Vietnam or Indochina?
Contesting Concepts of Space in Vietnamese Nationalism,
(1887-1954)
by
Christopher E. Goscha
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
p.
p.
p.
Part I: Setting Indochina into Motion Together (1887-1945)
Contesting Patterns of Space
p.
Rethinking Space Together
Annamese Conservatives between Indochina and Annam
Annamese Revolutionaries between Indochina and Vietnam
Trying to Have it Both Ways, 1940-1945 : Vichy and the ICP
p.
p.
p.
p.
Part II: Turning Indochina against the French (1945-1954)
Vietnam or Indochina?
The Party's Indochinese Federation
The Party's Indochinese Battlefield
Nguyen Binh and the Southern Indochinese Operational Front
p.
p.
p.
p.
Conclusion: Unraveling Indochina
Selected Bibliography
p.
p.
2
Acknowledgments
This essay on contesting concepts of space in Vietnamese nationalism, especially the
attraction of the Indochinese model in Vietnamese nationalist circles, has its roots in questions I
began asking myself in earnest in 1989. However, this report would never have seen the light of
day without the support of numerous scholars and friends. At the top of this list are my
colleagues at the University of Paris VII, in particular Agathe Larcher, Nasir Abdoul Carime and
Gilles de Gantès. I also owe a large debt to Pierre Brocheux, David Chandler, Thomas
Engelbert, David Marr, Nguyen The Anh, Serge Thionn, and above all Stein Tønnesson. They
provided invaluable criticisms, suggestions, and pushed me much further in my thinking than
otherwise would have been the case. I must also thank the participants of the Nordic Institute of
Asian Studies' workshop on National Identities in Asia (NIAS) in May 1994 who commented on
an earlier draft of this essay. Benedict Anderson, Hans Antlöv and Ngo Vinh Long got me
thinking in new ways.
A shorter form of this essay appears in Stein Tønnesson and Hans Antlöv, Asian Forms
of the Nation, Copenhagen: NIAS/Curzon Press, forthcoming. This is an extended version that
forms part of my current research. The directors of NIAS kindly allowed me to develop it here
as a working paper. All shortcomings and factual errors are mine. Time limitations and
incompatible Viet fonts prevented me from including the necessary diacritical marks for
Vietnamese names and sources. I apologise for this inconvenience.
Christopher E. Goscha, June 1995
3
Abbreviations
ANU
c.
CAOM
CG
CP
CSTFEO
d.
Australian National University
carton
Centre des Archives d'Outre-mer (Aix-en-Provence)
Commission Guernut (Aix-en-Provence)
Conseiller Politique (Aix-en-Provence)
Commandement Supérieur des Troupes Française en Extrême-Orient
dossier
DGD
Direction Générale de la Documentation
EM
Etat-Major
FL
Forces du Laos
HC
Haut Commissariat
ICP
Indochinese Communist Party
IDEO
Imprimerie d'Extrême-Orient
m.
microfilm
MAE
Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (Paris)
MD
Mémoires et documents (MAE, Paris)
NF
Nouveau Fonds/Indochine (Aix-en-Provence)
NIAS
Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (Copenhagen)
NXBKHXH
Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi [Social Sciences Publishing House]
NXBST
Nha Xuat Ban Su That [The Truth Publishing House]
PA
Papiers d'Agent
PRO
Public Records Office (London)
SHAT
Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre (Vincennes/Paris)
SPCE
Service de Protection du Corps Expéditionnaire (Aix-en-Provence)
TVQDND
Thu Vien Quan Doi Nhan Dan [Library of the People's Army] (Hanoi)
v
Volume
VWP
Vietnamese Worker's Party (Dang Lao Dong Viet Nam)
4
Introduction
In this year marking the fiftieth anniversary of the August Revolutions in Vietnam and
Indonesia, it may seem odd to begin by asking why Javanese patriots could declare an
independent Republic of all of Indonesia in 1945, whereas their Vietnamese counterparts balked
1
at setting up an Indochinese Republic in favour of a Vietnamese one? In both cases, the
Vietnamese and Javanese had formed the cornerstones in respective French and Dutch colonial
projects, but in 1945 only the space created by the Dutch served as a valid framework for the
emergence of an independent nation. Rather than seeing an Indochinese Federal Republic on the
map of mainland Southeast Asia today, we have grown accustomed to the thin, S-like Vietnam
declared independent by Ho Chi Minh on 2 September of that year. Its reality seems self-evident
and "natural", whereas the idea of an Indochinese nation seems somehow artificial and unreal, at
most a Vietnamese imperial pipe dream.
Yet we often forget that the name itself, "Vietnam", was not as widely used by the
Vietnamese prior to September 1945 as one may think today. In the years leading up to the
August Revolution, some nationalists still wanted to see "Dai-Nam" or "Dai-Viet" resurrected,
2
while others countered with "An-Nam" or "Indo-China". This latter appellation in particular
gave away the fact that even the spatial outlines of this emerging nation-state were unclear.
Indeed, the Javanese were not the only ones tempted by the geographical limits of the colonial
model. Vietnamese nationalists of almost all political colours had been having wide-ranging
Indochinese visions since the early 1920s. As a former Cabinet Minister in the short-lived Tran
Trong Kim government of mid-1945 conceded decades later: "Had the French created Indochina
3
twenty years earlier, we might well have declared an Indochinese state in 1945".
Only recently have historians, Vu Ngu Chieu and Stein Tønnesson, brought our attention
to the semantic competition between the terms "Vietnam", "Annam" and "Indochina" in their
4
studies of the events leading up to the August Revolution. In this essay, I want to explore this
question by adding the idea of space, as Professors Morris-Suzuki and Thongchai Winichakul
5
have done in the respective cases of Japan and Siam. I start by asking what lay behind these
semantic and spatial confusions. However, rather than assuming the Vietnam we see on the map
today, I want to go back in time and space to understand how French colonial policies interacted
with and transformed traditional Vietnamese notions of the geo-political landscape around
them—and how others resisted. Whether communist or non-communist, all the nationalists
under study here agreed on the reality of a national "body" (un seul corps)—to borrow one
6
famous patriot's precise term —, but they had more trouble choosing the geographical patterns
5
of this entity. Was it Vietnamese, Indochinese, or something else? This question would trap
many a patriot—not least of all the conservative nationalist, Pham Quynh, and his communist
counterpart, Ho Chi Minh—when complex interplays between nationalism and colonialism
started blurring traditional conceptions of space.
From my sources emerges a central reflection on the contradiction confronting a wide
range of Vietnamese nationalists caught between a strong ethnocultural identification with a geopolitical space known today as "Vietnam" and an unprecedented, French Indochinese realm that
tempted them to think in wider geographical terms. In Part I, I approach this problem by
focusing on how the mechanics of the French colonial project and the internationalist communist
movement converged around 1930 to pull Vietnamese nationalists in Indochinese directions and
how this westerly flowing current simultaneously hit up against a nationalist resurgence limited
to the eastern parts of the peninsula. Of particular interest are parallel efforts made by both the
French and Vietnamese to reconcile these contesting notions of space through the geo-political
framework of an Indochinese Federation. However, rather than ending my text at this point, in
Part II I concentrate on how Vietnamese communists continued moving in unequivocal
Indochinese directions long after declaring a "Vietnamese" nation in 1945. I focus primarily on
the Communist Party's political plans for an Indochinese state structure and on how full-scale
war against the French led Vietnamese communists to construct an Indochinese military,
economic and bureaucratic space that linked Laos, Cambodia—and even Thailand—to Vietnam.
These questions have received little in depth historical investigation in Vietnamese
studies. The problem is that most reflections on Vietnamese nationalism and communism stress
the uniqueness of Vietnamese identity, taking for granted both the space and its name. Yet in so
doing we tend to overlook contesting semantic and spatial patterns against which this entity had
to define itself both before and after the August Revolution. In the pages that follow, I want to
resurrect a number of long forgotten debates in order to explore the mechanics of the failure of
contesting spatial and semantic concepts to triumph, with "Annam" and "Indochina" serving as
7
my two major counter-examples. By turning the questions around in this way, we may then be
able to understand better the interplays at work and shed some light on the complexity of the
Vietnamese nation that has worked itself out so powerfully since 1945.
On this note, however, we should say a bit more about our use of the terms "Annam" and
"Vietnam" before continuing. Present convention normally holds that "Vietnam" is preferable to
"Annam", for it captures "true" Vietnamese nationalist sentiments, whereas "Annam" is usually
considered pejorative. I accept this explanation, for there is no doubt that the third syllable of
the French word "An-na-mite" could sting painfully in colonial encounters of a certain kind, just
as the two Chinese characters, "An-Nam" (Land of the Pacified South), could convey a
humiliating sense of submission. The problem, however, is that prior to 1945 many Vietnamese
6
nationalists actually used, and sometimes even preferred, the word "Annam" and "Annamese" in
their patriotic writings. I am thinking of the famous poet and editor of the Annamese Review (An
Nam Tap Chi), Tan Da; the president of the fiercely anticolonial Vietnamese Nationalist Party
(Viet-Nam Quoc Dan Dang), Nguyen Khac Nhu; as well as Ho Chi Minh and Nguyen An Ninh
8
to name but a few. These four patriots were obviously not French "collaborators"; so it seems
that the word "Annam" did not always embody pejorative connotations, nor was it necessarily
"pro-colonial" or "anti-Vietnamese" at certain points in time.
Thus, instead of discarding this term outright on anti-colonial grounds, it may be more
useful to hold on to it in Part I as a way of locating breaks in the nationalist discourse, behind
which competing ideas, such as "Viet-Nam" and "Indo-China", started contesting "Annam's"
9
hegemony. I will thus take up the word "Annam" in my text on the grounds that this term
acknowledged the existence of a geo-political entity both for the French and the Annamese
10
during the colonial period and because Annamese nationalists used it themselves. This will
allow me to track their use of certain terms and to understand why, especially when writing in
quoc ngu (romanised script), they jumped suddenly from "Annam" to "Dai Viet", "Nam Viet",
"Nha Nam", "Nuoc Nam", and especially "Viet-Nam" and "Dong Duong" (Indochina), and then
slid back to "Annam" as if nothing had happened. I will switch to the word, "Vietnam", in my
text for the period from 1930, when this coupling—sometimes but not always used by the
generation of Phan Boi Chau—started to take on a powerful life in the minds of an expanding
nationalist elite, communist and non-communist alike. Let us start, however, by reviewing the
traditional Vietnam that existed on the eve of European colonisation. Thereafter, we will
concentrate on the period between the creation of the Indochinese Union in October 1887 and
the opening of the Geneva Conference in May 1954.
7
Part I : Setting Indochina into Motion Together (1887-1945)
Contesting Patterns of Space
On the eve of French conquest, a linguistically homogenous group of people who called
themselves Viet ruled the lowlands of the far eastern part of the Indochinese peninsula from the
Red River delta to the Mekong basin. From the 12th century, demographic pressures had given
rise to a Southward March (Nam Tien) down the eastern side of the Annamese Cordillera. By
the late 17th century, the Viet had annexed Champa and had penetrated the peripheries of the
Khmer kingdom. Weakened by internal dissension and troubles with Siam, the Khmer were in
no position to thwart this dynamic southward expansion into under populated areas of the
Mekong Delta. By the late 18th century, the Viet had colonised areas that constitute much, but
not all, of present day southern Vietnam. They then turned their attention west. In 1834,
Emperor Minh Mang even declared Cambodia a provincial-protectorate, Tran Tay Thanh. He
levied taxes, named Viet bureaucrats, and required that the Viet language be taught to Khmer
subalterns. However, Cambodian resentment soon grew into open revolt, forcing his successor
to abandon Phnom Penh in 1841. Cambodia remained a tributary until the establishment of a
French protectorate in 1863.
The tables were turned in Viet relations with China. The former had been subordinate to
their giant northern neighbour for centuries. In the 10th century this changed, when an
independent state emerged in the Red River delta known as Dai Viet (The Greater State of Viet).
The term Viet-Nam (Yüeh Nan in Chinese) only appeared in an official sense in the early 19th
century. Having unified territories running down the eastern coast of the Indochinese peninsula,
the founder of the new Nguyen dynasty, Gia Long, sent a delegation to Peking to gain
recognition of his newly formed empire. Normally, the Chinese sovereign would have bestowed
the official seal of "An Nam Quoc Vuong" (Pacified South) on his southern neighbour as a
symbol of the tributary relationship that underpinned their relations. Gia Long broke with this
tradition, however, when he chose to refer to his empire as "Nan-Yüeh"—pronounced by the
Viet as Nam-Viet (Southern Viet/Yüeh). Worried that the use of this term belied expansionist
designs on Peking's southern flank, the Chinese Emperor reversed the word order to form the
term Viet-Nam. Gia Long accepted this Chinese devised coupling as recognising an independent
Viet state exercising control over southern territories. The Chinese continued to refer to his
Empire as An-Nam, but changed the seal to read Viet-Nam Quoc Vuong (King of the Southern
8
Viet Country). Nevertheless, the Viet court was not satisfied with this name and official usage
of Viet-Nam did not last long. In 1813, the court briefly revived the term Dai Viet (Greater Viet)
and, in 1838, Minh Mang replaced the word "Viet" with "Nam" to refer to his rapidly growing
southern empire as Dai Nam (Imperial State of the South). He did not inform Peking.
Subsequent Nguyen rulers would use this term until mid-1945.
Not the French. They shared the Chinese preference for the word Annam, using it
officially for the first time in the Treaty of Saigon in 1862, which turned the southern section of
11
Two
what they referred to as the Empire of Annam into a French colony, Cochinchine.
decades later, the French divided the central and northern parts of the Empire into two
protectorates, Annam and Tonkin respectively. Annam referred to the central part of the Empire
because of the court's location in Hue, while Tonkin was the French phonetic reproduction of the
12
Sino-Viet word, Dong-Kinh, meaning eastern capital.
To refer collectively to these three
spaces, though, the French borrowed the term Annam from the expression Ancien Empire
d'Annam. Thus Annam could mean both the central protectorate and the whole of the three
13
eastern possessions delineated by French cartographers.
To the west, the French expanded
their Indochinese colonial domain with a protectorate over Cambodia (1863) and a less clear one
over Laos by the end of the century. Together these five new geo-political units—Tonkin,
Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia and Laos—constituted the pentagonal structure that was
14
becoming French Indo-China—l'Indo-Chine Française.
Usage of Dai Nam or Vietnam
ceased.
New French geographical delimitations required new indigenous formulations.
Annamese geographers borrowed the term ky from Minh Mang's 1833 administrative reforms to
describe the French idea of a "specific region, confine or geographical domain". Cochinchina
thus became Nam (south) ky in Annamese; Annam, Trung (middle) ky, and Tonkin, Bac (north)
ky. The Annamese continued to call Cambodia by its Sino-Viet radical: Cao-men, Cao-man, or
15
In French, each of these five
Cao-mien, while they wrote Laos as Ai-Lao, Ai-Leo, or Leo.
constituents formed a pays (a "land"), translated into Viet as xu. Yet the term, Indo-China, was
not what it may seem to most today. English missionaries and linguists had used this hyphenated
16
coupling as early as 1811 to refer rather loosely to the Asia beyond India.
The French
geographer of Danish birth, K. Malte-Brun, joined in around a decade later, transforming it into
French as Indo-Chine to pinpoint the space falling between the Bay of Bengal and the South
17
China Sea and between the Malaccas and southern China. The Viet word for Indochina, DongDuong, appears rarely in dictionaries published prior to the 20th century, a reflection of its
novelty at the time. One renowned French-Annamese dictionary published in 1898, for example,
18
did not even list it , while another translated Dong-Duong first as les mers orientales and
19
secondly as l'Indo-Chine Française.
This term can even be found as an ancient name for
9
Japan.
20
By WWI, however, Annamese speakers used this Sino-Vietnamese coupling, borrowed
from the Chinese radicals—Dong for the "east" and Yang for "east of the ocean"—to translate
the term Indo-Chine. In 1920, the French tried to change the official Annamese translation of
Indo-China to Dong-Phap (France d'Orient) for fear that Peking would boycott goods marked
21
Dong-Duong, increasingly mistaken for "Japan" by Chinese border authorities.
In the end,
though, the Annamese grew accustomed to several words for identifying the geo-political space
the French called l'Indochine Française, above all Dong-Duong (Indo-Chine), followed by
Dong-Phap (translated as France d'Orient in 1920), An-do-Chi-Na (Sino-Annamese for IndiaChina) and Dong-Duong thuoc Phap (Indochine française).
Rethinking Space Together
The French did not create Indochina overnight. Once admirals had militarily
subordinated traditional peninsular empires to French sovereignty, administrators had to organise
vast territories covering much of the eastern part of the Indochinese peninsula. Things were in a
mess in 1883. To plant the French flag was one thing, but to rule over 16 million people of
diverse ethnic, cultural, political and religious backgrounds was another matter. The French had
to give shape to this amorphous kaleidoscope of peoples now under their authority.
Cartographers and diplomats were sent to the front lines to sculpt what was slowly becoming
l'Indo-Chine Française. They negotiated an end to Annam's traditional pattern of relations with
Siam and China and carefully plotted the outlines of an emerging French colonial space. Most
troubling to this creative process, however, was obstinate Annamese resistance to the
dismantling of the Dai Nam Empire. Yet by attempting to crush this resistance, the French
boxed themselves in, for such repressive action undermined their efforts to win over the support
of the very Annamese whose collaboration would be essential to the construction of French
Indochina. They would be needed to fill low-level but functionally important bureaucratic
positions in the administration of the colony and as manual labourers in the formation of
Indochina's backbone: the roads, railways and bridges of a modern infra-structure and the mines
and rubber plantations of a modern Indochinese industry. The French had to convince the
Annamese that an Indochinese creation was in their best interest, that Indochina was less a
rupture with the past than a continuation of Dai Nam's imperial future backed now by French
22
power. It was one of France's top Asia hands, Jules Harmand, who understood best the need to
"associate" the Annamese with France's Indochinese project. He wrote in 1885:
10
The day that this race understands that its historical ambitions can, thanks to us,
come to fruition in ways that it never before imagined; when [the Annamese]
sees our aid allow him to take vengeance for the humiliations and defeats that he
has never forgiven his neighbours; when he feels definitely superior to them and
sees his domination expand with ours, only then will we be able to consider that
the future of French Indochina is truly assured.23
In 1887, French policy-makers agreed that this could be done through the formation of a
24
Union Indochinoise that was widely referred to as French Indochina. In 1907, cartographers
and diplomats finished sculpting the major geographical outlines of the colony, when the French
signed treaties with the Siamese Court finalising the transfer of territories in Cambodia to French
Indochina. A western border had now been established to compliment the Franco-Chinese
Treaty of 1884 that had delimited Indochina's northern border. As Harmand put it in 1887,
25
France's expansion in Indochina had to continue "until it encountered a scientific frontier".
However, the linkage of this Franco-Annamese alliance to the creation of Indochina at
the turn of the century was also in response to problems with the Siamese. The historic presence
of Annam's western competitor did not disappear overnight. Bangkok rulers, worried by the
Indochina being "scientifically" projected westwards by French cartographers and explorers,
strove to create what Paul Beau called "a greater Unité Thai". The Siamese were particularly
worried by French racialist arguments that threatened to make the "Siamese" a minority in view
26
of the numerous other racial groups constituting what we now call "Thailand".
To French
policy-makers, though, the ability of the Siamese to achieve this greater Thai entity threatened
the constitution of French Indochina, which many wanted to call l'Unité Indochinoise at the
27
In Beau's view, France would "find neither in the Laotian plateaus nor in the
beginning.
Mekong Valley a race or a group [of people] capable of opposing" this Siamese "Thai" policy
designed to englobe diverse ethnic groups into a larger national identity. Only a racialist policy
linking the "Annamese" race to an Indochinese space and its new borders, Beau argued, could
offer the necessary "numbers", "cohesion", and "personality" to "take up the battle successfully
and smash this effort towards a unity of the Thai race before it can be realised". The French
justified this on the grounds that they were assuming Annam's place in an historic pattern of
rivalry between the Hue and Bangkok courts over the Indochinese peninsula.
The French, however, would fight this battle less by arms than by building roads and
railways to transport Annamese colons to the Mekong. "It is beyond the Annamese Cordillera",
Beau continued, "that we can find plains more fertile than those of the Red River. It is the
Mekong and its affluents that must be offered to Annamese colonisation. The necessity of
[building] routes of penetration towards the great river [that is, the Mekong] makes itself clear to
11
28
me with a most compelling logic and force".
But unlike the Viet, the Lao and Khmer were
considered to be races on the verge of extinction, weak and incapable of taking on the "Thai"
threat. Jules Harmand agreed. To him, the "homogeneity of the Annamese race" and continued
Annamese expansion westwards with the French would ensure "the future of Indochina" (which
29
he too had wanted to call l'Unité Indochinoise). As we shall see, Harmand and Beau's racialist
vision of an "Annamese Indochina" (Indochine annamite was the term at the time) would not be
as successful as the "Thaisation" of Siam undertaken by subsequent Bangkok leaders. Besides
the juridical and administrative problems surrounding the idea of the Unité Indochinoise, ethnic,
linguistic and cultural differences between the Theravada Buddhist and Confucian parts of
Indochina and changing French policy in the Metropole finally saw the Indochinese Union
30
prevail.
The French preserved the Cambodian kingdom and Lao principalities as separate
31
entities.
Nonetheless, from the beginning, the French saw the Annamese as the central racial
component in the construction of French Indochina. Besides security concerns, their
collaboration was to the French one of the keys to building Indochina. In many ways, leading
French architects of Indochina understood that it would be wiser to continue their colonial
project along pre-existing Annamese patterns of movement towards the south or by channeling
this current towards the west—into Laos and the highlands for example—through the
introduction of new technology, health care and above all by expanding and linking a precolonial
32
Annamese road system to a larger Indochinese one.
The "orientation of France's Indochina
policy towards the Mekong", Beau wrote, "was necessary not only as a result of the [Franco33
Siamese] treaty of 1896, but also as an historical necessity". The importance of associating the
Annamese with the French Indochinese project even led Beau to revamp education manuals "for
the cause", so as to give the Annamese "an idea of the great role which they can play with us and
under our direction. One must reawaken in them the expansionist instinct that seems to be
flickering out". Governor General Albert Sarraut was more to the point in 1912, summing up in
one phrase this early Franco-Annamese alliance in a letter to Minister of the Colonies: "French
Indochina today is Gia Long's Empire reconstituted, expanded by us through [the acquisition] of
exterior possessions", a revealing euphemism for Laos and Cambodia—as well as France's
34
priorities.
In short, force, diplomacy and cartography had given geographical life to a French
Indochinese colony by the turn-of-the-century. Legislation passed in 1911 sidelined the Court at
Hue by consolidating the Governor General's power as ranking administrator of Indochina, in
charge of the colony's diplomatic relations, civil service, defense, budget and internal security.
The French took further measures to give political and economical life to the word "Indochina"
by promoting public works projects, investments in industry, communication systems, and by
12
increasing the "reach" of the bureaucracy. It was now necessary to fill in the borders. WWI
delayed major projects. However, from 1919 French colonisation resumed with renewed vigour,
and Franco-Annamese collaboration was a crucial component of Sarraut's vision of La mise en
valeur des colonies. It was time to set Indochina into motion. In opening his famous speech to
Annamese elites in Hanoi in April 1919, he asked his burgeoning Annamese audience: "What do
we want to do and how must we work together, French and Annamese, for the good of this
wonderful Indochina and for the welfare of her populations? That is after all the goal to be
35
reached, the very one that occupies my mind and endlessly haunts my spirit."
A reading of the press shows that many Annamese took Sarraut very seriously that April
day, translating and commenting at great length on his speech in a wide-range of local papers
and reviews. His plans for developing a modern communications system, an industrial policy
and educational projects convinced many Annamese that there was a future in building
Indochina with the French. "Modernisation" was the key word. Paul Doumer had already
connected Hanoi by rail to Kunming. This was extended eastwards towards Haiphong and
southwards towards Vinh and eventually down the coast. Networks of trails, canals, highways,
radios and telegraphs were built or expanded upon throughout the Union. Routes penetrated the
rugged hills isolating Laos to connect silver mines along the upper Mekong to the port at Vinh.
Others contributed to the clearing of thick forests in eastern Cambodia in order to truck rubber
from plantations in the Mekong basin to the port in Saigon. Shipping lines linked these ports to
major trading centres in Hong Kong, Canton, Bangkok, Singapore, and Marseille and beyond.
By 1920, the Indochina that Sarraut sought to set in motion (mettre en mouvement) was
becoming a system, with an inner Franco-Annamese momentum all its own. Faced with serious
over-population problems in Tonkin and northern Annam, the French began shipping Tonkinese
labourers to southern Indochina to clear the jungle and to labour on rubber plantations in
southern Indochina. In the mid-1920s, three new roads linked Laos to northern Annam, thereby
allowing for easier transportation of Annamese labourers westwards to Thakhek and
Savannakhet. In Cambodia, new roads linking Cochinchina to Cambodia saw the Annamese
population grow from 79,050 in 1911 to 140,220 in 1921. Of the 16 Indochinese bureaucrats
working in the Town Hall of Phnom Penh in 1913, 14 were Annamese and 2 Cambodian. In the
offices of the Commissariat at Battambang in 1915, 11 out of 21 bureaucrats were Annamese; in
the résidence of Kandal, 8 of 14; 13 out of 19 at Kompong Chhang-Pursat; 10 out of 16 at Takeo
36
and so on. The ratio of Annamese bureaucrats in Laos was even greater. Employed as civil
servants, mechanics, carpenters or miners, the Annamese occupied 54% of the posts offered by
the Administration by the early 1930s, whereas the Laotians only represented 46% of the lower
level positions. This was in spite of the fact that the non-Annamese populations in Laos
constituted 98% of the population by the late 1930s. The problem, however, was that the inner-
13
workings of the French bureaucratic system in Laos had concentrated Annamese immigration in
the Laotian urban centres, where the Lao population was lowest, but where the French needed
the most administrative help in building and running "Laos". Given the preponderant numbers
of Annamese passing the French language civil service examinations in Hanoi and Saigon, the
Annamese dominated these western Indochinese posts from the outset. By 1937, this
immigration was such that there were 10,200 Annamese living in Vientiane, but only 9,000 Lao.
37
The same was true in other towns. As a French writer explained: "Thanks to our roads and
railways, we have opened Laos to outsider activities. The mountain barrier that had once
38
protected it is now gone. Between Laos and Annam, the Pyrenees have now vanished".
The colonial system actually sent thousands of Annamese soldiers and civil servants
beyond this natural mountain barrier and the geo-ethnic obstacles of an earlier Dai Nam Empire
in order to ensure the security of French Indochina in frontier posts positioned along the Siamese
39
and Chinese borders.
French colonialism even reoriented southerly patterns in Annamese
immigration in northerly directions by sending thousands of Annamese as far as Kunming in a
40
kind of Bac Tien (Movement towards the North). There they served as soldiers, secretaries and
petty traders in France's little studied "extra-Indochinese" bureaucracy—above all in the many
towns served by the French Yunnanese rail line and in diplomatic Legations in Canton and Hong
Kong. Meanwhile, the French sent others westwards to Nakhon Phanom, Bangkok and
Singapore as "boys", sailors or mobile agents of the political police, the Sûreté indochinoise
41
(itself an extra-Indochinese entity, if not a Southeast Asian one by 1930).
Newly installed
telegraph systems, postal services and expanded river and sea lines linked all these Annamese
more closely than ever to an Indochinese space running from Battambang and Thakhek to
42
Saigon and Hanoi. It must have seemed slightly odd to Siamese tourists and traders going into
Cambodia in the late 1920s to see Annamese customs officers examining their passports and
43
papers at the Poipet border check point.
Yet, viewed from the inside of Indochina, there was nothing contradictory about this at
the time. The French needed the Annamese on the borders, had trained them, housed them, paid
them regularly and covered their travel costs between Hanoi and Vientiane, Saigon and Phnom
Penh or to those remote colonial posts in Siemreap or as far away as Hong Kong, Kunming,
Bangkok or Singapore. Judged more dynamic and efficient than their Lao and Khmer
counterparts, by the 1930s Annamese graduates filled a myriad of low-level positions in western
Indochina as secretaries, soldiers, interpreters, telegraph operators, veterinarians, postal clerks,
customs officers, train conductors, and so on. It is not an overstatement to say that by the 1930s
the Annamese were largely responsible, at the ground level, for the running of the Indochinese
44
bureaucracies in Laos and Cambodia. However, to the few Cambodian or Laotian urban elites
standing inside the Indochinese civil service offices at Vientiane or Phnom Penh in 1930, it must
14
have been strangely difficult to believe that French colonisation had truly stopped Annamese
expansion westwards, especially when the only languages being spoken and written in these
45
Indochinese offices were French and Annamese.
