Radicalism: Context

When the Vietnamese revolution broke out in 1945 it was dominated by the Communist-led Viet Minh. Due to the ‘triumph’ of Marxism-Leninism over rival anti-colonial ideologies little has been written on the radical movements that subsequently failed to mobilize the majority of the population. The period in which Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution focuses begins in the 1920s; this period is traditionally viewed as a transition between the scholar-gentry of Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh’s generation to the emergence of the Indochinese Communist Party and Nguyen Ai Quoc/Ho Chi Minh in the 1930s.

The generation of Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh were concerned with questions of long-term modernization and Westernization in Vietnam as a result of French colonialism. While Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh were ultimately seeking the same goal, an independent Vietnam, their arguments were characteristically different. Phan Boi Chau can be characterized as an ‘anti-imperialist’ determined to throw the French out completely whereas Phan Chu Trinh can be viewed as ‘anti-feudal’, seeking to learn from the French in order to later overthrow them. According to David Marr, these “men set the guidelines for most later debate on anticolonial tactics, strategy, and doctrine. The next generation would be better equipped intellectually and would have the advantage of improved objective circumstances . . .” as well as learning from the past mistakes of their predecessors.”[1] David Marr characterizes the period 1925-1945 as the merging of Phan Boi Chau’s ‘anti-imperialism’ and Phan Chu Trinh’s ‘anti-feudalism’ into one stream of anticolonial thought exemplified by Ho Chi Minh.

David G. Marr’s Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885-1925 and Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945 provide the standard views of this period of intellectual foment beginning with the above-mentioned Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh. Marr states that the “twentieth-century history of Vietnam must be understood within the context of fundamental changes in political and social consciousness among a significant segment of the Vietnamese populace in the period 1920-45.”[2] While these changes are not decisive they serve as a precondition for mass mobilization and successful strategies for a people’s war. One drawback to Marr’s texts is the centralized focus on the communist intelligentsia and the lack of focus on the non-communist intelligentsia. This gap in the history of Vietnamese radicalism has been taken up by Hue-Tam Ho Tai in Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution.

---

[1] David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885-1925, 275.

[2] David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945, 2.