This study w i l l also respond to the call from supporters of the now-defunct R V N , such as Van N g u y l n Marshall 's, for a presentation of the R V N viewpoints in the debate. The project w i l l therefore bring together texts produced by the warring sides from both the North and the South, and both inside and outside of Vietnam.
M y analysis of Vietnamese twentieth-century literature is realized in five chapters. This body of Vietnamese literature, often referred to as tien chien prewar literature, elucidates the workings of the Vietnamese collective mind and the convergence of historical and cultural aspects which lend substance to the cause of independence and sovereignty led by the Viet Minh , and which, in my opinion, ultimately account for the success and failures of the political factions involved in the war.
Specifically, the chapter w i l l show that Vietnam's long tradition of resistance to foreign domination had, by the time of the French conquest, been indelibly established as ly roughly speaking, universal rules of logic in the Vietnamese mind. On the other hand, the literature examined reveals that colonialism and modernism had, by , left a yearning for tinh emotion or affection, which extends to all social relationships , which the Viet M i n h and its successor the N L F would attempt to fulfil by characterizing their organizations in a familial manner.
Chapter Three, "The Just Cause: The chapter examines the leaders' arguments on the basis of four often-used, but also much contested terms in relation to the Vietnam War: It is believed that analysis of the leaders' own accounts of their concerns and positions regarding the above four topics w i l l illuminate the nature of the leadership of competing Vietnamese forces in the French and American wars. Alternatively, the chapter also considers how satisfactorily the leaders address the ly and tinh dimensions which Chapter Two has concluded to be not only deep-rooted, but compelling among the South Vietnamese.
It is argued that, in this battle for the hearts 20 and minds of the people, the leaders' success or failure in addressing these popular thoughts and sentiments would effect the participation and zeal, or lack thereof, of their respective supporters, and ultimately, the prevalence of their respective causes. The chapter next analyzes representative fictional works by R V N and N L F writers to determine the extent to which supporters of the two warring factions identified with and believed in their respective causes.
Arguing that the essence of the respective regimes transpires most clearly and accurately in the literary representation of their traditionally weakest member—the Vietnamese woman, the chapter illustrates through textual analysis that R V N women are portrayed as passive, helpless victims of forces outside of their control, similar to what their political leaders inadvertently reveal themselves to be in their memoirs.
In contrast, N L F texts extol the revolutionary woman as embodying both ly and tlnh in the nationalist cause. Moreover, analysis of two major N L F novels—Hon Ddt by A n h Due and Man and I by Phan Tii—shows the advance of revolutionary women from primarily feminine, though active and heroic, supporters of the revolution to feministic, active agents of their own fate as well as leaders of the revolutionary cause to determine the destiny of their nation. Finally, Chapter Five, "The Aftermath," wraps up the dissertation with a discussion of some postwar Vietnamese literature and its relevance to the understanding of Vietnamese current thoughts and values.
In particular, the chapter w i l l put into 21 perspective the "literature of protest," so called because of its tone of disillusionment or dissent which has been over-represented in the West. The conclusion wi l l also suggest directions for further research in the study of Vietnamese literature about the war that impacted so deeply the course of history for both Vietnam and the United States. The project w i l l make use of Vietnamese texts available in English in the West, whether published in English in the original, or translated from Vietnamese.
I w i l l also attempt to introduce canonical writings which have boasted large audiences and which are believed to have left an enduring influence on the Vietnamese reading public during the war, but which the politics of translation and publication in the West have excluded from Western attention. Literature, History, and Politics—Genres and Interpretation The inclusion of both fiction and non-fiction in the present study, which, moreover, has to do with Vietnamese politico-history, demands acknowledgement at the outset of questions concerning the problematics of representation and interpretation among different literary genres.
On the other hand, the relevance of literature to the study of history and politics w i l l also need to be addressed. The relationship among history, politics and literature has always been somewhat controversial in the West. First off, there have been arguments against the interweaving of politics into works of imaginative art, as it is believed that political agendas usually come at the sacrifice of aesthetic quality. Moreover, politically engaged literature has often been discounted on the basis o f a supposed conflict o f interest.
A n assumption quite popular among Western critics is that art has the power to unify people, and that literature 22 is "disinterested," while, in contrast, politics is partisan and divisive. Thus, political bias and propaganda may have been the grounds on which literature produced by D R V and N L F nationalists on the Vietnam War has been consistently overlooked in the West, at least until recently. Such views of the relationship between literature and politics should prove to be counter-productive in examining the literature of Vietnam, where, as Chapter Two wi l l show, literature was traditionally produced by scholars who were at the same time performing their duties as administrators of the country.
Furthermore, it would be not only unwise, but impossible to hedge out political concerns in the study of twentieth-century Vietnamese war literature. The popular resistance against foreign domination consumed Vietnamese life and thought for most of the twentieth century to such an extent that any socially conscious writing produced in Vietnam during that time must be political to some degree.
If literature were looked at only as an aesthetic concern, much of this only viable body of literature in wartime Vietnam would be unduly excluded. A second, related question is how useful, then, are imaginative modes of art to the understanding of political issues. On this question, Catherine Zuckert argues that novels restore the human focus abstracted away by political and social theorists: Lee Sigelman goes further to contend that fiction is not simply a mirror which "reflects—in a one-to-one correspondence" history and politics, but a prism which "transforms whatever passes through it into something new and different" He maintains that 23 [t]he most fundamental influences on the way we live are often so deeply embedded in our collective and individual consciousness that they pass wholly unobserved.
B y portraying imagined alternatives in which some of these influences are inoperative, writers of fiction perform invaluable mind experiments [. Maureen Whitebrook sums up the debate by stating that "art deals not just with facts, but with our sense of fact. Imaginative expressions of the political do not substitute for the 'facts' of social science or 'real ' politics, but extend the understanding possible from facts," thus allowing for the fullest representation of "reality" by way of a "different kind of evidence and [.
A further note should be made about the inclusion in my present research of both fiction prose and poetry and non-fiction memoirs. M y argument for this inclusion is that these two categories are not mutually exclusive, but rather mutually supportive. A s George Egerton points out, political memoir is in fact a "polygenre"—an amalgam of political, historical, autobiographical, and literary elements. Discussing the interpenetration of autobiography and history in modern Indonesia, Susan Rodgers also maintains that "telling a life unavoidably [.
