Part III: French Colonialism

1. Part III: French Colonialism How do you evaluate French colonialism in Vietnam?

3. People living through the colonial times had different views on colonialism. • Modern scholars diverge on this matter as well. • It all depends on who you are and where you stand.

4. Different Voices and Views • The French colonizers who defended colonialism: • Pierre Jabouille, Resident superior of Annam : • : “…the Vietnamese people should not blame the protectorate government because it is thanks to the protectorate government that Annam has reached today such a

5. degree of prosperity: the people are • busily working in total peace… • The Vietnamese people have beautiful houses, good roads with shining lights on which automobiles are able to drive fast. • People should feel really happy. As for mental happiness, it is not necessary to have it at all” (speech in 1928)

6. The Vietnamese collaborators (including the mandarins) of the French colonial system: • Hoang Cao Khai (1850-1933; viceroy of Tonkin): “On the wisdom of our country to reply on France” (1910) • “Unlike China in the past, France could not be driven out due to their advanced technology and money, which China did not have in the past.

7. “How can we, with our outmoded technology, expect to fight against these modern techniques?” • “How can we expect to win if we, • a poor country, fight against a rich country like France?” • “If France is that powerful and her foreign relations so strictly maintained,

8. no matter what kind of agitation against the French we organize in foreign countries, • certainly nothing will come out of it.” • “After our intelligence has opened, probably France will grant us our autonomy in internal affairs.” • “To have autonomy we must study.

9. In order to study well we must make • France our teacher. • …within fifty or 100 years, we will become the same as the French—that is, an intelligent race…at that time France will give us back our autonomy, • and she will only protect us in foreign affairs.”

10. Pham Quynh (1892-1945): Minister of Education and of the Interior in the Vietnamese court; • Director of the cabinet of the last Vietnamese emperor; publisher of the widely read literary-political magazine, Nam Phong (southern wind) (1931). • “Here (Tonkin) stands the cradle of our race. From there, the descendents of the Giao Chi

11. launched their conquest of Indochina that last for several centuries. • From here departed those human waves that slowly submerged Champa and pushed the Cambodians away from the rich plains located along the Mekong River that have become the beautiful Cochinchina of the present day.

12. In effect, we also have been a conquering people. • We have been, ourselves, ‘imperialists’ in our way. • After we liberated ourselves from the domination of China in the tenth century, • we have bit by bit conquered all of present-day Annam and all of present-day Cochinchina at the expenses of our neighbors,

13. in spite of the fact that they themselves were resourceful and tough. • That expansion along the coastal plains of Indochina combined with the victorious resistance we opposed the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century constituted one of the most flattering and the most glorious pages in our history…

14. Our people, therefore, have shown vitality and energy in the past. • But since the end of the 18th century, internal dissension, including civil strife, • has profoundly weakened us as the breaking up of our country combined with unrest have brought abut such a state of affairs that could justify the French encroachment… • “And such was our destiny. From then on Vietnam was for ever bound to France!

15. …It looks like French tutelage was working well and was even beneficial to us. • In a half-century she has helped us achieve considerable progress in all areas. • She has above all maintained for us order and peace, resulting in a sense of security that allows our mind to open up, our conscience to be

16. Strengthened, our personality to bloom at the revitalizing breeze of liberal ideas blowing from the West. • …not only can we have a national life, but we would furthermore be able to live it, fully and intensely, • under the tutelage of France. For that national consciousness, • a long time in lethargy,

17. has begun to live again in us; it even acquire a new vigor with every passing day...” • According to this group, many things (political, economic, cultural, educational, etc.) needed to be reformed and improved, • but the French rule should be maintained.

18. Nationalist Voice and View: • Terminating the French rule and reform the old Vietnam • Phan Boi Chau (1867-1940): “The New Vietnam” (1907) • “Oh! Compatriots, the country is ours, the people are ours. • What interest does France have here for her to come and protect our country?

19. “Even since France came to protect us, Frenchmen hold every lever of power; • they hold the power of life and death. • The life of thousands of Vietnamese people if not worth that of a French dog; • …Look at those men with blue eyes and yellow beard.

20. They are not our fathers, nor are they our brothers. • How can they squat here, defecating on our heads? • …we should be determined to kill the enemy in order to raise the energy of the yellow races of ours.

21. “The French stole our country. • They gagged our mouths. • They tied up our limbs. • They blinded our eyes. • They plugged our ears… • “Under the previous dynasties…, taxes the rulers levied from the people were not heavy…but that treatment was still somewhat humane.

22. Today the French consider us no better than animals, buffaloes or horses to be traded in exchange… • Alas! Our people have used up their sweat and blood to provide the Frenchmen, • their women, their horses, and their dogs each year with so many hundreds, thousands, millions, billions…

23. “And yet our country is still a semi-civilized, semi-barbarian, because the mind of our people is still not fully open yet… • “After modernization… • Social Darwinism: “In this competitive world, where people’s dispositions are as poisonous as snakes, where vultures pursue sparrows, the otter swimming after

24. The fish, where can we can someone like the Buddha? • If you don’t want to progress, people will kill you… • “Soon our people will see automobiles and electric trains. • They will hear French rifles and firecrackers. • They will know all French culture and French technology.

25. But right now they are still blind. Deaf, and a bit drunk or benumbed. • Why is it so? • That’s because we refuse to change. How our ancestors did it, we now do it exactly in the same way.