By the 1930s, literally thousands of Annamese were flowing with the French throughout
all of western Indochina as workers, bureaucrats, fishermen and even as colons in eastern
46
Cambodia and, to a lesser degree, in Laos. This collaboration was such that Annamese elites
could even petition the French to accelerate the development of Laos by opening it to Annamese
"colonisation". The influential editor of La Patrie Annamite, Pham Le Bong, argued for this
because it was essential to taking population pressure off Tonkin and northern Annam and "to
develop the fertile yet untapped valleys of the Mekong with the financial aid of the State." The
People's Representative of Bac Ninh (Tonkin) made the same demand for the "colonisation of no
man's lands in Indochina", emphasising the need to expand the transport and communication
systems between Tonkin and Laos, so as to reach the rest of Southeast Asia. In another instance,
Annamese civil servant associations in Laos sent a petition calling for the abrogation of rules
subordinating the administration of Annamese colonies to Laotian representatives. The
favorisation of Annamese immigration was also high on their list, as were increased political
powers for them; the abolition of Lao language civil service exams; and the granting of land
concessions. There was even a request to the French to cover the travel costs incurred by
47
Annamese bureaucrats in Laos during their holiday trips back home in eastern Indochina.
The growing number of civil servants traveling between eastern and western Indochina at
the cost of the Indochinese administration underscored the changing patterns of Annamese
movement within the French colonial system. When a young Annamese student was admitted
into the Indochinese civil service, he entered into an Indochinese world that could send him
anywhere in the Union where his services might be needed. Official decrees and colonial rubrics
governing Annamese movements within the Indochinese level of the Laotian and Cambodian
bureaucracies—in particular, "Transfer Lists", "Promotions", "Nominations", "Designations",
"Paid Holiday Lists", and above all "Destinations"—show how the Annamese were circulated
legally and orderly from one post to another within the Indochinese universe. The following
notice published in the Bulletin administratif du Cambodge is a good example of how the
Annamese bureaucrat flowed with the French through Indochina: "The apprentice auxiliary
veterinarian, Truong Van Thanh, having completed his formation at the Pasteur Institute at Nha
Trang is to be transferred to Phnom Penh, where he will begin his work from 10 January
48
1928". The administration paid for his trip and bus and car services—often run by Annamese
entrepreneurs—transported him to Phnom Penh along newly built colonial roads. Another
decree captured the local Annamese transport services being set up along these Indochinese
routes in similar terms: "Mr Nguyen Van Nhon, presently residing in Phnom Penh, is authorised
15
to use his car of the following characteristics to establish a passenger transport service on all the
49
roads of Cambodia". To an Annamese bureaucrat, entrepreneur, or teacher, the Indochinese
administration appeared to be a coherent system linking all five parts of the Union through an
integrated transport service and backed up by a governing set of legal decrees. In other words,
during the colonial period Indochina was a functional concept and space for the Annamese
moving through it. In other words, this Indochinese space was linked tangibly on the ground by
roads, transport services, automobiles, cities, maps and people. As Mr. Truong Van Thanh
traveled to Phnom Penh in 1928, he had no reason to doubt the reality of Indochina. In his eyes,
it existed. One Annamese civil servant in Cambodia even argued for increased (he meant
subsidised) mobility because it would allow the Annamese "to make contact with other brothers
50
of the Indochinese Family".
One of the effects of this French policy was that many Annamese started to find it easier
to cast themselves in Indochinese roles. We can track this Indochinese reorientation in
Annamese minds in bulletins left behind by civil servant associations called Amicales or civil
servant clubs. The Association Amicale du Personnel Indigène des Résidences du Cambodge is
a good example. Based in Phnom Penh, in 1933 the President was Annamese, but Cambodians
served as Vice President, Secretary and they had a representative on the council. Five years later
this had changed dramatically. Traces of the earlier Cambodian members had disappeared, voted
out by the increasing Annamese majority. This change was symbolised semantically, when the
Annamese majority voted unanimously to change the name of the Amicale by replacing the word
indigène with indochinois, explaining it as follows: "Given that the Amicale counts as many
Annamese as Cambodian bureaucrats among its members, Mr. Nguyen Van Thong proposes to
the Assembly that the word «Indigène» be dropped from the present name of the Amicale, which
will hereafter be known as the "Association Amicale du Personnel INDOCHINOIS des
51
Résidences du Cambodge".
This often confusing Indochinese-speak is noteworthy. To the
French, indigène referred roughly to those ethnically non-European, subject races who originated
52
from the area within the borders of Indochina ; however, at another level, this word could also
be used to distinguish between ethnic groups falling within the five geographical sub-divisions
(les cinq pays) of Indochina. Thus, a Viet and Khmer could both be considered indigènes of
Indochina, but in certain situations a Viet had a harder time defining himself juridically as an
indigène (originaire du pays as defined by the jurist Ernest Hoeffel) of Cambodia or Laos. He
had to turn "Indochinese" or play up his "French subject" status. It was a complicated word
game, but these geo-ethnic distinctions created by the French were very real during the colonial
53
period. Depending on the legal discourse and his geographical position within the Indochinese
realm, not only could the Annamese slip in and out of his "Annamese" everydays, but he could
also dress up in his "Indochinese" best. It meant access to education and then jobs in the
16
administration or it could mean different treatment before the diverse colonial courts within the
Indochinese realm. The reworking of juridically defined ethnic categories, for example, could
suddenly change the identity of certain groups in relation to the pays in which they were
54
residing. Listen to how one Annamese journalist in Phnom Penh explained this complexity in
1938 in an editorial demanding from the French that "Annamese" children be allowed continued
access to educational opportunities in Cambodia. The French administration "cannot ignore [...]
its Annamese children. Logically, they must be considered with less rigour by the fact that they,
too, are Indochinese and one-hundred percent French subjects. It is thus not going too far to ask
whether an Indochinese [that is, an Annamese in Cambodia] can or cannot attend the schools of
55
Indochina [i.e. in Cambodia]."
Another related off-shoot of the French staffing of the Laotian and Cambodian civil
services with literate Annamese bureaucrats was that they unwittingly expanded Annamese
readerships westwards. Besides the newsletters and bulletins disseminated by numerous
Amicales, most of the major quoc ngu and French-language Annamese papers published in
eastern Indochina were shipped by truck or steamship to urban centres in Laos and Cambodia.
Readers could purchase easily the Tribune Indochinoise, Tin Tuc, Annam Nouveau or Phu Nu
56
Tan Van in western news-stands. Quoc ngu papers even spread their way across the Mekong
to Annamese revolutionary laboratories in northeastern Siam and southern China, thereby
transcending the formal boundaries of French Indochina. The Sûreté was well aware of the
dangers of this peninsular-wide diffusion of Annamese newsprint. French officials passed
decrees systematically outlawing in the west scores of eastern Indochinese newspapers, as well
57
as dozens published in France, Siam, southern China and Moscow.
Meanwhile, Annamese
printing presses in Vientiane and Phnom Penh reinforced the Indochinese nature of Annamese
58
59
publishing. An Annamese teacher edited the Tin Lao in Vientiane, while publication of the
Phnom Penh-based Viet Kieu Nhot Bao tapped into the expanding Annamese bureaucratic and
trading communities in Cambodian urban centres by the late 1930s. Not only did these papers
keep their ethnic Annamese readers abreast of local events, but they also reprinted articles from
other eastern Indochinese papers or tapped in to international wire services installed by the
French to update the local community of world events. Articles appeared in these quoc ngu
papers and Amicale bulletins on the transport and communication systems linking Phnom Penh
to Saigon, Battambang, Khone or Vientiane. After all, Annamese bureaucrats being
"transferred" (affectés) from one post to another had to know the way to their next Indochinese
60
assignment. This growing, literate Annamese population in western Indochina soon attracted
the attention of publishers. By 1935, the manager of the Indochinese Publishing House (Nha
Xuat Ban Dong Duong) could proudly advertise that his quoc ngu books were sold "in major
stores throughout Indochina", while more than thirty Annamese editors splashed the word
17
Indochina—either Indochine, Dong Phap or Dong Duong—across the front-pages of their papers
61
prior to 1940.
Colonial educations reinforced the Annamese bureaucrat and journalists' penchant for
62
Indochinese things. It was, after all, "an Indochinese formation". In 1911, this was symbolised
best when Governor General Albert Sarraut created an "Indochinese University" in Hanoi. One
of its major aims was to redirect Annamese attention away from its Chinese influences and
towards, as the name suggests, French Indochina. The French abolished the Confucian
examination system and replaced it with a French-style education system. History and
geography courses emphasised the reality of Indochina, its history, structure and functioning.
Western style maps of the five lands of Indochina were commissioned and used in schools
throughout the Union. Courses stressed the importance of French-built roads, rail systems,
63
telegraphs, postal services and telephones in the development of Indochina. The eastern tilt in
the French conception of Indochinese education was symbolised by the preponderant number of
schools in Annam where there were very few Lao or Khmer students. Even in Laos and
Cambodia, Annamese youngsters often outnumbered their Laotian and Cambodian classmates in
64
the Franco-Indigène schools, the latter preferring the Renovated Pagoda Schools.
The
Governor General, Alexandre Varenne explained the Annamese emphasis of Indochinese
education in 1927 as follows: "Where have we put the best of our creative action [in Indochina]
if not in the Annamese pays. We built the Indochinese University on Annamese territory. It is
in Cochinchina and Tonkin that one finds our best universities, high-schools and lower schools.
We did more. To make sure that the young Annamese formed by us had jobs, we arranged
administrative positions for them outside their pays d'origine and we staffed the local services in
65
Laos and Cambodia with Annamese bureaucrats".
This emphasis on the Annamese role in Indochina even found its way into school
textbooks. The most remarkable example was the 1928 publication of The Five Flowers:
Indochina Explained (Les Cinq Fleurs: L'Indochine Expliquée). It was written by Jean
Marquet, a fervent admirer of Annamese tradition and a longtime civil servant in eastern
Indochina, influential in local education policy. Through the form of a fictive travelogue,
Marquet explained in simple terms the history of French Indochina to his young Annamese
66
readers. This book was such a success that A. Thalamas, Director of the Indochinese Public
Education system, singled it out as a perfect example of the themes to be inculcated in an
67
Indochinese education. It was, in his words, fiction of "unequaled" genius. This is exceptional
praise from the chief of Indochinese education policy. Let us take a closer look at the
Indochinese space across which the French "were walking" (faisaient promener) their Annamese
students.
18
Once upon a time, an aging Annamese father gathered his five sons together to explain
the hard times his tea business was encountering. The competition was increasingly stiff. It was
time to diversify. He informed them that he had consulted the proper genies for advice and had
subsequently had a dream in which his five sons handed him five different petals, which, when
gathered, formed a unique flower. Marquet has his father figure interpret this dream as a sign
that his sons had to travel to the five lands (pays) of French Indochina in search of new aromatic
leaves to boost the family business. One son explores Tonkin, another travels to Annam, while
the others set off for Cochinchina, Cambodia and Laos. From this point, Marquet takes us on a
remarkable spatial voyage with our five young Annamese through the looking glass of French
Indochina. However, before we can begin our fictive sojourn, we must stop over at the local
village school teacher for a quick, Indochinese geography lesson. The son who had been the best
in this subject recites: "French Indochina is formed by five wonderful départements:
Cochinchina, Cambodia, Annam, Tonkin and Laos." It needed to be said. He then did the same
for all the provinces and their capitals. With our map of where we are going now firmly in
68
mind , we can proceed down the newly built French roads, railways, canals. We discover
modern factories, mines and plantations. We explore the most remote parts of Indochina as we
ride with our Annamese explorers in cars, trains, steamships and even in an airplane for our
return trip to Hanoi. In a matter of a hundred pages, we streak across this Indochinese
wonderland, its history, its development and its future. Indeed, the airplane is symbolically most
important, for it allows Marquet to drive home the modernising influence of French colonialism
and to highlight the spatial reworking of Indochina as a French pilot transports his young
Annamese passenger from the Cambodian bush to Hanoi. Our Annamese traveler explains his
(Marquet induced) Indochinese vision during their airplane ride. And hundreds of meters above
the ground, the imagination often knows no limits: "I thought I was dreaming: I had just
covered almost two thousand kilometres, crossed ten rivers and a thousand hills. In other words,
thanks to a flying-machine, I had just passed over all of Indochina within a few hours." In
traditional Annamese travel terms, this was a record crossing of "all of Indochina". In a matter
of hours, our imaginary Annamese voyager had just witnessed Nam Tien in reverse (a common
Marquet theme). Reunited at home, the father solemnly convened his sons to collect the five
petals they had brought him. The family business had been saved—and so had Indochina.
Thalamas must have known that the Five Flowers was the Indochinese version of the
incredibly popular French children's tale: Le Tour de France par deux enfants (devoir et patrie),
69
published in 1887 by G. Bruno. To make it work in the colonial world, Marquet had taken the
model of the traditional Annamese family and its children as an effective way to explaining the
existence of the Indochinese patrie to young Annamese tempted by the traditional education
system. There were no Lao, Khmer or Moi travelers. It was a Franco-Annamese trip, an
19
intentional reorientation of a traditional "Annam" away from its Chinese roots and eastern
geographical tilt towards its French Indochinese future. Though he exaggerated the successes of
French colonialism, Marquet had transformed the Confucian-minded Annamese father into an
obedient, modernising symbol of France Indochina in a secondary school textbook. It was no
accident that Marquet emphasised the systems and lines of communication that would transform
this Indochinese space into a future "reality". Addressing his Annamese sons, the father explains
the moral of this Indochinese story on the last page as follows:
And what progress has been achieved within a time span hardly equal to the life
of a man. Today, the roads, telegraph lines, and railways support the heart of the
country just as arteries feed the body. Each province has its school, hospital,
opthamalogy centre, day care centre, and a postal service that allow the denizen
of the smallest village to receive the letter sent by the soldier, the trader or the
traveler. And each day we see the Protecting Government [France] install even
the most modern of western applications, such as the plane, the radiograph and
the wireless telegraph. "Do not forget all this, my sons, and repeat it often to
your own sons".70
Annamese geographers were already translating similar geo-nonfiction into quoc ngu by
1930, while the introduction of the motion picture further stimulated this (elite) Annamese
71
curiosity for Indochinese things. By 1924-1925, there were 28 movie theatres in Tonkin, 18 in
Annam, 33 in Cochinchina, 9 in Cambodia and 6 in Laos. The large number of feature films on
Laotian and Cambodian ruins, festivals and temples showing on eastern Indochinese big screens
is striking. The French made over twenty on Laos between 1924 and 1929 and more than forty
72
on major cultural events in Cambodia in 1928 alone.
My point is that Indochina's geography was coming into better focus for a new generation
of Annamese elites growing up within the Indochinese realm. New ideas and mentalities
diffused by the French were intersecting with more ancient Annamese visions of the world and
peoples around them. Even village level Annamese primary students had to memorise all the
roads linking the Indochinese Union. This was particularly the case towards the late 1920s,
when the French approved directives to put official maps of Indochina into circulation.
Speaking in 1929, one education official explained that "very soon even the little school will
have a general map of Indochina and of the pays of the Union, as well as one of the province to
73
which they belong [...]".
A good example is the Premières notions de géographie de
l'Indochine Française, Cours préparatoire et élémentaire, published in that year. On the first
page, official directions explained to geography teachers that they were to have their students
20
memorise and recite the major geographical features of Indochina by using a map, a ruler and a
standard set of questions. The first question of the opening chapter was: What is Indochina?,
followed by Who are the peoples who live in Indochina? The answer: The Cambodians, the
Laotians and the Annamese. Thereafter, the cities, communication lines and economic systems
of Indochina were described in detail in relation to the required classroom wall map. However,
like Marquet's Five Flowers, the annex entitled "Little Geographical Dictionary" gave the
equivalents of abstract French geography terms in Annamese. There were no Lao or Khmer
translations, indicative of the fact that the discovery of Indochina's geography remained a largely
74
Franco-Annamese experience. By the mid-1920s, Annamese youngsters had reason to believe
in an Indochinese geographical, political and economic space. For perhaps the first time, in
1932, an Annamese geographer could write a textbook proclaiming that together with the
75
Laotian and Cambodians, the Annamese formed "one country: the Indochinese Union."
This geographical prise de conscience by young Annamese towards 1930 is notable and
Marquet's choice of a fictive voyage throughout Indochina in 1927 was not at all far-fetched. He
knew exactly what he was doing when writing his fictional Indochinese travelogue. As his
young Annamese passenger stuck his head out of the cockpit to marvel at "all of Indochina", on
the ground a growing number of his compatriots were making similar journeys, catching trains,
hitching rides in local buses, or embarking on steamships to work in western plantations and
mines as workers or to discover as young travel writers the Indochina that French technology
and Annamese labour were opening up around them. Indeed, the appearance of The Five
Flowers in Indochinese school libraries was linked to a simultaneous explosion in the
publication of Annamese travelogues, a fascinating source for studying changing Annamese
views of their surrounding landscape.
What were the subjects of these travelogues and who wrote them? Their appearance in
Annamese literature at the end of the 1920s was related to the construction of new transport
systems in Indochina, the introduction of the automobile, the train and the steamship by the
76
French and the growth of tourism throughout the region. Furthermore, if there is one common
theme, it is the detailed descriptions of the routes they took, with the distances carefully
delimited for their readers' information. For one of the first times, Annamese youths, bus and
truck drivers, traders and revolutionaries could buy modern road maps of Indochina. They could
then plot their Indochinese trips in relation to the "mile-markers" (les bornes) popping up
alongside the roads, indicating in scientifically precise terms the number of kilometers between
Thakhek and Vinh. Calculating distances followed naturally and travel guides of Indochina
77
became hot items on the Annamese reading list.
The remarkable Madrolle guides, in
particular, "mapped" all of Indochina, southern China, Hainan and Siam, introducing new ways
of thinking about time and space.
21
This new geographical information was particularly helpful for Annamese entrepreneurs
who started forming car, bus and trucking services in the 1920s to transport goods and people
"on all the roads" of Cambodia, Laos, and Annam, providing mobile services between Saigon
78
and Battambang as well as Vinh and Savannakhet (see above). At the same time, the French
were meticulously mapping lower Indochinese canals and making available precise naval guides
to Annamese (and Chinese) navigators transporting rice, pepper and passengers to and from the
heart of Cambodia. These guides provided maps showing the locations of canal-side "hotels",
79
customs stops, local sites and markets.
Though Annamese sailors, mechanics, drivers and
coolies were often moving along more ancient trading routes running into Laos and Cambodia,
they were doing so in unprecedented ways. For example, by 1925, one could travel between
Hanoi and Vientiane in two days instead of a month. With the introduction of the "mini-bus" on
the roads and a motorised pirogue service on the canals, local Annamese traders, peasants and
clergy could travel more easily and efficiently beyond the "bamboo hedge" of their villages to
exchange their goods, labour and ideas in wider circles, often venturing as far as Laos and
Cambodia—and even further. The spread of the Cao Dai faith as far as Phnom Penh and the
continued movement of Annamese rice farmers and fishermen into eastern Cambodia and then
on to the Tonle Sap by road and canal are but two examples of continued Annamese westerly
80
movements within this Indochinese space. Moreover, the fascinating travelogues written by
the proto-capitalist Nguyen Van Vinh in the 1920s and 1930s reveal how new transport systems
linking Annam to Laos and Cambodia allowed many Annamese entrepreneurs to rethink their
commercial activities in Indochinese terms. As Vinh put it during his trip to Cambodia,
Annamese labour combined with expanded roads and canals would eventually transform
81
Indochina into a Franco-Annamese capitalist entity.
Meanwhile, the Siamese watched from
the sidelines of Indochina. In their eyes, if French colonialism had stopped them cold at the
Mekong in Laos and the Dangrek Range in Cambodia, Annamese expansion had just kept
moving westwards.
82
Annamese entrepreneurs were not the only ones lured by this "Indochinese Far West".
Parallel to these economic and religious movements westwards came the Annamese adventurer.
In 1930, a proto-travel agency in the form of the famous women's daily Phu Nu Tan Van even
organised an Annamese excursion to Angkor Wat, insisting that "to travel is to learn" (di choi tuc
83
la hoc).
It was indicative of an emerging trend. Between November 1928 and November
1929, for example, the Hotel des Ruines d'Angkor lodged 99 French visitors, 24 Annamese and
84
10 Cambodians. By 1938, Annamese were making enough trips to Cambodian temples that
one dealer advertised his souvenir shop situated just outside the famous Khmer Temple, while a
well-known writer published perhaps the first Annamese adventure novel set in Cambodia,
85
entitled Standing before the Ruins of Angkor Wat. Travelogues followed naturally and young
22
Annamese journalists were on the cutting edge, inspired by famous French writers passing
86
through Indochina in the 1920s. Roland Dorgelès' La Route Mandarine was a favourite and
the dashing Nguyen Tien Lang was the perfect example of the young Annamese intellectual
turned part-time Indochinese explorer. Lang's adventures throughout upland minority regions,
Cambodia and Laos were serialised in several Annamese papers, with his most famous tales to
be found in a year-long series in the Annam Nouveau nicely entitled Les Etapes Indochinoises.
It was a romantic account of his voyage with the Governor General René Robin to the historic
sites of Angkor and into the recesses of the Mekong River. "Highland groups", "historical sites",
"ruins" and "secret lands" formed his major themes as he moved down an unprecedented
Indochinese road network linking Laos and Cambodia ever closer to Annam. One sees through
the travelogue, for example, how the highlands were becoming increasingly accessible to the
Annamese. As Lang wrote of the Moi regions he traversed in southern Annam: "It's Annam, but
it's not Annam. I don't know quite how to explain it. One doesn't quite feel Annamese in the
Highlands". Lang was serious. And in many ways he was bringing a still largely unknown
world to his reading audience through the travelogue. And if French writers like Jules Boissière
reveal a certain exotisme in their accounts of the Annamese people and culture at the end of the
19th century, the publication in 1935 of Lang's masterpiece, Indochine la douce, gave away a
remarkably similar Annamese mentality towards the upland minorities and the Buddhist societies
87
of western Indochina.
Yet it was Lang's Confucian-minded boss, Pham Quynh, who provides the best example
of how travel was expanding traditional Annamese horizons westwards. As the editor of Nam
Phong, a well-known commentator and a regular contributor to the daily France-Indochine,
Quynh was aware of the expansion of the road system into Laos and the increasing Annamese
immigration to western Indochina in the late 1920s. Inspired by Dorgelès and others, Quynh set
out with a map of the new colonial roads to make his way to Laos. He traveled first down
Colonial Route 1 to Dong Ha to take road 9 to Savannakhet, carefully noting the distance that
separated each major urban centre from the other. He observed that French technology had
88
subdued the mountains that had historically prevented the Annamese from crossing westwards.
Whatever Quynh may have read in books, it was practically a new world for this Confucian
intellectual. As he reflected later: "The further we drove from Hue, the further we stepped into
89
the Indianised world, leaving the Sinic realm [of Annam] behind us in the distance".
This
reflection on the two sides of Indochina is important; for Quynh opened his articles in Annamese
with detailed geographical descriptions contrasting the geo-history of the Indochinese peninsula
before French conquest to the changes caused by French colonialism and its effects on traditional
90
Annamese notions of their surrounding geography. This was explicit in Quynh's emphasis on
the notion of "Indochina" and how in going to Laos he felt he had "suddenly" crossed an
23
invisible, cultural dividing line. He also revealed how the geographical ramifications of this
notion of "Indo-China" had never truly occurred to him until he traveled to Laos and was struck
by the contrasts between his Confucian world and the Theravada Buddhist world of the west.
Writing in Annamese, he marveled: "One side is Chi-na, while the other is An-Do [India], and
thus we have this land of Dong Duong, which is quite rightly given the name of An-Do-Chi91
na." Quynh could not help himself from imagining what his country would have looked like
had the mountain range protecting Laos not blocked Annamese expansion before French
conquest. Returning to the present, he argued that though the French had neutralised the 19th
century Nam Tien, their "creation of a communication system" now permitted "more and more
Annamese (nguoi Nam) to travel to Laos with each passing day." He was no doubt thinking of
the Annamese bureaucrats and soldiers that he had met during his voyage to Vientiane and the
Annamese coolies he noted from the window of his car while crossing into Laos. In several
strongly worded articles written after his return to Hanoi, Quynh called on the French to promote
92
immediately Annamese immigration to Laos. To him, there was continuity between Dai Nam
and French Indochina. As we shall see, others shared his vision.
By 1930, thinking in Indochinese terms for an Annamese was not as hard as it once
seemed or as it might seem to us today. Traditional barriers to his mobility were being eroded
by French colonialism, eschewed or expanded by the necessity of creating and running a modern
Indochinese political, economic and administrative space. The automobile, the map, the
bureaucracy, and an unprecedented Indochinese road network represented a major reorientation
93
in traditional conceptions of time and space by 1930.
This, in turn, allowed Annamese
travelers and revolutionaries to flow more quickly and easily westwards along the currents of a
French Indochinese system in ways which Minh Mang's subjects would have had difficulty
imagining in 19th century Dai Nam. In this sense, Indochina was much more than a replica of
Dai Nam. The French used the Annamese to construct the western Indochinese roads, to man
and repair the steam-ships going up and down the Mekong, to deliver the mail, to operate the
telegraphs and telephones in the hundreds of Indochinese post offices, and to serve as secretaries,
translators and pencil pushers in the expanding Indochinese bureaucracy and army. A Résident
Supérieur wrote privately in 1936 that without the collaboration of the Annamese, the French
94
would never have been able to take and organise Laos administratively.
Though the French did indeed take measures to regulate Annamese immigration
westwards by the 1930s and although French administrators like Pierre Pasquier never forgot
95
ethnic minority identities, the very mechanics of the Indochinese project continued to give real
administrative, economic, military and spatial meaning to being "Indochinese" for many
96
"Annamese" elites.
Writing from within the system in 1930, an Annamese civil servant in
western Indochina never thought twice when sending a letter in quoc ngu to a compatriot in the
24
east, even on official colonial stationary marked Gouvernement Général de l'Indochine,
97
Given his place and role in the
Protectorat du Cambodge (Battambang), Travaux Publics.
Indochinese system at the time, it seemed quite natural.
This paradox did not escape Cambodian elites in difficult negotiations in 1945-46 with
French General Alessandri (see below). To them, the French had actually been more successful
in staffing their bureaucracies and their cities with Annamese civil servants than Minh Mang had
been in the mid-19th century. Colonisation had been two-fold in their eyes—first French, then
Annamese. The two went hand-in-hand. After WWII, Prince Phetsarath criticised the French
for this, aware perhaps that the French had made plans in the early 1940s to relocate as many as
98
100,000 Annamese cultivators in Laos. The Khmer Court, led by Prince Monireth and Nhiek
Tioulong, made every effort to reverse this process in 1945-1946 by demanding local control of
immigration as a major pre-condition to signing a Modus Vivendi and [re?]-joining another
Indochinese Federation in the wake of WWII. Tioulong insisted to his bewildered French
interlocutors that controlling Annamese immigration was a "matter of life or death for
99
Cambodia". Viewed from the western side of French Indochina by a Lao, Khmer or ethnic
group elite, the Annamese were not always on the losing end of the French colonial project in
Indochina. In 1945, a French negotiator replied to Nhiek Tioulong that "France and Cambodia
agreed on a good number of points" concerning the problem of Annamese immigration.
However, French officials in 1945 seem to have forgotten that the patterns of their colonial
100
policies in Indochina before WWII were at the heart of this very problem.
Annamese Conservatives between Indochina and Annam
This spatial and racial reworking of Indochina by the French was at the heart of a series
of heated debates that broke out in communist and non-communist circles in 1930-1931 over
how to conceive the geographical patterns of Annamese nationalism. Nationalists asked if
federalism or outright Annamese immigration (several Annamese conservatives did not hesitate
to call it colonisation) could bridge the gap between a precolonial conception of an Annamese
space and the new one circumscribed by the boundaries of French Indochina? Albert Sarraut
had first floated the idea of an Indochinese Federation in his 1919 speech designed to give more
of a say to Annamese within the context of French colonialism. Faced with an Annamese
counter-government taking form on the outside of Indochina (in southern China and northeast
Siam) under the direction of Phan Boi Chau and Cuong De, Sarraut went so far as to call for
formation of an Indochinese Charter, "a sort of constitution" and strengthened the Sûreté in a
101
Yet if he was thinking of
move to seal off an Indochinese space from these exterior threats.
