Vietnam - the day before
Hanoi nobility circa 1915
European colonization varied. The Belgians committed outrageous acts in the Congo, extracting rubber and cocoa from the colony. The Germans organized a veritable genocide in Namibia. The British weren't particularly savage, but they were extremely annoying with their snobbery, racism, and paternalism: "Bear the white man's burden..."—all that stuff. Against this backdrop, the French looked pretty good—at least they considered the people of their colonies human beings, and the local elites tried to make them French in culture, education, and way of thinking, but...
And this is the one who produced Vietnam's main export product in the early 20th century.
It's important to remember that colonies were established not to introduce the locals to high culture and civilization, but to generate money. So, in terms of extracting money from Indochina, the French were honest and rational: it was officially declared "a colony for exploitation"As they write in smart books, "The Vietnamese economy during the French Indochina era (1920-1953) had a distinctly colonial and raw materials character."Approximately 94 percent of the population was employed in agriculture. The Mekong Delta is ideal for rice production, so initially, it accounted for the majority of exports. By 1918, rice exports amounted to 1,62 million tons, 76 percent of all exports.
I assure you that the quality of the product is more than worthy!
The administration of the colony was financed by local taxes, and such lucrative "items" as the trade in opium, salt, and local rice vodka ("com ruou" or something like that—the Vietnamese pronunciation is something else entirely!) became state monopolies. And not just any monopoly: each village was assigned a consumption quota for all of the above, so whether you wanted to or not, you'd have to consume them! In 1920, 44 percent of the colonial administration's budget came from the trade in these "consumer goods."
Saigon Chinese Women: The Chinese diaspora in Vietnam was quite wealthy and influential
Naturally, the French had no intention of accommodating competitors in their colony, so German and Austro-Hungarian trading houses were expelled from Indochina at the outbreak of World War I. However, these merchants quickly changed their ways: they converted their German companies to French registrations without replacing their middle management. Milking Vietnamese farmers was a point of honor for the French! Customs tariffs fluctuated constantly, resulting in exports falling into the hands of large Chinese companies capable of "establishing a dialogue with customs officials," who fleeced local farmers by buying rice at rock-bottom prices.
Vietnamese landowner, colonial exploitation of Vietnam was carried out mostly through people like him...
The French also established plantation farming in Indochina: from 1907, tea, coffee, and pepper were grown on plantations, while coal, zinc, and tin were mined in the mines. But rubber soon became the colony's most important crop—rubber plantations were established throughout the territory, especially in the provinces of Annam and Cochin China. French Indochina became the largest rubber producer in the world, prompting Michelin and its competitors to invest heavily in the country. By 1930, 100 hectares of rubber plantations in Vietnam were under cultivation, up from 30 in 1924.
The establishment of plantations led to a dramatic loss of land among local peasants. By the 30s, landowners owned more than 50 percent of agricultural land, the French 9 percent, and only 30 percent belonged to peasants. Moreover, more than half of the peasants owned no land at all, being tenants.
Lang Son Copper Mine
True, industrial enterprises gradually began to appear in the colony: textile factories, breweries, tobacco factories, cement production. All these goods were sold throughout the French Empire. But—the Empire! No one allowed local industrial products to be imported into France, so colonial officials in Indochina itself smoked cigarettes rolled in makeshift Vietnamese factories, along with beer and other such things—the same thing. story.
Catherine Deneuve in "Indochine" (1992)
French colonists, or "colons," lived in isolated settlements reminiscent of French provincial towns. Residents of the metropolis treated them with a mixture of envy and contempt: the colons were considered lazy and apathetic, a condition known in France as "le mal jaune"—"the yellow disease," a condition caused by an abundance of servants and opium abuse. If you're interested, the film "Indochine" starring Catherine Deneuve portrays this lifestyle quite well, albeit a bit glossed over (or perhaps not a bit, but it's just...).
The lifestyle of the "colons" in Indochina - with an opium pipe at their side
However, the Vietnamese attitude toward the colonists was no better: all decent Vietnamese at the time had their teeth blackened, and "madams and monsieurs" walked around with white men, which, according to the locals, strongly resembled dogs. It must be said that even the Vietnamese in French service never forgot that they were the heirs of the great Vietnamese culture, and not the descendants of Gauls, as they tried to drum into them in colonial schools. To be convinced of this, one only had to study the Asterix and Obelix comics and then look in the mirror...
Ho Chi Minh in his youth: few photographs remain from this period – the guy was a master of conspiracy
Born in 1890 in the village of Kim Lien, the boy who was given the "baby name" of Nguyen Sinh Cung learned to look in the mirror early. The boy's family was wealthy and respected: his father was the most educated man in the village, even rising to the position of district governor. Before entering school, he changed his name to Nguyen Tat Thanh. I won't list all the boy's names and aliases—he had over 200 of them. We know him as Ho Chi Minh, and that's what we'll call him. After graduating from a French school (yes, the same one where they claimed he was of Gaulish descent), he decided to see the world and, under yet another alias, took a job as a sailor on a steamship. The year was 1911; the boy would return to Vietnam exactly 30 years later, a completely different man!
The Congress of the French Communist Party in 1920, just when it was joined by a new member
During his years of wandering, Ho Chi Minh visited the United States, crisscrossed Europe, and lived in Great Britain and France. In 1919, he appealed to the leaders of the countries signing the Treaty of Versailles to grant Vietnam independence. Needless to say, no one listened to the young Vietnamese. Meanwhile, a specter had been haunting Europe for some time. After 1917, this specter began to take shape. So Ho Chi Minh's fascination with socialist ideas is more than understandable. In 1920, he joined the French Communist Party.