Similarly, Whitebrook's assertion that fiction is a mode of apprehension, o f "facts fitted into a larger vision of the human condition," may very well apply to non-fictional genres such as memoir and autobiography. Moreover, while some autobiographers' conceptions of truth invite comparisons to fiction, as Stephen Ambrose suggests Nixon ' s memoir to do, memoirs can also be appraised under the categories of poetics and fiction as "metaphors of self and novels of self-exploration" Egerton Finally, insofar as both forms "enable us to gain an understanding of issues, problems, and points of view as they matter to the other" so that we may then come to "understand the motives and behavior of others as they understand them" Egerton 5, italics in the original , the decision to embrace both categories in a study like this proves to be of unquestionable validity indeed.
Lastly, in the case of the Vietnam War, fiction and non-fiction appear to intersect on several levels and in very interesting and complex ways. The Vietnam War with its delusions and deceptions invoked serious doubt and self-doubt in those who experienced it first-hand, resulting in a peculiar blurring of fact and fiction. A well-known example of this inseparability o f fact and fiction in the American Vietnam War literature is Michael Heir ' s Dispatches.
Composed of intensely individual and artful recollections of a journalist who has "been there," the work is often treated as a novel for its strange, mosaic admixture of military moves and s pop culture, with all the accompanying absurdity. In Peter Mclnerney's words, it is "the finest example of facts about the American experience in Vietnam rendered into fiction" On the other hand, 25 veterans of the war such as Wayne Kar l in , T im O'Brien, Bao Ninh , Le M i n h Khue and several others have produced fiction distinguished by a strong fusion of both autobiographical and imaginative elements.
One of the Vietnamese discussed in this project, Nguyen Cao K y , prime minister, then vice president of the former R V N , recently returned to Vietnam for the first time after the collapse of his government. His pleas for reconciliation are, I believe, long overdue. But true reconciliation is only possible when there is acceptance of certain aspects of the war, and when both sides are committed to making Vietnam a better place. It is my hope that examination of the literature about the war from the Vietnamese perspectives wi l l help facilitate this understanding for both Vietnamese and Americans.
But it is also irrelevant. Instead, victories depended on a much more intangible criterion: To understand where the Vietnamese "hearts and minds" rested, let us return to the socio-political context at the beginning of the thirty-year long war. A close look at the literature from the onset of colonialism to the official outbreak of the resistance war against the French shows a gradual evolution toward what was to become by the twin desire for national independence and a new organized community.
In the twentieth-century revolution to resist both foreign domination and the breakdown of Vietnamese society, national sovereignty was to represent ly broadly speaking, "the mind" , while the emotional bond and security of a mutually supportive and caring community was to underwrite tinh broadly speaking, "the heart" for supporters of the Vietnamese Revolution as a whole. Given their importance to the understanding of the success or failure of the political factions involved in the war and of the literature penned by supporters of those factions, these concepts merit a careful explanation at this stage.
Both ly and tinh have multiple meanings, for which there are no exact equivalents in English. Essentially, ly refers to the ultimate rules of the universe, and encompasses not only the "rational" or "logical," but the moral as well. Thus, Neo-Confucians in China in as far back as the eleventh century, and notable Vietnamese scholars such as Le Quy Don in the s called themselves members of the ly hoc, or "School of Principles," and exalted ly as transcendental principles that sustained human ethics.
This blending of the moral with the rational in the concept of ly is further demonstrated in two of its related terms: Similarly to ly, tinh is originally a very broad-based omnibus term about which whole books have been written in Chinese studies.
It can mean both the general emotions of the heart and the more specific face-based ties of reciprocal obligations and friendship. In modern Vietnamese, tinh is most often used to mean "care and affection;" in close relationships, it is the equivalent of "love. Rounding out the moral virtues are trung, which originally meant loyalty to the king, but was later to be understood more broadly as loyalty to the nation, and hieu, essentially the filial piety to one's parents, or more broadly, piety to one's family.
It 28 should be noted here that, to the Vietnamese, morality, judging by its component virtues, reflects proper behavior in one's relationships with other people, in which the self is held amenable to the cultivation of the relationships. Ly, tinh, and the moral virtues are indelible in the Vietnamese consciousness. They work on both conscious and sub-conscious levels to explain to the Vietnamese what is considered good, proper and just.
Together, they lend foundation to cong ly justice, or justness , present when conflicts are resolved in such a way that satisfies all of the above aspects—"co ly, co tinh," as the Vietnamese would say. In traditional Vietnamese studies, students were taught these concepts and virtues just as children in the West learned the Ten Commandments.
Thus, for thousands of years, these concepts and virtues defined to the Vietnamese, as they still do, the ideals of good human behavior. This paradigm of ly-finh, and its satellite terms of chdn ly, dao ly, and cong ly, w i l l form the background of my analysis of Vietnamese literature in this study. For better or for worse, by the time Westerners began to arrive en masse on Vietnamese shores, Vietnam had spent many years fending off foreign aggressors.
Besides generating a sense of national cohesion identity based on a shared language, culture, and geographical homeland , this resistance has also been a major source of pride for all Vietnamese—and not without good reason. Vietnamese history by the nineteenth century had claimed repeated victories not only over the chauvinistic Chinese, but also over the Mongols, who once possessed an army formidable enough to threaten the world. These military announcements called hick were somewhat ironically inked in Chinese, which was the official written language of Vietnam before the Vietnamese version, chic nom, overtook it.
They were also often in verse form, not only because military generals were well trained in poetic tradition and convention, but because they wanted their soldiers to take to heart the political message, and verse could be easily remembered and recited by the common soldiers. Two of the most famous hich, which have been widely taught in schools to generations of Vietnamese then as now, were composed by Generals L y Thuong Kiet and Tran Quoc Tuan, who went on to join the long list of national heroes for leading Vietnam to victory over the Chinese in and the Mongols in respectively.
I, for one, still remember these hich by heart. Nam quoc son ha Nam de cu; Tuyet nhien dinh phdn tai Men thu. Nhu hd nghich 16 lai xdm pham; Nhu dang hanh khan thu bai hu. The Southern emperor rules the Southern land. H o w dare you bandits trespass on our soil?
Y o u shall meet your undoing at our hands! A s I w i l l demonstrate, this reasoning was to be followed in many later nationalistic writings. The fact that Vietnam prevailed over China in that same year would prove to the Vietnamese people the "truth" of L y Thuong Kiet 's assertion, as would Vietnamese history of resistance and triumph over militarily superior invaders time and time again confirm the power of the w i l l. In this symmetrical speech, composed of perfectly parallel sentences, Tran Quoc Tuan invokes loyal patriots in history and asks his generals and soldiers alike to prove that they are men worthy of respect by devoting themselves wholly to the national cause.