25
Indochinese autonomy in largely administrative terms, Annamese editors were immediately
imagining an Indochinese entity along political lines and in exclusively Franco-Annamese terms.
Like Phan Boi Chau, they wanted a State. However, unlike these militant nationalist groups
circulating on the outside of Indochina since the 1910s, those who were flowing with the French
inside Indochina had a harder time choosing the geographical limits of this future entity. Was it
Annamese, Vietnamese, Indochinese or something else? And where was one to draw the line
between these contesting notions of space?
The formation of the Indochinese Constitutionalist Party under the direction of Bui
Quang Chieu's leadership was one of the first clues that Annamese nationalism was running in
an Indochinese direction. As editor of the Party's official mouthpiece, La Tribune Indigène
(renamed in 1926 La Tribune Indochinoise), Chieu took Sarraut seriously when the latter talked
of building an Indochinese Federation. The Constitutionalists applauded the idea of giving
102
greater "autonomy, decentralisation and freedom of action" to Indochina.
They called on the
French to allow them to form "a constitutional charter" with "all the structures needed for a
modern State." This transformation, they argued a week after Sarraut's speech, was necessary if
the colony were to become a "pays autonome" and if "its Annamese personnel [were to] become
103
Indochinese citizens".
Another southern intellectual, Bieu Chanh, pointed out in an article
entitled Towards an Indochinese Charter and published in the first issue of the Dai Viet Tap Chi,
that combined economic and transport systems, as well as abundant natural resources, would
104
inevitably transform Indochina into a reality.
Bui Quang Chieu was not alone in making these associations between Annamese and
Indochinese. In his famous Revendications du Peuple Annamite, Nguyen Ai Quoc (later known
as Ho Chi Minh) unintentionally set off an intense debate in 1919 over the frontiers of Annamese
nationalism, when he opened his petition: "the People of the former Annamese Empire, today
105
Hostile editors at the Courrier
French Indochina, submit to the honorable governments [...]".
Saigonnais took Annamese nationalists to task for this linkage. Indeed, the future Ho Chi Minh
had provoked what may be the first public exchange on the "Indochinese" and "Annamese" lines.
As the Courrier retorted:
They say: "former Empire of Annam, today French Indochina". There you have
it. What are the Cambodians, the Laotians and the countless other nations
occupying the summits of the Annamese Cordillera going to say? They are
annexed by the stroke of a pen by our so-called Annamese patriots. Whatever
these [Annamese] might think, French Indochina exceeds strangely the frontiers
of what was formerly Annam; so much so that one can conclude that, far from
constituting French Indochina today, the former Empire of Annam is the smallest
26
member in terms of surface area and is no more populated by Annamese than
Cambodia is by Khmer.106
The Courrier was nonetheless walking a fine line by forgetting that there were no nations
in the context of French Indochina, only five pays. Moreover, the French association of the
Annamese with this Indochinese creation had contributed to the latter's ability to think of himself
in wider geo-political terms. Quoc's association was after all what Harmand, Beau and Sarraut
had wanted. Quoc associated "Annam" with "Indochina" again when he became the
representative for "Indo-China" in the "Union Intercoloniale". Moreover, the famous patriot,
107
Nonetheless,
Phan Chu Trinh, had already made the same association a decade earlier.
whatever their intentions, the Courrier's editors posed Annamese nationalists a major problem
when they hit on the following contradiction: "Yet by speaking of an Annamese people and by
attaching these words to the expression of French Indochina, you seem to want to establish a
108
concordance between [Annam and Indochina] that does not exist [...].
The debate over this "concordance" remained at the fore of nationalist polemics for the
next three decades (some would say longer). The French creation of Indochina had set in motion
a complex series of cause-and-effect relationships. Much was in flux. Annamese were tapping
into a new vision of Indochina, taking what the French had offered them for a road-map and
molding it into something altogether new, often linking up with a pre-colonial Annamese
imperial vision of peninsular geography. In 1921, the Indochinese Constitutionalist Party in
Cochinchina published an article to this effect, entitled L'Etat Indochinois, in which they stressed
109
that an Indochinese State could be realised through further Franco-Annamese collaboration.
But at the heart of the matter was whether the Annamese could truly bridge the spatial and racial
gap between "Annam" and "Indochina". One week later, La Tribune published a three-part
series, entitled: La prépondérance politique des Annamites en Indochine est-elle justifiée? in
which the Indochinese Constitutionalist Party had the Courrier Saigonnais specifically in mind
when its editors explained the "concordance" between Annam and Indochina since it was in
110
The Courrier's powerful argument
keeping with historical Annamese expansion westwards.
in defense of other racial groups living within Indochina was still making itself felt three years
later. As the Constitutionalists retorted:
We do not deny these races intrinsic qualities or the right to present their
problems within the Indochinese Union. But given the overwhelming majority
of the Annamese in this country and the importance of their population, the
forces behind their expansion continue. Given the more advanced state of their
civilisation and, finally, their historic rights, they occupy clearly the most
27
important place in the concerns of the Protecting Country [France] in her
colonising mission in Indochina. The Annamese [...] are thus first in line for
historic, ethnographic and geographic reasons which would be childish to deny
and against which it would be futile to argue. In Indochina [...], it's the law of
the majority that rules [...], within the French Indochinese Union our supremacy
is the logical consequence, the very nature of things.111
Borrowed from French colonial discourse and given a special cultural twist by an historic
sense of a Confucian civilising mission, these references to Darwin were used in many
Annamese arguments calling for a leading position in France's policy of association in
112
However, I have yet to find a precise definition of these "historic rights", which
Indochina.
leads me to hypothesise that Indochinese Constitutionalists were attempting to rework traditional
Annamese geo-history by resurrecting and linking a pre-colonial notion of Nam Tien or Dai Nam
to the spatial concept of French Indochina in an attempt to "justify" their "preponderance" within
the French Indochinese framework. Yet in 1921, this was still more in their minds than a
concrete manifestation on the ground. It was a kind of politico-cultural "Manifest Destiny"
vision of Indochina that many conservative Annamese intellectuals were fond of evoking in
113
cultural debates and historical studies in the late 1920s.
To them, Nam Tien provided a
glorious imperial past—like the French—, thereby distinguishing the Annamese race from the
114
"less civilised" Lao, Khmer or Moi, who threatened to slow down the evolution of Indochina.
To get Indochina going, in fact, many Annamese conservatives were not far from
advocating a policy of "filling in the empty Indochinese spaces" with ethnic Annamese. Some
115
advocated a policy of inner-colonisation.
In an essay entitled De la Nation Annamite à la
Fédération Indochinoise, a budding capitalist Pham Le Bong wrote that "in studying the history
of the Annamese nation, one also has the impression that [Annam] is the unachieved history of
Indochina". To him, Nam Tien had been well on its way to creating its own "Indochina" before
the French stepped in. Despite their efforts to protect the Lao and Khmer races, the economic
and demographic imperatives would force them irrevocably to redirect the "evolution of the
Annamese nation towards its Indochinese form". Continuing, Bong insisted that "the
Indochinese Federation [was] the last word in the national evolution of Annam and that Annam
would not have its full and entire [national] meaning until the day it spread completely
116
To him, the Indochinese "form" was not "fiction",
throughout the Indochinese Federation".
but rather "a vital necessity". Tieu Vien, an outspoken supporter of French industrialisation of
Indochina, agreed entirely. He took this projection of the Dai Nam past into the Indochinese
future a step further in 1939. With Tonkin's demographic problems firmly in mind, he argued
that
28
Annamese emigration is not only an economic or a nutritional problem. It
is a tradition, the historical mission of our race. [...] The peaceful
expansion towards the south and the west remains one of our national
goals. What is considered to be the Annamese nation is only a beginning.
The Indochinese Nation will be the logical outcome, the last word in our
evolution. In the meantime, the Indochinese Federation will mark a
period of transition, an intermediary stage between the Past and the
Future. And within this Indochinese Federation, one must understand the
interdependence and the necessary harmonisation of the existing interests.
One must conceive of a bloc of developing forces in which each element
takes its place within the composition of the whole. Moreover, one must
finally accord the Annamese element the predominant place merited by its
[larger] numbers and [superior] qualities. In other words, one must
recognise the right of the Annamese people to make use of their "vital
space" within the limits of the Indochinese territory.117
It would be naive to deny the imperialistic impulses driving these aggressive arguments.
What makes these passages so interesting for our discussion here, though, is that if Pham Le
Bong and Tieu Vien had conceded that Indochina was not exactly Dai Nam, both writers reveal
nonetheless that a new Indochinese Nation was coming into being for some, with the
Indochinese Federation serving as "an intermediary stage between the Past and the Future." In
this sense, the Javanese were clearly not the only ones rethinking national identity along the
geographical lines of the colonial state. Tieu Vien had already captured this idea in unequivocal
terms: "The day will come when Indochina will no longer be an amalgam of distinct and
isolated countries, but rather a single country which Annamese blood will have fertilised (aura
fécondé) by breathing into this [French] creation his dynamism, strength of action and desire to
react. That day, the Indochinese Nation will be a beautiful and living reality". As the future
anterior tense gave away, this nation was still to be born. However, it is clear that it was already
being "imagined" (to borrow Anderson's term) in the 1930s and being projected both forwards
and backwards into time and space. It is notable, however, that these conservatives rarely
thought to consult Lao, Khmer, or ethnic groups on this "Indochinese form". Moreover, as long
as the French were there, they seemed to have completely forgotten that the Thais and Chinese
looking in from the outside might one day have different ideas about "the coming into being" of
an Annamese-dominated Indochinese space on their respective eastern and southern flanks.
29
Ho Chi Minh would be much more careful to avoid evoking imperial chapters of
Annamese history, when he went back to the past in the early 1940s in search of nationalist
symbols. He preferred to evoke historic Annamese resistance against Chinese expansionism
southwards, rather than the Annamese version called Nam Tien. Indeed, these conservative
Indochinese ambitions were not monolithic; and one would be committing a serious error to
throw Ho, Pham Quynh or Phan Chu Trinh into the same basket with Tieu Vien or the
Constitutionalists. This is particularly true for the new generation being graduated from colonial
schools during the 1920s. They were having Indochinese visions of another, more complicated
kind. The fiery young radical from the south, Nguyen An Ninh, is a case in point. Educated
entirely in French Indochinese classrooms and then in France, Ninh had little in common with
the Confucian education of his father or Pham Quynh or Ho Chi Minh, other than their
patriotism. In 1924, he wrote a famous essay on Annamese nationalism in which he limited his
discussion to the need to unify—into one nation—what French colonialism had divided into
Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin. Ninh made no mention of Laos or Cambodia, he used the
word "Annam" throughout his text, and denounced "the arbitrary division" of Annam into three
parts that, he insisted, "the Annamese still consider to constitute the same body." However, Ninh
revealed the pervasive power of his Indochinese formation when he chose to entitle his essay—
Towards the Indochinese Nation, calling it "the greatest of [his] dreams, the dream of [his]
118
race".
Unlike Vien's visionary Indochinese Nation, what Ninh's "dream" symbolises is a
remarkable confusion of two very different geo-political entities, the first a traditional
remembrance of a unified Annamese Empire, the loss of which his father had long lamented to
him, and the new one being a French Indochinese space which had been drilled into his head in
119
the colonial classrooms he had entered as a toddler.
In 1924, Ninh (and many of the young
revolutionary elites of his generation) were lost somewhere in the gray area between the
extremes of Marquet's imaginary vision of the Indochinese future and Vien's new interpretations
of Dai Nam's imperial past. Having read most of Ninh's works, I have found no evidence that he
harboured hegemonistic designs on western Indochina, leading me to postulate that it was a
combination of Harmand and Sarraut's policy of association and his Indochinese schooling that
120
On 19 May, Ninh repeated this when
made him reach for an Indochinese title for his article.
he spoke of revolution in exclusively Annamese terms but posed the question in Indochinese121
speak: "Is a revolution possible in Indochina?"
A few weeks later, in a thoughtful response to this question, a certain Trung Ky (meaning
the central protectorate of Annam) awakened La Cloche Fêlée's readers to the dangers manifest
in going beyond the traditional boundaries of Annam, reminding all of the historical Khmer and
Lao hostility for the Annamese and of the ethnic contradictions inherent in Ninh's spatial
confusion of "Annam" with "Indochina." "Indochina is not just Annam", he warned, "Indochina
30
consists of Laos where the people have their own habitat and are absolutely different from us. In
Cambodia, where the people have always been our age-old enemies, as well as in the Mois
regions, we can count on few friends. It is a fact that must be recognised." To him, an
122
Annamese-led "Indochinese revolution" was out-of-line.
This contradiction between Indochina and Annam came to a head in 1930-31. On the one
hand, it is related to the French economic, administrative, transport and education systems that
allowed so many Annamese to move and think in wider Indochinese terms by this point. On the
other hand, it is equally linked to a nationalist resurgence from 1925 that culminated in violent
revolts in 1930-1931. Faced with nationalist and communist rebellions in Tonkin and Annam at
this juncture, the French resurrected the idea of an Indochinese Federation in an attempt to
outline a more coherent and solid definition of Indochina as a real political entity. Already in
1928, Governor General Pierre Pasquier had put forward a 19 point Indochinese Charter. Like
Sarraut, he insisted that only the maintenance of French sovereignty could hold the ethnic and
cultural diversity of Indochina together in order to create a "Federal Unity" and to form "the
123
Indochinese federal citizen" (le citoyen fédéral indochinois).
Always concerned by the need
to preserve local identities, languages and traditions, Pasquier himself had little confidence in the
124
reality of an Indochinese "national entity" given the diversity of the colony.
Nonetheless, the
"Federation" was seen to provide the necessary model for building an Indochinese State in the
face of growing unrest inside and outside Indochina, especially as the Comintern's Eastern
Bureau started to make itself felt in the two countries bordering Indochina. As Pasquier defined
Indochina's still ambiguous status in 1928: "Indochina is not a colony, nor a protectorate or even
a possession. Indochina is all of this, and even more. She is a federation of States (une
fédération d'Etats). Indochina tends to be generally thought of (tend à faire figure) as a Federal
125
Alexandre Varenne argued in similar terms, when he referred to Indochina as "a sort
State".
of federal State". To both men, only France could provide the unifying "cement" that would link
these diverse cultural and ethnic possessions into a larger Indochinese identity. One day,
Varenne said, "I can see the emergence of a kind of Asian [Indochinese] State linked politically
and economically through ever looser links to the metropole, an [Indochinese] State which will
126
find its place next to us just as the Dutch Indies [Indonesia] stand next to Holland".
Pasquier
conceded in 1930 that the day "each federated Indochinese will be proud to feel like a son of
France as an Indochinese citizen, that day our work will have acquired (aura acquis) a solidness
127
that nothing will be able to break".
But this Indochinese State was still projected in the future
as the future anterior tense belied. And even Albert Sarraut left little room for optimism, when
he insisted that without its French "armature", Indochina would "collapse" into "scattered
128
fragments".
31
However, even though no Federation was created by the French at this juncture,
Annamese elites of all political colours were closely following the Indochinese federal idea and
the revolts of 1930-1931 it was designed to defuse. In fact, the federal ideas advanced by the
French set off a parallel series of debates in communist and non-communist circles not only over
a future Indochinese state, but also over how to reconcile the geographical limits of Annamese
nationalism with the Indochinese model required by the French. Yet, if Nguyen Ai Quoc had
encountered this contradiction after WWI, in 1930 it was Pham Quynh who resumed the debate a
few weeks before his trip to Laos in an article entitled Fédéralisme Indochinois et Nationalisme
Annamite. He conceded that Annam was not alone in an envisioned Federation, but he made it
clear that the Annamese remained the most important partner in French Indochina. As in 1919,
the question as to the geographical limits of a future state resurfaced. Again, was it Annamese,
Vietnamese or Indochinese? To Quynh it was clear. "Annam" came first, with federalism being
the only way to "conciliate" the Annamese nation with the French Indochinese concept. A
constitutional monarchy had to take form within the confines of Indochinese Federalism, not the
129
other way around.
However, if Quynh sought a preponderant place for the Annamese nation within the
French-led Indochinese Federation in early 1931, his cultural counterpart, Nguyen Van Vinh,
came down in favour of an Etat Indochinois de fait. This formed the central idea of his 1931
political programme. Vinh demanded that eventually the French would have to recognise the
reality of the Indochinese State and its "Indochinese citizen", a clear allusion to the simultaneous
130
French debate on the Indochinese Federation.
Yet Vinh had gone a step further than Quynh
and the Constitutionalists to join Tieu Vien, by actually calling for the grafting of Annamese
nationalism on to the Indochinese model. This was justified on the grounds that there was
nothing wrong with the historic, westward expansion of the Annamese. They worked
productively in Laotian mines, on Cambodian plantations, and throughout the Indochinese
bureaucracy. He was deeply interested in developing western Indochina economically. He had
traveled to Laos and Cambodia and had written prolifically in support of immigration westwards,
concessions to Annamese colons, and he himself had left his editorship and family to search for
gold in the rugged Indochinese west. He died in the highlands of Laos in 1936, while
telegraphing back "live" reports to the Annam Nouveau's readers on indigenous cultures and gold
131
prospecting.
Quynh broke with Vinh over the idea of an "Indochinese state" taking him to task for
"speaking Indochinese" when he should have been "speaking Annamese". Annamese
nationalism could not be grafted to an Indochinese model, for the geo-historical abstraction of
French Indochina itself was incompatible with a conflicting notion of "Annam", that continued
32
to exist despite French attempts to build an Indochinese structure on top of it. Quynh explained
this contradiction between French colonialism and Annamese nationalism as follows:
But ethnically and linguistically, Indochina has never existed and will never
exist. Politically, it could take form within the context of a Federal Assembly;
but there will never be a citizen in flesh and blood. No doubt, Mr. Vinh will
answer us by saying that he wanted above all to say Annamese when saying
Indochinese, and that this dispute over words is silly. But on the contrary I find
it very important, for, depending on the point of view you take, Annamese or
Indochinese, the problem changes entirely. Seen from the Indochinese angle, it
is basically a federal question [...]. But seen from the Annamese angle, the
problem is uniquely national. And the Annamese nation is a reality that dances
before the eyes [...].132
Unlike Quynh, Vinh was ready to go with the French model of Indochina as a new
geographical delimitation for Annamese nationalism turning "Indochinese". To him, Annamese
immigration westwards and their role in the functioning of the Indochinese colony would
eventually fill in the blank spaces between the pre-colonial "Annamese" space and the new one
which had been defined by the boundaries of French Indochina. It was essential, he wrote, "to
link French imperialism to the future of an Annamese nation", for it would be "impossible to get
the French to admit the existence of an Annamese nation living independently of the general
evolution of their Indochinese creation" (an ominous premonition when one thinks of the Dalat
and Fontainebleau negotiations of 1946, see below). One can ask seriously whether Vinh had
been re-reading Jules Harmand when he wrote:
All right, Indochina is a French creation, but does not this creation have for a
base our country of Annam? [...] I distinguish perfectly, like Mr. Pham Quynh,
between the Indochinese point of view and the Annamese one. But I intend to
conciliate the two points of view between which I see no incompatibility. [...]
While repeating that our country is not called Indochina but Annam, I submit
nonetheless that French Indochina is the fulfillment of an Annamese destiny with
French power. Whatever you call it, this fact remains.133
Quynh balked firmly at taking this geographical leap of faith. He reminded Vinh just how
difficult it would be to weld Annamese nationalism to the French model of Indochina. The gap
was still too wide. Quynh held the line for the "real" Annam:
33
As I said, Indochina is a French creation [...], whereas Annam has always had
and will always have its own national existence. [...]. Like us, Mr. Vinh calls
for a constitution, but with the key difference that he proclaims an Indochina that
remains nothing but a simple geographical and political entity, for which we
have little need, whereas we seek a constitution for Annam, which is truly a
national reality to which we are tied by the most profound sentiments of our
soul.134
Quynh's defense of the Annamese line is elegant. But if he did not like the Indochinese
pattern of Vinh's nationalist clothes, he seems to have carefully downplayed (or somehow
forgotten?) his own penchant for "speaking Indochinese". This no doubt stems from angry
reactions he had provoked in Laotian circles in earlier articles calling for increased Annamese
immigration to Laos and Minh Mang-like reflections on Laotian culture. Days before Quynh
and Vinh began slugging it out over the Annamese and Indochinese lines, Quynh had been
caught off guard completely when a Laotian elite took him to task in the pages of FranceIndochine for belittling Laotian culture and history and pointed out that Annamese immigration
135
to Laos was considered a real danger.
Even Prince Phetsarath entered the debate during a
brief stop-over in Hanoi. Interviewed by the same paper, he embarrassed Quynh publicly for his
articles on Laos, saying that "the Annamese are already too prone to think only of Annam when
136
they speak of Indochina".
The Prince was not against Annamese immigration, but it had to be
regulated to avoid creating in Laos "a state within the state". More importantly, "Laos" had to be
unified.
The concept of Indochina was imagined—or was simply "not imagined" I would argue—
quite differently by those living in Laos and Cambodia. As Phetsarath explained in print to
Pham Quynh and Nguyen Van Vinh in 1931: "First of all, all confidence in French promises
fades away and the Indochinese Federation appears, to the weakest nations making it up, like an
eye wash designed to allow the Annamese to rule over the others, under the protection of the
137
This anti-Indochinese
French flag." For the Prince, "Laos existed", but not "Indochina".
vision extended into Cambodian circles as well. The widely read Revue du Pacifique
paraphrased the ideas of an un-named "Cambodian mandarin" in January 1934 as follows: "And
yet too many French, even at this very moment, see Indochina as a homogeneous and Annamese
country.
[However,] it is too often forgotten that if an Indochinese Union exists
administratively, there is no Indochina from an historical, geographical or ethnic point of view.
And their is certainly no such thing as [being] Indochinese". Nguyen Van Vinh read this article
carefully and sent a letter to the editor of La Revue du Pacifique dismissing this Cambodian's
34
anti-Indochinese mentality as absurd. In Vinh's view, he was more the exception than the rule.
138
The Cambodians remained "sweet" and "indifferent" beings.
These Laotian and Cambodian rejections of "Indochina" were not isolated incidents.
They were part of emerging national identities in Laos and Cambodia that were making
themselves felt by 1930-1931 in opposition to the dominant Annamese role in Indochina. The
expanding Indochinese road system bringing Annamese to the West played a part in stimulating
139
this "reawakening".
This Laotian and Cambodian hostility to the Annamese would strike an
early blow to the Indochinese idea. We get a better glimpse of these opposing mentalities in the
colonial literature emerging at this same juncture. For, if Jean Marquet had taken up the
Annamese case in Indochina in the Five Flowers in 1928, two years later another French writer,
Roland Meyer, defended a Laotian identity by rejecting specifically this vision of an Annamese
140
Indochina in his novel entitled Komlah: Visions d'Asie.
Disappointed by the "West", Meyer
had broken with his "Family" and "Tradition" in France to travel to Indochina, where he worked
in the Cambodian and Laotian civil services and where he developed a life-long passion for
Theravada Buddhist cultures. Having lived in western Indochina for well over a decade, Meyer
became fluent in Lao and Khmer and published perhaps the first grammars for both
141
languages.
In Komlah, Meyer marches us, much like Marquet, across Indochina. Yet it is
Meyer, not young Laotian students, who travels as Komlah. Laos and Cambodia are described in
glowing terms, the "Promised Land" and "Nirvana", whereas eastern Indochina is portrayed in
142
the darkest of images: "funerary", "somber", "severe", and "gray".
Most disturbing in his
eyes was the increasing Annamese immigration westwards and the French failure to protect the
Laotians and Cambodians against it, especially considering the new roads linking Laos to
Annam by 1930-1931. To him, this would be "the end of Laos". Republican values obligated
the French to protect the weak and small against the stronger Annamese, whatever the economic
imperatives of building the colony.
It is easy to dismiss this colonial litterature as irrelevant to our discussion of contesting
concepts of space. The problem, however, is that the themes chosen by Jean Marquet, Roland
Meyer, Pham Quynh, Nguyen Tien Lang, and many others were being diffused in new and more
powerful ways than during the pre-colonial period, absorbed by an increasing number of
Indochinese elites increasingly at ease in French and quoc ngu by the late 1920s. In 1925, for
example, Marquet presented a conference before the Education Society of Tonkin headed by
Pham Quynh, in which the former opened by announcing that for him Indochina was the
Annamese, "being superior both in number and worth to the other Indochinese peoples" who, he
argued, "would be fatally absorbed" one day or the other by the Annamese. Before a Tonkinese
audience, Marquet could go further than he did in the Five Flowers by actually calling for the
full-scale "colonisation" of Laos by the Annamese. This was justified because the "lazy" Laotian
35
was not willing to do the "work" that only the "industrious" Annamese could do. His thoughts
were later published in a book entitled L'Avenir du pays d'Annam and reproduced in the
Moniteur d'Indochine, Bulletin d'Enseignement Mutuel du Tonkin and translated into quoc ngu
143
A close reading of Quynh's
by Quynh himself and published in the pages of Nam Phong.
travelogues on Laos shows that he borrowed liberally from Meyer's thoughts on the notion of
144
"Indochina" and from Marquet's argumentation in favour of Annamese immigration.
In 1939,
Marquet published another book entitled the Chant du Coq in which he returned to the theme of
Annamese expansion. As he wrote in a personal dedication to Bao Dai: "Soon the Mekong
River will be the final western wall of your three clawed Empire! Cochinchina, Annam and
145
Tonkin".
As we have already seen in the Five Flowers, historic Annamese expansion and the
superiority of Annamese Confucian culture were two of Marquet's favourite themes.
None of this was lost on Roland Meyer. As Komlah and a colleague of Prince
Phetsarath, he took it upon himself to valorise the Indian side of the world of "Indo—China".
One had to choose, he liked to say, between the "Indo" or "China"; the hyphen being symbolic of
146
a ethno-cultural fault line that French colonialism had just not bridged.
In opposition to the
aggressive conservatism of Marquet and Quynh, Meyer called for the "renaissance" of a Laotian
identity through the careful resurrection of ancient "traditions" of a uniquely "Indo-Buddhist"
nature (he refused to say "Indochinese"), the rebuilding of long-lost monuments, and the use of
monks and reformed pagoda schools as ways of forming a Laotian elite. As Meyer wrote of his
calling: "Let us on the contrary rebuild the ruins, search the treasures of the original traditions
of this country and its neighbours of Indo-Buddhist formation. There we will discover their past
and the laws of their evolution. And just as an archeologist constitutes a crumbling palace from
the surviving elements, let us build for the use of our protected (protégés) a monument of social
147
However, Meyer
organisation that will provide them a renaissance in line with their past".
was not interested in the Annamese regions of Indochina, only its Theravada Buddhist parts. A
year later, he could take quiet satisfaction when the Institut Bouddhique was established by the
Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient. Prince Phetsarath was one of the main guest speakers at the
inauguration celebrations, speaking in defense of this rebirth of Laotian Buddhism and Tradition.
Worried, Pham Quynh criticised in his travel notes these French "fanatics of Laos" and rejected
their efforts "to return to the Laotian the awareness of their national traditions, religions and
arts", all which would complicate the emergence of an Indochinese Federation—and endanger
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Annamese immigration westwards.
My point here is that the ideas being tossed around in these books, educational manuals,
travelogues and book reviews were being read and reflected upon by local elites, intersecting in
interesting though complicated ways with a deeper level of Annamese, Laotian and Cambodian
149
geographical conceptions of the world around them.
