VIETNAM:PART THREE

www.explaininghistory.com

Ho CHi Minhs revolutionary journey in the early years of the 20th Century has interesting similarities and parralels with Sun Yat Sen and Gandhi, all of whom explored, experimented and negotiated with the prevalent powers and ideologies at the time, looking for a workable model for independence.

Ho Chi Minh
By Nick Shepley

A 20th Century Revolutionary Life

Ho Chi Minh, by the end of World War One was an exceptionally well travelled young man. Like many revolutionaries in the past century he had grown up the son of a member of the colonial administrative class. His father was a village magistrate who died after being brutally punished for misusing his powers. He was also a Confuscian scholar, which led to his son receiving a rigorous education. After his fathers fall from grace, Ho Chi Minh was marginalised from the structures of colonial life that would normally have resulted in his advancement. He had no way of accessing the scholarships that would normally have been available to him and so instead he worked and travelled on ships, ending up in France, Britain and America. Much like Sun Yat Sen, Ho Chi Minh found friends amongst various Asian diasporas in Europe and America and was politicised initially not by Vietnamese revolutionaries but by Korean and Chinese. Most importantly, he initially explored liberal nationalist ideas, the likes of which had been used to liberate and unify European countries like Italy in the 19th Century. His move to the left occurred in the period 1919-23 in France. 1919 had been the Communists moment in Europe, there had briey been a socialist republic in Bavaria and Bela Kun established a communist state in Hungary (again, briey). The countries that did not have actual communist revolutions came under serious threat of unrest with strikes and mutinies occurring in most countries; in Italy 1919-20 was known as the Biennio Rosso. At this time, however, he could not be described as a communist, his nationalism simply incorporated socialist ideas. He joined a Vietnamese nationalist group in France that attempted to petition the Big Four at the Paris Peace Conference. Assuming that President Woodrow Wilson would listen to them because of his 14 Points he published in 1917 (which declared that national self determination for all peoples should be included in the peace settlement), they were disappointed when they were ignored. Self determination would be granted to the subjects

www.explaininghistory.com

Mao, McCarthy and Vietnam Ho Chi Minhs Revolution

By Nick Shepley

- of the defeated empires in Europe and the Middle East, not to the subjects of France and Britain. Wilson had no chance of persuading the French to dismantle their own empire, or the British for that matter either. The liberal democratic institutions laid down at Versailles, such as the League Of Nations, to manage the world in the post war era were therefore redundant to Ho CHi Minh and seemed to be about nothing more than allowing European Imperialism to carry on unhindered. He joined the French Socialist Party and in 1920 broke away to become a founder member of the Parti Communiste Francais, though his attempts to bring anti colonial struggles to the top of the partys agenda was of limited success. Even though Lenin had made various anti imperial pronouncements and encouraged revolutionary movements in Britain and Frances overseas colonies, residual white working class chauvinism in France (and the rest of Europe) put the concerns of the colonised at the bottom of the list of revolutionary goals. Realising he was unlikely to make any further progress in France he left for Moscow in 1923 and became a member of Comintern. In many ways this journey seemed to answer many of Ho Chi Minhs questions about revolution and independence, looking towards the peacemakers at Paris or the French left had been fruitless but in Comintern there was an organisation that appeared to be committted to exporting revolution to as many countries as possible. He was sent to China in 1924 where he educated Vietnamese exiles in Canton but was forced to ee again in 1927 when Chiang Kai
Statue to Ho Chi Minh in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Siagon)

French Indochina: * Vietnam * Laos * Cambodia

Shek launched a bloody coup against the communists. Throughout the 1930s he returned to Russia and Asia and fell out of favour in Comintern gradually as he was suspected of disloyalty to Soviet Communism. He was lucky not to have been arrested and executed in Stalins purges. He returned to Vietnam in 1941 to lead the Viet Minh - the League for the Independence of Vietnam, against the Vichy regime and the Japanese. In April 1945 he was contacted by the American Ofce For Strategic Services who gave the Viet Minh arms, supplies and training. As mentioned previously Roosevelt broadly favoured an independent Vietnam but he died in the same month that the Americans rst made contact with Ho Chi Minh and Trumans policy thereafter would be quite different. In 1945 it was the British, not the French that controlled Vietnam, they had crossed into the country from liberated Malaya and forced the Japanese to surrender, they planned to return the colony to their ally. In the same year the Chiang Kai Shek invaded from the north to prevent a communist state from emerging. Ho Chi Minh was left with little choice but than to sign an agreement with the French giving Vietnam autonomy, but not independence.

www.explaininghistory.com

In the next part of this series I will explore the long term interests of the USA in South East Asia from the start of the 20th Century onwards. If you found this handout useful you can find more free materials at: www.explaininghistory.com/freestuff/

Red Sun At War Part Three Fighting Back From The Coral Sea to the Kokoda Trail
The speed with which European empires and American inuence in South East Asia were swept aside in 1941 and 1942 was historically unprecedented and in the rst few months of 1942 it seemed as if Japans advance towards Australia was unstoppable. However, the early months of 1942 would prove to be the apex of Japanese successes and the remainder of the year would see her ambitions to become Asias hegemonic power dashed. In a six month period her advance was halted, never to be resumed, in a series of naval battles and land campaigns that left her ghting a long and ultimately futile defence over the next two years. Facing Japan was a US Navy under Admiral Chester Nimitz, eager to avenge Pearl Harbour and the Army, led by General Douglas MacArthur, the vain and ego-driven warlord of Manila, concerned equally to retake the Philippines that he had been ejected from and to present himself in a positive light in the US papers for a possible post war presidential race. Beneath these men and their Australian counterparts were countless soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and civilians who drew a bloody line across the South Pacic, nally stopping the enemy at Milne Bay, Buna and Guadalcanal. This is the third of six Explaining History ebooks that chronicle the entire Pacic War from Pearl Harbour to the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ebooks are short accessible guides to the main themes and events of the 20th Century, written for newcomers to modern history and seasoned enthusiasts who want concise but in depth writing that gets to the underlying causes of war, revolution and the massive changes of the past 100 years. Red Sun At War Part Three will be available on January 1st 2014 for Kindle, Kobo, Nook, iBooks and in PDF format, you can access it at:

www.explaininghistory.com