Declaring that "Chet vinh horn song nhuc" to die in honor is far better than to live in shame , Tran Quoc Tuan expresses his heartfelt concern for the nation and his determination to crush the invaders in the following forceful words, which have been memorized by generations of Vietnamese: Ta ticng tai bita quen an, nua tfem vd goi, nude mat dam dia, ruot dau nhu cat, chi gidn khong duac an thit, nam da, nudt gan, uong mdu qudn thii, dau tram than ta phai ngodi not co, nghin xdc ta goi trong da ngua, cung nguyen cam long. I have been foregoing food at mealtimes, tossing and turning at night, my eyes wet with tears, my insides hurting with anger.
If only I could get my teeth at the enemy's flesh, tear off their skin, eat their liver, drink their blood! Even i f my 31 body were a hundred times exposed on the battlefield, even i f my corpse were a thousand times buried in horse skin, I would still be satisfied.
The mids abruptly mobilized this tradition of resistance against a modern French army and its Western culture and philosophies. Between and , French colonialism was to rip apart the very fabric of Vietnamese traditional society. Vietnamese Literature and French Colonialism From the s to s, at the same time that other European colonizers were eradicating indigenous peoples in North America, French colonial rulers in Vietnam set in motion the beginning of a gradual, but relentless demise of this thousands-year-old civilization. The construction of French Indochina, based on France's administrative divisions of Vietnam into Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina, with Cambodia and Laos added in and , constituted an amalgam that had no historical, cultural, or geographical justification whatsoever.
Vietnam's foreign relations and civ i l administration were controlled by Paris. Vietnamese military forces were disbanded and replaced by a French legionnaire army. A s French colonialists sought to impose their own cultural and institutional models on the colonized Vietnamese, they also exploited existing social structures as a means of control. The puppet Nguyen dynasty was preserved and Vietnamese mandarins became the low level bureaucrats of the French colonial administration. The impact of colonialism was felt first and most acutely by the scholar-gentry, who traditionally wielded far greater influence than any other group could with regards to Vietnamese thinking, ways o f behavior, and politics through their unique role in Vietnamese society—but who had now lost all of their political power.
A s a matter of fact, its influence may explain in part the large following the Viet M i n h easily acquired in the beginning, given that its leadership came primarily from the scholar-gentry. In traditional Vietnamese society, the scholars constituted a small corps; yet they enjoyed an eminence unequalled by any other social group.
They served as a connection—arguably the only, i f largely informal, connection—between the administration and the rural community. Scholars who won one or more of the academic degrees in the court examinations became c iv i l servants quan—scholar officials , who administered districts, prefectures, and provinces. The top scholar in the third-degree examination could even fi l l the equivalent of the modern-day prime ministership. In times of revolution, scholars were especially appreciated as strategists. A most notable example of the scholar-strategist is Nguyen Trai, who helped Le L g i to success in military as well as administrative matters in the fifteenth century, and who bequeathed several speeches and documents attesting to his strategizing genius.
When scholars were not involved in administration, they contributed to society as teachers, whose very words were revered and adhered to by generations of students. Vietnamese teachers received, as they still do, a level of respect unequalled by any other profession. Children were taught 33 to put their teachers on the same level as their parents, to be honored, obeyed, and paid moral debt to for the rest of their lives. According to a moral lesson to children, "Mot chit ciing la thdy; nita chit cung la thdy" He who teaches you a word, or only half a word, is still your teacher [to be respected].
Finally, these scholars were also writers who produced most of the high literature in a society observed by historians to be one of the most intensely literary civilizations on earth Woodside, Community 2. Under French colonial rule, the scholars, on whom the country's proud history fell, were more than anyone else sensitive to nhuc mat nude the humiliation of losing one's country.
They were also the group most upset by the new social dis order. The power these classes obtained, less from any traditionally recognized qualifications than from their assistance to the invaders, upset the traditional hierarchy. In came an era when former "losers" and French-speaking militiamen could replace cultivated scholar-officials as administrators of Vietnam.
Worse still , the Vietnamese elite became inferior even to the lowest ranking French Woodside, Community. It was a time of "nude chdy nguoc" water flows upward , when all ran 34 counter to ly. Not only was the old social order reversed, traditional morality as the scholars saw it also suffered a serious decline. Rapid Westernization caused an inevitable disintegration and erosion of traditional values.
Confronted by these disruptions, scholars now either stood up and resisted, or abstained in protest and resentment. Not surprisingly, their inner turmoil was translated into an impressive body o f literature which preceded the national Revolution in August Because the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contributed significantly to the political activism leading to the later resistance war, it w i l l be the topic of discussion next. Benedict Anderson observes that the concept of nationalism gained prominence in Europe in the eighteenth century when "the novel and the newspaper provided the technical means for 're-presenting' the kind of imagined community that is the nation" 25, emphasis in the original.
In Vietnam, patriotic poetry had long played the role of creating the imagined community o f the Vietnamese people with a legendary tradition of resistance against foreign invasion and domination. From the onset of the French invasion to the s, resistance poetry surged. The writings formed a concerted attack on the French invaders and on those Vietnamese who collaborated with the foreigners. After the revolutionary scholars' initial attempts at armed resistance failed, there was a pervading sense of nostalgic longing for the pre-colonial past, and desperate yearning for able saviors and change.
Young men and women among whom the teenaged Nguyen Sinh Cung, later known to the world as Ho Chi Minh , and several others who were to become leaders of the D R V and N L F listened to secret readings of these writings even as they witnessed the miseries of their nation under the French. Born in Nghe A n Central Vietnam , the cradle of many radical revolutionaries in Vietnamese history including Ho Chi Minh , Phan B o i Chau ranked among the most famous mandarin revolutionaries of the "Can Vuong" support the king movement, so called because they aided K i n g Ham Nghi and Prince Cuong De in their resistance against the French.
A child prodigy, he was known for being able, at the age of six, to memorize the Tarn Tie Kinh Three Bibles after only three days of reading. Besides political tracts, Chau left several poems, some under the pen name of Phan Sao Nam. His poetry reminds his fellow countrymen in many ways that determined opposition is the only moral and just way for a Vietnamese citizen l iving under foreign rule. Committed to armed resistance as the primary means of struggle even after the armed insurgence of the late nineteenth century had been brutally suppressed by the French, Chau also advocated change so that Vietnam could benefit from renewed strength.