Pham Quynh and Nguyen Van Vinh
36
must have been stunned to have been criticised publicly—and above all on the front-page—by
150
No Lao Prince would have spoken as
Laotian readers at odds with their notion of Indochina.
such to Minh Mang in the 19th century. Older cultural and historical perceptions of the "other"
were being recast in new ways. But deeper ones still flowed beneath the surface. And if French
administrators and Annamese nationalists did not quite grasp the breadth of the cultural gap
hidden behind the hyphen in the word Indo-China, they would be reminded in much stronger
terms by outbreaks of ethnic violence in the wake of WWII. Meyer put his finger on this ligne
de fracture indochinoise best, when he captured in one paragraph one of the major conundrums
facing the French architects of an Indochinese identity in 1930:
From this point, the French mission in Indochina is not to unify this hybrid mass
of protectorates [and colonies] by forcing the assimilation of the weakest with
the strongest, the subjugation of the old Indian colonies of the western part of the
peninsula with the ancient Chinese provinces of the Annamese coast. Her role is
to allow each one to renew its national characteristics within the context of the
fertile education provided by French peace, all the while giving them the
possibility to play their particular role within the Indian or Chinese orbits of the
civilisation from which they emerge.151
This ethno-cultural fault line opposing Annamese elites against their Laotian and
Cambodian counterparts ran against the transportation and communication networks pulling
them together on the ground. In 1930, national identity in Indochina was a very complicated
process. It depended on who you were and where you were standing in time and space in the
Indochinese realm. Vinh wanted to become "Indochinese", Pham Quynh insisted on remaining
"Annamese", Ninh dreamed of being both, Prince Phetsarath insisted that "Laos existed" and
ethnic groups were rarely consulted before WWII.
Annamese Revolutionaries between Indochina and Vietnam
At the very moment that Pham Quynh and Nguyen Van Vinh were hammering out the
limits of Annamese nationalism in view of a future Indochinese Federal State, a remarkably
similar debate was dividing Annamese revolutionaries. For the communists, the question was
similar but with a key twist: Could Annamese communism be grafted on to the Indochinese
structure? The concept was certainly not alien to young militants. They were armed with an
Indochinese education, fresh from courses on its history and geography and avid readers of
37
152
books, editorials, and travelogues covering Laos and Cambodia.
Like Nguyen An Ninh, many
of them were already speaking of an Indochinese Revolution in enthusiastic terms by the late
1920s. In their eyes, there was nothing necessarily contradictory about Ninh's 1924 vision of
"the Indochinese Nation". After all, French colonialism had been promoting the pattern for
decades and the Comintern started marketing it at about the same time as Pasquier, when
directives arrived in the late 1920s calling for formation of an Indochinese Party based on the
153
French Indochinese model.
Besides the Federal plans outlined by Governor Generals, the
Soviet Union served also as an important reference point as Annamese militants made plans for a
future post-revolutionary Indochinese state. The Soviet Union was, after all, a multi-ethnic
entity dominated by one "historical nation" (Russia), which had sacrificed its historical identity
154
to the modernising idea of a union based on soviets.
The "Annam"—"Indochinese Union"
parallel would have been reassuring to young Annamese activists caught between the two
models. In 1929, Annamese revolutionaries put the Comintern's orders into practice by forming
the Communist Party of Indochina (Dong Duong Cong San Dang) and the League of
Indochinese Communists. The boundaries of their revolutionary action were approved in three
155
Except for
words: "Complete Indochinese Independence!" (Dong Duong hoan toan doc lap).
nine months in 1930, this slogan would remain the guiding geo-revolutionary pattern for the ICP
156
well into the 1950s.
Not everyone, though, was ready to make this Indochinese leap. Ho Chi Minh himself
balked, when it came time to create a new and unified communist Party in early 1930. Like
Pham Quynh, Ho still had one foot firmly planted in the traditional world of the Annamese
Empire and the other in this new Indochinese realm. As in 1919, Ho was again struggling with
the "concordance" between concepts of space. In the course of one conversation, he not only
rejected "Annamese" (referring to the short-lived Annamese Communist Party (An-Nam Cong
San Dang)) because of connotations of Chinese domination, but he allegedly found "Indochina"
(Dong Duong) "too wide" a framework for Annamese-run revolutionary activities given the
157
According to a communist historian, Ho
incredible ethnic diversity of the French colony.
argued in a mini geography lesson that the word "Indo-China" could be confused with a larger
geo-political space falling between India and China, englobing Burma, Malaya, Siam,
Cambodia, Laos and Annam. As for the idea of a "French Indochinese Communist Party", he
argued that this would do little to dissipate the confusion. As for "Annam", it was too often
158
confused with the central protectorate of the same name to work.
For the moment, Ho and his
partisans settled on "Viet-Nam". It appears that such reasoning won out a few weeks later, when
Ho presided over formation of a unified Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP, Dang Cong San
Viet Nam). The guiding revolutionary slogan became: "Complete Vietnamese Independence"
(Viet Nam hoan toan doc lap).
38
The use of "Viet-Nam" at this juncture deserves a special detour in our discussion of
contesting concepts. Since WWI, it had been increasingly used by a wide range of nationalists to
capture the idea of the eternal national identity, which would eventually triumph over its
159
This was particularly the case around 1930. To
"Indochinese" and "Annamese" competitors.
many, the idea of "Annam" was increasingly problematic, since it implied humiliating
submission to foreign rule, both Chinese and French. By resurrecting "Viet-Nam", nationalists
expressed a strong counter identity that evoked the unification of the northern and southern parts
of the country in the late 18th century, and an association with a long tradition of struggle
against foreign domination. In this sense, Ho Chi Minh was not alone in his preference for "VietNam", but rather a part of a much larger reorientation. The militant scholar-patriot, Phan Boi
Chau (a friend of Ho's father), had given this term a clear nationalist hue, when he formed the
Vietnamese Restoration Association (Viet-Nam Quang Phuc Hoi) and wrote his History of the
160
Loss of the Vietnamese Country (Viet-Nam Quoc Vong Su).
Pham Quynh had used "Viet161
Nam" as early as 1917 to evoke a timeless tradition , and three years later, Tran Trong Kim
opened his Outline History of Viet-Nam (Su luoc Viet-Nam) by asking his readers to give up
162
"An-Nam" in favour of "Viet-Nam".
Ho followed suit in 1923 when he set up a nationalist
paper, Hon Nam Viet (Soul of Nam-Viet), but initially arranged the two syllables in the same
163
way as Gia Long had done, "Nam Viet".
He had turned to the more familiar order in 1925,
when he established his blended communist-nationalist organisation, the Vietnamese
Revolutionary Youth League (Viet Nam Thanh Nien Cach Mang Dong Chi Hoi). This was all
part of the well-known nationalist outpouring that swept Annam in the wake of Phan Boi Chau's
arrest and Phan Chu Trinh's death in 1925-1926.
However, much stronger competition for appropriation of the term Viet-Nam came from
the non-communist Vietnamese Nationalist Party (Viet-Nam Quoc Dan Dang, VNQDD), truly
set in motion by Nguyen Thai Hoc and Nguyen Khac Nhu in early 1928. The VNQDD is
particularly important at this point in time. It had direct links to Phan Boi Chau and strong roots
in a militant, ethnocultural patriotism, which the Nationalist Party kept alive during the ICP's
1928-1935 journey into the desert of anti-nationalist internationalism in favour of a proletarian,
164
More than any other group at the time, the Nationalist Party made a
Indochinese identity.
conscious effort to put the word Vietnam firmly in the patriotic vocabulary—writing it violently
in "iron and blood" (bang mau va sat) if need be. Though Nhu had used the word "Annam" in
earlier writings, by the end of the 1920s he and others truly felt that the Viet race was on the
point of extinction. Going a step further than Phan Boi Chau, the VNQDD took cultural symbols
of ethnic identity, such as "Rivers and Mountains", "Children of the Lac Hông" and "people of
the same family" and started linking them to a modern concept of the nation which they insisted
on calling "Viet-Nam". In the call to arms disseminated days before the unforgettable suicide
39
attack of Yên Bay (and at the precise moment that Ho was arguing in favour of a Vietnamese
Communist Party in Hong Kong), Hoc and Nhu went so far as to demand that the people shout
"Long live Viet-Nam" (Viet Nam Van Tue) before shedding their "blood" for the "nation" (quoc
165
The power of the word, Vietnam, became legendary on 17 June 1930 with the execution
gia).
of Hoc himself. Stepping last on to the scaffold at daybreak, he defied the French in culturally
powerful terms, when he bowed to the Vietnamese crowd and then screamed with a chilling
northern accent—Viet Nam van tue !—seconds before being decapitated. That very afternoon
his fiancée took her life moments after signing a double suicide note addressed both to her
husband and the fatherland. (She reportedly became a protecting genie for certain villages in
166
northern Vietnam).
Paul Arnoux, Indochina's master policeman who witnessed both these
events, was so worried that the VNQDD was reactivating a militant side of the Vietnamese
167
identity that he suspected Phan Boi Châu's very hand behind Yên Báy.
In his report to
Governor General Pierre Pasquier, Arnoux was obligated to reproduce Hoc's insistence on the
term Viet Nam to explain to superiors the force of this two syllable rejection of the French
colonial order. Pasquier, the erudite expert on Annamese civilisation that he most certainly was,
must have understood only too well the militant culture that was resurging before his eyes.
Strangely, the republication of Pasquier's impressive Annam d'autrefois coincided with the
168
appearance of several Annamese articles coming down in favour of the word Viet-Nam.
Yet despite this extraordinary semantic reorientation, the word "Viet-Nam" remained
169
largely unknown to the common folk between 1930 and 1945.
That Hoc, Nhu and Tran
Trong Kim had to ask the people to pronounce this term instead of "Annam" is in itself
revealing. Less than a month after the execution of Hoc, the famous poet Tan Da (who knew
Nhu well) defended the place of "Annam" in his literary review, An-Nam Tap Chi, insisting that
neither scholars nor peasants were accustomed to the word "Viet-Nam" in their daily language,
170
Even Bay Vien (Le Van Vien), future leader of the secret and often violent
only "An-Nam".
Binh Xuyen, was stunned upon arriving at the top security prison at Poulo Condor in the early
1930s to hear communist and non-communist political prisoners yelling "Viet-Nam" instead of
"Annam". As a VNQDD prisoner explained to him: "The word "Annamite" is from now on to
be banished from our language. It is a word used by the colonialists. Our patrie is to be called
by its historic name: Vietnam. We, the Vietnamese, are all sons of the same race. Remember
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this, my brother".
In short, "Viet-Nam" was taking form in the minds of revolutionary
leaders, but not necessarily that of the peasant's or worker's. Nonetheless when it comes to
planning a nationalist revolution, it is the elite who searches new symbols. Arnoux understood
perfectly well what was going on, and the Sûreté continued to translate Vietnam systematically
into French as Annam. However, a French journalist who had witnessed the execution of Hoc
with the head of the Police published a sympathetic account of the events of 1930, entitled Viet-
40
Nam: la tragédie indochinoise, read widely both in France and Indochina. The title is revealing.
Not only was it the first time that the word "Vietnam" had appeared publicly in French, but it
also brings us back to this on going contradiction between "Indochina" and what was now
replacing "Annam" to become "Vietnam" in the nationalist discourse, a term which I will now
172
take up in my text.
In early 1930, Ho Chi Minh shared the VNQDD's preference for "Vietnam".
Nonetheless, if the Nationalist Party limited its revolutionary purview to the eastern part of the
peninsula, the communists did not escape the pull of the French Indochinese model. During a
Central Committee meeting in October 1930, the VCP was renamed the Indochinese Communist
Party (ICP, Dang Cong San Dong Duong) on instructions from the Comintern that Cambodia
and Laos be officially included as part of the Party's domain in view of the Indochina-wide
173
nature of French colonialism.
There was strong support from young militants pushing a
proletarian line, some of whom accused Ho of narrow-minded nationalism and a failure "to fuse
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the three communist organizations of Indochina from top to bottom".
Yet we need perhaps to conduct more research into this question before classifying Ho
narrowly as "pro-Vietnamese" and "anti-Indochinese" or as "more" "nationalist" than
"communist". These classifications tend to be post-1975 ideological categories that tell us more
about the state of contemporary historiography in Vietnam and elsewhere than about the
complexities of these 1930-1931 debates on contesting concepts of space at the time. Instead,
we might ask as a hypothesis whether Ho said "Vietnam" as a compromise solution needed to
unite competing communist groups unwilling to shed their own names when it came time to
create a unified Party? After all, in the late 1920s there was already an "Indochinese Communist
Party" (Dong Duong Cong San Dang and not Dang Cong San Dong Duong) and an "Annamese"
one (An-Nam Cong San Dang), neither of which was keen on shedding its name. "Vietnam" was
175
Secondly, a close reading of Ho's proto-communist review, Youth (Thanh
still available.
Nien), shows that there was a pre-1930, proletarian line flowing into the Revolutionary Youth
League in Canton from the International communist movement of which Ho would soon be one
of the most important members in Asia. In 1926-1927, for example, a long series of front-page
political essays, entitled Nationalist Revolution and the Nation, appeared in Ho's review.
Quoting Lenin, it was argued that "nationalism" was designed by the bourgeois class as a way of
controlling the masses. The correct line was to be found in an internationalist community of
proletarians. The Indochinese pattern is there as well: "In Indochina, not only must we fight
against the European and native capitalists, but we must also unite and stir our proletarian
176
compatriots within the five pays of the Union to rise up against these tyrants".
It is hard to
177
believe that Ho was unaware of this pattern, given his editorial duties at this precise period.
Thirdly, it is possible that Ho said "Vietnam" in 1930 because he understood the ethnic
41
contradictions inherent in the Viet use of the Indochinese model in view of the complex racial
diversity of the "peoples" of Indochina and the difficulty Vietnamese revolutionaries would have
in promoting "Laotian" or "Cambodian" revolutions. Use of "Vietnam" may have allowed him
to evoke a needed heroic tradition, while keeping revolutionary activities limited,
178
geographically, to the east.
It may be that Ho (like Pham Quynh) was caught somewhere in the middle. On the one
hand, the momentum of French colonialism and the international communist current in which he
was moving and building Vietnamese communism pulled him in Indochinese directions. On the
other hand, a simultaneous resurgence of an ethnic Viet patriotism specifically limited to the
eastern part of the peninsula checked Ho's Indochinese temptations. Moreover, Ho must have
known that this contradiction between the internationalist line (Indochina) and a nationalist one
(Vietnam) was emerging as a divisive issue in debates between ranking VNQDD and Thanh
Nien militants. And it would manifest itself in even more violent encounters at Poulo Condor in
the early 1930s, at Kunming in 1942, and on a bloody street named On Nhu Hau in Hanoi in July
179
1946.
Ho must have found it difficult around 1930-1931 to harness and then keep the militant
patriotism of 1930-1931 in step with the internationalist line and the required Indochinese
180
model.
Ho's failure to convert Nguyen Hai Than, an older patriot of the early Phan Boi Chau
school of thought, to the communist camp in 1925 underscored the difficulty of reconciling these
181
two currents.
Whatever the case, the re-written October Political Platform of the ICP addressed this
spatial and semantic contradiction by incorporating Cochinchina, Annam, Tonkin, Cambodia
(Cao-mien) and Laos (Ai-Lao) into a new political unit referred to as the "land of Indochina" (xu
Dong Duong). Besides continuing the call for the overthrow of feudalism, the implementation of
land reform, and the expulsion of French imperialism, the ICP picked up the earlier slogan
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As a communist journal explained:
calling for "Complete Indochinese Independence!"
"Although these three countries are made up of three different races, with different languages,
different traditions, different behaviour patterns, in reality they form only one country. [...]
Although the Party's name is only a form, since the form is important for the revolution, the
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change has to be made".
In April 1931, as Quynh and Vinh were wrapping up their
conservative debate on the limits of Vietnamese nationalism, the ICP was officially recognised
184
by the Comintern.
Young militants were no doubt more at ease with this Indochinese "form" than Ho or
Pham Quynh and they could look to the Soviet Union as a helpful reference point in creating an
Indochinese version. Second, if Nguyen Van Vinh and Tieu Vien saw an Indochina in capitalist
terms by 1930, communists saw a budding Indochinese proletariat in the form of the growing
Vietnamese "proletarians" working in Laotian silver mines and Cambodian rubber plantations.
42
By the mid-1930s there were around 6,000 Vietnamese coolies working in Laotian mines, among
185
A few years later, these
whom novice communists had been militating since 1930.
populations were such that Vietnamese communists started forming their own Workers
Associations in Vientiane and Thakhek alongside the bureaucrats' Amicales. And technology
and political relaxations were such that in 1937-1938 Vietnamese communists could send
administrative instructions by telegraph to their western Indochinese cells, in much the same way
186
that Vinh had wired his reports on gold prospecting in Laos back to editors in Hanoi.
In
Cambodia, Vietnamese communists concentrated their activities on the thousands of Vietnamese
coolies working on eastern Cambodian plantations, in small-scale industries and among the
187
young Annamese bureaucrats working in Phnom Penh (see Part II as well).
Things continued
in this direction during the laxer Popular Front period, when Vietnamese communists organised
the famous "Indochinese Congress" (Dai Hoi Dong Duong), whose Laotian and Cambodian
branches centred, unsurprisingly, on Vietnamese urban communities. ICP activists attracted
hardly any Cambodian or Lao ethnic support. Indochinese communism was a largely
188
Vietnamese affair.
As long as the Vietnamese failed to bring the Cambodians and Laotians
into their Indochinese revolutionary system, the creation of a shared Indochinese socialist
community would remain elusive.
Nonetheless, the Indochinese Congress is significant because it was yet another effort by
Vietnamese communists to actualise in more concrete terms the Indochinese entity they had been
conceptualising since the late 1920s. Moreover, both the Popular Front government and
International Communist movement were still requiring the Indochinese model for imagining the
state. The ICP kept in step on both counts. Its revolutionary slogan remained "complete
independence of Indochina" in view of creating a "Soviet Republic" of Indochina. As the
political organ headed by a ranking communist Duong Bach Mai put it in 1938: "Must we
always repeat that as communists we would never cease to be the determined partisans of the
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French
independence of Indochina and of the construction of socialism in this country".
colonial administrators and Vietnamese communists had thus one thing in common throughout
the 1930s. Both were envisioning parallel, though opposing, Indochinese states as the political
endpoints in the evolution of the colony. Even Ho Chi Minh could go Indochinese if need be.
He was certainly no stranger to the Comintern, being one of its most important delegates in the
Eastern Bureau in charge of communist work in Southeast Asia by 1930. While Ho may have
had private doubts about the viability of the Indochinese model, in practice he seems to have
accepted the new line demanded by the Comintern and many Vietnamese revolutionaries. In a
letter dated 20 April 1931, he had even scolded dissenting colleagues in the Annam section who
balked at accepting the Indochinese name on the grounds that "Cambodia and Laos would first
have to be [properly] organised." He reminded them of Comintern instructions calling for the
43
190
creation of an Indochinese-wide Party.
Four years later, in a Resolution approved at the ICP's
Macao Congress of 1935 (which Ho did not attend), communists promised the Lao, Khmer and
other ethnic minorities the right to "self-determination", but they also aimed to place them within
191
the "Soviet Union of the Indochinese Republic" (Lien bang cong hoa xo-viet Dong-duong).
Even the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China supported the idea of a future
192
political structure to be known as "Soviet Indo-China".
Vietnamese communists conceded at
the Sixth Plenum of November 1939 that "the alliance of Indochina need not form a single
193
nation, for the peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos have been independent".
However,
the idea of an Indochinese Union was transformed in 1939 into plans for two Vietnamese-led
political forums, the "National United Anti-Imperialist Front of Indochina" and—after the
expected revolution—the "Federal Government of the Democratic Republic of Indochina"
194
(Chinh Phu Lien Bang Cong Hoa Dan Chu Dong Duong).
Ho's return to the Vietnamese revolutionary scene in 1940-1941 would bring young
internationalists back to the nationalist fold, when he breathed new life into the word "Vietnam"
through the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh (Vietnamese Independence League, or Viet Minh for
short). Yet this does not necessarily mean that Ho or his followers had abandoned the
Indochinese model, although they were certainly ready to recognise the reality of emerging
Cambodian and Laotian nation-states. In what may be a compromise to the internationalist
Indochinese line, Vietnamese communists attempted simultaneously to form both a Cambodian
Independence League (Cao-Mien Doc Lap Dong Minh) and a Laotian Independence League (AiLao Doc Lap Dong Minh). Working together, the three national leagues were part of a
Vietnamese vision of a larger politico-strategic body that was to be known as the Indochinese
Independence League (Dong Duong Doc Lap Dong Minh). The Indochinese body would be
directed by a "Central Executive Committee" (Tong Bo) under which three national
195
Even in his famous
"committees" (chap uy) would represent "each country of the Union".
letter to his countrymen (written in Chinese) in 1941, Ho too gave away a 1930s Comintern
accent when he criticised the French for having ceded parts of "our land" (dat dai cua ta) to
196
Thailand. Ho was referring to western Cambodia and Laos—not Vietnam.
According to the
Party Regulations approved during the Eighth Plenum of the ICP's Central Committee on 20
May 1941, "the ICP is the unique forward army of the proletarian class of Indochina. It is the
leader of this class and of the universality of the Indochinese people, working for a revolution of
liberation and working for the total independence of Indochina [...in view of] of realising
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socialism, the first stage of Communism".
The slogan of a "Union of Socialist Indochinese
Soviet Republics" was allegedly dropped during this Plenum, but it did not rule out the
198
possibility of a future "[Indochinese] Union of Democratic Republics".
Vietnamese
44
communists were clearly envisioning three nation-states taking form within an Indochinese
Union or Federation.
Trying to Have it Both Ways, 1940-1945 : Vichy and the ICP
So why, if the Indochinese idea was acquiring such a palpable consistency in so many
Vietnamese minds by the outbreak of the Pacific War, did an Indochinese state structure not
come into being when the war came to an end, whereas the Javanese had little apparent trouble
taking up the geo-patterns of the Dutch colonial model to form an independent Indonesia? Up to
this point, I have tried to show that the idea of an "Indochinese Nation" was quite "real". The
problem, however, is that from 1930 this "Indochinese Nation" started hitting up against an
equally "real" ethnocultural identity that had links in a precolonial patriotic culture and was
firmly anchored in the eastern part of the peninsula, mainly eastern Annam and Tonkin.
Indochina was certainly taking form in many Vietnamese minds, but it did not yet have the
critical mass needed to allow Vietnamese nationalists to make the Indochinese leap. When
French colonialism crumbled following the March 1945 Japanese coup de force, Vietnamese
nationalists found themselves caught between the two—tempted to take over the Indochinese
model pushed by France, the Soviet Union and from within their own ranks, but pulled back by
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this strong ethnic attachment to the far eastern part of the peninsula.
Time was certainly part of the problem. A few more decades of French colonialism, as
Hoang Xuan Han shrewdly put it (or large-scale Indochinese industrialisation and Vietnamese
immigration as I would argue), and the mechanisms of French colonialism might well have
transformed the Indochinese idea into a concrete bureaucratic, economic and military reality,
thereby turning the Vietnamese into Indochinese nationals in the same way a Javanese could
become "Indonesian". In a material sense, had the Trans-Indochinese railway completed by the
French in 1936 penetrated widely into Laos and Cambodia as Sarraut had originally envisioned it
in 1921, one can ask whether this would have provided stronger concrete momentum to the
200
But the French first laid tracks for southern China before heading
Indochinese idea?
southwards to Saigon. The Trans-Indochinese was not finished until 1936, only four years
before Japanese occupation, while the lines between Saigon and Phnom Penh and between Vinh
and Thakhek were never completed. In short, in French Indochina, the rail system never had the
time to link the different regions and local economies of the colony. As a French rail expert
wrote on this subject in 1936, "the Trans-Indochinese line will constitute firstly a material and
tangible link in the union of the different pays of the Indochinese Federation. But it will take
years before 'a sense of [an Indochinese] nation', to borrow Mr. Albert Sarraut's term, can emerge
45
201
from this amorphous mass of races".
It is, however, true that an unprecedented network of
roads and canals linked Cambodia to Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin. However, Colonial
Route 13—the real Trans-Indochinese line running down the entire Mekong valley—was only
completed in the mid-1930s, hardly enough time to allow it to become an Indochinese backbone.
As for Laos, it was only in the early 1940s that increased public works projects started linking
this wayward son more closely to the Indochinese family.
These factors were important, but there was more to it than time. Benedict Anderson is
correct to emphasise differences between the Dutch and French education policies, the latter
implementing language policies that worked against a common bureaucratic language, and
eventual Indochinese identity, while the former facilitated an Indonesian person, with a language
202
that was not Javanese, but Malay (Bahasa Indonesia).
Secondly, in French Indochina, the
Laotian and Cambodians were "not imagining" Indochina like the Vietnamese. Their
participation in the French Indochinese administration was very limited. Official travel lists in
the Bulletins administratifs prove that Laotian and Cambodian bureaucrats were not going east to
work in Vinh or Saigon as often as the Vietnamese were going west to work in Phnom Penh or
203
Third, for cultural differences far too complex to consider here, the Laotians and
Vientiane.
Cambodians did not share the Confucian politico-cultural penchant for linking education to
bureaucratic careers. The Buddhist conception of power did not always address political action
in the same ways as Confucianism or Republicanism. The French reinforced these divergences
by promoting Reformed Pagoda Schools for the Cambodians and Laotians that were never
designed to form Indochinese civil servants, let alone to bring the eastern and western halves of
204
Indochina together.
The number of Khmer students formed in these Pagodas in Cambodia
increased from 53 in 1924 to 3,000 in 1930, reaching 51,991 in 1946, whereas in Laos 2,375 Lao
students attended 115 schools, increasing to 7.549 youngsters in 387 Pagoda Schools in 1935.
There, they learned Khmer or Lao, studied a little Buddhism and history and even absorbed some
French-programmed stereotypes of the Chinese and Vietnamese before returning to their
205
Even then the numbers of graduating elites remained quite small, limited mostly to
villages.
the lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh. Of those few who undertook advanced studies in eastern
Indochina or France, most were of royal blood (Prince Sihanouk was a graduate of ChasseloupLaubat and Prince Phetsarath was educated in France). Unlike the "Indonesians", the career
paths of Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian students did not cross very often, be it in the
Pagoda Schools, upper-school, Indochinese level classrooms, scouting organisations or even in
206
the "Indochinese" Army which was heavily dominated by Viet soldiers.
Moreover, the
division of the western Indochinese bureaucracies into two separate halves did little to create
shared work experiences. There were certainly exceptions, but the evidence I have consulted
thus far suggests that they were rare. Traditions, cultures, languages, education, military service
46
and work remained largely distinct between the eastern and western parts of Indochina during
the colonial period. As noted earlier, one can even speak of a certain anti-Indochinese mentality
that channeled Lao and Khmer Buddhist cultures and emerging nationalist identities away from
207
the more Confucian parts of eastern Indochina.
The hyphen in the word "Indo-China" was thus important, symbolic of a deeper,
precolonial cultural divide that the French did not succeed in bridging—even though they
208
dropped the hyphen.
In 1936, an official representative cited these reasons in a report on the
problem of Vietnamese immigration to Laos, concluding that for the Laotian and Cambodians
the idea of the "Indochinese Union" remained mysterious: "Time and again, the existence of
Cambodia and Laos seems to have been simply forgotten (semble avoir été simplement oubliée),
without a doubt the result of what could be called the mystique of the Indochinese Union." Their
reluctance to leave their native villages was also cited as a major impediment to moving them
into the Indochinese system. On reading this report, French Governor General, René Robin,
took issue with this interpretation, but conceded nonetheless that efforts had to be made to bring
the Laotians and Cambodians into the Indochinese family. Revealingly, he admitted that the
Laotians and Cambodians were simply not experiencing the Indochinese Union like the
Vietnamese. "For reasons of a political order", he insisted,
I do not think that this Union can be considered by the Laotians in only symbolic
terms. If we do not get the Laotians to understand the necessity and above all
the interest that they have in rallying to this Union, under French sovereignty, we
run the risk of seeing them turn their gaze, no longer towards the other
Indochinese pays [i.e., Tonkin, Annam or Cochinchina], but towards the left
[right, sic] bank of the Mekong [i.e., Siam which was becoming Thailand at this
same time] . . . 209
The head of the French official delegation sent by the Popular Front government to
investigate the needs and desires of the local populations put the non-Indochinese mentality best.
Echoing Prince Phetsarath five years earlier, he wrote: "There is not yet an Indochinese
aspiration shared by all our protégés [...]. Certain good intentioned souls have taken up this idea
of an Indochinese Federation and support it with their authority. Although one must not reject
this hypothesis outright, it seems difficult given the present situation to envision seriously the
210
Indeed, during the Popular Front period (1936constitution of an Indochinese Federal State".
