Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [339]
On the positive side, mass vaccination and health programmes did bring the frequent epidemics of cholera, smallpox and plague under control. Education was a thornier issue: overall, education levels deteriorated during French rule, particularly among unskilled labourers, but a small elite from the emerging urban middle class received a broader, French-based education and a few went to universities in Europe. Not that it got them very far: Vietnamese were barred from all but the most menial jobs in the colonial administration. It was this frustrated and alienated group, imbued with the ideas of Western liberals and Chinese reformers, who began to challenge French rule.
History |
The anti–colonial struggle
For a population brought up on legends of heroic victories over superior forces, the ease with which France had occupied Vietnam was a deep psychological blow. The earliest resistance movements focused on the restoration of the monarchy, such as the “Save the King” (Can Vuong) movement of the 1890s, but any emperor showing signs of patriotism was swiftly removed by the French administration. Up until the mid-1920s, Vietnam’s fragmented anti-colonial movements were easily controlled by the Sûreté, the formidable French secret police. On the whole, the nationalists’ aims were political rather than social or economic, and most failed to appeal to the majority of Vietnamese. Gradually, however, the nationalists saw that a more radical approach was called for, and an influential leader named Phan Boi Chau finally called for the violent overthrow of the colonial regime.
Meanwhile, over the border in southern China, the Revolutionary Youth League was founded in 1925. Not only was this Vietnam’s first Marxist-Leninist organization, but its founding father was Ho Chi Minh. Born in 1890, the son of a patriotic minor official, Ho was already in trouble with the French authorities in his teens. He left Vietnam in 1911, then turned up in Paris after World War I under one of his many pseudonyms, Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”). In France, Ho became increasingly active among other exiled dissidents exploring ways to bring an end to colonial rule. At this time one of the few political groups actively supporting anti-colonial movements were the Communists; in 1920 Ho became a founding member of the French Communist Party and by 1923 he was in Moscow, training as a Communist agent. His task was to unite the nascent Vietnamese anti-colonial movements under one organization, the Revolutionary Youth League. Among his many talents, Ho Chi Minh was an intelligent strategist and a great motivator; though he was now committed to Marxist-Leninist ideology, he understood the need to appeal to all nationalists, playing down the controversial goal of social revolution. (see "The life of Ho Chi Minh" for more on Ho Chi Minh.)
Although many other subsequently famous revolutionaries worked with Ho, it was largely his fierce dedication, single-mindedness and tremendous charisma that held the nationalist movement together and finally propelled the country to independence. The first real test of Ho’s leadership came in 1929 when, in his absence, the League split into three separate Communist parties. In Hong Kong a year later, Ho persuaded the rival groups to unite into one Indochinese Communist Party whose main goal was an independent Vietnam governed by workers, peasants and soldiers. In preparation for the revolution, cadres were sent into rural areas and among urban workers to set up party cells. The timing couldn’t have been better: unemployment and poverty were on the increase as the Great Depression