In , he went to Japan to seek outside support for revolutionary activity and to investigate ways to modernize Vietnam. The 36 Dong D u Go East movement was thus started, which would later produce many staunch revolutionaries for the Viet Minh. H o w come you barged in here and called it home? M y wife and I have worked so hard to build this home; Y o u and your kind, do not sit so brazen there. I thought your abuse would not last beyond two or three days; Who knew you would have overextended your stay several times by now. Y o u came unasked; resisted, you wi l l not leave! In "Chuc Tet Thanh Nien" [New Year's wishes for the youth], Chau urges young people to do their part in saving the country from slavery and backwardness: The rooster has just crowed The birds are singing their welcome.
Arriving Spring, do you know H o w ashamed I am before the rivers, how sad before the mountains, how mortified under the moon? Twenty-something and I have experienced such sorrows. I am lucky to be alive But day and night, I burn with hatred for the barbarians. Open your eyes to new opportunities Give a hand to the rescue of our ancient nation. March forth, stand upright, withstand with perseverance! Unified, we are determined to once again create the fortune. We shall strive to maintain fraternity Shedding the old skin, we shall nurture our spirit. We shall not indulge in the common pleasures of games, fashion, or gastronomy.
With hearts of iron, we w i l l move mountains and drain seas We w i l l wash away the disgrace of slavery with our boiling blood. N o w that is truly new, my people! A s they say: It is a new day, once again! In "Song" [To Live] , an inflamed Chau rouses his less fervent countrymen to greater social responsibility in this time of foreign domination: L iv ing in shame, you do not deserve to crowd this earth! L iv ing that kind of life, do you not feel disgraced facing the world?
If you wi l l live in slavery, to be kicked around, If you w i l l live in stupidity, to be laughed at, If you w i l l live for your social position while the nation is lost, If you wi l l live with dreams of wealth, heedless of your people's suffering, Then you had better not live at all. Sixty years on this earth, I have paid my dues to this life. Where is the grand spirit I was born with? The moon is still shining in my heart, as clouds still covering the sky. In my life, I have failed to terminate the country's enemies N o w about to die, I ask that the younger generations not bother to mourn.
Submitting myself to the tigers like this, I am no better than D i T e , 1 2 am I? M y tears are flowing for the country and its people, I wish for talents that I do not have to save them from decline. This body is going to die while the spirit is still frustrated H o w mortified I w i l l be, facing our ancestors! In the same revolutionary vein, Phan B o i Chau's most talented comrade, Phan Chu Trinh, urges his fellow-countrymen to social responsibility and action in "Ngau Hung" [Impromptu]: Chew over your own duties—bitter tang Open your bag of literature—dank mold.
Those scoundrels play and dally fighting fire— Waifs wander, mourning fathers in distress. A leader of the resistance in the South, Nguyen Huu Huan wrote his last poem, "Carrying a cangue around the neck," then bit his tongue and took his own life before he was to be executed by the French in Here, Huan sees it instead as a symbol of French rule, which, as a scholar, he is under the duty to resist. To Huan, the scholar's responsibility for the nation's welfare is both his "moral burden" and "pride.
It is a moral burden, not a cangue. Beneath its weight, the scholar's shoulders stoop Around its neck, the hero flaunts his pride. I shall die and go up north: Y o u live and stay down south: Fuck you base traitors! Don't you dare laugh at me! Guillotined in , Tran Cao Van announced that "It is a mere child's play to die" for his country. To die a patriot's death is Heaven's grace. I shall have my body crushed and die a man. I shall let my head fall off and die upright.
Who dies for justice wins the world's respect Who dies to serve his king forever lives. To die this way w i l l be a sheer delight. Hey, do you hear? I am not afraid to die! Revolutionaries together stressed the need for all Vietnamese to cultivate social responsibility, and to stand up and fight the invaders. The scholars themselves, through their lives and deaths, set examples of self-sacrifice for the cause of national salvation.
Meanwhile, abstaining patriots such as Nguyen Khuyen, Tu Xuong, Tan Da, and Nguyen Dinh Chieu reached out, through their writing as well as their teaching, to a large segment of the population no matter their social, political, or educational background. These poets preached and practiced non-collaboration, the only other acceptable response to unjust foreign rule.
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A t the same time, they boycotted everything associated with the French—be it shorter hair, Western clothes, paved roads, French cultural traditions, or even Western-style soap. He served as a mandarin from to , and, at the height of his career as governor of Son Tay province, withdrew from public 41 service after the Hue Court signed the Harmand Treaty, giving France dominance over the whole of Vietnam in August Both Khuyen and Tu Xuong, the poet I am discussing next, are taught extensively in Vietnamese schools.
In this poem, the usually mild, polished poet lashes out at the crowd who jo in in the French-staged festivities on Bastille Day. The Amnesty festival is here! Firecrackers snap Hosts of flags are hoisted, hosts of lanterns hung. B i g dames, legs exposed, watch the boat race Small boys, hunched up, sneak a peek of the folk opera. Boasting their strength, damsels wigway on the swing Chasing after money, bumpkins climb greased poles. Hats off to those who have staged this merriest of shows! The merrier, the more humiliating it is!
In only eight lines, the poem delivers a number of messages. First, the poet bemoans the decline of moral standards: Erosion of traditional morality is clearly attributed to the French corrupting influence. A s organizers of this "merriest of shows," the French stand to be blamed for encouraging the above condemned traits. But more importantly, the main message of the poem rests on one word: The title of the poem, "French National 42 Holiday," reveals the cause of this shame. Historically, French colonialists attempted, as part of their mission civilisatrice, cultural assimilation—the Gall icizing of Vietnamese culture and institutions.
More than anybody else, scholars like the poet himself, who grew up believing in the inherent superiority of their culture, felt the humiliation of having to celebrate a foreign holiday. It is at the same time self-reproach and a verdict against those Vietnamese who are ignorant or mercenary enough to jo in in the merriment, thereby celebrating their own humiliation.
Although not nearly as successful as Nguyen Khuyen in his academic career, Tu Xuong , another Northern poet, attained comparable prominence in Vietnamese literature with his exquisite, biting attacks on the French and their Vietnamese underlings. In poems such as "Gieu Nguoi Thi D o " [Mock the graduates], Tu Xuong castigates those Vietnamese scholars who subject themselves to French rule rather than resist or withdraw.
Tren ghe, ha dam ngoi dit vit, Duoi sdn, 6ng cu ngdng ddu rong. A flock of failed candidates stand by to watch; The graduates of this examination, aren't they jubilant! Upon a high chair, the French dame hoists her duck-like rump; Down in the courtyard, the graduates lift their dragon heads. The poem was composed in , the first year the court exam was presided over by the French. But disaster again hit Vietnam because in that same year, a cholera epidemic claimed a million victims.