1939), the ideas of an Indochinese Federation, Dominion and Autonomy were debated again in
French and Vietnamese circles. In 1937, Vietnamese representatives of the Chambre du Tonkin
asked for the constitution of an Indochinese Federation of five pays, each of which would be
47
equipped with a Senate containing an equal number of "French" and "Indochinese"
211
Similar
representatives. As an autonomous entity, this Federation would have its own army.
arguments were debated in a wide-range of leading quoc ngu papers, with the most interesting
212
ones to be found in Tan Viet-Nam in October 1937.
In July 1939, Ho Chi Minh reported to
the Comintern on how the Indochinese Democratic Front sought to cooperate with the French
213
Popular Front for the well-being of the French and the Indochinese peoples.
However, these discussions remained limited to the realm of ideas and the Indochinese
debate was entirely Franco-Vietnamese in nature. Few if any Lao, Khmer or ethnic minorities
took much interest in participating in the existing Indochinese-wide political institutions, such as
Grand Conseil des Intérêts Economiques et Financiers de l'Indochine. Moreover, neither an
Indochinese Common Law Code nor a legal definition of an "Indochinese citizen" nor
"Indochinese nationality" was established before WWII to establish legal currents for channeling
national identities in an Indochinese direction. Civil Codes published in the 1920s and 1930s
show us that "nationality" remained defined strictly along Annamese, Cambodian and, in more
214
ambiguous ways, Laotian lines.
Yet as long as coherent political status for Indochina did not
come into being, one French observer wrote, France would find it difficult to bestow a real
215
"personality" to the idea of "Indochina".
Indochina thus remained a geo-juridical amalgam of
colonies, protectorates and military territories. The idea of an "Indochinese" national identity
continued to have something slightly artificial about it.
Significantly, during the Vichy period in Indochina between 1940 and 1945, Admiral
Decoux tried earnestly to change this and to create a "real" and "living" Indochinese identity. To
do this, he aimed to stimulate and then canalise Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese
nationalisms into the Indochinese Federation to defuse counter-nationalisms fanned by Japanese
216
Adhering to cultural and
occupants, Thai competitors and Vietnamese revolutionaries.
educational policies already underway in Vichy France, Decoux put the accent on "Tradition"
and the idea of "discovering" and "resurrecting" the "True" Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian
patrimonies as part of a larger Indochinese one to be led by la Mère Patrie herself. Decoux's
highly erudite cultural team (in many ways better trained than Ho Chi Minh's in 1941)
consciously fanned particular nationalisms through subtle propaganda drives, the formation of
youth groups as well as expanding sports and scouting organisations. Textbooks were rewritten,
articles evoked the glorious nationalist histories of the three patries of Indochina, Buddhist
tradition and Confucian values were emphasised, victories against the Thais were common,
though Nam Tien was conspicuously absent. National anthems, flags and symbols were
217
designed and diffused for all three countries, not five.
Decoux even marched Sihanouk, the
newly installed boy king, around the Cambodian countryside and into Vietnam in a sort of
counter-travelogue, an informal "getting finally to know your Indochinese neighbourhoods",
48
while Laotian elites started to ask themselves seriously: "Qui sommes nous?"
218
In 1943, the
famous cycling Tour d'Indochine was organised, sending hundreds of Vietnamese, Cambodian
and French youths scrambling across all of Indochina. The main idea behind this 4,000
kilometre race was, according to its main organiser Maurice Ducoroy, to allow all of these young
Indochinese (elites) to "study the customs and traditions, to observe the sites throughout the
lands they would cross, [and] to realise on the ground (sur place) the diversity of Indochina [...].
Through these representatives of the Indochinese youth, we were hoping that, after having
contemplated and reflected [on what they saw], they would be able to announce the truth [of the
219
Indochina] surrounding them".
Decoux and Ducoroy were effectively using "sporting events"
and the "official 'royal' voyage" as a way of reinforcing Indochinese links, "getting elites to meet
each other". Even Sihanouk took pleasure in attending the soccer matches alternating between
his Cochinchinese alma mater, Chasseloup-Laubat at Saigon, and the Sisowath lycée at Phnom
Penh. (Did he cheer for his home team or for his home "nation"?). It was also he who proudly
lit the Indochinese Torch which was paraded solemnly by "Indochinese youths" from Angkor
220
Wat to Hanoi in 1941.
These sporting and traveling policies were part of the crafting of a larger Indochinese
identity by Decoux. In June 1942, for example, he officially banned the term "indigène" and
221
replaced it with the word "indochinois".
Though given little attention at the time, this was
symbolic of a subtle though long-awaited attempt to start thinking of the Indochinese and in
Indochinese terms. To Decoux, only the "Indochinese" working together with the French would
constitute a true French Indochinese Famille and Patrie. Again, the Federal idea was resurrected
when trouble was in the air. Isolated from the Metropole and occupied by the Japanese army,
Indochina had to take on real life politically, economically and even culturally to survive. Vichy
made notable efforts to increase the number of "Indochinois" in the higher reaches of the
administration, and it was also Decoux and his erudite team who succeeded in bringing more
non-Viet ethnic groups into the larger Indochinese Family.
However, Vichy's Indochina remained based on three major national monarchies:
Annam, Cambodia and Laos. In December, an important article appeared in Vichy's mouthpiece
Indochine, entitled Fédéralisme indochinois, in which it was explained why the three pays could
not stand alone as "nations", but rather had to be associated within the tripartite framework of the
"Federated Nation of Indochina" (nation fédérale indochinoise), for "only Indochina as a whole"
222
Of course, each would maintain its unique
could serve as the model of "a viable nation".
cultural and linguistic characteristics, "just as the Bretons, Basques and Corse had done in
becoming French," but they would all function within a newly created Conseil Fédéral
Indochinois, consisting of 23 French and 30 Indochinese, of which 24 were "Annamese", four,
223
"Cambodian" and two, "Laotian".
The preponderance of the Annamese within this institution
49
could not have been lost on Laotian and Cambodian delegates. Yet they had little say in these
matters. For reasons of a political order, the three Indochinese patries had to recognise that they
shared "common interests",
that they must rely on each other, understanding above all that their
common mission is to work together for prosperity and growth, and to
display to the world their shared patrimony, the Indochinese Union, linked
by destiny and [then] offered by France to History (lié par le destin et
proposée par la France à l'Histoire).224
If this vision of Indochina was not quite yet "real", this triangular entity, Vichy insisted in
225
late 1942, constituted at the very least "a national virtuality" (une virtualité nationale).
In
equally fascinating essays, Bui Quang Chieu reversed the Tribune's formerly aggressive cultural
visions of the Annamese role in Indochina to conclude that the "Indochinese Federation" was
becoming "a nation" and that the French language had "become the common tongue of the
226
Indochinese elite".
Even the editorial board of the Annam Nouveau had suddenly to forget the
chauvinistic arguments of its founder, Nguyen Van Vinh, to join with Decoux and Chieu to
proclaim that the "interpenetration" and "interdependence" of Indochina were giving rise at last
to "a living reality":
The large-scale youth movement that has been unleashed in Indochina
under the direction of the General Commissar of Sports and Physical
Education, the Captain Ducoroy, and the common education that is being
dispensed to all the children of Indochina, will soon have fused (aura tôt
fait de fusionner) Cambodians, Laotians and Annamese into one unique
personality. In place of the historic Annamese expansion towards the
south and the west, the French Protectorat has substituted [a policy of]
peaceful interpenetration among the peoples of the peninsula favorable to
a good entente and towards mutual collaboration for the better of the
Union.227
It was even argued in several semi-official essays that a new "Indochinese Civilisation"
was actually "coming into being" (en train de naître), one which would close the gap between
the Indic and Sinic halves of the Indo-China debated so heatedly by Marquet and Quynh on one
228
Another essay insisted in 1942 that France had
side and Meyer and Phetsarath on the other.
created "a cultural comprehension of the constituting civilisations" that would give rise to "a
50
consciousness of Indochina, a political and cultural reality and not just a geographical and
229
Even the prestigious Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient
administrative grouping (pression)."
conceded in print that is erudite publications were aimed to "return to the Indochinese their
230
history" and to "awaken in them a national sentiment".
What makes these essays so
interesting is how Vichy sought to foster and then to project the idea of a coherent "Indochinese
civilisation", a cultural ensemble, into the past so as to be able to root the "Indochinese Nation"
on firmer "historical" ground in the future. Ethnographic and archeological studies of the
precolonial period flourished as French and Indochinese scholars set off after the real "Vietnam",
"Laos", "Cambodia"—and "Indochina". A geo-administrative structure was not enough.
Indochina had to be "real", one of fascinating cultural offshoots of the Vichy period in France
and her colonies. This Indochinese "cultural personality" would find its originality in the
melding of Confucianism, Buddhism and Western (preferably Franco-Roman) civilisations into a
larger whole.
In many ways it was the combination of the resurrected racialist policy of "Thailand" (no
longer Siam) and a group of extremely erudite French admirers of local cultures and histories
231
that saw the French finally bring Laos and Cambodia into the French Indochinese project.
They could no longer be "forgotten", but rather had to be valorised on the same level as the
Vietnamese. In what is perhaps a veiled allusion to the debate between Prince Phetsarath, Pham
Quynh, Nguyen Van Vinh and Roland Meyer in 1930-1931, this 1942 essay on the Indochinese
Civilisation argued that the cultural fault line between the eastern and western halves of IndoChina could be bridged: "In this way, in the cultural domain as well as other areas, the
Indochinese Federation will not become, to the great confusion of its detractors, an empty
232
formula or a hybrid creation, but rather a living and magnificent reality".
Yet this unique Indochinese "personality" advanced by the Annam Nouveau was still
fiction, as the reliance on the future anterior tense belied again and as the outbreak of antiVietnamese demonstrations in western Indochina from mid-1945 would confirm. The
appearance of Laotian and Cambodian children personalities in what was in effect an updated
version of Marquet's 1928 vision of Five [Indochinese] Flowers, now turning three, was too
little and far too late for bringing the Laotians and Cambodians into this magical Indochinese
233
One writer applauding Bui Quang Chieu's essay on an
wonderland "proposed" by Vichy.
Indochinese nation gave this away when he felt compelled to write that this Indochinese identity
was not some "spiritual, fragile or artificial construction, built on moving sand that the first wind
would blow away, but it [was] a nation that possesses a shared way of thinking (pensée
234
commune), [a body] of common interests".
Moreover, in spite of Decoux's subtle politico-cultural campaign, this Indochinese
national identity proposed by Vichy must have seemed slightly odd to at least some nationalist
51
elites at the time. Announcing that it existed was one thing, but giving it a material base on the
ground level was quite another. After all, Decoux was suddenly asking his conservative
Vietnamese allies to reverse, literally overnight, their formerly aggressive visions of Indochina,
which had rarely included the Lao, Khmer or ethnic communities, in order to work in
"solidarity" with their newly found western and highland brothers in the pursuit of a larger
Indochinese Family. "Peaceful interpenetration" was after all a marked departure from Tieu
Vien's 1939 Indochinese Nation forged by Vietnamese blood, sweat and tears. The volte-face
made by the Annam Nouveau and the Tribune Indochinoise in 1941-1944 was symbolic of the
turnaround conservatives nationalists had to make to keep in step with Decoux's model of
Indochinese solidarity. As for the Laotians and Cambodians, they were no doubt thrilled to
finally get the attention of the French, but the ethnic friction caused by Annamese movement
westwards prior to WWII would be hard to forget for elites like Prince Phetsarath and Nhiek
Tioulong. And they could not have been left untouched by the nationalist discourse fanned by
235
Vichy from 1940.
This was all the more the case given that Vichy worked against an Indochinese
personality by stressing inner cultural, linguistic, juridical and above all racial particularities,
which reinforced the consolidation of national identities along separate lines or along precolonial notions of Khmer, Lao and Viet kingdoms. A scholarly emphasis on ethnology and
identity tended to differentiate rather than to assimilate. In short, the re-rooting of "local
nationalisms" in their specific cultures, traditions and languages by conservative colonial
administrators dating from the time of Pasquier made it harder for a "superior Indochinese
nationalism" to emerge. Moreover, by exhorting the "Khmer" and "Lao" races against the racial
imperialism of the "Thai", the semi-official reviews, Indochine, Lao Nhay and Kampuchea must
have triggered similar hostility towards the Viet (even though "anti" Vietnamese articles would
236
Though Decoux sought
not surface in official French propaganda until late 1945 and 1946).
to dilute such differences by using French as the unifying form of communication within this
Indochinese body, as in West Africa, he would have had a hard time reversing existing
educational and linguistic policies stressing the rejuvenation of local languages and traditions.
What is more important, he had little time to create a Cambodian and Laotian elite competent in
French and who would be capable of joining their Vietnamese counterparts in the Indochinese
bureaucracy, another of the keys to turning the Indochinese Federation into this chimerical
237
"living reality".
Whatever Vichy's optimism, the Vietnamese would continue to dominate Indochina. Of
the 4,200 members of the Indochinese Youth Movement in 1941, 91% were Viet, the rest were
238
Khmer and there were few, if any, Lao or Rhadé.
The Bulletins Administratifs published
during this period show that the Vietnamese stayed firmly at the helm of the larger Indochinese
52
administrative machine (as distinct from the "indigenous" Laotian and Cambodian ones). I have
found few Laotians or Cambodians going to work in Saigon as Indochinese civil servants. Even
a photo published in Vichy's Indochinese mouthpiece gave away this fiction. The title hails a
patriotic demonstration in Laos rallying in support of France, but the vast majority of the
239
By 1945, it was clear that
"Indochinese" portrayed are too easily identifiable as ethnic Viet.
240
Decoux had not created a common Indochinese flag, language, history or shared identity.
An
Indochinese Civil Code and Indochinese citizen were never officially approved to redirect local
241
identities in an Indochinese direction.
In spite of the Indochinese economic and political
policies with which Decoux sought to build a real Indochinese identity, he would need much
more than four years to make it work. Deep seeded Asian mentalities, cultural differences and
languages would not be reoriented or forgotten overnight. In terms reminiscent of Pham Quynh's
debate with Prince Phetsarath in 1931, a Laotian elite wrote in early 1946 to Charles Rochet, the
French Father of Laotian nationalism under Vichy: "Neither our heart nor our blood pulls
(entraînent) us towards the East. The children of Annam are of a different race than us and we
have seen what comes of forced marriages. However difficult it may be for geographers, we will
242
never be "Indochinese". Indochina may be a necessity for us, but She will never be a patrie."
In short, prior to 1945, the Laotians and Cambodians experienced neither Marquet,
Sarraut, Pasquier or Decoux's Indochina nor the one proposed by Nguyen Van Vinh, Bui Quang
Chieu, the ICP or the Comintern. And it is perhaps here that the "myth of the lazy" Laotian and
Cambodian "native", so popular among French and Vietnamese writers before WWII, may be
better interpreted as a "strategy" of cultural resistance that, for better or worse, kept the Laotians
and Cambodians outside the Indochina house being built by the French colonialists, Vietnamese
conservatives or their communist counterparts backed up by the Comintern. In 1938, the
Résident Supérieur in Laos captured it as follows: "I am increasingly convinced that the
question of French sovereignty runs up against [an attitude] of absolute Buddhist indifference
and that they [the Laotians] would welcome tomorrow the Siamese as their masters just as easily
243
Indochina remained a largely Franco-Vietnamese
as they have cohabited with the French".
experience.
As for the Vietnamese, Vichy accentuated things by trying to coopt the "true" Vietnam
that had resurged in nationalist circles since 1925-1930 and by promoting an Indochinese
"reality", which was being simultaneously experienced by many Vietnamese nationalists.
Neither was fiction and both Pham Quynh and Ho Chi Minh would find themselves pursuing
remarkably similar nationalist policies between 1941 and 1945, when they tried to take hold of
the "real" Vietnam, while striving at the same time to keep it in step with the French and
Comintern's Indochinese orders. Decoux gave a loose rein to Pham Quynh's cultural nationalism
by making him Minister of Education in Vichy's Révolution Nationale. Ridiculed by the highly
53
westernised Self Autonomy Group (Tu Luc Van Doan) directed by Nguyen Tuong Tam since
1932, Quynh took his revenge under Vichy to give the nation back its "Tradition", an heritage
that, in his eyes, had been blurred by years of unbridled westernisation and competition from
anti-colonial parties. He paid lip service to the Admiral's Indochinese model, but what mattered
most to him was the return to Confucian values, the resurrection of national symbols, culture and
the realisation and unification of the Annamese entity he had defended so passionately in
244
In October 1942, Decoux thrilled conservative spirits, when he became the first French
1931.
245
official to pronounce the word "Viet-Nam" in public.
As a Vietnamese editorial captured this
conservative cultural convergence: "The Admiral, as the honorable representative of the
Maréchal and in the name of the Annamese Patrie, gives back [to the nation] its dignity and
primacy." What it did not say was that Decoux was clearly trying to co-opt one of the most
powerful nationalist symbols since the executions at Yen Bay in 1930: the very idea of "VietNam". Vichy was effectively turning from the Annam d'autrefois to the Vietnam of
246
tomorrow.
Meanwhile, on the outside of Indochina moving in, Ho Chi Minh was preparing his own
nationalist revolution. He evoked many of the same heroes and glorious symbols of "Vietnam"
as Decoux and Quynh; and was as careful as the Governor General to avoid resurrecting certain
chapters of Vietnamese history that could irritate Laotian and Cambodian sensibilities. Through
the Viet Minh, Ho fostered a strong counter nationalism based upon an ethnocultural identity
forged in opposition to the Chinese and French domination and not "glorious" southwards
expansion into Cambodia. Unlike Quynh, he could draw upon a full blown cultural militantism
running from Phan Dinh Phung and Phan Boi Chau to the VNQDD, elements of which were to
247
be found within his own communist ranks.
In brief, Ho had every intention in mid-1945 not
to fail as the VNQDD had in early 1930. The Japanese provided the favorable conditions for the
Viet Minh to take power. The irony, however, was that once Ho returned to Vietnam from
China he had to hold this resurging, militant nationalism within the Indochinese framework
demanded by the ICP, the Comintern and the New France under General de Gaulle. In the wake
of the Japanese overthrow of Decoux's French Indochinese family on 9 March 1945, one of de
Gaulle's top hands in Asia, Léon Pignon, advocated an Indochinese identity in directives
outlining a new Federation: "We should not hesitate, and it is the opinion of a good number of
248
Significantly, the
Annamese, to think Indochinese, and not only Annamese or Cambodian".
Federation he envisioned planned for the legal constitution of an "Indochinese citizen" and
249
"assembly".
When French Indochina collapsed on 9 March, this spatial and racial contradiction in
Vietnamese nationalism had still not been resolved in either conservative or revolutionary
nationalist currents. But with the French finally gone, the Vietnamese had to choose. And even
54
250
the name was still undecided.
On 12 March, Dan Bao (People's News) heralded formation of
251
Imperial Viet Nam (Viet -Nam De Quoc).
It was one of the first times the word Viet-Nam had
appeared publicly as the name of the country since Gia-Long. On 16 March, though, another
252
Editorials published
daily published a proclamation referring to a Dai Viet nation and people.
since the early 1940s in Tri Tan, Dai Viet Tap Chi or La Tribune Indochinoise show that the
national name was undecided and "Vietnam" was not officially approved until well after the 9
253
March coup de force.
Nationalists conceded that "Annam" had been the most widely used
term since the arrival of the French, but, as writers argued in mid-1945, it was to be rejected for
254
it implied "submission" to foreign powers.
After considerable debate, on 12 June 1945, Bao
Dai announced finally that the word Viet-nam would be the official name of the country, thereby
255
ending the Nguyen dynasty's century-old use of Dai Nam.
At the same time, a cabinet
meeting in mid-1945 forbid the use in Vietnamese of the terms Nam ky, Trung ky, and Bac ky
replacing them respectively with Nam phan (southern section), Trung phan (middle section), and
Bac phan (northern section) as the three regional constituents of "Viet-Nam". Ho Chi Minh's
government would follow suit, but dropped phan in favour of bo—Nam bo, Trung Bo, and Bac
256
Bo. Use of the word "Annam" was suddenly severely frowned upon.
Yet, if communist and non-communist nationalists had agreed on the name "Vietnam",
they had also to choose a space. Should it include all of French Indochina or only the three
ky/phan/bo? Unfortunately, we do not know how Pham Quynh felt on this question in his role
as advisor to Bao Dai. We do know, however, that many tried to have it both ways. Like the
French in 1930-1931, 1937-1939, and 1941-1942, they saw the Federal idea as the best way out
of this spatial conundrum. On 31 March, an official circular in Dong Phat announced that the
term "French Indochina/Dong Phap" would be dropped officially, but the words
257
On
"Indochina/Dong Duong" and "Indochinese peoples/dan Dong Duong" remained intact.
25 April, an editorial appeared in the daily Binh Minh arguing for an Indochinese Federation
(Lien Bang Dong Duong), unassociated with the French. Though vaguely defined, it envisioned
a union of the states of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, which together would constitute a Central
Committee designed to govern the Indochinese Federation. Particular attention was paid to
258
guaranteeing minority rights.
An important politician, Nguyen Van Luyen, developed this
idea in greater detail in the widely read Trung Bac Chu Nhat in early August. Aware of rising
anti-Vietnamese feelings in the West, Luyen guaranteed that, as a part of a National Indochinese
Union (Dong Duong Lien Hiep Quoc), Laos and Cambodia would share power as part of a
tripartite federal government in charge of Foreign Affairs, Defense and Finances. By combining
their economic potential, communications systems, and defense, he argued, they could not only
create a "great nation", an Indochinese Federation, but they could also become "Indochinese
55
259
citizens" (cong dan Dong Duong).
Léon Pignon was clearly not the only one trying to remake
an Indochinese state.
The Japanese had similar ideas. While they ousted the French in March 1945, they kept
the French Indochinese model alive, and even proposed their own "Indochinese Federation" that
260
was eventually rejected in Tokyo.
Nonetheless, Vietnamese bureaucrats stayed in their
Indochinese positions, and their power increased considerably as they replaced their exiting
French bosses throughout the administration after 9 March. This led to a paradox where the
Japanese continued Decoux's policy of promoting Laotian and Cambodian independence
aspirations, but adhered to the French colonial tradition of keeping Vietnamese bureaucrats in
261
charge of their Indochinese administration.
This brutal strategic reality was not lost on the
Cambodians and Laotians when the Japanese heralded formation of a "New Indochina" (Tan
262
To them, Indochina still had a strong Vietnamese accent to it.
Dong Duong).
Indeed, Vietnamese communists were having considerable trouble concealing their
Indochinese political projects. As Stein Tønnesson has shown, in June the ICP's General
Secretary himself, Truong Chinh, wrote in the Party's journal that resistance forces would defeat
the Japanese and then "establish an Indochinese Democratic Republic". Even in the famous
Directive N° 1 of 13 August 1945 calling for the general insurrection, Truong Chinh was
263
preparing an "Indochinese uprising", and not just a Vietnamese one.
All of this changed
mysteriously, however, when the Viet Minh came to power in late August 1945. Vietnamese
communists could have announced formation of Chinh's envisioned "Republic of Indochina".
Instead they balked. Quietly changed was the term, "Indochinese", in the 1929 revolutionary
slogan, "Complete Indochinese Independence!" It reverted to Ho’s 1930 preference for
264
"Vietnamese," "Complete Vietnamese Independence."
There must have been high-level Party
debate to change this Party slogan, most probably during the ICP All-Country Congress at Tran
Trao on 15 August or shortly thereafter. One wonders whether the veteran Vietnamese
communists from Laos and Thailand who made it to this Congress in time were the ones who
cautioned Ho against too strong an Indochinese line, given the anti-Vietnamese tone of rapidly
consolidating Laotian and Cambodian nationalisms that they must have been following since 9
265
Moreover, Vietnamese bureaucrats left operating the Laotian and Cambodian
March.
administrations in mid-1945 would have been in a favorable position in the first days of the
Revolution to telegraph Vietnamese officials in Hanoi to report on anti-Vietnamese sentiments in
Laos and Cambodia, thereby providing revolutionaries with up-to-the-minute intelligence on all
of Indochina.
The Vietnamese line became government policy on 31 August 1945, when the Acting
Minister of Interior signed legislation ordering the word Indochine in the Journal Officiel de
l'Indochine to be deleted and replaced, as of 1 September, by the word Viet-Nam in the Official
56
266
Record of Viet Nam, Viet-Nam Dan Quoc Cong Bao.
The next day, Ho announced formation
of the "Democratic Republic of Vietnam" (Viet Nam Dan Chu Cong Hoa) before thousands of
cheering Vietnamese citizens who were proud to be part of an entirely independent Vietnamese
nation. On 20 October 1945, Ho signed Decree N° 53, of which Article 2 defined a "Vietnamese
national" as an individual born to a father or mother of Vietnamese citizenship or any individual
"born in Vietnamese territory of unknown parents or nationality". Article three turned "ethnic
minorities" residing in the pays of the "Tho, Man, Muong, Nung, Kha, Lolo, etc" and with "fixed
267
residence in Vietnamese territory" into "Vietnamese citizens".
We get a small theoretical clue
to the Party's nationalist thinking on 16 September 1945, though, when an official essay entitled
The National Question (Van de dan toc) was published in Hanoi. It cited Soviet Russia (Nga-soviet) as the best model for Vietnamese communists to follow in dealing with the "minority
question" and in creating a new "nation". It is noteworthy that the author did not say "Soviet
268
What remains less clear in such documents, though, is the
Union" (Lien Bang Xo-Viet).
geographical and juridical limits of Vietnamese revolutionary thinking on the nation and the
position of non-Viet peoples within this unprecedented national community.
Meanwhile, even after the August Revolution, the tension between the "Vietnamese" and
the "Indochinese" lines continued in communist political thinking. This was best symbolised by
the fact that the Viet Minh’s official mouthpiece, National Salvation (Cuu Quoc), used the
slogan "Complete Vietnamese Independence", while the ICP's Liberation Flag (Co Giai Phong),
edited by Truong Chinh himself, continued to call for "Complete Indochinese Independence"
269
(Dong Duong hoan toan doc lap).
Even after the latter's closure following the public
dissolution of the ICP in November 1945, the "Indochinese" call was immediately renewed in
270
the first issue of the Party's new mouthpiece, Su That (The Truth).
This led to a double line:
the communist-run nationalist front, the Viet Minh, advocated "Viet-Nam", while the communist
Party, now operating under the cover of a Marxist Study Group, stuck unequivocally to
"Indochina" well after the declaration of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam. Indochina was
not dead. In a fitting confusion, a communist faction in the South had even explained at the
height of the Revolution that the five points of the star in the Viet Minh's flag represented "the
five lands of the Indochinese Federation that had been liberated under the leadership of the
Vietnamese nation." This remains to be proven with original documents, but that such an
argument was put forward at all suggests that the French model of Indochina had a geo-political
staying power of its own, even in the imaginations of young communist nationalists opposed to
271
French colonialism.
Whatever the case, Vietnamese communist ideologues such as Truong Chinh had not
abandoned the idea of an "Indochinese Revolution" by declaring a "Vietnamese" government.
The two co-existed. In other words, communists under the direction of Truong Chinh were still
57
imagining a post-colonial revolutionary space in clear Indochinese terms. Archimedes Patti,
head of the OSS team that entered Hanoi just after the August revolution, was struck by this
spatial contradiction between "Vietnam" and "Indochina" during his military assignment to
Hanoi in the fall of 1945. He asked Hoang Minh Giam and Truong Chinh personally to explain
this paradox. As Patti remembered it years later:
In 1945 the question of Laos and Cambodia as separate political entities
was never at issue. In the context of the struggle for Vietnamese
independence, the three nation-states complex was interwoven in the
French concept of the French Indochina "federation". On two separate
occasions, I asked Truong Chinh and Hoang Minh Giam to clarify the
apparent contradiction in terms between Viet Nam as a nation and
Indochina as used in the name of the Indochinese Communist Party. They
both held that the terms were compatible since the three nation-states,
under French rule, had developed commonality of geographical, political
and economic interests. Hence Viet-Nam, the name of the three kys
(regions of Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina) was also applicable to the
French "federation" of Indochinese states.272
A year later, a French intelligence officer explained to his superiors that Vietnamese
communists saw themselves as the natural inheritors of the French Indochinese space. As this
officer wrote:
In the wake of the proclamation of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam,
the Annamese believed that their [Indochinese] dream was going to come
true. The elimination of the trusteeship power [France] left vacant the
place which many had become used to seeing occupied. The idea of
"Indochina", though an artificial creation of the French, was anchored in
the minds [of the Vietnamese] such that it could not disappear overnight.
