French Colonialism In Vietnam Analysis

This historical analysis will define the imperial impact of French colonialism and the influence of Chinese communism and on the Vietnamese people in the pre-WWII era. The important role of China in the development of Vietnam’s history is crucial to understand the ways in which foreign colonists could not sustain dominance over these peoples. In the past, Northern Vietnam had been a part of China, which defines the close relationship that these people had with a larger and more powerful empire in this region of the world. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the role of China’s own nationalist movements had an impact on Vietnam’s own struggles in French-Indochina. The early focus on “nationalism” in China was going against western

In a European colonial perspective, the Vietnamese peoples had to combat the threat of French colonialism as a threat to their identity in the region from 1859-1885. During this time, the French had colonized Vietnam as part of a larger colonial policy in French Indochina. The Vietnamese peoples were forced to learn a western style of education and Catholics was the dominant religion to be forced onto the Vietnamese culture. These types of policies were eventually perceived as being oppressive, since Vietnamese nationalist began gaining power in the early 20th century. For instance, the French would force the Vietnamese peasant population the Latin Alphabet in order to being to the process of converting the local population into a French speaking society: “Admirals realized a Latin alphabet would allow French administrators to learn Vietnamese more easily…[and] the possibility of a creating a language that all Franco-Annamese people will understand” (Goscha 82). These factors define why the Vietnamese people would rebel against the strict mandates of French education and cultural assimilation, which could not be effectively imposed on the peasant classes and the urban intellectuals. Forced assimilation by learning French and adopting Catholic cultural

The impact of Lenin’s victory over a capitalist monarchy defines an important change in the way Sino-Vietnamese relations would occur, since the focus on nationalism would slowly convert to communism as the dominant ideology to resist western capitalism. The rise of the communist resistance Ho Chi Minh in the early 20th century defines the overarching influence of Chinese/Soviet communist policies, which he followed by building a military force on the northern border of China and Vietnam in the 1920s: “By late 1924, Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh) was in southern China, building a new revolutionary organization meant to operate inside Indochina. These efforts culminated in 1930 with the establishment of the Vietnamese Communist Party” (Ward 45). In this historical perspective, it is imperative to understand the impact that the Soviet Union had on Chinese Communism, which had been steadily growing as a counter-ideology to the capitalist nationalism of Sun Yat-sen. These trends throughout the post-WWI era define the growing associations between China and the revolution forces of Ho Hi Minh that would eventually result in the expulsion of the Japanese and French colonies in Vietnam. These factors define the close ties between Chinese military and ideological support, which would ultimately lay the foundation for the