In the south of Vietnam Buddhist monks led the opposition against the French who could only maintain their regime through the supply of troops from China and the Philippines. They appear from nowhere, destroy everything and disappear again into nothingness. Siam recognized this in exchange for the annexation of two Cambodian provinces. And in June followed the annexation of the three western provinces in the south of Vietnam in Cochinchina. As from French law was applied in Cochinchina and in Charles Marie Le Myre the Vilers became the first colonial administrator.
However, resistance went on. In , the French under the leadership of Garnier stormed the citadel of Hanoi. This Treaty recognized French sovereignty over Cochinchina and made the Red River accessible to trade. The French opened consulates in three cities and promised to help the Emperor with the defense of his territory against external attacks. He himself was killed and his troops were defeated.
On 15 May , two days before the death of the childless Emperor Tu Duc, the French parliament approved a budget for an expedition that would impose a French protectorate in Annam in the center, and in Tonkin in northern Vietnam. In Hue the struggle for the throne was still raging, when the French fleet made its appearance at the mouth of the Perfume River. The French protectorate formally meant the end of the independence of Vietnam.
But neighboring China sent troops to the border with Tonkin. The subsequent war with France dragged on for three years. Only after an air raid on the Chinese port of Fuzhou and Keelung harbor on the island of Taiwan, the Chinese recognized the French protectorate. As from Laos also became part of the this union. And after his successor, Kien Fuk, who also had signed an agreement with the French, was murdered as well, the thirteen year old Ham Nghi ascended the throne. The mighty mandarin and regent, Ton That Thuyet, led the opposition against the French protectorate and wanted Ham Ngi to become the head of state of an independent Vietnam.
On July 2, , the Ambush of Hue failed. It was an attempt to attack the French occupied citadel of Hue by surprise. The French put down the uprising in a bloody fashion, murdering and looting. The imperial library with its unique scrolls and manuscripts went up in flames and the imperial palace was robbed of all its gold and silver ornaments and valuables.
Prince Ham Nghi, Ton That Thuyet and the other members of the imperial family fled to the central highlands with the imperial seal. Then the French put the docile prince Dong Khanh on the throne in Hue. Prince Ham Nghi issued an edict that asked the people to help or can vuong the king. The coordination of the uprising against the French was done from a military camp at Tan So in the mountains of central Vietnam. The thousands of Vietnamese who joined the resistance primarily targeted Catholics because they were considered supporters of the French colonialists.
In most places the faithful defended themselves with all means available, led by their priests. The parish Ba Ngoat did not escape this wave of terror. They murdered between and six hundred adults with a sword or spear, by burning them to death or by burying them alive. Nguyen Dang Lu, chairman of the parish council, was crucified together with his wife.
The survivors of the massacre in Ba Ngoat, all children of martyrs, built the following years a solid parish that over the years would grow into three districts. They bought land for the construction of a new church because the existing one had been burned down. New families established themselves there, including the grandfather and the grandmother of Nguyen Van Ly. They came from the villages of Phu Viet and Loi De. The homogeneous Catholic parish Ba Ngoat formed a warm close-knit society and the inhabitants worked together in the rice fields.
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Everybody attended the daily Holy Mass at five o'clock in the morning and the evening prayers at six o'clock in the evening. Repression marginalizes the opposition The French sent more and more troops to quash the revolt of the Can Vuong. The fortunes of war changed and the capture of the stronghold Ba Ding in January was a decisive blow for the resistance. Prince Ham Ngi was exiled to Algeria and many of his followers were killed. However, the resistance against French colonialism was far from over. Ton That Thuyet continued the struggle from South China.
In the area he controlled, Phan Dinh Phung had his own army, a political framework and an administration that imposed taxes. But after his death in the French nipped this movement in the bud by using bribery to encourage people to denounce insurgents. Due to the low social acceptance, the colonial administration quashed every revolt with an iron fist. In their efforts to suppress the resistance the French applied the principle of collective responsibility.
The discovery of a shelter for resistance fighters led to the destruction of the village and the execution of the notables. As a result of this approach only a few scattered pockets of resistance remained but they failed to mobilize the population.
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In the year , Hanoi, instead of Hue, became the capital of French Indochina. His eclectic Vietnamese style is a mix of French and Oriental motifs. Traditional social order faded away Britain controlled its colony India indirectly. The British association policy utilized the existing political institutions and respected the local customs. In contrast, the French in Indochina chose for an assimilation policy. They had total control. Only the landowners, bankers and traders or the upper layer of the Vietnamese people who cooperated with the colonizer and also reaped the benefits thereof, embraced the ideas, language and culture of the French.
They wore Western suits, drank wine, rode a bicycle and sent their children to French schools. The Catholic Church became the major landowner. But the Buddhists, by far the largest religion, had to ask for approval for any public activity. In five thousand French bureaucrats controlled the thirty million people of Indochina, while the British in India employed as many officials for ten times more inhabitants.
They just called on the Vietnamese as intermediaries and for performing the executive functions and they paid them the lowest wages. Just about any new legislation ignored local needs and traditions. Hence the introduction of French criminal law accelerated the erosion of society, for according to the Vietnamese tradition the paterfamilias and the religious dignitaries have the last word in family disputes. The long imprisonment of political opponents without trial was detrimental to the credibility of the French law. The central government which was strictly managed by the French first disrupted the traditional social order in the cities.
Because of lack of manpower the mandarins and the local chiefs in the provinces and the municipalities collected the taxes and mobilized the workers for public works. In the interior the French had no direct control. They had even less control over the protectorates Annam and Tonkin than in the colony Cochinchina. Yet the influence of the imperial bureaucracy was waning.
In six thousand candidates took part in the triennial exams for mandarin and in only 1, In , the exams were organized for the last time. Illiteracy increased alarmingly In the19th century Vietnam had a well-developed educational system. Eighty percent of the population used Chinese characters to write Vietnamese. Yet the French colonizers out of their feeling of superiority comprehensively reorganized the educational system.
They compelled the use of French or quoc ngu , the conversion of the Vietnamese language into a western alphabet which was created by Alexandre de Rhodes in the 17th century. Only the Vietnamese elite spoke French and became fascinated by French culture. Their children studied in private schools. The University of Hanoi, founded in , already closed its doors one year later for the next decade for fear of the involvement of the students in revolts against France.
Moreover, the colonial police considered the rare Vietnamese who had studied in Paris and who returned to Vietnam as potential subversives. They rarely found a job on their level and the government paid them a smaller wage than the lowest qualified Frenchmen who looked down on them. Despite the discouragement policy of the government, the traditional Chinese classical literature-based schools in Annam and Tonkin flourished, even in the twentieth century.
