Chapter 2 The Nationalist Movement in Indo-China(Ncert notes)

The Nationalist Movement in Indo-China

1. Vietnam gained formal independence in 1945.
2. The Republic of Vietnam was formed.
3. The knitting together of a modern Vietnamese nation brought the different communities together.
4. The way colonial empires functioned and the anti-imperial movement developed.

Emerging from the shadow of china:

1. The modern countries of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
2. The powerful empire of China.
3. The maritime silk route that brought in goods, people and ideas.
4. The hinterlands where non — Vietnamese people such as the Khmer Cambodian lived.

1.1 Colonial Domination and Resistance:

1. The colonization of Vietnam by the French brought the people of the country into conflict.
2. The most visible form of French control was military and economic domination but the French also built a system that tried to reshape the culture of the Vietnamese.
3. French troops landed in Vietnam in 1858.
4. French Indo — China was formed.
5. Exploring and mapping rivers were part of the colonial enterprise everywhere in the world.

The famous blind poet Ngyuyen Dinh Chieu bemoaned what was happening to his country:

.I would rather face eternal darkness

.Than see the face of traitors.

.I would rather see no man

.Than encounter one man’s suffering

.I would rather see nothing

.Than witness the dismembering of the country in decline

1.2 Why the French thought colonies necessary:

1. Colonies were considered essential to supply natural resources and other essential goods.
2. The area under rice cultivation went up from 274,000 hectares in 1873 to 1.1 million in 1930.
3. Vietnam exported two — third of its rice production and by 1931 had become the thirds largest exported of rice in the world.
4. Move military garrisons and control the entire region.
5. Construction of a trans — Indo — China rail network that would link the northern and southern parts of Vietnam and China was begun.
6. Vietnam to siam (as Thailand was then called) Cambodian capital of phnom penh.

1.3 Should Colonies be developed?

1. Paul Bernard, an influential writer and policy — maker, strongly believed that the economy of the colonies needed to be developed.
2. There were several barriers to economies growth in Vietnam.
3. Labourers worked on the basis of contracts that did not specify any right of labourers but gave immense power to employers.

(II) The Dilemma of colonial education:

1. French colonization was not based only on economic exploitation
2. It was also driven by the idea of a ‘civilising mission’.
3. The colony even if this meant destroying local cultures, religions and traditional, because these were seen as outdated and prevented modern development.
4. Education was seen as one way to civilise the ‘native’
5. The French needed an educated local labour force but they feared that education might create problems.
6. French citizens living in Vietnam (called colons) began fearing that they might lose their jobs — as a teacher, shopkeepers, policemen — to the educated Vietnamese.

2.1 Talking Modern:

1. This would help create an ‘ Asiatic French solidly tied to European French ’
2. The Vietnamese were represented as primitive and backward, capable of manual labour but not intellectual reflection.
3. They could work in the field but not rule themselves.
4. They were ‘skilled copyists’ but not creative.

2.2 Looking Modern:

1. The education included classes in science, hygiene and French. ( these classes were helpful in the evening and had to be paid for separately)
2. It was not enough to learn science and Western ideas: to be modern the Vietnamese had to also look modern.

2.3 Resistance in schools:

1. Teachers and student did not blindly follow the curriculum.
2. There was open opposition, at other times there was silent resistance.
3. It became difficult to control what was actually taught.
4. Vietnamese teachers quietly modified the next and criticised what was stated.
5. In 1926 a major protest erupted in the Saigon Native Girls School.
6. The principal also a colon ( French people in the colonies), expelled her.
7. The government forced the school to take the student back.
8. ‘I will crush all Vietnamese under my feet. AH! You wish my deportation. Know well that I will leave only after I am assured Vietnamese no longer inhabit Cochinchina.’
9. Vietnamese from qualifying for white — collar jobs by patriotic feelings.
10. The conviction that it was the duty of the educated to fight for the benefit of society.
11. The 1920s, student were forming various political parties.
12. The Party of Young Annan, and publishing nationalist journals such as the Annanse Student.
13. School thus became an important place for political and cultural battles.
14. The control of education they tried to change the values, norms and perceptions of the people to make them believe in the superiority of French civilization and the inferiority of the Vietnamese.
15. The people were developing a master — slave mentality.
16. The larger battle against colonialism and for independence.

(III) Hygiene, disease and everyday Resistance: Education was not the only of everyday life in which such political battles against colonialism were fought.

3.1 Plague Strikes Hanoi:

1. The least ideas about architecture skills were employed to build a new and ‘Modern’ city.
2. The spread of disease created serious social conflicts.
3. The ‘Native quarter’ was not provided with any modern facilities.
4. During heavy rains or floods, overflowed into the streets.
5. The French city became the cause of the plague.
6. The sewers also served as a great transport system, allowing the rats to move around the city without any problem.

3.2 The Rat Hunt:

1. To stem this invasion, a rat hunt was started in 1902.
2. The French hired Vietnamese workers and paid them for each rat they caught.
3. The dirty work of entering sewers found if they came together they could negotiate a higher bounty.
4. The French were forced to scrap the bounty programme.
5. The contradictions in their ‘civilising mission’.
6. The rat — catchers took to just clipping the tails and releasing the rats .
7. Some people, in fact, began raising rats to earn a bounty.