Spontaneously and most naturally the Annamese thought that it fell to
them to replace the French in the role of protector and federater of the
young nations become subtly sovereign (subitement souverains).273
58
Part II. Turning Indochina against the French (1945-1954)
Vietnam or Indochina?
In the wake of WWII, the contesting concepts of space that had invested Vietnamese
nationalist debates since WWI surfaced with force in complex negotiations designed to build a
French Indochinese Federation and to avoid full-scale war. The idea of a geographically unified
"Vietnam" caused a particular problem for French officials who sought to rebuild Indochina
along its prewar pentagonal structure. The problem was that this word, "Vietnam", had been
rapidly infused with powerful and complex sentiments in the midst of the nationalist outpouring
triggered by the Japanese overthrow of French colonial rule in March 1945. The now unleashed
press played an important role in creating an extremely charged idea of Vietnam in Vietnamese
274
minds in 1945-1946.
The symbolic power of Nguyen Thai Hoc's unforgettable last minute cry
for "Viet-Nam" in 1930 was often evoked. In November, the VNQDD's Central Committee
picked up where Hoc had left off in 1930, when Khai Hung and Nhat Linh, two of Vietnam's
best known modern writers, joined in to transform their cultural weekly, Ngay Nay (Today), into
the ultra-nationalist, virulently anti-communist and extremely anti-French daily: Viet-Nam. If
nationalists had said "Annam" and "ky" before March 1945, few would think of repeating these
words in Vietnamese after returning to the nationalist fervour of Hanoi in late 1945. Even the
Viet Minh had to give orders in one of its nationalist mouthpieces, Doc Lap, "to nationalise"
(dan toc hoa) "Viet Minh" into "Vietnam" in the face of the VNQDD's fiercely "Vietnamese"
275
"Vietnam" was one and indivisible, almost sacred in the nationalist discourse of
propaganda.
1945.
All of these terms became volatile political indicators during Vietnamese and French
negotiations at Dalat, Fontainebleau and Paris, when each side insisted on denying or affirming
la réalité/su that of either the three kys/ancien Empire de l'Annam or the three bo/Viet-Nam.
Admiral d'Argenlieu, the High Commissioner sent by de Gaulle to re-establish Indochina, and
President Ho Chi Minh of the DRV were only too aware of the geo-political power of these
words. That it was a real geo-semantic rupture was symbolised chillingly, days after the
outbreak of full-scale war in Indochina in late 1946, when the Admiral issued harsh orders to
suppress the word "Viet-Nam" in all official language by restoring the "previous terms"—
Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina. To him, Ho had achieved "a clever exploitation of the term
"Viet Nam" and its content, even more so since no one in the public domain, except a few
59
specialists, could call into question its historical, geographical and juridical meaning". "The
resurrection of the ancient term VIET NAM", he argued, "was a sheer stroke of genius" invoked
276
Whatever one might think of the
by Ho to consolidate the unification of the three "ky's".
Admiral, he was not entirely off the mark in arguing that nationalists were "resurrecting the
ancient term VIET NAM". They were. And as we have seen Ho was not the first to use it in this
powerful nationalist sense. It was a reorientation reaching back to the early post-WWI period.
However, Admiral d'Argenlieu seems to have forgotten that his predecessor, Admiral Decoux,
had officially approved this semantic resurrection only a few years earlier.
To d'Argenlieu and his team in Indochina, though, it was the reconstitution of the
277
Indochinese Federation along the prewar pentagonal lines that counted most.
Those were the
instructions he had received from Paris and he applied them politically and militarily to the
letter. The French reoccupied their former Indochinese space, starting with southern Indochina
below the 16th parallel (Nam Bo, southern Trung Bo, Cambodia and extreme southern Laos in
late 1945), all of Laos north of the 16th parallel (February to June 1946), the Laotian and
Cambodian territories ceded to the Thais (June to November 1945), and then northern Vietnam
278
following the outbreak of war in December 1946.
Meanwhile, French officials undertook
negotiations to reintegrate politically and administratively the Laotian, Cambodian and
Vietnamese governments proclaimed independent since March 1945 into a new Indochinese
Federal structure. To the French, the constitution of states outside the French Indochinese model
threatened to undermine the very concept of Indochina. However, unlike the situation in
Indonesia, the rapid emergence of three nationalist states—Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos—after
9 March suggests that French Indochina was less of a geo-political state reality in mid-1945 than
many French had been hoping. Ethnic violence against the Viet in Cambodia and Laos would
make soldering Cambodia and Laos back to Vietnam even harder than during the colonial
279
Sarraut and Pasquier had reason to fear the break-up of Indochina without the French
period.
"cement".
However, in 1945-1946, the French had to give real meaning to an Indochinese space if
they were to keep it from disintegrating into unassociated states and if they were going to keep
their Asian Empire intact. Again the Federation was seen as the only structural and legal way to
hold Indochina's "local" nationalisms together. France would provide the necessary "cement".
As a French note explained at the outset of the Dalat Conference the importance of keeping the
Indochinese model alive:
Geographically, INDOCHINA constitutes a whole of which the parts are
compatible (solidaires). The economic inter-penetration of its diverse
regions is clear and will develop even more with the mise en valeur du
60
pays. To this community of situations and interests there must be a
corresponding unity of conception and action. A centralising organ is
necessary, which can only be instituted in INDOCHINA itself.
Membership in the French Union would not be enough to ensure the
indispensable internal cohesions, while the divergent tendencies that are
already making themselves felt among the Indochinese peoples would not
lose any time to bring about their disassociation or to [their] withdrawal.
[...] Federalism was imagined expressly for solving such difficulties.280
It is not my intention here to discuss in detail the French Indochinese Federation.
Bernard Fall, Joseph Buttinger, Philippe Devillers, Stein Tønnesson and most recently Paul
Isoart and Daniel Hémery have already shown how the French went about doing this and how
they eventually had to abandon the idea of a separate Cochinchinese Republic in favour of
recognising the unity of a non-communist Vietnam in 1948-1949. The French then transformed
281
the Indochinese Federation into the "Associated States" of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
One might note, however, that repeated use of the terms "disassociation" and "association" since
WWI underscored the difficulties inherent in the evolution from an Indochinese colonial model
to post-colonial Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian nation-states. In other words, the eventual
"disassociation" of Indochina into three distinct national states that we assume today did not
happen overnight. To the French in 1945-1946, Indochina remained the guiding structure. And
Nguyen Van Vinh was on to something very important in 1931, when he insisted to Pham Quynh
that it would be "impossible to get the French to admit the existence of an Annamese nation
living independently of the general evolution of their Indochinese creation". (Would Truong
Chinh have made a similar argument about the Comintern?) Whatever the case, for communists
and non-communists alike, the emergence of three states was part of a larger historical process.
Present at the inauguration of the "Associated States" at Pau in 1950, Albert Sarraut would refer
to this passage from Indochina to three distinct states as une création continue. It was a fitting
metaphor pronounced by the very man who had thirty years earlier invited the Vietnamese "to
work together" with the French for the "good of this wonderful Indochina" (see conclusion).
To this, though, we must also note that the Laotian and Cambodian nationalists coming
out of Vichy were particularly reluctant to "join" a French Indochinese Federation in which the
Vietnamese would remain numerically and hence politically preponderant. In the Indochinese
Assembly proposed by the French at Dalat, for instance, the three "Annamese" pays would have
a total of 30 seats (ten each) against the 20 held by the Laotians and Cambodians, and ten by the
282
In many ways, the reluctance of the Laotians and Cambodians to rejoin de Gaulle's
French.
Indochinese Federation in 1945-1946 was less a matter of breaking with the French at all costs
61
than a refusal to accept continued Vietnamese domination of French Indochina. In private
discussions with one of de Gaulle's representatives in 1945, Cambodian nationalist, Son Sann,
explained that if Cambodia had to enter into the Indochinese Federation, then "the Annamese
bureaucrats must be expulsed from Cambodia, for they constitute a danger for the Cambodian
people. They must be replaced by French technicians until Cambodian bureaucrats can be
283
As noted earlier, Nhiek Tioulong told General Alessandri bluntly that Vietnamese
formed".
immigration was a "matter of life and death", while Prince Phetsarath held the French directly
responsible for the near "colonisation" of Laos by the Vietnamese. In 1947, Laotian leaders
stunned the French, when they rejected the request of Prince Vinh Can (cousin to Bao Dai) to
284
reside in Thakhek because he was "Annamese".
One thing was certain. The Vietnamese would never again flow through western
Indochina as smoothly as they had during the colonial period. The inner structural fluidity of
Indochina before the 9 March coup had suddenly hardened as internal Indochinese borders
started rapidly to become national ones. The dominant role the Vietnamese had played in
building Indochina was no longer acceptable for consolidating postwar Laotian and Cambodian
states. It is hardly an accident that after the war the Laotians and Cambodians demanded local
instead of federal control of immigration and security affairs as one of the preconditions to
joining the Indochinese Federation in 1946. It was the key juridical tool to reversing what they
saw as the pre-war "Vietnamisation" of western Indochina by the French. In a political report,
one of the French negotiators of the preliminary talks on the Federation explained this persistent
anti-Indochinese mentality of the Laotians and Cambodians as follows: "Doubtful as such of the
value of French arbitration, many Cambodians came to the conclusion that it would be better for
Laos and Cambodia to participate in a Buddhist Federation in which Siam would be the
federating element rather than to enter into a [French] Indochinese Federation where the non285
Annamese countries would be vastly outnumbered".
However, if the French had "seemed to have forgotten" the non-Viet side of Indochina
before WWII, from 1945 this changed radically. Faced with an increasingly militant Vietnamese
nationalism, the French had to take the Lao, Khmer and ethnic groups more seriously than ever.
Their strategic positions would be essential considerations in the war that raged between the
French and Vietnamese throughout Indochina until 1954 (see below). This constitutes one of the
major ironies of French colonial history in Indochina. At the outset, Admirals sought to
"associate" historic Annamese imperialism with their colonial project in order to channel
Annamese nationalism in their favour against Siamese territorial claims and to make Indochina a
reality. After WWII, they played the Khmer, Lao and ethnic groups against the Vietnamese to
"contain" what they saw as runaway Viet nationalism and the primary threat to the French ability
to hold Indochina together.
62
The Party's Indochinese Federation
Meanwhile, Vietnamese communists were still trying to have it both ways. On the one
hand, the communists were some of the staunchest defenders of Vietnamese unity against the
arguments advanced by Admiral d'Argenlieu in 1946. Two of Ho's main communist
representatives at the first Dalat Conference in April-May 1946, Duong Bach Mai and Vo
Nguyen Giap, defended to the point of tears the idea of "Vietnam" (as did the VNQDD's Nguyen
Tuong Tam). Angered by persistent French associations of Vietnam with Indochina, Mai blurted
out in one heated exchange: "We are not Indochinese. If one were to give them another status,
we would be Vietnamese". To which, a French negotiator shot back: "That is not exactly true.
286
You are Vietnamese, but you are Indochinese after that".
On the other hand, the Vietnamese could think of themselves in Indochinese terms.
Again, there is a kernel of truth to be found in this French observation. By signing the 6 March
Accords, the Vietnamese entered into negotiations to create an Indochinese Federation that
would have juridically turned them into "Indochinese citizens" as part of a larger federal family.
Yet it was also true in another sense. For, if the Vietnamese did not follow Indonesia's lead in
1945 to declare an "Indochinese Nation" as Nguyen An Ninh had dreamed in 1924, the
Indochinese pattern had not been abandoned in communist political thinking. After all, Duong
Bach Mai was one of the founding members of the ICP and the editor in the 1930s of the
communist paper, Le Peuple Indochinois. He was also one of the strongest defenders in the
1930s of the ICP's slogan: "Complete Indochinese Independence". As a ranking Party member,
he must have known as he spoke at Dalat that Vietnamese communists had their own plans for
an Indochinese Federation. If Mai said "no" to the French version, he was not necessarily
against a Vietnamese communist definition of an Indochinese identity.
Even after the ICP was transformed into the "Vietnamese Workers' Party" (Dang Lao
Dong Viet-Nam, VWP for short) in early 1951 and after the French had abandoned their
Indochinese Federal project in favour of three non-communist Associated States, documents
dating from 1950 and 1951 make it clear that the Indochinese model remained the guiding geopolitical state structure for the top Vietnamese communist ideologues of the VWP. In internal
Central Committee documents discussed in the wake of the Chinese communist victory in China,
it was agreed that "Indochina [was] one unit in geographical, economical, political and strategic
terms". Though the revolutionary development of Laos and Cambodia lagged behind Vietnam,
this report continued, the principles of the "New Democratic Revolution" were to be applied by
Vietnamese communists to all three countries of former French Indochina. This meant land
63
reform programmes, anti-feudal measures and creation of state enterprises. The VWP Central
Committee outlined a common political, economic and industrial platform for all of Indochina as
part of a vision of an eventual Indochinese socialist regime. The common political endpoint set
out in this 1950 programme was, according to the Vietnamese original, to form an Indochinese
Federation of Democratic Republics (Lien Bang Cong Hoa Dan Chu Dong Duong) composed of
Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos as the major state components, with the possibility of autonomous
287
In communist documents captured in Hanoi by the American
zones for the ethnic minorities.
intelligence service after WWII, Vietnamese communists had approved directives in the early
288
1940s advocating a new socialist Indochinese state organised "in the form of soviets".
In
289
1949, the Indochinese model was reiterated in internal communist documents.
And one of the
goals of the newly formed VWP remained the creation of a free, democratic and wealthy
290
"Indochinese Federation".
As a late 1951 Party circular put it: "[L]ater, conditions
permitting, the three revolutionary parties of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos could be associated
291
to form: the Party of a Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian Federation".
Were Vietnamese communists continuing historic expansionist patterns of a Ming Manglike nature by taking up the French Indochinese pattern in their political thinking? After all,
even Vietnamese communists conceded that one of the reasons the VWP was created because
the "word Indochina" in the appelation, Indochinese Communist Party, risked offending much
needed western allies, "nationalist Laotian and Cambodian elements who [were] distrustful" of
292
Vietnamese communist intentions in Indochina.
While there were most certainly imperial
impulses in Vietnamese culture and politico-economic development, as I have documented at
length in this essay (and as later Vietnamese communist actions would confirm), it is just not
enough to explain the continuity of the Indochinese pattern in Vietnamese communism at this
point. 1951 is not 1980. We might try going in the other direction. For as in 1930-1931 the
attraction of "Indochina" in Vietnamese communist minds in 1950-1951 had its roots in a
complex historical process, above all in the colonial period, in the Indochinese systems set in
motion by the French and the Vietnamese, and in the Indochinese guidelines demanded by the
International communist movement since the early 1930s. Current research, especially the
outstanding work of Motoo Furuta, shows that pressure coming from the internationalist line was
293
still making itself felt in strong terms in orthodox Vietnamese communist circles after WWII.
The Indochinese model remained a part of this. As one of the guiding principles of the Party
pledge read in the VWP's admission requirements: "I swear that I will, for all my life, sacrifice
myself entirely to the Party of the proletariat of Indochina and to the world proletariat" (cho
dang cua vo san Dong Duong va vo san The Gioi). In another case, a ranking Vietnamese
communist even asked how the appelation, ICP, "could be abandoned given the thousands of
294
comrades who had died in its name".
He was entirely sincere.
64
I would argue that it is historically more useful to situate Truong Chinh's response to
Patti's question on the simultaneous Vietnamese and Indochinese accents in the ICP's nationalist
discourse in terms of the historical currents flowing out of the colonial period and in from the
295
In many ways, the French and
internationalist communist movement since the 1920s.
International Communist emphasis on the Indochinese Federal/Union model linked up on the
ground with the Indochinese transport, communication, economic and educational systems that
had pushed many communist and non-communist nationalists to think in Indochinese terms. As
Truong Chinh conceded to Patti in 1945, Vietnamese communist thinking on the Indochinese
Federation was interwoven with the Indochinese model created by the French. The two were
interconnected. In turn, both the colonial and internationalist currents were positioned on a
deeper stratum of historical and cultural experience that tends to move Vietnamese in
expansionist ways, not unlike the Javanese, Thai, Chinese or Russians. By citing the Soviet
Union or Federation as models, Vietnamese communists were implicitly looking for a way of
recasting a French Indochinese entity as a Vietnamese-led one of a socialist nature. Moreover, it
was a way of holding the incredible cultural and ethnic diversity of Indochina together in
opposition to the French. If the French could not provide the "cement", the Vietnamese felt they
would have to do it. And of course Vietnamese leaders understood as well as the French that the
economic future and defense of Vietnam would always be linked closely to that of Laos and
Cambodia. It was and remains a matter of simple geography.
In many ways, the Indochinese Federation first envisioned by the ICP in the 1930s came
into being as a counter-state, in opposition to French colonialism in Indochina, but nevertheless
modeled on the identical French geo-political conception of Indochina. If one lists Vietnamese
communist debates on "Indochina", it is striking to note just how closely the Vietnamese
communist discourse on Indochina mirrored the Indochinese Federations debated by French and
those conservative Vietnamese aligned with them in 1919-1920, 1930-1931, 1935-1939, 1941296
1942, 1945-1946, and 1950-1951 (the Conference of Pau/Dissolution of the ICP).
This interrelation is perhaps what Truong Chinh and Hoang Minh Giam were referring when they told
Patti that "the three nation-states complex was interwoven in the French notion of the French
Indochina federation". Vietnamese communists probably considered themselves destined to lead
some sort of an Indochinese bloc like the Russian communists were doing in the Soviet Union
(or perhaps the Javanese in Indonesia). This led to a revealing paradox, in that both Admiral
d'Argenlieu and General Secretary Truong Chinh sought to preside over the creation of parallel
though opposing Indochinese Federations. The Secretary General of the ICP, Truong Chinh,
understood as well as the French that if Laotian and Cambodian revolutionary parties—potential
states—could not be assimilated into Indochina in the form of the Indochinese Communist Party
by 1950, then they had to be at least associated along national lines with the VWP and within the
65
larger geo-political confines of an Indochinese structure. In many ways, Truong Chinh was
opposing his own version of "Associated States" to those allied with the French. Thus, the ICP
was truly dissolved in 1951 along national lines, but the Indochinese model continued to guide
the revolutionary activities of Vietnamese communists in the form of an association policy
297
From
aiming at the future creation of a possible Indochinese Federation or Associated States.
the outset, the VWP's Central Committee gave urgent orders "to aid" Laotian and Cambodian
revolutionary governments "in their struggle for independence" and for " the liberation of
Indochina".
As for the Laotians and Cambodians, since the outbreak of the Franco-Vietnamese war in
all of Indochina in late 1946 their strategic positions obligated them to choose between one
Indochina or the other. Remaining outside of the French or Vietnamese conceptions of
Indochina was very difficult, if not dangerous. Truong Chinh would have no doubt agreed with
Admiral d'Argenlieu when the latter rejected Cambodian resistance to France's Indochinese
Federation by instructing General Alessandri "to bring the Khmer to a point of view more in line
with the nature of the facts. Cambodia cannot reasonably constitute, in Indochina, an isolated
298
entity. The geographical, political and economic realities go against it".
Truong Chinh would
put this same "reality" in almost identical language in 1950: "In the war against the French,
Indochina constitutes one single front. The strategy of the counter-offensive must englobe
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (see below). The future of these three countries is closely
connected by geographical and political conditions. Vietnamese independence will not be
299
guaranteed as long as Cambodia and Laos are not liberated".
Or as point 12 of the VWP's
Political Programme explained: "With the aim of serving the common interests of the three
peoples, the Vietnamese people stand ready to ensure a long term cooperation with the Laotian
and Cambodian peoples and to fight to facilitate [the emergence of an] identity of views (identité
300
de vue) among the three peoples, with the goal of the complete liberation of Indochina".
Similarly, if the French sought to consolidate Cambodian and Laotian states through the
local monarchies, Vietnamese communists turned to the Lao Issara and Khmer Issarak(s), as well
as Lao and Khmer Princes who had broken with the French, their policies or allies, or to
"outlaws", "bandits" and family clans led by Dap Chuon or Son Ngoc Thanh, to start assembling
their own counter-Indochinese states in waiting. The extremely close friendship formed between
Prince Souphanouvong, a civil servant at Vinh, and Ho Chi Minh from as early as September
1945 would constitute the VWP's most important Indochinese ally. The Vietnamese continued
forging alliances with Laotian and Cambodian oppositional groups throughout the late 1940s. In
the name of the Party's Central Committee, Truong Chinh concluded the Third National
Congress of 1950 by insisting that the positions of the "Laotian and Cambodian Revolutions
relative to the situation in Indochina, Southeast Asia and the world [were] also Popular
66
Democratic Revolutions, such as in Vietnam, even though in terms of their development certain
differences may appear given the particular conditions of these two countries. The basic and
immediate mission of the Laotian and Cambodian revolutions is one of national liberation [...]".
"On this matter", this document continued, "the Central Committee of the Party will carry out a
careful investigation of the economic and social conditions of Laos and Cambodia" in view to
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outlining the future political guidelines for these countries.
The Party's Indochinese Battlefield, 1950-1954
However, for Vietnamese communists in 1950, it was more than the interactions
emerging from the French colonial period and from the influences of the internationalist
communist movement that were making "Indochina" a reality. It was also a question of fullscale war. Though the ICP was dismantled along national lines in early 1951, the Indochinese
model remained intact as a vital strategic concept and space for the VWP's Central Committee.
An "Inter Allied Conference" was immediately held a few weeks after the formation of the VWP
to form a military "People's Alliance" among the three Indochinese peoples against the French,
coinciding with the "Associated States" announced by Sarraut during the Conference of Pau a
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few months later.
The parallel between French and Vietnamese actions is not without reason.
They both came in the wake of the Chinese communist victory in 1949, one which now provided
Vietnamese communists with a huge rear-area and a massive source of aid on the northern flank.
More than any other factor, it was ironically the victory of the Chinese communists in 1949 and
their crucial aid that allowed the Vietnamese to set their Indochinese strategy into motion. This
was particularly the case as preparations were made for an upcoming General Counter Offensive
against the French. As an internal Party journal put it: "The victories of world democracy and
above all the success of the Chinese Revolution will have a very great influence on the resistance
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With the Chinese now behind them on
of the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian peoples".
the northern flank, Vietnamese strategists were more determined than ever to consolidate all of
Indochina under their control, to link it to an outer Indochinese revolutionary system based in
much of eastern Thailand and southern China (see below), and then to turn both squarely against
the French and their Indochinese allies based in Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane. Orders
given in preparation for the general counter-offensive during the Third National Congress of the
Party in early 1950 made this unequivocally clear. Vietnamese communists considered Laos,
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Cambodia and Vietnam to constitute one, inseparable strategic unit, one "Indochinese Front".
With the northern front now open and military aid on the increase, no longer could Vietnam be
considered apart from its Indochinese context. The strategic stakes were too high given
67
Vietnam's extreme vulnerability to French attacks by sea from the east or from the west through
Laos and Cambodia. This was even more the case as the Americans increased their interest in
Indochinese affairs and tightened their relations with Thailand on Indochina's southwestern
flank. As a Central Committee document approved during this all important Congress read:
The directives of our Central Committee show us that the liberation of the
Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian peoples is one, indivisible operation.
To put it another way: 'The Indochinese war constitutes one Front'.
Indochina is one strategic unit. For the enemy, in his expansionist
colonial plan and his territorial conquest as well as in the defense of his
colonial Empire in Asia, Indochina is considered to be one. For these
reasons as well as for geographical and strategic ones, we cannot and we
must not conceive Vietnam as an independent Front [...] More than ever,
the extension of a war front into Laos and Cambodia is necessary.305
Explicit in this argument is the understanding that the French were conducting their
military operations against the Vietnamese in Indochinese terms, and could thus strike the
Vietnamese resistance and its supply lines from the west with impunity. To the Central
Committee, this French Indochinese advantage could prove strategically dangerous as plans were
made for the counter-offensive. A major resistance strike on southern Vietnam, for example,
could be severed from behind by a French attack from southeastern Laos or northeastern
Cambodia (especially given the French air bases at Pakse and Attopeu and National Route 13
connecting Kratie and Stung Treng provinces to Saigon). This is one of the major, and too often
forgotten differences between the American and French wars. Until 1954, the French High
Command could consider Indochina as one, unified strategic unit. The Laotian and Cambodian
monarchs were always subordinate to greater French military interests in defeating the
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Vietnamese communists.
With Chinese backing, Vietnamese communists were finally in a position to challenge
France's control of the Indochinese battlefield. In a review of the military situation as of July
1950, Truong Chinh explained how the French were using Cambodia as a "springboard" (ban
dap) to attack the south. To him, the French had deliberately moved "to organise Cambodia and
Laos into two separate battlefields". As a result, the Vietnamese had to expand their bases and
take up "guerrilla war" there so that Laos and Cambodia could become "two rear areas from
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which the Vietnamese could attack the French".
Indeed, the evidence shows that military
preparations for creating an "Indochinese Front" had already preceded the Third National
Congress, in view of the strategic implications of the Chinese communist victory in early 1949
68
308
and in reaction to concurrent French attempts to expand their presence in Laos and Cambodia.
In August 1949, for example, the Party had already directed its cadres to open the Laotian and
Cambodian fronts in a move to transform "Indochina [into] one battlefield". Vietnamese
communist cadres were sent to Laos and Cambodia to make concerted efforts to build Laotian
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and Cambodian resistance parties from zones in western Vietnam and eastern Thailand.
This Indochinese thinking was particularly true for the Commander in Chief of the Army
and Minister of Defense, General Vo Nguyen Giap. To him, any war in Vietnam would have to
include Laos and Cambodia. As Giap outlined the Central Committee's Indochinese-wide
strategy for the upcoming General Counter-Offensive in early 1950: "From a territorial point of
view, our strategic goal is to retake all of Indochina. That means Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia,
from China to the Point of Camau and from the coast of Dong Nai to the Mekong [Laos] and the
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Northern Vietnam would be the main battlefield, given its
Dangrek Massif [Cambodia]".
proximity to China, followed by the south, and then Laos and Cambodia. In another instance,
General Giap had this Indochinese strategic idea firmly in mind when he explained the counteroffensive by emphasising that "Indochina is one strategic unit and one battlefield." And, "for
this reason, and especially because of the strategic terrain, we cannot consider Vietnam to be
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independent so long as Cambodia and Laos are under imperialist domination [...]".
This was
the beginning of a remarkable Indochinese strategic, economic and administrative space which
Giap would baptise the "Indochinese Battlefield"—Dong Duong la mot chien truong—and
which would complement Truong Chinh's political vision of an Indochinese Federation of a
socialist nature.
But whatever the propaganda, none of this was easy. "During the last two years", Truong
Chinh admitted in 1950, "we have made efforts to develop the guerrilla war and to constitute
liberation zones in Laos and Cambodia. [...] But it has not been sufficient. We do not yet have a
precise plan for the synchronisation of Vietnamese military activities in these two countries".
With this problem in mind, a Central Committee order explained during the Third National
Congress that there had to be "unity of command from a political point of view as much as from
a military one in our relations with Laos and Cambodia". Directives were outlined to enlarge the
liberated zones in Laos and Cambodia, to unify the chain of command, to form footholds for the
Laotian and Cambodian revolutionary movements, and to create more Laotian and Cambodian
cadres as a part of remaking Indochina. Economic plans targeted the industrial development of
Indochina and the elimination of "feudal vestiges" (but not necessarily royal influences) in view
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of forming a socialist regime.
As for the various Laotian and Cambodian resistance groups (dissident family clans
might be more accurate) allied with the Viet Minh, they would find themselves moving within a
Vietnamese Indochinese entity. In May 1950, an ICP journal stated that because Vietnam "was
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the major front," the Vietnamese would naturally make the decisions for each front in
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Vietnamese communists also reserved the right to set up revolutionary
Indochina.
organisations in Cambodia and Laos "in line with the circumstances" in Vietnam, for the VWP
had "the responsibility to assist in leading the comrades and organisations of the Cambodian and
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revolutions towards winning final victory."
This gave rise to an irony where the Cambodian
and Laotian resistance organisations often found their policies subordinate to larger Vietnamese
strategic interests, as much as the royal governments in Vientiane and Phnom Penh faced similar
limitations in terms of France's larger interests in defeating the same Vietnamese.