Nevertheless only ten to twenty percent of the young people attended school regularly and illiteracy increased alarmingly. Already after a few decades, few people still understood the inscriptions in Chinese characters on the houses and temples. Economic policy disrupted society The Vietnamese were subjected to a travel ban outside their own district and the colonial police prevented the spread of "subversive" publications and the creation of anti-French associations.
The perverse colonial system, however, had the greatest impact on the economy. As from , Paul Doumer, the liberal former French finance minister, was the Governor General of Indochina who made the country into a colony. Raw materials, including two thirds of coal production, were exported to the motherland and in the protected Vietnamese market only French goods were available. Moreover, the population paid all costs of the colonial administration, the construction of bridges and dikes, the railroad from Hanoi to Saigon, the equipment of the ports, irrigation works, and so on.
In order to maximize the profitability of the colonial investments, Doumer abolished the Co Mat or the Cabinet of mandarins. The last piece of sovereignty that the emperor still had, made way for a council of French advisors. Furthermore the division of the country into three regions formally robbed the Emperor of his authority.
Doumer introduced direct taxes and created monopolies for the production and sale of alcohol, salt and opium. The lucrative drug trade provided a third of the colonial revenue, without anyone caring for the toll of the exploding drug use. Furthermore the land policy disrupted this rural society.
The imperial ban on rice exports aimed at supplying regions with a shortage of rice and establishing reserves for the lean years, was abolished. Under French rule rice exports increased, but as a result of the commercialization, prices fell and farmers became impoverished. They were under pressure to sell their land to speculators and large families. In the s, seventy percent of the farmers were tenants or worked a barely profitable plot. Many worked as cheap labour in the mines, or in the rubber plantations, in the construction of roads, railways and prestigious buildings such as opera houses and the bridge over the Red River in Hanoi.
Working conditions were very harsh. In a rubber plantation owned by Michelin in the period 12, of the 45, employees died of malaria, dysentery and malnutrition. All colonial societies were linked to the Bank of Indochina, a financial mammoth in which the French government and a consortium of French banks participated. The gap between rich and poor became deeper. Cao Dai and Hoa Hao In with the arrival of the evangelical Christian and Missionary Alliance in the city of Da Nang Protestantism was introduced in Vietnam and in the central highlands, two new sects emerged.
This deity urged him to crystallize an ideal religion on the basis of the best elements of Christianity, Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, Taoism and animism.
Hai-Dang Phan
By living a life of austerity and introspection, which also includes elements of spiritualism and ancestor worship, the followers of the Cao Dai want to break the circle of reincarnation. Mediums bring the faithful into contact with the supreme god and the world of spirits.
The Cao Dai has plagiarized the Catholic Church hierarchy. Most adherents live in the Mekong Delta and in the province of Tay Ninh northwest of Saigon, where their main temple is situated. In the monk Huynh Phu So advocated a return to the pure Buddhist teachings. Characteristic of the Hoa Hao sect is a strong personal faith and a direct contact between man and God, without the intervention of temples and priests. Especially the rural population in the Mekong Delta embraces this simple variant of Hinayana Buddhism.
But cult leader Huynh Phu So also cherished political ambitions and opposed French rule. Vietnamese nationalism could not mobilize the masses The mission civilisatrice. That was the official mandate commissioned by the French government in Vietnam. The colonizers wanted to teach the "unfortunate" people their superior culture so that they might develop into "real citizens".
Yet this was only a cover for shameless exploitation. Because in France only a small circle of intellectuals opposed the way things were done in the colony, Vietnamese nationalism over the years became more extremist. He recruited followers among the elite in the belief that the farmers who constituted eighty percent of the population, would automatically follow. But this mobilization did not occur. Phan Boi Chau remained a major influence on Vietnamese nationalism, even after the French kidnapped him in the Chinese city of Shanghai and sentenced him to lifelong penal servitude.
Under the influence of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles de Montesquieu Phan Chu Trinh, another Vietnamese nationalist, promoted peaceful reform towards a parliamentary democracy. And in , resistance leader De Tham was killed in an ambush. But in Vietnam, the turbulence increased after the introduction of a tax aimed at paying for the war effort.
In May the year-old Emperor Duy Tan escaped from his palace in order to take part in an uprising. A year later, a general uprising against the high taxes occurred and in Hanoi the French army crushed the mutiny of Vietnamese troops. After the war the strict French control suppressed Vietnamese nationalism for a long time. Under their impulse Vietnamese soldiers mutinied on 9 February in the garrison town of Yen Bay.
The French reacted harshly. Not only all rebels were executed, but a dozen leaders of the VNQDD underwent the same fate under the guillotine. This was followed by the bombing of villages that were suspected of harboring partisans, after which the soldiers of the Foreign Legion massacred the inhabitants. Nghe Tinh-Communist rebellion suppressed From on, three separate communist fractions operated in Vietnam. Their leader, Nguyen Sinh Cung b.
Later, he took the name Ho Chi Minh, literally "he who enlightens". But that only happened when he was older than fifty and had repeatedly been declared dead. Although his life story contains many gaps, it is known that Ho Chi Minh moved to France after a stopover in Britain where he converted to socialism. There he became one of the founders of the Communist Party in As from he emerged in Moscow as an agent of the Comintern and a practical organizer and he provided training in revolutionary techniques.
In he published his revolutionary manual Duong Cach Menh — The revolutionary path. The roots of the Vietnamese Communists lie in the ruling elite of Vietnam. Establishing a foothold on Vietnamese soil was not evident for the Communists because no urban industrial proletariat existed in society. The founding of the Indochinese Communist Party took place when, due to the economic crisis, the price of rice on the world market halved and rubber was reduced to a quarter of its former value.
This led to restrictions on production and a decrease in wages of between thirty and fifty percent. Even the colonial government dismissed one in seven officials. Unemployed workers demonstrated and in some places hungry farmers took control of local districts. For the Communists the moment approached to implement the adage of Lenin: They created party cells, unions and peasant associations in Nghe An and Ha Tinh, provinces with a tradition of peasant revolts.
Demonstrations resulted in a revolt during which local associations or soviets took over the governance tasks and village militias were created. In September the Foreign Legion intervened. A column of thousands of farmers who marched to the provincial capital Vinh was bombed and early , the Nghe Tinh-rebellion, whose name refers to the two provinces, was over. Eighty leaders were executed and thousands put in prison. Also in Singapore, China and Hong Kong communist leaders were arrested. Many were imprisoned without any form of trial on the island of Poulo Condore.
And after the victory of the leftist Popular Front in the French elections of political prisoners, including the Communist leaders Pham Van Dong and Le Duc Tho, received amnesty. Vietminh grows into mass movement In August , the publication of the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union led in Vietnam to the arrest of two thousand communists.
