AT3 Indochina Essay Flashcards
French colonisation paragraph
social:
* French constructed hospitals and dispenaries throughout the country which brought Western healthcare to the Vietnamese people.
* goal was to develop Indochina into an income-generating westernised society which can be observed by the population of Indochina more than doubling.
* series of land reforms; French colonisation which significantly reduced communal land space to ⅕ of their original size and with the land divided, the Vietnamese peasant didn’t have enough land to sustain themself.
* gap between rich and poor grew wider
* plantation workers were taken from the villages of Tokin by force and sent south to work under a semi-military system bound by contracts which give their employers the right to regulate their labour by force.
political:
* brought a western economic and administrative system that disrupted traditional framework
* French made use of the traditional monarchy but only to discredit it; their power was taken away and they essentially became figureheads.
* policy that was laid down in France was implemented in Indochina by the French Bureaucracy which extended down the chain of command.
* Authority was entirely in the hands of the highly-centralised French administration.
economic:
* French irrigated hundreds of thousands of acres of previously unused land and introduced new crops to the country including rubber trees.
* broke down the old closed vietnamese economy through exports
* fortunate land owners exploited poverty of Vietnamese land owners by allowing them to borrow money and re-lend at exorbitant rates
* three-fold monopoly on solt, opium, and alcohol
* high taxes imposed
Japanese colonisation paragraph
Social:
* their rule was brutal and caused famine for four years
* opened schools, hospitals, places of worship, roads, railways, ports
* culture influenced by introduction of Japanese arts
Political:
* Japan occupied all of Vietnam in 1941 and through the French were allowed to ‘minister’ Vietnam
* icreased resentment against French colonial authorities that failed to protect Vietnam
Economic:
* food and resources diverted to Japanese war effort that caused death
* serious inflation
vacuum of power after Japanese surrender paragraph
- September 1945: Viet Minh supporters stage a general strike in Saigon
- 6th March 1946: Franco/Viet Minh Accords recognise Vietnam’s independence
- November 1946: French troops and Viet Minh clash in Haiphong
- 1950: People’s Army defeats the Peoples Republic of China
- Nov 1953-May 1954: Siege at Dien Bien Phu
Growth of Vietnamese nationalism: gaining social support
ICP
* Originally Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League
* Groups were trained at bases in southern China to infiltrate Vietnam to form peasant associations, study groups, and parties
* By 1930, they were sanctioned by Moscow
* It was a clever blend of Vietnamese history, patriotism, and Marxist-Lennist communist principles
Viet Minh
* The fall of the French that weren’t able to offer any resistance to Japan
* The Viet Minh was created a year later to fight the Japanese and fostered a hate for the French that left them to fend for themselves against the Japanese
Growth of Vietnamese nationalism: political legitimacy
- At the Postdam conference in July 1945, it was agreed that France would resume control
- Before the French could regain control upon Japan’s exit, the Viet Min capture Hanoi in the August revolution
- On the 2nd of September, Vietnamese independence was declared
- French forces returned in 1946, a major French attack on Haiphong in November which killed 600 000 people signaled the beginning of the first Vietnam war
- By December 1946, the Viet Minh declared war on France
- Strong reliance on the Peoples Army of Vietnam in the war effort through through the use of Guerilla warfare
- Dien Bien Phu was located near the border with Laos in a large valley
- French paratroop drop into the valley and Giap transfers supplies to the hills in December 1953
- Ends in Geneva conference with Vietnam in a position of strength
Ho Chi Minh as a military strategist
- Directed his underground groups in seeking independence
- Responsible for brokering settlement after WW2 which stabilised Vietnam’s political situation
- Revolutionary activites of the Guerrilla groups such as the Vietnminh relied on popular support
- His recoginition of the downfall of the colonial era and disappearance of holdings evidenced his nuances political understanding of Vietnamese independence
- extensive knowledge of Marxist-Lennist ideas allowed himself to align politically,
Ho Chi Minh as a communist agitator
- Encouraged defiance and revolt
- Leader and establisher of the ICP
- Dien Bien Phu events
- In 1946, Viet Minh supporters staged a general strike in Saigon
- he was a representative of the Communist International Organisation for overseas affairs
- The August General Uprising of 1945: launched a revolution against the Empire of Vietnam and the Empire of Japan, sought to create a unified regime for the entire country under the Việt Minh’s rule, he declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 2 September 1945 after this
- General Order No.1 was a document that outlined the terms of Japans surrender which was approved by the US and allow allies to disarm them
social evidence/historiography
- o 62% of the Tonkinese peasantry owned less than 9/10 of an acre each, and 30% had less than 4/10 of an acre.
- French-sponsored Prime Minister Nguyen Van Tam even mentioned that “In the past the (French) government encouraged rice cultivation by lending to big landowners who, in turn, helped their farmers with state money at the usurious rate… After one or two bad harvests the peasant became literally the slave of his master just because of usury.”.
- Ellen J. Hammer in book ‘Before the French came/The impact of the French rule/Second class citizens’ mentions that Vietnamese society didn’t allow for extremes of poverty and power in their political structures.Hammer makes note of the fact that Vietnam was “built on an efficient system of checks and balances” which was obliterated entirely by a hyper-hierarchical system implemented by the French which allowed for such extremes to occur
- The well-known French writer Roland Dorgeles in 1925 wrote “Less than forty years ago, there was not a rubber tree in the colony… Today rubber trees can be counted by the millions on immense plantations… and these miserable lands which were not worth a piastre bring fortunes: ships take on rubber at Saigon by the thousands of tons.”.
- Ian Sutherland, 1993, Conflict in Indochina, Thomas Nelson “They plundered the peasant’s land to establish plantations and drive them to utter poverty. They levied many heavy taxes…In short they reduced us to wretchedness.” Ho declared after founding the ICP
- T Cantwell: Contested Spaces “Communist principles were purposefully ignored because they were irrelevant to illiterate rural farms. Instead patriotism, nationalism, and independence were stressed.”
Ho Chi Minh evidence
Ho claimed to have a long term strategy “White man is finished in Asia…I would rather sniff French dung for five years than eat Chinese excretement for the rest of my life!” (1946)
He declared in 1946 “the hour of national salvation has come! We must scrifice enen our last drop of blood to safeguard our coutry”
Ho Chi Minh as an inspirational leader
- supported humanitarian projects which assisted the most vulnerable
- he encouraged his followers to go without one meal every 10 days and donate it to the poor
- affectionately known as ‘Uncle Ho’
- support of the peasants brought him momentum for the Declaration of an Independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh historiography
- W.Willmott in ‘Thoughts on Ho Chi Minh’ mentions that, Ho was “constantly in the thick of the stuggle and thoroughly committed to its day-to-day problems.” It is mentioned that this may not be historically accurate, but it presents him accurately as someone of action.