However, abstract notions of an "Indochinese space" or "front" had little concrete
meaning to Vo Nguyen Giap unless they could be linked concretely on the ground. Saying that
an Indochinese Battlefield or "space" was a reality was one thing, setting it into motion was quite
another. In other words, we must ask ourselves at this point what the Vietnamese communists
were doing in Laos and Cambodia to turn this Indochinese Battlefield on the French in effective
ways, just as we explored the ways in which the Vietnamese flowed with the French in
Indochina before WWII. Like the French, the Vietnamese communists had to make Indochina
move. To do this, they had to foster the development of an Indochinese counter-bureaucracy,
economy, resistance movements among the Lao, Khmer and ethnic minorities, a system of land,
river, canal and sea routes—in short, they had to organise the people, resources and
communication systems in opposition to the French. This is what the VWP tried to do. As
Truong Chinh put it to the Third National Congress, the Indochinese Front depended on the
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"general mobilisation of the human, intellectual and material resources".
Let us try to move
our way back down to the ground to see what he had in mind exactly.
Cambodia was a crucial part of translating this Indochinese strategic concept into action.
Orders sent by Giap and his staff to military officials in the south from 1949 show us just how
serious the High Command was about Cambodia’s role in the General Counter Offensive. As
Chinese communists were consolidating their hold on southern China, an "Extraordinary
Conference of Political-Administrative-Military Cadres of the Cambodia-Vietnamese Front" was
held in February 1949 under the direction of Nguyen Thanh Son, director of Nam Bo's External
Affairs Office (Ban ngoai vu), concerning the situation in Cambodia and the actions to be taken
by the Viet Minh there in the coming months. The mainly Vietnamese leaders of this meeting
gave orders to connect eastern Cambodian provinces politically, militarily and administratively
to southern Vietnam. More military action teams, the famous bo doi, were sent to Cambodia to
organise the Viet Minh's activities there. The External Affairs Office issued more directives
(though not necessarily implemented) to organise the Cambodian resistance movement at the
district and provincial levels and to form more Cambodian cadres to work in the politico-military
administration. Discussions outlined the major propaganda themes to be used towards the
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Khmer and Viet populations. Meanwhile, this group of southern Vietnamese discussed
economic plans to tap the rich resources of eastern and northwestern Cambodia by binding these
areas to a larger Vietnamese command and transport system. Rice production in particular had
to be increased to finance the Indochinese Battlefield. In fact, Vietnam's relations with
Cambodia were first truly outlined by Nguyen Thanh Son in 1948, in what was originally called
the "Nguyen Thanh Son Plan", that aimed to form a Provisional Cambodian Government,
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Popular Front and a Cambodian administrative, economic and military structure.
The importance of Cambodia in Giap's Indochinese space was made clear in March 1950,
only a few weeks after the Third National Congress, when Nguyen Thanh Son addressed
Vietnamese and Cambodian revolutionaries at the "First Congress of Cadres in Cambodia". The
importance of this ten-day meeting aimed at setting a Cambodian revolutionary party and
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southern Indochinese theatre into motion cannot be underestimated.
The VWP headquarters
issued orders to link the Cambodian Front under Thanh's personal direction to the economic,
administrative and military structures in southern Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. With
instructions from General Giap, Nguyen Thanh Son argued in this Cadres Meeting for increased
aid to Cambodian resistance groups in order to boost the Vietnamese strategic position in all of
Indochina, and to create an international communication line to the Southeast Asian region as a
whole:
If Cambodia seeks to ensure its victory, it must open and consolidate, at
any price, an international line of communications between Cambodia and
Nam Bo. Simultaneously, it must also create and consolidate a western
communications line with Thailand and one in the north with Laos. Of
particular importance is the communications line with Thailand that will
ensure the supplying of the Resistance. These lines of international
communications are of vital importance for all the Indochinese Peninsula
in view of the revolutionary alliance of the Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, Thai,
Malaya peoples of Southeast Asia.318
Son's joining of Southeast Asia to Indochina by way of Thailand in 1950 is no accident.
Since March 1945, as I have shown elsewhere, a sophisticated network of communist land and
sea bases, under the direction of the DRV's "Southeast Asian Delegation" at Bangkok, had
provided the Vietnamese resistance with an extremely important opening to Southeast Asia and
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the world.
This was still the case in early 1950. Indeed, Nguyen Thanh Son had first
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prepared the directives for this March Congress in Bangkok in November 1949.
But what
made Thailand so important to the Viet Minh resistance in terms of the Indochinese battlefield
71
was that its eastern bases—strategically positioned between Bangkok, May Rut, Ubon
Ratchathani and Udon Thani—served to channel a Southeast Asian and international arms trade
straight into Indochina's backdoor by sea and land routes. The Viet Minh's contacts with Thai
officials at the highest levels between 1943 and mid-1950 (including both Phibun Songkhram
and Pridi Phanomyong), the massive amounts of arms flooding Thailand after WWII, and the
large population of overseas Vietnamese placed along the entire western Indochinese border and
at the port city of Chantaboun provided the Viet Minh with financial donations and tax revenues,
a bilingual rear-guard, and above all a network of sympathetic Vietnamese-speaking
communities who would help link Indochina to Southeast Asia by providing manpower, shelter,
young army recruits, transporters, important contacts with Thai national leaders, army officials,
local authorities at the border, or with arms traffickers, opium dealers and indispensable Chinese
go-betweens. From Bangkok, the representatives of the DRV's Southeast Asian Delegation
made arms deals in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, and as far as Czechoslovakia, Italy
and Sweden. A very large Soviet Legation was there as well, not to mention the Chinese trade
and channels based in Bangkok. Besides the Chinese, the Thai Navy (closely allied after WWII
with Pridi Phanomyong) provided important logistic and material aid to the Viet Minh's
maritime networks, while Pridi's former Free Thai (Seri Thai) allies still active in northeast
Thailand (Tieng Serikhan for example) made arms depots in Khorat and land routes available to
the Viet Minh agents running contraband into Indochina. Thai trains, complete with Seri Thai
and Viet Minh escorts, transported arms from Bangkok to Poipet. This line was soon dubbed the
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"Far-West Train", the "artery of the clandestine commerce between Cambodia and Siam".
Even Lt. General Phin Chunhawan, the father of former Prime Minister Chatichai Chunhawan,
"donated" 10,000 rifles to Ho Chi Minh's secret agents in late 1945 to turn Indochina into a
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Thailand—its geography, transport systems and leaders—were quite simply a
battlefield.
crucial part of the Viet Minh's consolidation of Indochina. That Thailand was vital to the Party's
Indochinese battlefield was symbolised nicely in January 1947, when General Vo Nguyen Giap
personally ordered the creation of the "Western Front" (Mat Tran Mien Tay) war zone that ran
down both sides of the Thai-Indochinese border. From the Ban Mai Rut relay, it was in turn
linked simultaneously by clandestine radio and sea and land routes to his deputies in Nam Bo
(Nguyen Thanh Son) and the DRV's Delegation in Bangkok (Nguyen Duc Quy/Tran Van Giau).
These inner and extra-Indochinese links were reinforced by communist cadres formed in
northeast Thailand during the 1920s and 1930s. General Hoang Sam, born and raised in Oubon,
was Commander in Chief of the United Laotian Fronts in 1950-1951. He oversaw liaisons
between northern Vietnam and upper northeast Thailand. Nguyen Tai, also formed in Thailand
during the 1930s, ran Giap's Northern Laotian Action Committee linking Inter-zone 4 to
northeast Thailand as well. And then there is Hoang Van Hoan, a top ranking ICP Central
72
Committee member close to Ho Chi Minh who had played a key role in the ICP's affairs in Siam
between 1928 and 1935. He returned to Thailand in 1948 to revamp the Party's activities there.
As he explained the importance of the Western Front in relation to the Party's Indochina since
1946: "Thailand is presently the surest gateway between the international community and the
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In brief, Giap and Chinh were setting Indochina
Vietnamese and Indochinese resistances".
into motion from the inside and the outside, and they were doing it with some of the best cadres
available.
Nguyen Thanh Son was at the heart of these two systems, Head of External Affairs for
Nam Bo, Chief of the Cambodian Front, longtime member of the ICP, and above all in direct
radio contact with the VWP's Southeast Asian delegation in Bangkok and the Ministry of
Defense in northwestern Vietnam. He had himself traveled secretly to Bangkok as recently as
December 1949 to make preparations to revamp southern Indochina from the east and west.
What makes this March 1950 Cambodian Congress so significant, though, is that in preparation
for the Counter Offensive, the Vietnamese High Command was consolidating its communication
lines across Cambodia in order to tie Vietnam both to an Indochinese politico-militaryadministrative space and a Southeast Asian one. Cambodia's "body"—not necessarily her
leaders—would be central to the Viet Minh's ability to link its Indochinese operations to its
military and economic bases operating simultaneously out of northwestern and southwestern
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Vietnam and eastern Thailand.
As Nguyen Thanh Son had already explained in a secret
report to the DRV’s Ministry of Defense, aid now had to be increased to the Cambodian
operations and resistance in order to boost the Vietnamese resistance's position in Southeast
Asia: "One must sever the enemy's lines of communication from Laos, Battambang, and from
Phnom Penh towards Saigon. A large military base in western Cambodia, from the right bank of
the Mekong to the Thai frontier, must be created so as to enlarge the route towards Southeast
Asia". Two sectors were needed: a "communications and economic war" zone east of the
Mekong and a "military and political" one in the west. Plans were simultaneously outlined for
forming a Provisional Government of Independent Cambodia as well as preparations for
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Son went
developing its administration, cadres, military affairs and economic development.
further in the section of his report entitled The Military Role of the Khmer Revolution in the
Indochinese Front. He explained how the French High Command conceived its military strategy
in Indochinese terms and how the Vietnamese were now seeking to turn this idea against the
French as part of the General Counter-Offensive plans. He urged the Cambodians to focus their
military efforts on preventing the French from attacking the Vietnamese resistance zones from
the west, while pledging the Vietnamese would do their best to block a French offensive against
them coming from Vietnam. Son even explained that Cambodia would provide the Indochinese
73
front with an important southern base in case the Americans would attack from the southwestern
326
flank—from Thailand.
However, parallel to this strategic conception of Cambodia's place in Indochina, there
was also an ideological one. The two were connected. During the Third National Congress,
Truong Chinh had already given specific orders "to reinforce the official power of the Laotian
and Cambodian resistances" (i.e. state power) and to continue "to direct the resistance of the
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Laotian and Cambodian until the final victory".
In a discussion of the Nature and Mission of
the Khmer Revolution, Son explained the VWP's view that the Cambodian revolution was above
all one of national liberation designed to garner the complete "independence" of and establish
"democracy" in Cambodia. However, Son made it clear that given "Cambodia's position on the
Indochinese chessboard, the Khmer Revolution would have to be placed under the direction of
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the Indochinese proletariat".
Of the 9 Principle Points of the Khmer Revolution outlined that
day by Son, the eighth one called for the eventual "formation of a Federal Republic of
Indochina" and entry into the "World Democratic Front". With the Chinese communists on their
northern flank and with an eye on the possibility of eventual victory against the French, the
Vietnamese sought effectively to incorporate the Cambodian and Laotian resistance movements
into a larger Vietnamese directed Indochinese entity, in turn, a part of the International
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communist family.
In a clear reference to this March meeting, Radio Nam Bo announced that
on 12 March 1950 a meeting between Khmer Issarak members, including Keomoni and Son
Ngoc Minh, and Viet Minh officials as important as Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, Nguyen Thanh Son,
Duong Quoc Chinh and General Nguyen Binh, had outlined plans to form a "Provisional
Cambodian Government". Led by a ranking Central Committee member, Le Duc Tho, this
meeting established the political, economic, and social line of the Cambodian Party and
330
Government that would bring about "the amelioration of the well-being of the Khmer people".
A day earlier, the VWP had formed the "Vietnamese-Lao-Khmer Allied Front", with Prince
Souphanouvong and Sieu Heng representing the Laotian and Cambodian movements
331
respectively.
If the "word Indochina" had not been pronounced, it was clear that the hyphens
in Viet-Mien-Lao continued to give real meaning to such a concept of space.
Summing up the VWP's Cambodian policy, Son explained that Indochina had to be
"consolidated" and "fused" militarily, strategically, economically and politically. Just as the
Japanese and French High Commands had linked Cambodia to Vietnam, the Vietnamese would
332
do the same.
Plans were outlined to bind all of eastern Cambodia to war zones in western
Nam Bo as part of a larger "Mekong Front" to include parts of Laos and Central Vietnam. This
was followed in mid-April by the formation of a "United Khmer Issarak Front" and a
"Provisional Central Committee of the People's Liberation of Cambodia" during the "First
Congress of the Khmer Resistance". According to its political programme, the Unified Khmer
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Issarak Front was to be part of a larger "Indochinese National Unified Front" and an even larger
333
In Laos, on 13 August 1950, Prince
world Democratic Front led by the USSR.
Souphanouvong announced formation of the "Government of Free Laos". As in Cambodia, the
VWP instructed its commanders to link Laotian war zones more closely to their Vietnamese
opposites in Inter-Zones IV and V. Of particular strategic importance was Giap's Lower Laotian
Regional Zone (Khu Ha Lao) commanded from Interzone IV by Hoang Minh Thao, commander
334
of the Laotian Front (Mat tran Lao).
In Cambodia, the VWP re-issued directives to
Vietnamese communist action teams in southern Indochina to revamp and link all Cambodian
revolutionary affairs to corresponding war zones in Vietnam and bases in eastern Thailand as
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part of a bigger theatre of operations.
On 14 June 1950, Le Duc Tho reported to his superiors
that "the peoples of the three States of Indochina must fight France within the ranks of the World
Democratic Front under the direction of the Soviet Union [...]". Five days later, the Voice of
Nam Bo (Tieng Nam Bo) published a statement by General Giap praising the organisation of
these Indochinese resistance organisations. He insisted that "Indochina [was] from this point one
unique Battlefield. No longer [could] Vietnam be considered apart from Laos and Cambodia in
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the struggle against the common enemy".
This was accelerated as preparations were made to bring the VWP to life. On 8 February
1951, Le Duc Tho outlined in quoc ngu the provisional statutes for the forthcoming "Cambodian
People's Revolutionary Party". He assigned the External Affairs Committee of Nam Bo the task
337
of implementing these directives.
Simultaneous attempts were made to form the "Neo Lao
338
Issara Front" and the "Lao Independence Party".
In August 1951, the VWP's Activating
Committee for the Creation of the Cambodian People's Revolutionary Party (Ban Van Dong
Thanh Lap Dang Nhan Dan Cach Mang Cao Mien) approved and issued directives in
Vietnamese for the creation, organisation and administration of the Cambodian People's
Revolutionary Party, much as the French had been doing for the creation of the Laotian and
Cambodian states since 1946. The goal was to develop and consolidate a "revolutionary
adminstration" and construct a "Khmer Nation" in close collaboration with the Laotians and
339
In the wake of the dissolution of the ICP in February 1951, the French 2ème
Vietnamese.
Bureau intercepted orders from the Party in Vietnam to its cadres in Thailand concerning the
measures to be taken to create Laotian and Cambodian states in alliance with the Vietnamese.
Again, Vietnamese controlled areas would serve "to constitute the base for the development of
Laotian and Cambodian liberation governments and troops". Orders were issued to build state
administrations, to increase the standard of living of the Laotian and Cambodian peoples, to
improve their level of education, to eradicate illiteracy, and to diffuse more effective
propaganda. It would be part of a larger Indochinese economy, communication system, politicomilitary administration, and combined army for Laotian and Cambodian revolutionaries. More
75
special Vietnamese teams were dispatched in 1952 to set this Indochinese-wide political
340
structure firmly into motion.
However, the results were far from successful. Despite Le Duc Tho's blueprints for
Laotian and Cambodian revolutionary parties, a 1964 Vietnamese military command meeting
revealed that between 1951 and 1954 the Vietnamese had a very hard time forming an authentic
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Central Committee for the Cambodian Party.
It appears that the Vietnamese may have
established some sort of a Provisional Committee which was headed by Tou Samouth and his
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deputy, Sieu Heng.
French intelligence concurred, writing that the Vietnamese failed in 1952
to bring to life a Laotian People's Party (Dang Nhan Dan Lao). Laotian "communists" were
instead attached to the "VWP's Laotian Section" in Laos (Bo Phan Dang Lao Dong Viet Nam o
Lao) Meanwhile, Vietnamese communists had to hold "A Conference for the Military and
Administrative Reorgansiation of Free Cambodia" in Ha Tien. There they revamped plans to
train Khmer cadres through special politico-military schools, strengthen the Cambodian
resistance administration, and to assign a "Committee of Vietnamese Advisers" to help Son
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Ngoc Minh form a "Popular Cambodian Government".
This is one level of the Indochinese Battlefield that Vo Nguyen Giap and Truong Chinh
were trying to build. It was above all a strategic space, but also a state building process. Despite
the difficulties this engendered (and there were many), parallel Cambodian and Laotian states
were taking form within two opposing though inter-connected French- and Vietnamese-led
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Indochinese systems.
This counter Indochinese space was backed up in material terms on the ground.
Vietnamese communists created a inter-connected Indochinese politico-military administration
from 1950, by linking large parts of Cambodia and Laos to western Vietnamese war zones and to
the National Defense in northwestern Vietnam in direct radio, land and sea contact with the
DRV's Delegation in Bangkok and subordinate communists bases throughout eastern
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The Vietnamese made the decisions for the whole of the Indochinese Battlefield.
Thailand.
They divided Laos and Cambodia into military and administrative zones. And as during the
French colonial period, Vietnamese cadres, soldiers, secretaries, doctors, nurses, radio operators,
navigators and teachers were sent westwards from Nam Bo and eastwards from Thailand to
make Indochina work, but this time against the French, not with them. In Cambodia, military
personnel were paid in rice plus 1$50 piastres a day or 2$50 without rice, whereas civil servants
were paid 2$00, while the Viet Minh's Economic Committee in Nam Bo provided the needed
346
subsidies for running the Viet Minh's Cambodian administration.
"Liberation Committees"
were consolidated at the provincial levels in Laos and Cambodia and as the conduits into the
Viet Minh's larger Indochinese bureaucracy. Vietnamese officials levied taxes on cars, trucks
347
and junks traversing the road and canal networks under their direction in western Indochina.
76
Maps of Indochina were clandestinely procured from former colonial libraries, commissioned by
the Vietnamese High Command or seized from the enemy during ambushes. Even Vietnamese
language road and naval guides replaced the tourist ones of the 1930s, while the trucking, bus
and junk services that Vietnamese entrepreneurs had run in the 1930s were now transformed into
revolutionary transport services (ban van tai) flowing against the French, but always oriented
towards Vietnam. Secret and complex trails were built between bases in southern Vietnam into
eastern Cambodia to deliver bureaucratic correspondence, financial funds, newspapers, and
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The Viet Minh even created an Indochinese postal service to deliver
instruction manuals.
much awaited letters from loved ones in the east. This network was complete with resistance
"mailmen" and postage stamps covering all of Indochina and reaching as far as Thailand and
349
southern China.
The Vietnamese carefully mapped, like the French, and organised the
complex network of canals linking southern Vietnam and southeastern Cambodia to a very
rudimentary though amazingly functional counter-system serving their sea routes running to
Hainan, Bangkok and the Philippines. Junks and sampans were built, bought or rented to serve
as Viet Minh transport carriers (sometimes equipped with radios but always with special agents)
350
as a part of Nam Bo's Maritime Service.
Fishermen along the coast or on the Tonle Sap were
incorporated into a "remarkable system", as one French naval officer put it, which warned the
Viet Minh's "navy" of approaching French patrols. "It is the Viet Minh relay post (tram)," he
351
said, "that serves both as a traffic centre and coast watching station".
Another French officer
in charge of destroying the Viet Minh's Mekong canal system in Cambodia and southern
Vietnam explained this Indochinese river war in 1951 as follows: "In this troubled period we are
now experiencing, this "aquatic" characteristic [of Cambodia and Vietnam] requires an important
military activity. [To this end], the forces of the French Union seek to preserve the utilisation and
to maintain the benefits of this system, so as to deny it to the Viet Minh, and to use it as a way of
352
Control of the canal and Mekong river network in
reaching the Viet Minh and to strike him".
Cambodia meant being able to move and transport men, resources and arms between the Tonle
353
Sap, southern Vietnam, southern Laos and even Thailand.
Meanwhile, one of Giap's top delegates stationed in Thailand since early 1946, Tran Van
Giau, created special transport teams called Overseas Military Groups (Bo Doi Hai Ngoai) to
transport arms, radio equipment and medical supplies to Nam Bo in exchange for gold, piastres,
and exportable products such as rice, pepper and opium. This in turn was sold in Thai markets
354
and beyond to finance further arms purchases.
Giau organised relatively sophisticated though
not always successful transport teams named Mekong II-III-IV, Tran Phu and Quang Trung to
carry by land and sea routes arms and medicines to the southern resistance. Overseas
Vietnamese in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia provided his recruits, guides and navigators, while
maritime relays (tram) and resistance entrepôts were scattered along the coast of the Gulf of
77
Siam and the inner islands, such as Phu Quoc and along land routes running north and south of
the Tonle Sap. The Viet Minh's tram at Mai Rut, located at the extreme southeastern tip of
Thailand, played a key role in channeling contraband from Thailand to southern Vietnam into
355
In 1946, for example, the Viet Minh delivered successfully 20 tons of arms
the early 1950s.
356
across Indochina by Giau's transport teams.
Between 1949 and 1950, according to French
intelligence, these mobile transport units transported 13 tons of contraband a month between
357
Nam Bo and Thailand—that is, 156 tons a year.
As for the water routes, in the third trimester
of 1947, the French Navy seized 250 tons of contraband, but admitted that it was probably only a
fraction of the arms getting through to Vietnam by sea. The French Navy gives us an idea,
however, of the size of this contraband in 1950, when its gunners sank 4,151 Viet Minh junks
and seized 1,891 tons of merchandise, followed by 5,998 sunken junks in 1952 at a cost of 2,824
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tons of merchandise.
According to Viet Minh statistics recovered by the French, 50% of this
Vietnamese maritime contraband was either seized by the French or "dumped" by the
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Vietnamese to avoid confiscation.
I have been unable to determine how much of the rest was
actually channeled successfully into Indochinese relays, but it must have been sizable.
This ground link between Southeast Asia and Indochina was clear in the orders that had
been given to Tran Van Giau in Bangkok in 1947 to attach the southern Vietnamese resistance
economy to outlets in Thailand. Of a particular interest was the need to export large quantities of
rice (estimated at 65.000 tons in one case) to markets in Thailand, Sumatra and Hong Kong, as
well as fish, poultry, animal skins, and pepper exports. $500.000 piastres were allotted to the
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creation of an import-export "company" in Thailand.
While I have been unable to confirm
whether this was ever implemented, one can see from these documents that the Viet Minh had
every intention to link its Indochinese economy to a Southeast Asian market by way of
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Meanwhile, the Viet Minh created other Indochinese land routes to import convoys
Thailand.
carrying salt across Laos from southern China to northwestern Vietnam and from Siam by
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sampan.
These land, sea and canal routes worked thanks to Vietnamese agents and transporters
sent from Vietnam or recruited from overseas Vietnamese communities living in Laos,
Cambodia and Thailand or among former Vietnamese employees of the French Yunnanese
railway, fluent in Chinese and strategically placed on the northern border to channel this Asian
arms traffic into Indochina by land and sea. They worked as the "boys", guides, cooks, sailors
and manual labourers, while teams of elephants, oxen-pulled carts, horses, bicycles, pirogues and
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junks allowed them to set this inter and extra-Indochinese revolutionary space into motion.
Small-scale industries were formed to construct junks and to supply the resistance with beasts of
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burden and Vietnamese "coolies".
Carefully mapped but always changing relays marked the
halts along these land and water routes on the ground. Agents in these posts guided Viet Minh
78
convoys from Thailand across Cambodia and Laos to reach Nam Bo and central Vietnam, as
365
well as provided them logistical support, maps, compasses, food and armed escorts. Identity
cards and passes printed in quoc ngu were carefully distributed to these moving cadres so that
they could circulate orderly and officially within the Vietnamese Indochinese system (though it
366
was never this easy).
From above, this increasingly sophisticated politico-military
bureaucracy was coordinated by a relatively complex network of radios (far from perfect) that
linked Indochinese posts to the Ministry of Defense under Vo Nguyen Giap's direction and to
367
Southeast Asian posts in Bangkok, Rangoon, New Delhi, Hong Kong and Manila.
My point is that what made this "Indochinese space" for the Viet Minh was not some
abstract strategic concept. It was the men, women, trails, maps, elephants, junks, sampans and
relay posts. The Indochinese Battlefield was this "moving space", administered as much from
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the inside as from the outside.
The "Western Front" in Thailand linked to the Laotian and
Cambodian Fronts were all part of Giap's Indochina in 1950. However, in order to "move" it, it
had to be linked. And only people and their networks could circulate the agricultural products,
contraband trade, or be in a position to foster and associate the Cambodian and Laotian
resistances with the Vietnamese one. It would be a serious mistake to think that VWP leaders
controlled Indochina like the French. They did not and they never did. What is notable,
however, is the extent to which Giap went to concentrate an Indochinese space in his favour in
the fight for Vietnam. Everything that went into the twining of Laotian and Cambodian
resistance zones to their Vietnamese opposites was symbolic of the rebonding of the two sides of
the former French colonial bloc into a counter economic, administrative and military space.
Moreover, there was continuity between French Indochina and the Vietnamese Indochinese
Battlefield in that both systems moved Vietnamese beyond their traditional politico-cultural
boundaries or "bamboo hedges", and linked them to a larger Indochinese realm and a Southeast
Asian region in ways never before dreamed by Gia Long. General Giap's Indochina sent
thousands of Vietnamese in new directions—deep into jungles of Laos and Cambodia or aboard
junks far into the Gulf of Thailand or the South China Sea (though I think the Chinese were still
the ones in charge of these junks). One could even argue that Vietnamese revolutionaries often
knew the geography of Laos, Cambodia, eastern Thailand, and the sea and land routes
connecting them better than the Laotians, Cambodians, or Thai. For just as geography had
played a key role in the European conquest of Indochina, so too would it be integral to its
369
But unlike the Indochinese transport systems and geography
reconquest by the colonised.
described by Nguyen Tien Lang in Indochine, la douce or in his essays on southern Vietnam's
matrix of canals in La Dépêche Coloniale, Giap's Indochinese Battlefield was based on a
wartime system that created routes where they had never existed before or tapped more ancient
means of moving between eastern and western Indochina.
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However, as during the French colonial period, it was the Vietnamese who were making
this inner and extra-Indochinese Battlefield work. Vietnamese cadres were "transferred" from
Laos to Cambodia and then on to Nam Bo and so on. The five components of the Viet Minh's
politico-military administration were interconnected by special decrees, transport services and
370
More than one Laotian or Cambodian elite has remarked
trained "resistance" civil servants.
on how he seemed to have been simply forgotten in the midst of Vietnamese and French notions
of Indochina. The former remained, for the most part, in relatively low-level positions in the
Viet Minh's Indochinese bureaucracy, and rarely thought of going east to work in the Nam Bo
resistance like the Vietnamese were going west to work in Cambodia, Laos, or in outer
Indochinese bases in Thailand or southern China. In Laos, the Vietnamese preponderance was
even greater. In April 1951, for example, a ranking member of the Western Laotian Front
conceded in a Political Report that the administrative power of the Laotian revolutionary
apparatus "had been in the hands of the Vietnamese" before early 1950. Since then, the Viet
Minh had made an effort to bring more Laotian into the administration, but it remained
inadequate. Lao Issara commanders often had to get official authorisation from Viet Minh units
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in upper Laos to allow the free circulation of their men and supplies.
They did not run the
system.
Like the French during the colonial period, Vietnamese communists found the formation
of Cambodian and Laotian cadres one of the most difficult and persistent obstacles to building a
truly shared Indochina. It may not be an accident that the ranking Cambodian allies working
within the Vietnamese Indochinese system were often Khmer Krom, ethnic Khmer from
Vietnam who spoke and often wrote Vietnamese. For example, Son Ngoc Minh, also known as
Pham Van Hua, had been a member of the ICP since 1932, whereas in Laos Kaysone
Phoumvihane was the son of a Vietnamese bureaucrat and Prince Souphanouvong was married
to a Vietnamese. Both of them had been trained in eastern Indochina during the colonial period,
both spoke Vietnamese and both would be two of Hanoi's strongest Indochinese allies well into
the 1980s. (Even Nouhak Phoumsavan was recruited from his position as a truck driver on the
372
roads running between Laos and Annam prior to the end of WWII).