26. “Let our compatriots seek fame… Let our compatriots seek profit. • Our country will be rich and strong only when its people have one will, one determination.”

27. Nguyen An Ninh (1900-43): French-educated; • one of the famous anti-French activists of the 1920s (1925). • Calling for violence: “In order to eliminate the regime of slavery imposed by France on Indochina there is only one way, and that way is to combat violence with violence as in a bull’s fight…

28. “The independent character of the Vietnamese people has manifested itself very clearly in history. • China has seen it. • She was never able to dominate Vietnam in spite of her several occupations, • which lasted altogether for more than a thousand years,

29. and in spite of her repeated attempts at conquest, • which were at times more violent than others.” • Ideas from France: “[Vietnamese students] brought back from Europe ideas of democracy,

30. a critical mind, a strength and a faith that are reinvigorated by the Western spirit. • They received from the hands of metropolitan Frenchmen the condemnation of the political regime imposed upon Indochina by the French colonialists, who, after all,

31. Cannot prevent them from reading Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire… • “They fight openly, in the name of humanitarian ideals, and the principles of [the French Revolution of] 1789. • “One must be a colonialist in the most stupid meaning of that term to

32. believe in the civilizing mission of the Europeans who colonized Indochina…’Would you tell us whether civilization exists in your country? • “The European prestige is based neither on the moral nor the intellectual superiority of the Europeans over the Asians. It is based on the color of the skin alone.

33. “It is the European prestige that proposes that a European, as idiotic as the can be, could be a boss over a Vietnamese. • “It is the European prestige that kills justice in the courtrooms… • “In 1789 the Rights of Man were proclaimed in France…[but] the absence in Indochina of these basic rights that protect the dignity of mankind.”

34. The Communists: • Terminating colonialism/imperialism and undertaking social revolution • Ho Chi Minh, “The Communists must organize themselves into a single party” (1929).

35. “The revolutionary movement in Vietnam has now begun the stage of proletarian leadership… and the peasantry is the leader of the proletariat, so the peasantry will overthrow the French imperialists, • Seize political power, and set up the dictatorship of peasants and workers in order to achieve a communist society.”

36. Ho’s movement would differ from those that preceded it in several important aspects: • National in scope; • A mass movement; • A social as well as a political agenda; • Links to the outside world via the communist movements in other countries;

37. sustained by the unshaken belief that history was on their side and that victory will be certain, • because capitalism was on the decline ad communism would triumph and usher in the millennium.

38. Debates on Colonialism: • Defenders of French colonial policy have frequently to the beneficial effects of Western technology: • The draining of the marshes in the Mekong delta and the building of new irrigation systems to put thousands of acres of new rice land under cultivation.

39. Rice production soared in the first decades of French rule, and the export of rice became the major source of foreign currency.

40. Opponents of French colonialism disagree: • With the commercialization of agriculture came the concentration of land holdings and the seizure of village communal land by the wealthy and a consequent rise in tenancy and rural poverty.

41. In Cochinchina, less than 5% of the population owned more than half the arable land. • An inequitable tax system and the hated government monopolies on salt, opium, and alcohol represented a serious drain on the peasants’ financial resources. • While grain production under the French rose to new heights, per capita consumption was declining.

42. Ordinary Vietnamese complaints: • “From the generations of our ancestors and our fathers, • No generation suffers more than ours. • From the day we lost our country to the French, • Worn out we are but never united with out family.”

43. “Why is it that girls, boys, old, young, • All harnessed like buffaloes and calves, • Work their heart off to enrich them by mining coal, • Panning gold to load ships that sail to France.”

44. “Easy to get into rubber plantations, • But hard getting out; • In, you lose your wife, • Out, you lose your children. • Easy to get into rubber plantations, • But hard getting out; • In, you were young and strong, • Out, you are thin and sick.”

45. Troung Buu Lam, “The sociology of the road:” • The colonial administration generally boasted of the impressive number of kilometers of roads built and of canals dug in colonies as major achievement of its civilizing mission.

46. While roads and canals certainly improved communication, facilitated travels, and multiplied the exchange of goods and ideas, the roads also introduced an untold number of strains and stresses upon the lives of the people in the countryside. • Roads or canals violated rice fields and, worse, ancestral burial sites, which were sacred spots.

47. Little did they realize that the road constituted a key factor in alienating the colonized from the colonizer. • French engineers totally ignored people’s geomantic beliefs. • People were forced to construct the public works (roads, irrigation. Etc.) • Popular saying: “Automobiles belong to the French and the mandarins, while bullock carts are for the Vietnamese.”

48. Car accidents killed lives in rural areas. • For peasants, the road was not there to be walked on; • it was a cut, an intrusion into their daily life. • Lam calls French colonialism an “unjust, brutal, cruel, inhumane, and unethical system.”

49. Mai Elliott: the French rule in Vietnam for over 60 years had transformed the country. • They had brought modernization; • built cities, hospitals, roads, harbors, and railroads; • Developed the country’s natural resources, exploiting mines, setting up plantations, draining land, and expanding agriculture, esp. rice.

50. Yet by being unwilling to share the benefits of these developments more equally with the local people and by refusing to restore independence to Vietnam, • they would earn animosity instead of gratitude from the Vietnamese.