(IV) Religion and Anti-Colonialism:

1. Colonial domination was exercised by control overall areas of private and public life.
2. The French occupied Vietnam militarily.
3. Vietnam’s religious beliefs were a mixture of Buddhism Confucianism and local practices.
4. Ngu An and Ha Tien provinces where over a thousand Catholics were killed.
5. The elites in Vietnam were educated in Chinese and Confucianism.
6. The variety of syncretic ( the different beliefs and practice, seeing their essential unity rather than their difference) traditions that combined Buddhism and beliefs.
7. One such movement was the Hoa Hao. It began in 1939 and gained great popularity in the fertile Mekong delta area.
8. It drew on religious ideas popular in anti-French uprisings of the nineteenth century.
9. The founder of Hoa Hao was a man called Huynh Phu.
10. He also opposed the sale of child brides, gambling and the use of opium.
11. The French tried to suppress the movement inspired by Huynh Phu.
12. They declared him mad, called him the Mad Bonze and put him in a mental asylum.
13. This always had a contradictory relationship with mainstream nationalism.
14. They could neither control or discipline the groups nor support their rituals and practices.
15. These movements in arousing anti — imperialist sentiments not be underestimated.

(V) The Vision of modernization:

1. In order to be modern, was it necessary to regard tradition as backward and reject all earlier ideas and social practices.
2. The ‘West’ as the symbol of development and civilization.
3. Led by Confucian scholar — activists, who saw their world crumbling. Educated in the Confucian tradition, Phan Boi Chau (1867 — 1940) was one such nationalist.

4, He became a major figure in the anti -— colonial resistance from the time he formed the Revolutionary Society (Duy Tan Hoi) in 1903, with prince Cuong De as the head.

5. Phan Boi Chau met the Chinese reformer Liang Qichao in yokohama in 1905.
6. The History of the loss of Vietnam.
7. The loss of sovereignty and the severing of ties with China — ties that bound the elites of two countries within a shared culture.
8. That Phan laments, a lament that was typical of reformers from within the traditional elite.
9. The idea of resisting the French with the help of court.
10. He did not want a wholesale rejection of western civilisation.
11. The French revolutionary ideal of liberty but charged the French for not abiding by the ideal.
12. Legal and educational institutions, and develop agriculture and industries.

5.1 Other ways of Becoming modern: Japan and China:

1. In the first decade of the twentieth century a ‘go east movement’ became popular.
2. The puppet emperor and re – established th Nquyen dynasty.
3. The Japanese as fellow Asians Japan had modernised itself and had resisted colonisation by the West.
4. Its victory over Russia in 1907 proved its military capabilities.
5. In 1911, the long established monarchy in china was overthrown by a popular movement under sun Yat — sen, and a republic was set up.
6. The association for the Restoration of Vietnam
7. The objective was no longer to set up a constitutional monarchy buyt a democratic republic.

(VI) The communist movement and Vietnamese Nationalism:

1. The Nationalist groups to establish the Vietnamese Communist Party.
2. The Indo – China Communist Party.
3. In 1940 Japan occupied Vietnam.
4. The Japanese as well as the French the League for the Independence of Vietnam.
5. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was formed and Ho Chi Minh became Chairman.

6.1 The New Republic of Vietnam:

1. The French tried to regain control by using the emperor. Bao Dai, as their puppet.
2. The French were defeated in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.
3. The entire commanding staff, including a general, 16 colonels and 1,749 officers, were taken prisoner.
4. The Vietnam into a battlefield bringing death destruction to its people as well the environment.
5. A French Law that permitted Christianity but outlawed Buddhism.
6. National Liberation Front (NLF)
7. NLF fought for the unification of the country.

6.2 The Entry of the US into the War:

1. From 1965 to 1972, over 3,403,100 US.
2. Advanced technology and good medical supplies, casualties were high.
3. This Phase of struggle with the US was brutal.
4. Troops arrived equipped with heavy weapons and tanks and backed by the most powerful bombers of the time — B52s.
5. Many were critical of the government for getting involved in war that they saw as indefensible.
6. they could be waived for university graduates.
7. The privileged elite but were minorities and children of working—class families.
8. Hollywood made films in support of the war such as John Wayne’s Green Berets.
9. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) reflected the moral confusion.
10. The Ho Chi Minh government would start a domino effect.
11. They underestimated the power of nationalism to move people to action.

6.3 The Ho Chi Minh Trail:

1. The Vietnamese fought against the US.
2. Their limited resources to great advantage.
3. Footpaths and roads was used to transport men and materials from the north-south.
4. The trail had support bases and hospitals along the way.
5. The trail was outside Vietnam in neighboring Laos.
6. Bombed this trail trying to disrupt supplies.
7. They were rebuilt very quickly.

(VID The nation and Its Heroes:The anti-imperialist movement in Vietnam.

7.1 Women as Rebels:

1. The lower classes but they had only limited freedom to determine their future and played no role in public life.
2. Anew image of womanhood emerged.
3. A woman leaving a forced marriage and marrying someone of her choice.

7.2 Heroes of past Times:

1. Patriots fighting to save the Vietnamese nation from the Chinese.
2. They committed suicide instead of surrendering to the enemy.

7.3 Women as Warriors:

1. Women as a brave fighter,
2. Some stories spoke of their incredible bravery in single-handedly killing the enemy.
3. Women began to be depicted as selflessly working and fighting to save the country.
4. Women were urged to join the struggle in large numbers.
5. Many women responded and joined the resistance movement.
6. They built six airstrips, neutralized tens of thousands of bombs transported tens of thousands of kilograms of cargo.

7.4 Women in times of peace:

1. The war seemed near women were no longer represented as warriors.
2. Women as workers begin to predominate.

(VIII) The End of the War:

1. The US had failed to achieve its objectives.
2. This was a war that has been called the first television war.
3. The daily news programs.
4. Their heroic defense of the country.
5. The greatest threat to peace to national self-determination and to international cooperation.
6. A peace settlement was signed in pairs in January 1974.
7. The presidential palace in Saigon on 30 April 1975 and unified Vietnam.