Life in Colonial Vietnam: Context

During the period between 1862 -1940 of the Colonial Regime of France the Vietnamese were subject to a high rate of mass imprisonments and a brutal oppression of its people. These prisoners consisted mainly of common law violators, those falsely accused, and political revolutionaries that opposed the French Regime. Also, during this time period of the colonial regime many Vietnamese villagers and peasants were facing the same adversities that those prisoners and political revolutionaries had faced.

During this period of the French regime Vietnamese villagers fell victim to colonial oppression which lead to years of mistreatment and death. Probably the most typical form of oppression bestowed upon these people were that of high tax rates forced on extremely poverty stricken individuals. These taxes forced people from their property and also lead to constant hardships of trying to make enough money to support themselves.

Another oppression method of the French were their land concession in 1932 where the French controlled nearly 1/5 of the land throughout all of Vietnam. This land was confiscated from generations of villagers and if they were to resist their evictions they would be sentenced to long-term imprisonment or even occasionally death. With this land the French comprised themselves of rubber, coffee, and tea plantations that acted as profitable concentration camps for Vietnamese workers who were promised a better life. These workers were subjected to harsh working conditions, beatings, and evens killings. Those villagers that tried to flee this life a solitude were eventually found and killed, but the madness did not stop there as the French would completely burn the homes of those housing the worker.

These villagers were highly oppressed by physical abuse, but also subdued to economic monopolies and mental distress. The colonial regime had monopolies over alcohol and also the opium trade. Any personal distilling or trading of opium was considered illegal, which forced the poor peasants to pay high prices for these products. Also, the mental anguish that peasants had to deal with was the physical superiority complex that the French had over the Vietnamese. Frustrations turned into violence or death and punishment for these French individuals would most likely consist of suspended jail sentences or petty fines. During this time, it was common for French people to leisurely abuse villagers.

On the other hand along side the amount of common criminals within the French Indochinese prison system there were many political prisoners. Although political prisoners were eventually subject to special treatment while imprisoned they were capable of finding comrades of their Communist ideals within the prison walls. Prisons became revolutionary schools of the communist movements due to the number of political revolutionaries that were sentenced to prison during this period. These inmates were given the opportunities to study the Marxist-Leninist theories of Communism and create stronger and closer revolutionary factions within prison than as free men. The author of The Colonial Bastille concluded with his research that the forefront of Vietnamese Independence was created by those Communist factions that were reconstructed during the Colonial imprisonments.

After many small revolts and the Thai Nguyen Rebellion, thousands of inmate deaths, and the reconstruction of political factions the French encountered a change in government that led to the amnesty of most of the political prisoners. The majority of these political offenders were given reduced sentences and when they were released were hounded by Administrative surveillance and the shame of prison. Once freed from prison these ex-convicts scattered across Indochina spreading the word of Communism and creating factions to oppose the French Regime. The political prisoners were released in 1936 and quickly began their tasks of creating these revolutionary factions. These elements of resistance would lead to the highest number of imprisonments in the history of Vietnam between 1936 and 1939.

The lives of both prisoners and the citizens of Vietnam were turmoiled with many difficult hardships and were more or less prisoners within their own homes. These people were enslaved with high taxes and government monopolies, land reforms, labor camps, imprisonment, and physical abuse during this colonial period which meant it was going to take an incredible formation of unity to bring this oppression to a halt. The reformation of the Communist party within the Vietnamese prisons was the exact unity that the country needed to give it a sense of strength that they were capable of rising up and overcoming their adversity.