How Ho Chi Minh changed over the years: his gaze reflects the difficult experience of decades of revolutionary work
In the 20s, even the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was considered a mere section of the Comintern, to say nothing of the French Communist Party? In 1923, a promising Vietnamese party member was invited to the USSR. The trip took place under strict secrecy—under yet another pseudonym, via Berlin and Hamburg, and from there by ship to Petrograd. In the Soviet Union, Ho Chi Minh dreamed of meeting Lenin, but the leader of the world proletariat was already gravely ill, so the meeting never took place—the Vietnamese was only able to attend the funeral.
In 1923, the I.V. Stalin Communist University of the Toilers of the East opened in the building of the First Women's Gymnasium of Moscow.
In Moscow, Ho Chi Minh graduated from the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. Here it's worth comparing him with Kim Il Sung: while the Korean leader was more of a nationalist who exploited communist ideology for his own ends, Ho was a true communist—a dedicated and literate one. In 1924, he received his first party assignment—he went to China, ostensibly as a translator for Mikhail Borodin, an adviser to the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, but in reality, to establish ties between the Comintern and the Vietnamese émigré community. Soon, through Ho Chi Minh's efforts, a "Special Political Training Committee" was organized in Canton, where Soviet comrades taught Vietnamese revolutionary terrorists the methods of organized revolutionary struggle in the Soviet style.
Kuomintang Advisor Mikhail Borodin, Ho Chi Minh's immediate superior
To call Ho Chi Minh's activities in 1925 turbulent would be a gross understatement! He organized a Vietnamese equivalent of the Komsomol, the "Association of Revolutionary Youth of Vietnam," and created its publication, the newspaper "Youth." He formed women's revolutionary organizations, and the "Union of Oppressed Peoples of Asia" to work with non-Vietnamese. He sent groups of Vietnamese to Moscow to study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. At the same time, Ho wrote the program for the future Communist Party of Indochina, the pamphlet "Paths of Revolution."
Chiang Kai-shek changed his orientation from Soviet to American... and made a mistake.
Ho Chi Minh's activities were interrupted by Chiang Kai-shek's coup in 1927. Soviet advisers were evacuated, the mission's translator faced arrest, and he attempted to take refuge in Hong Kong, but a man with such a murky background was not allowed there. Ho then undertook a dangerous journey across war-torn China, from south to north, and returned to the USSR. However, the Comintern agent did not stay long in the Soviet Union: the geography of his travels was as varied as his list of new aliases: Belgium, France, Italy, Siam... Ho Chi Minh's activities in organizing Vietnamese revolutionary groups in the future Thailand were so successful that he received the highest possible punishment—a death sentence from the puppet Vietnamese imperial court.
In 1930, he was already in Hong Kong: a new passport, a new biography, a new alias. Here, on February 3, he founded a branch of the French Communist Party—the Communist Party of Vietnam. With the help of French communists, it took over communist groups throughout Indochina and, in October of that year, became the "Communist Party of Indochina": Ho was not a nationalist; he was ready to work with anyone!
Vichy government troops in Indochina
Meanwhile, the sleepy life of French Indochina ended. In 1940, France lost the first round of World War II, and its empire was left... practically abandoned! But, as nature abhors a vacuum, Indochina quickly found its share. It must be said that the colony was terribly defended: 70 French soldiers, 15 modern fighter aircraft, and one 01 tank Japan's only ally in the region, Thailand (Siam was renamed in 1939), opened its mouth to the peninsula. On June 12, 1940, Rama VIII signed a non-aggression pact with France, and on January 9 of the following year, he attacked.
As I've already said, the French forces in the region were meager, but they were quite sufficient for Thailand: after an initial retreat due to the surprise attack, the French regiments counterattacked and took everything back. Then, on January 17, the French light cruiser La Motte-Picquet, which was by no means new or particularly powerful, sank a third of the quite modern Thai fleet—a monitor and a couple of torpedo boats—in the Battle of Koh Chang.
However, these victories had no impact on the colony's fate: on June 19, 1940, the Japanese government asked the French colonial administration to allow imperial troops to pass through Vietnamese territory to attack Chiang Kai-shek's rear. Negotiations began, but the Japanese didn't wait for their conclusion: on September 22, they attacked the border forts, and on September 24, they landed in Haiphong. Around 800 Frenchmen were killed in the fighting, after which Pétain's government ordered the commander of French forces in Indochina, Admiral Jean Decq, to allow the Japanese to occupy the colony. In defense of the descendants of Asterix and Obelix, it's worth noting that they had no choice: the mother country was less than enthusiastic, and the Americans refused to provide them with equipment (a contract for the supply of 120 fighters had already been concluded).
The Fall of Saigon
These relations with the Japanese, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, were perceived by the Americans as collaborationism, so cooperation with the French was banned. Even when the Japanese launched a surprise attack on French garrisons and administration on March 9, 1945, the Americans fighting the samurai received orders prohibiting them from providing any assistance to the dying French troops.
Emile Lemonnier in 1912. In 1940, he behaved honorably, for which he paid. With his head...
Meanwhile, the garrisons of the forts in northern Vietnam fought to the death. The fiercest battle was the defense of Lang Son. The Japanese invited General Émile Lemonnier, commander of the French forces in the Lang Son area, to a banquet, where they arrested him and ordered him to sign a surrender order for the troops under his command. The general refused and was beheaded along with Resident General Camille Ophel. Nevertheless, the Lang Son garrison held off the superior Japanese forces for three days, and the 53 surviving French soldiers were beheaded or bayoneted.
Unnoticed in all these clashes was the fact that the organization that had been their main enemy throughout the four years of their existence, the Viet Minh, had formed a united front against the Japanese alongside the French. It was created by our old friend with hundreds of aliases, Ho Chi Minh...
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