they have adapted to the new society and lost their since of belonging in their homeland.
Extra Credit 2:
1) The migrations of the refugees in 1954 were considered something unnatural because there were thousands of Vietnamese who desired freedom from the communists. After defeating the Cham and Cambodia, the refugees wanted to just leave the French colonial rule and just be able to be free in another country. With the aid of other countries, people in Vietnam were sent away from the communist rule.
2) The settlement of the refugees in South Vietnam was very successful for the fact that many people were welcomed with different opportunities offered to them. With the help of countries like France and United States made it possible for the people to have freedom.
3) Viet-Minh returning to the north in 1954 did not considered the movement of the refugees because of the communist rule that had strict orders. Fear of the commanders in the north, they just had to do what they were told according to the Bernard Fall.
1. There was a new waves of students that left Vietnam to France during the mid 1920s. Some students has been expelled from school in the 1926 student strikes and so their migration to France was a way of continuing their education. Some students that migrated from Saigon, came to study in France as a sort of political gesture because France represented science and modernity. Some of these students were sons of Vietnamese lower middle class that had financial aid from wealthy Vietnamese. Others took odd jobs like cabin or ship helpers while some took on a life of scams and hustling. Lastly, some students were offsrpings of the rich from Cocinchina. These were children of land owners in the Meking Delta who were mostly uneducated but has monetary wealth.
2. The perils of loving France by the Vietnamese was quite cogenial. The students were treated with dignity and respect. The perils of loving France was that of dazzlng ray of intellectual and artistic opportunities.
3. The spirit of separateness was is to be apart from one’s own cultural identity. It is to be displaced from one’s own country.
Why was the migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 considered something “unnatural�
I thought the migration of Vietnamese was unnatural because it seemed to work so well with such a large number of people. You would think this because of what the author says about the people being connected to their ancestors and China. However, he goes on to make you understand that the Vietnamese people as a whole have been “on the move for that past two thousand years… century after century, thousands of Vietnamese left the tombs of their ancestors and the familiar northern countryside for the fertile lands of the south. †From the movement from China towards the central plains to defeating Chams and Cambodians, the Vietnamese are used to moving and adapting for their own advantage.
The perils of loving France are that people back in the native land view these students who study abroad as traders. The Vietnamese government felt that the French are brainwashing the Vietnamese students into their culture and ideas so that when these students return home, they will incorporate their thinking into the Vietnamese government
The spirit of separateness is students who live in French for a long period of time, began to forget their roots. Because of the word “freedom†they began to lost contact with their own people which shows that they are no longer belong part of the Vietnamese heritage
Extra Credit
The migration of one million in-country refugees in 1954 was considered to be “unnatural†because the whole Vietnamese nation has been on the move for the past two thousand years, in which the reasons were to occupy the particular region and make it as our own such as defeating the Cham and Cambodian. Therefore, this move of in-country Vietnamese is unnatural because we weren’t moving in order to take it over land for our own advantage but to escape communist “Red†Vietnam
The settlement of in-country refugees in Southern Vietnam was quite successful due the helping hands of foreign aids. United States supported approximately 97 percent of the refugee aid. France comes next as the largest contributor of financial aid. Numerous countries and welfare organizations made the resettlement possible for refugees. By the mid-1957 all refugees villages were absorbed into the local administrative stucture.
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