The party shifted its activities to the countryside where French control was less intense. With their overwhelming military force the Japanese crushed the European colonial powers in Asia. In Vietnam, the administration remained unchanged since the Vichy regime in France cooperated with Nazi Germany.
The Japanese Kempeitai however interfered in the administration and Jean Decoux, the Governor-General of French Indochina, allowed Japanese troops to use to military barracks in the north of Vietnam. From there they occupied Indochina. This clandestine communist organization that played the patriotic card, not only attracted traders and workers, but with the promise of a redistribution of the land, it also attracted moderate and radical farmers. For the first time in Vietnamese history, Ho Chi Minh brought together urban nationalism and the insurgents in the countryside.
The organization was active throughout the country and wanted to conquer all of Vietnam from its revolutionary base in northern Vietnam. Struggle against French and Japanese Although the number of guerrillas increased because of the ambition to expel the foreign invaders, the Japanese and French patrols hunted them down continuously.
Retreated into the jungle many survived by eating insects, roots and bark. A large number suffered from malaria, dysentery and other diseases. Vo Nguyen Giap, the Communist General, taught his troops how to shake off their enemies and how to store food. He built a secret communications network that killed spies. In a first phase, military action was limited to conducting guerrilla operations from the mountains. In , Ho Chi Minh successfully approached the Allied forces who were winning the world war. The Americans supported the principle of national self-determination.
In early the Vietminh counted in central and southern Vietnam about five thousand followers, mostly communists.
UBC Theses and Dissertations
When after the reconquest of the Philippines by American soldiers it was rumored that Indochina would be the next stop, General Charles de Gaulle took action. The prime minister of the provisional government in France was indeed determined to keep the colony Indochina and had ordered the dropping of French agents and French arms in Vietnam. They got the order to attack the Japanese troops once the Americans arrived. On March 9, , the Japanese reacted by placing the French troops still in Vietnam under their command.
The latter surrendered without bloodshed. Furthermore the Japanese arrested hundreds of French citizens. They were tortured by the guards who worked for the colonial administration. Two million famine deaths Although the Japanese were losing the war throughout Asia, Bao Dai, the thirteenth and last emperor of the Nguyen dynasty on the throne since , declared on 11 March the independence of Vietnam under Japanese authority. But at that moment in the delta of the Red River a human tragedy without precedent was unfolding.
An estimated two million people died of hunger, while in the Mekong Delta rice was available in abundance. Under colonial rule, the north was indeed focused on the mining of raw materials such as coal, iron and non-ferrous metals and the development of industry. And in agriculture the focus was on the cultivation of cotton, coffee, tea, tobacco, jute and oilseeds. Therefore the north depended for its food on the supply of rice from the south. But in , the Allied Forces destroyed the supply lines by bombing the roads and railroads while in the Mekong Delta rice ships were moored at the quay.
Moreover, as from , the Japanese had exported 2. The price of rice on the black market in Hanoi increased twentyfold. Hundreds of thousands died from hunger in the streets and parents sold their children for a couple of cups of rice. The famine was an important issue in the political strategy of the Vietminh. Vietminh filled the power vacuum After the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan capitulated on 14 August On August 16, the Liberation Committee, that had proclaimed itself the Provisional Government, called for a general uprising.
The Vietnamese Catholics also gave their support. They also under no circumstances wanted to restore the French colonial government. On 19 August, the army of the Vietminh took Hanoi and on August 23 the old imperial capital of Hue fell in their hands. Because of the support of the Americans, and inspired by the American Declaration of Independence of , he said,: They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental powers and to sacrifice their lives and property, in order to safeguard their freedom and independence. Bishop Le Huu Tu, now an adviser to Ho Chi Minh, and three other bishops of Vietnamese origin, asked the international community to recognize the Nationalist government. The powerless emperor Bao Dai transferred power to the Vietminh, including his sword and ivory seal.
In his attempt to seize power, Ho Chi Minh was prepared to do anything. In he dissolved the Indochinese Communist Party in order to take the wind out of the sails of his opponents. But the recognition of the Provisional Government of Ho Chi Minh by the United States remained in the balance because the true form of the Vietminh became ever clearer. Communist executives took charge in most places, which was disputed by the other coalition partners.
French authority laboriously restored The Vietminh also tried to seize power in the south of Vietnam. Over there the movement was less strongly developed because of the grip of the militias of the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao on the countryside. On 25 September a general strike called by the Vietminh got completely out of hand In Saigon the central market was burned down, the airport was stormed and hundreds of prisoners were freed. And hundreds of others were taken hostage. Because of this brutality the Americans halted all aid to the Vietminh and aimed for the restoration of the French colonial government.
For now, after the German surrender on May 8, and the fall of the Vichy regime in France, the international tide had turned. With the support of British troops the French recaptured large parts of southern Vietnam while Vietminh fighters retreated to the central highlands and left a trail of destruction in their wake. Both arrived in Vietnam in October.
Thierry d'Argenlieu was ordered to restore the colonial authority in Saigon and Leclerc was given the same task in the Gulf of Tonkin. The latter noted that the two hundred thousand ragged Chinese soldiers who had to disarm the Japanese, mainly engaged in looting. Freed criminals terrorized the countryside and in some villages communist people's courts sentenced mandarins to death.
The Vietminh wanted to prevent the restoration of French authority in the north. But when a clash with the French soldiers of Leclerc seemed inevitable, Ho Chi Minh suddenly made a degrees turn and began to work together with France. At that time, his Democratic Republic of Vietnam barely got any international support. The Soviet Union was furious about his pro-Western independence speech. The leader of the French Communists, vice president Maurice Thorez, advocated the maintenance of the French position in Indochina and the Chinese communists were still embroiled in a power struggle with the nationalist troops of Chang Kai-shek.
Truman, the successor of Franklin D. Roosevelt who had passed away on April 12, also was determined to restore the French colonial government for fear of contamination of Asia by communism. First Indochina War ended in armed peace Agreement remained a dead letter The Vietminh won of the seats in the parliamentary elections of January in the north of Vietnam. Yet the new constitution of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was democratically inspired.
It provided for freedom of speech, press and association in order not to offend the non-communist nationalists and the French negotiators. On 6 March , Ho Chi Minh reached an agreement with Jean Sainteny, the representative of the French Government, on the reform of the colonial administration and the gradual independence of Vietnam within the French Indochinese Union. But that agreement was immediately under attack. Firstly the conservative circles in Paris torpedoed the plan for a referendum.
They dreaded the loss of direct control over their colony. Secondly many Vietnamese feared for a sale of their revolution. Uncertainty was further increased when shortly afterwards 15, French soldiers arrived in the Tonkin countries. Thousands of soldiers were killed or languished in the concentration camp of Luc Yen Chau. For in the ancient Vietnamese tradition the Communists ruled over the territory that they controlled with an iron fist. A new constitution was promulgated and a government put in place that was fully dominated by the Communists.
Until Catholic militias fought against the Communists. Meanwhile, negotiations on the implementation of the agreement with France continued in Fontainebleau since May But Admiral Thierry d'Argenlieu, the High Commissioner for Indochina, violated an earlier agreement by appointing a government for the southern region Cochinchina. After the interruption of the consultation in September , Ho Chi Minh, who had remained in France as the only representative of the Vietminh, signed a modus vivendi that was disadvantageous for him.
This agreement provided for the cessation of hostilities and the maintenance of 25, French soldiers in the north of the country until Nevertheless France was not much interested in the agreement. The country was bogged down because of an institutional crisis in which one government followed another. The fear prevailed that the withdrawal from Vietnam would lead to the loss of several colonies. In the port of Haipong riots took place between French and Vietnamese troops and after the murder of a number of French officials French warships and aircraft bombarded from 23 to 28 November the city from the sea and from the air During the conflict people were killed or wounded on the Vietnamese side.
The Vietminh withdrew, and also left the capital Hanoi in December after fierce fighting. In January French sovereignty was restored in six provincial capitals in the north and in February, and after a siege of six weeks the former imperial capital of Hue was back in French hands. In August followed the restoration of French control of the border with China. The Vietminh, who did not yet want a confrontation with the French, further built up their armed forces.
They engaged in guerrilla attacks from the 'liberated' countryside and jungle. With their superior firepower on land and in the air the French hoped that , French soldiers would be sufficient to control Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Their mobile tactical elite units however had to operate in the mountainous jungle, a terrain with which they were not familiar.
Moreover, the commanders were accountable to superior officers in Paris that were frequently replaced by new superiors. The French had therefore increasingly less grip on their opponent. The army of the Vietminh moved in accordance with the imagery of Mao Zedong as "a fish in water.
Moreover, General Vo Nguyen Giap trained a regular army in the jungle. The Vietminh compensated for their limited military and logistical equipment by the motivation of their soldiers, their knowledge of the terrain, the support of the population and their objective to expel the French. On 20 October this attack was followed by operation Ceinture. Then Major General Marcel Alessandri, the commander of the French troops, cut off the rice supply to the Vietminh by occupying the delta of the Red River. As from the communist army grew to , units and expanded the area under their control.
Yet the tide really turned after the Communist takeover in China in Chinese soldiers trained the soldiers of the Viet Minh and Mao provided the Vietminh with light and heavy weapons as well as logistical supplies. The government of Cochinchina sank into a quagmire of corruption In April , the Vietminh lost their last chance for cooperation with the influential Hoa Hao Buddhist sect in Cochinchina because they murdered their leader Huynh Pho So.
In communist ranks there was a growing awareness that priority should be given to the liberation of the north. Indeed, the conquest of the south promised to be a long process. Pending full independence, the French maintained control over the key ministries of Defense and Finance. They hoped that Bao Dai would form a strong coalition that would bring together conservative nationalists, Catholics and other groups that could take over the leadership of Vietnamese nationalism from Ho Chi Minh. But many prominent nationalists, including Ngo Dinh Diem, refused to join and left the country.
On 7 February , Great Britain and the United States recognized the government of Bao Dai, although this was sinking into a morass of corruption. He is the youngest in a family of five children and literally a latecomer. His eldest brother Nguyen San was Although the family of Van Ly was poor, two homeless children were adopted: The atmosphere in Ba Binh was very pleasant.
No distinction was made between the social classes in the community. Apart from more affluent families, poorer families also lived in Ba Binh. The area was part of the parish Ba Ngoat. Like every inhabitant of this exclusively Catholic community, he experienced the pure Vatican faith from a young age.
Without exception, he attended Mass at 5am and at 6pm he attended the evening service. Until the age of eight, Van Ly struggled with a speech impediment. Smiling, the parishioners saw how he sat in the first row during church services and enthusiastically repeated in his high voice the verses said by the priest. As a young man, Van Ly was impatient.
Instead of reading, he would rather play with his friends. Later he helped with work in the rice fields and when one day he stole grapes in the orchard of a neighbor his older brother Tri Nguyen Hong An punished him. This brother was indeed responsible for his upbringing. Because the parish Ba Ngoat had no primary school, illiteracy was widespread. Many young people learned to read and write during the religious instruction when prayers were taught. Often seminarians assumed that task. As from , Van Ly walked 3 Km every day to the primary school in the neighboring parish Thach Han.
First encounter with the Communists Despite the presence of French missionaries, the people of the Catholic enclaves were opponents of the colonization because of the systematic exploitation they experienced first hand. And because of their faith they were naturally against the nascent communism. They yearned for freedom and peace. But under the impulse of communist sympathizers and partisans from the neighboring non-Catholic villages, propaganda visits as well as military attacks occurred in Ba Ngoat at night.
From the mids, parishioners between eighteen and sixty years formed a militia for their self-defense and they carried firearms. The village was fortified and the church and the presbytery of Ba Ngoat grew into a fortress. The Vietminh also regularly killed parishioners and took others prisoner. The man was released from prison one year later, but the difficult living conditions in the camps had weakened him.
After a long illness Thomas Nguyen Dang Thu died in Domino theory By establishing diplomatic relations with the Yugoslavia of Marshal Tito, who sailed an independent course within the communist world, Ho Chi Minh made it clear that he was not a puppet of the Soviet Union or China.
But the Western powers thought otherwise. He was of the opinion that following the victory of Mao in China, the tide of communism threatened all of Indochina. President Truman to increase his involvement in Vietnam. This theory received great support in the United States, because at that moment U. Senator Joseph McCarthy had launched a hate campaign against the "red peril". His delusional idea that the Communists could count on a number of hidden supporters in the United States led to a witch hunt against real and especially alleged communists.
The Western capitalist bloc led by the United States faced the communist bloc under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. Thus, the former Japanese colony of Korea at the 38th parallel was divided into two zones. The north was occupied by the Soviet Union and the south by the United States. When on 26 June an unusually bloody war erupted in Korea, the conflict in Vietnam also escalated. Both France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam assured themselves of additional international aid. On the other hand the French, who had increased their military effort in Indochina, obtained additional American political, economic, financial and military support.
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