Trained Laotian and Cambodian cadres were very important. They were key to
penetrating the Laotian and Cambodian masses. The commanders of the opposing French and
Vietnamese southern Indochinese front both bemoaned, in private, the "indifference" and
"laziness" of the Laotians and the Cambodians, and the problems this posed for getting them to
think of state building priorities or the fight either against the "communists" or the "colonialists".
Khmer and Lao peasants were often (not always) on the outside looking in as Viet Minh or
French convoys passed through the village. But it was war. Both the French and the
Vietnamese needed to "win over" these western Indochinese populations through "pacification"
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or "liberation" campaigns. The French had Sihanouk and the major road networks at their
disposal. The Vietnamese did not. In June 1952, it was decided by the Vietnamese to create
politico-military schools in every Cambodian province to be run by Khmer-speaking Vietnamese
cadres. A Committee of Vietnamese Counselors was also attached to Son Ngoc Minh's team to
help him form a stronger state apparatus. Khmer cadres were also sent to southern Vietnam for
more special training, while the major Lao Issara revolutionaries studied abroad in special Nghe
An cadre schools (in a pattern that would be continued well into the 1980s). Meanwhile, the
373
French were doing much the same thing.
However, in contrast to the French who were having trouble filling the vacant places left
by the Vietnamese "Indochinese" civil servants since 1945, Vietnamese communists could turn
the colonial patterns of Vietnamese immigration in western Indochina in their favour. Indeed, it
was often the Vietnamese immigration that the French had facilitated throughout Cambodia and
Laos before WWII that would allow Vietnamese communists to recruit the crucial Vietnamesespeaking personnel for their Indochinese politico-military bureaucracy from 1945. Directions
were sent to local communist working offices (I am thinking here of the all powerful Ban Cong
Tac (Action Committees) and Ban Can Su (Cadres Committees) to draw its staff, messengers,
and guides from the Vietnamese communities located in the rubber plantations of eastern
Cambodia, workers and bureaucrats at Phnom Penh, the fishermen of the Tonle Sap, at the Thai
port of Chantaboun, Bangkok or among the thousands of Vietnamese living in the northeastern
Thailand—just across the Mekong from all of Laos, and a little over one hundred kilometres
from central Vietnam. The French Expeditionary Corps provided the communists with more
recruits in early 1946, when General Alessandri's reoccupation of Thakhek and Vientiane sent
thousands of Vietnamese refugees across the Mekong and straight into some of the ICP's best
organised bases in all of Southeast Asia—in Nong Khai, Udon Thani and Nakhon Phanom. A
large number of them were highly trained radio operators, telegraphists, former colonial troops
374
and much needed mechanics and nurses. Many were soon circulated throughout the system.
On the inside, the Indochinese level of the Viet Minh's organisation in Laos and
Cambodia remained in Vietnamese hands. Using French intelligence charts of the Viet Minh's
organisation in Laos and Cambodia, I have been able to determine that of the approximately 95
posts in the all-powerful Cadres Committees (Ban Can Su) functioning in the provinces of
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Kompong Cham, Kratie and Stung Treng in 1953, at least 65 were held by Vietnamese.
In
Cambodia, the VWP's Overseas Vietnamese Patriotic Ligue in Cambodia provided at least
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10,443 Vietnamese members in 1949.
In 1950, 2,000 Vietnamese coolies in Cambodian
rubber plantations crossed over to the resistance. In brief, Vietnamese immigrant communities
in Laos and Cambodia provided the crucial stepping stones needed for the creation of a larger
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Indochinese administrative and military space, running all the way across the Mekong River to
377
link up with an extra-Indochinese one that was directed by the DRV's Delegation Thailand.
Nguyen Binh and the Southern Indochinese Operational Front
One of the most remarkable examples, however, of how the Vietnamese High Command
sought to turn Indochina against the French is to be found in the detailed reports written by
Giap's military counterpart in the south, General Nguyen Binh, on the creation of a Southern
Indochinese Operational Front (Can Cu Mien Nam Dong Duong) to complement the northern
one under Giap's personal command. Though Binh was killed during his mission into the heart
of northeastern Cambodia in September 1951, the French recovered his reports and those of his
378
economics adviser and confidant, Vo Ba Nhac.
What makes Binh's strategic reflections so
remarkable is the extent to which he and Giap were determined to take total control of all of
Indochina in the battle against the French. The victory of the Chinese communists and
Vietnam's entry into the socialist camp and Phibun's closure of the "Western Front" would make
the creation of a southern front indispensable as the Counter Offensive was stepped up. This
was even more the case if the French would have to drop back to the south or if the Americans
decided to take a stand against China by introducing their troops through southern Vietnam or
eastern Thailand. Binh was convinced that if war broke out between the "socialist" and
"capitalist" camps in Southeast Asia, southern Indochina would be the main point of conflict. He
was not alone. Since as early as 1950, the Party's Central Committee had already begun plans
for a Southern Indochinese Operational Front convinced that the French would shift their
strategic attention to Cambodia and Nam Bo as Chinese communists increased their aid to the
VWP. Foreshadowing things to come in the late 1960s, the Central Committee gave orders "to
create a foothold connecting the eastern Cambodian, southern Laotian, and Nam Bo battle
fronts". To Truong Chinh, although the northern Vietnam (Bac Bo/Tonkin) was the main front,
the other Indochinese fronts would be key to the final victory of the general counter offensive:
"The enemy attacks us on top, we attack him underneath. The enemy attacks us in the north, we
379
General Vo Nguyen Giap
attack him in central and southern Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos".
explained during a speech to the Army's Sixth Military Conference in early 1950 that in the
second phase of the General Counter-Offensive, "we have decided to coordinate all the fronts of
the country, expanding our operations to include the Laotian and Cambodian fronts. If we
consider Indochina in its totality, Cambodia constitutes the weak point in the enemy's system,
380
and the most favourable link for our activities".
82
General Binh admitted that though he had not received any formal instructions from Giap
on forming this base, his trip to the north in mid-1951 would allow him to provide a first-hand
report. Already in 1949, Binh had outlined plans on the importance of the Cambodian front in
the Indochinese theater. He had contacted Phibun Songkhram through private messengers sent
to Bangkok in a bid to keep strategic lanes open between southern Vietnam and northeastern
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It failed. As Chinese communists arrived on Indochina's northern front in late
Thailand.
1949-1950, US officials put great pressure on the Thai government to shut down the Viet Minh's
Western Front, to recognise the Bao Dai government, to end the arms traffic, and to ally itself
more closely than ever with Washington and its partners in a rapidly evolving non-communist
Southeast Asian strategic space. Binh was closely following these changes, worried in particular
by the sealing off of Indochina along the Thai border. In his report, he stressed the need to
prepare immediately for a larger Indochinese war now that the counter-offensive was under way
and as the Americans took increased interest in the war.
Communication lines would be crucial. If an Indochinese Battlefield were to be created,
then it would have to be linked in concrete ways. Binh gives us an idea of how serious the
Vietnamese command was, when he reveals that a new "Indochinese Road" had already been
under construction for some time. It ran down the entire spine of Indochina, from Bac Bo to
Nam Bo by way of central Vietnam, lower Laos and northeastern Cambodia. The Western Front
that had been positioned in Thailand until 1951 was effectively pushed eastwards to the
Vietnamese border. Binh considered his recall to the north the perfect opportunity, as he put it,
"to inaugurate our new road crossing all of Indochina, a route constructed during the resistance",
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and one that would "eventually" be used "to supply" the south from the north.
Binh provides
no other details, but this new Indochinese path foreshadowed ominously the Ho Chi Minh Trail,
that vital Indochinese moving pipeline of people, trucks and bicycles that would be crucial to the
communists, when the "Indochinese Battlefield" was reactivated against the US-backed South
Vietnam. The construction of this trail, no matter how rudimentary it certainly was, suggests
that Vietnamese communists were truly preparing in 1950-1951 for a possible shift in the focus
of the fighting from northern Indochina to its southern half in the wake of the Chinese victory
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and the increasing possibility of American intervention.
Cambodia was the "essential piece on the Indochinese chessboard", as a French Brigadier
General noted on reading Binh's report. And to Giap, the success of the Southern Indochinese
Operational Front revolved on the control of the Mekong River running into northeastern
Cambodia. The two provinces of Stung Treng and Kratie and Route 13 were targeted as the base
area for the Southern Front. It would in turn be expanded by links to the Southern Laotian Front
(Khu Ha Lao) and Interzones IV and V in lower central Vietnam. It no doubt reflected Giap's
tactical desire to control the entire area falling between the Mekong River and Nam Bo's western
83
border as a key strategy to defending southern Vietnam's vulnerable western flank and linking
the two halves of Indochina at the intersection of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. This region
between the Mekong and southern Vietnam would be linked to bases in central Vietnam (Trung
bo), lower Laos, the rest of Cambodia and western Nam Bo by an eastern Cambodian
communication line (xuyen dong mien). This space would be created through more liaison
384
Only then would the Southern Indochinese Front be able to
agents, relays, and supply lines.
prevent French and US forces from retaking Indochina by a southern pincer move coming by sea
385
at the 16th parallel, up route 14 from southern Vietnam, and by land from northeast Thailand.
That Cambodia was taking on added importance was clear in June 1951, when the VWP
officially approved the creation of the Central Committee's Southern Office, the famous Trung
Uong Cuc Mien Nam (or COSVN to the Americans), to replace the Regional Committee of Nam
Bo (Xu uy Nam Bo). Cambodia was designated its home base from the outset. Foreshadowing
386
things to come a decade later, it was in charge of all of southern Vietnam and Cambodia.
As
General Binh summed it up: "Before we projected our [military calculations] in terms of a
Vietnamese theatre of operations; now we must put it in the Indochinese context". Binh advised
a rapid strengthening of Vietnamese administrative, economic, supply, and military operations in
all of Cambodia, as I have described above. Despite considerable progress, the French did not
387
remain idle.
Nevertheless, to the Vietnamese High Command, Indochina had to be "taken in hand".
General Nguyen Binh went to great lengths to explain in his report the need to smooth over
complicated cultural breaks in the battlefield between the Cambodians and Vietnamese. He
recommended that the Vietnamese resistance had to reorient its ethnic minority policies in
particular and cadres had to learn Khmer, take up the local customs, instruct Khmer subalterns,
and win over and incorporate the Buddhist monks into the system given their crucial role in
Cambodian society. Only then could the Viet Minh win over the hearts and minds of the Khmer
and minority peoples in the fight against the French. Of equal importance were the Vietnamese
communities who would supply the Southern Front with personnel and cadres. Without control
of the populations, the Vietnamese would be unable to activate their transport and
communication networks.
Most important , though, was the need to take control of the rich economic resources that
Cambodia could offer to the Indochinese theater, especially in the southwest, northwest and in
Kompong Cham province. Rice, cotton, rubber, lumber and fish would be used to finance
Vietnamese resistance activities. "Cambodia," he wrote, "has important resources which could
388
Continuing, he argued in his typically direct fashion: "The
easily supply all of Indochina".
French know how to use all of the resources of Cambodia to continue their fight against us. Why
389
don't we do the same thing to them?"
Only by controlling the Cambodian economy, Binh
84
argued, could the Vietnamese set up their Southern Indochinese Operational Base, and thereby
turn the Indochinese Battlefield into a real entity. His economics adviser traveling with him, Vo
Ba Nhac, inventoried and classified Cambodian exports, natural resources, transports systems,
populations, ethnic groups, and languages during his trip with Binh through Cambodia.
Following pre-colonial and colonial patterns of la mise en valeur de l'Indochine, the Southern
Resistance dispatched teams of Vietnamese coolies and rice farmers into eastern Cambodia to
clear land for rice paddies as part of "Overseas Vietnamese Committee of Autarkic Production".
These groups were subdivided into "production cells" and "supply and transport cells".
Meanwhile, the prices of agricultural goods coming from Viet Minh controlled areas of eastern
Cambodia were controlled strictly by the Vietnamese Economic Committee and customs
services. The most developed areas were in Kompong Cham, southern Prey Veng, Kompong
390
Chhnang, Kampot and Battambang provinces.
In fact, since 1949, the Viet Minh had
succeeded in these areas in imposing a relatively efficient tax system on ordinary and traditional
forms of the Cambodian economy, but never really succeeding in controlling the large rubber
plantations in the area (though Vo Ba Nhac had carefully noted the economic importance of
these Cambodian industries). Taxes were levied on a wide variety of goods and services,
including the circulation of automobiles, junks, trucks, buses, lumber, fishing rights, commercial
and industrial patents. The Viet Minh administered these "controlled zones" (khu bi chiem)
through ground level bureaucratic organisations such as the "Mobile Economic Committee" (Ban
Kinh Te Luu Dong), "Water, Forest and Customs Services" (Ban Thuy-Lam Thuong Chanh),
391
"Fishing Services" and "Missions of Commissioners of Finance at the Khum level".
The
funds generated by these services were then deposited in the Viet Minh's Office of Economic
Affairs. According to a detailed French Intelligence study of the Viet Minh's economy in
Cambodia in 1952 (and based largely on original documents), the Vietnamese were able to
extract a minimum of $40.000.000 piastres from their taxes on rice, pepper, salt, lumber, fishing,
392
In the province of Kampot
transport systems, and alcohol in controlled areas in Cambodia.
alone, the Viet Minh generated a minimum of $12.000.000 annually thanks to its taxes on
pepper; $6.000.000 on salt and another $2.000.000 on various other products. Kompong Cham
generated $4.605.000 annually; Takeo, $3.060.000; Kompong Chhnang, $2.500.000; Pursat,
393
$3.100.000; and Kandal, $3.500.000.
Cambodia was also the major exporter of livestock to
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the southern resistance (as during the colonial period).
In this sense, Cambodia and Laos
were much more than mere "sideshows" to Giap and Binh in the early 1950s. They were a very
real part of financing a functional Indochinese Battlefield. As a French intelligence report
concluded, the Viet Minh's control of Cambodia went beyond the local level to "subsidise the
bank of the Central Committee of the Indochinese Communist Party [sic, it was truly the VWP]".
Moreover, detailed plans had already been outlined for developing the transport and
85
communication lines running from southern Vietnam across Cambodia into northeastern
395
French military officials in Cambodia were only too aware of the
Thailand and Laos.
implications of the Viet Minh's increasing economic and military control of Cambodia, and their
capture of Binh's reports provided important clues to communist strategic thinking on Indochina.
Plans were immediately made to engage the Viet Minh on the Indochinese economic front. First
on the list was the defense of Cambodian pepper farms. As the General de Langlade screamed in
396
one memo: "I want to win the pepper war!".
As for the military front, in spite of considerable losses in Cambodia during this period,
by the time of the opening of the Geneva Conference in mid-1954 Vietnamese military statistics
claim that they had gained control of around 43% of the Cambodian countryside, while another
397
estimate puts Vietnamese resistance forces in control of around a third of Cambodia.
Vietnamese documents captured by the French and considered to be of "total reliability" confirm
General Binh's reports that Giap's High Command was very serious about the importance of
securing Vietnam's entire western flank, from the Chinese border to the Gulf of Thailand. In the
"Report of the External Affairs Committee of Nam Bo on the Cambodian Situation", dated 25
February 1952, we learn that preparations were, indeed, underway to link eastern Cambodia
closely, especially the inter-provinces of Stung Treng and Kratie, to western Vietnamese war
zones in a bid to create an operational base running from western Nam Bo to the Mekong in
northeast Cambodia. Control of the Vietnamese-Cambodian border was considered to be vital
and the whole Cambodian Front was eventually placed under the Vietnamese Southern
398
Command in Nam Bo, though the eastern part between the Mekong River and western Nam
Bo was no doubt the primary concern.
On 3 April 1953, General Vo Nguyen Giap instructed his top military commanders in
Nam Bo to prepare for an attack on Cambodia to coincide with northern operations scheduled for
the upcoming autumn. Giap gave personal directions to Nguyen Thanh Son to prepare to strike
eastern Cambodia in the coming fall in a move to "extend" the Viet Minh's front towards the
frontier zones of Thailand and to deflect the "progression of the imperialist bloc", the latter being
a clear reference to the possibility of an American attack from Thailand. Orders were also given
to begin concentrating troops on the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. Giap and Son created an
Inter-Allied Military Committee made up of Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese commanders
(including Son Ngoc Minh) to lead an attack of 7,000 Vietnamese soldiers and 4,300 Cambodian
399
In September 1953, Nguyen Thanh Son was in northern Vietnam to meet
and Laotian ones.
with Giap personally on these rapidly developing plans that had been studied in detail in July
and August. The politico-military administration of all of Cambodia was revamped and linked
directly to the new eastern and western zones that now made up the Nam Bo politico-military
400
administration.
The offensive was to come from western Nam Bo and above all from Viet
86
Minh war fronts in southern Laos and Trung Bo where Giap had started concentrating hundreds
401
All of these moves led the
of well-armed (though not particularly well supplied) troops.
French to prepare for an attack on the Trans-Indochinese—National Route 13.
This was part of a larger Indochinese strategy. In early 1953, for example, Giap had sent
some of his best troops deep into Laos, to the Thai border in some cases, to engage in a "second"
Battle of Thakhek before being driven back by French forces. Besides its strategic value in
relation to military operations in northwestern Vietnam, Giap's timing was perhaps also designed
to tap the opium harvest in the Laotian highlands that contributed significantly to the economy of
402
the Northern Indochinese Front.
Perhaps Giap wanted also to draw the French southwards or
sever their southern supply lines running north on route 13. Whatever the case, consolidating
Cambodia remained much harder for southern military commanders than for their northern
counterparts working in Laos. For one, the military command in the south had suffered
important losses in battles with the French in 1950-1951. Second, the south was still very
isolated from the north and massive Chinese military aid did not flow so easily southwards when
the French could strike extended supply lines running south. The French struck the Viet Minh
403
hard in eastern Cambodia in 1952 and early 1953.
By late 1953, however, as Laos and northern Vietnam became the centre of the war,
French military resources and men were drawn away from southern Indochina. The strike into
Cambodia that never came in the fall of 1953 was finally launched in April and May 1954, when
several fully outfitted and modern-armed Vietnamese battalions, regiments and companies thrust
straight southwards from lower Laos and Trung Bo into northeastern Cambodia. Their
communications lines were based in the provinces of Kratie and Stung Treng, and along the
Mekong River. This offensive appears to have continued throughout the Geneva Conference in
an attempt to strengthen the security of southern Vietnam's vulnerable western flank before
signing a cease-fire and to disrupt French supply lines linking northern and southern
404
By June 1954, Vietnamese military forces were consolidating their hold on a
Indochina.
western security shield in the form of the seven Cambodian provinces lying between southern
405
Vietnam's western border and the Mekong River.
In the end, Vo Nguyen Giap had remained
true to a pledge he had made to Central Committee members in 1948: "If the Rhine was the first
406
line of defense for Britain, the Mekong River [is] Vietnam's first line of defense."
However,
his attacks on Laos and Cambodia in 1953-1954 would also suggest that Giap was truly worried
by the possibility of an American attack on his southwestern Indochinese flank as he took a stand
at Dien Bien Phu and that he was very serious about his 1950 promise to take all of Indochina
from the French.
Whatever the case, the Indochinese ideological and military space outlined by Truong
Chinh and Vo Nguyen Giap helps us to understand better why Vietnamese communists were so
87
determined at Geneva to keep their Indochina intact by defending stubbornly their Cambodian
and Laotian revolutionary allies in opposition to France's royal Indochinese partners. In a way,
two opposing visions of Indochina were at stake at Geneva, one French, the other Vietnamese. It
was key to holding their Indochina together. As a well-placed French intelligence officer in
Indochina lamented bitterly during the fall of Dien Bien Phu to Vo Nguyen Giap in May 1954:
A simple look at the map makes it clear. Each one of these three
countries, if isolated from the others, is weak. Given the outlines of their
borders, if these countries were isolated from each other, they would be
obligated to live in difficult conditions, harmful to their development. For
Indochina constitutes one geographical entity, a coherent whole. France
achieved the unity of the peninsula and gave form to this entity. The
communists, who seek to oust the French [from Indochina], have exactly
the same objective. The revolution must be Vietnamese, Cambodian and
Laotian. It must be simultaneously Indochinese.407
Vo Nguyen Giap, Nguyen Thanh Son, Nguyen Binh, and Truong Chinh would have no doubt
agreed with this analysis.
Nevertheless, one wonders if the thought ever occurred to these men that once the war
was "over", the Thais and Chinese, whatever their political colours, might find the idea of a
Vietnamese-dominated Indochina unacceptable. While one can only speculate, it would be
helpful to know how the Chinese military officers working in Giap's Command structure felt
about the VWP's plan to turn Indochina against the French strategically and politically through
the creation of an Indochinese Federation and Battlefield. Chinese military and intelligence
officers must have at least been privy to the major outlines of Vietnamese politico-military
408
When Giap sent troops into Cambodia and
thinking on the "Indochinese Battlefield".
especially Laos in 1953 and 1954, Chinese communists may have suddenly balked at the real
possibility of actually facilitating themselves the birth of a Vietnamese dominated Indochina on
their southern flank, within the very space created by the French. It is possible that Binh, Son
and Giap's desire to link Cambodia and Laos tightly to Vietnam since 1949 led Chinese
communists to cool their support of the Vietnamese at Geneva. If so, this would tend to confirm
the theses of François Joyaux that it was the Chinese who prevented Vietnamese communists in
409
1954 from taking Indochina from the French.
Historian Ben Kiernan quotes Hoang Tung, a
full member of the Party Central Committee in 1980, as saying that prior to the Geneva
Conference, Vietnamese communists planned to send two divisions into Cambodia "to create a
free zone", but Tung claimed that this plan was "killed by a telegram from Chou En-lai in
88
410
Geneva, saying that such a move would sabotage the Conference".
Another historian,
William Duiker, has even speculated that in early July 1954 Zhou Enlai may have "exacted a
promise in private from Ho Chi Minh to give up the federation idea in return for continued
411
When the Chinese agreed to neutral royal governments in Cambodia and
Chinese support".
412
Laos at Geneva in 1954, they dealt Vietnam's Indochina an important setback.
89
Conclusion:
Unraveling Indochina
Whatever the case, Indochina clearly had a real strategic, economic, and political staying
power in the upper reaches of Vietnamese communist thinking as French Indochina came
tumbling down in 1954. This is one of the remarkable paradoxes of our study of contesting
concepts of space in Vietnamese nationalism. Almost seventy years after the creation of the
Indochinese Union and well after the August Revolution of 1945, both "Vietnam" and
"Indochina" existed—conceptually and spatially—in communists minds. The momentum of
Indochina had its roots in a long and complicated historical process, facilitated by French
colonialism since the 1880s, pushed by the internationalist communist movement since the late
1920s and forged on the ground in an Indochinese-wide battlefield between 1945 and 1954 (and
beyond). This, in turn, was situated on a deeper level of Vietnamese historical and geographical
experience that tends to push Vietnamese in westerly directions.
Ironically, as Truong Chinh was reformulating the Vietnamese communist vision of an
Indochinese Federation during the Third National Congress in 1950, Albert Sarraut was
explaining to another group of non-communist Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian
representatives at the Conference of Pau why Indochina had to be dismantled along national
lines. Though the French colonial project had long invested Indochina with "a vital solidarity",
Sarraut explained to his tripartite audience that the Federation now had to be unraveled in order
to give rise to three independent though still associated states: Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Until a recent date, 1948, upon that part of the Indochinese peninsula composed
of the neighbouring Annamese, Cambodian and Laotian peoples, France
exercised a magistrate, either by direct authority or through the more nuanced
form of the protectorate, both of which placed within her hands [...] the guiding
powers of the [Indochinese] Federation. Through this body, France had
assembled and synchronised the activity and life of these three peoples in a
structure of solidarity that was then called the Unité Indochinoise. [...] One day,
this same France severed with her own hands the unifying links that had been
woven between Her and each one of your countries. [...] She unraveled the
Indochinese Federation (Elle a défait la Fédération Indochinoise).413
90
In a symbolic conclusion with echoes of Marquet's Five Flowers, Sarraut ended his
speech at Pau by setting France's three "sons" upon "the road to the future". They were now to
be "Associated States", what Sarraut brilliantly referred to as a "continued creation".
Meanwhile, the ICP was being dismantled along the same national lines. However, if the
former Governor General had conceded in 1950 that the French Indochinese Federation now had
to be "unraveled", Vietnamese communists were still determined to hold this Indochinese
"creation" together with their own Cambodian and Laotian alliances and the possibility of a
future Indochinese socialist family of their own. The Indochinese political, economic and
strategic space carved out by French cartographers and diplomats at the turn-of-the-century was
still very much alive for Vietnamese communists. And like Sarraut, Truong Chinh would
borrow this same idea of "Indochinese solidarity" to build his own special relationships with the
Laotians and Cambodians, when Vietnamese communists reactivated the "Indochinese
414
Battlefield" against the Americans.
In many ways, the Vietnamese had much more in
common with the French than they realised or might care to admit today. For if Harmand and
Sarraut had sought to ensure the reality of Indochina by associating the Vietnamese with their
colonial project, Vietnamese communists had their own Indochinese policy of association which
they would eventually rename "special relationships". This, too, was a "continued creation", part
of a larger historical process. It aimed to affiliate Laotian and Cambodian revolutionary states
that finally came into being in 1975-1976 with their Vietnamese elder brother through intimate
political, military, economic, and cultural links (not unlike the French Federation negotiations in
1945-1946). For reasons of a political and military order, Vietnamese communists felt they had
to hold Indochina together. Like the French before them, it had become an "immutable" law. In
1976, Le Duan's Foreign Minister, Nguyen Duy Trinh, would expound on this as follows:
We attach great importance to the solidarity between the three countries:
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia [...]. Together they fought and together
they won victory; and, as a result, a special relationship has taken shape.
In the new period, we will do all we can to safeguard and develop this
special relationship between the Vietnamese people and the Laotian and
Cambodian peoples, to strengthen the militant solidarity, confidence, long
term cooperation, and mutual assistance in all fields between our country
and the two brotherly countries, on the principle of total equality, mutual
respect of each other’s independent sovereignty and territorial integrity,
thus making the three countries stand shoulder to should forever [...].415
91
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the August Revolution of Vietnam and
commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Khmer Rouge victory in Phnom Penh, the communist
victory in Saigon and the coming to power of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party in Vientiane,
we might remind ourselves that behind the names Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos and their
current spaces lurks another wider space against which they had to delineate their national
identity. Vietnam is a distinct reality today. So are Cambodia and Laos. Few would deny the
power of their national names in communist and non-communists circles alike. Yet older
nationalists of the generation of Nguyen An Ninh, Nguyen Van Vinh, Vo Nguyen Giap and
Truong Chinh, as well as Son Ngoc Minh, Son Ngoc Thanh, Souphanouvong and Kaysone, or
even Sihanouk ,would probably agree that the idea of "Indochina" was just not quite as "unreal"
in 1945 or 1954 as we might think in 1995.
The silence that reigns over the Indochinese idea in Vietnamese historical studies today is
perhaps linked to the fact that the Indochinese space in which the Vietnamese flowed with the
French during the colonial period and the one that the communists sought to turn against them
from 1930 came "unraveled" on Truong Chinh just as it had on Albert Sarraut. It seems that
Vietnamese communists, much like the French, failed to understand that there were those who
416
just did not wish to associate themselves with "Indochina", no matter who was in charge.
In
many ways, the Vietnamese have had as hard a time letting go of Indochina since 1975 as the
French did after 1945. Security concerns were certainly paramount for the Vietnamese
communists. But there was more to it than that. Their past was also "interwoven" with that of
France in the very creation of this Indochinese concept, its space and what set it all in motion . . .
.
It remains to be seen whether rapid development and inter-connected communication and
transport networks on the eastern half of the Indochinese peninsula will pull the Vietnamese
back in Indochinese directions. It seems very likely. After all, long before Chatichai
Chunhawan ever thought of turning "Indochina into a market place", French and Vietnamese
entrepreneurs in the 1930s such as Pham Le Bong, Tieu Vien, Nguyen Van Vinh and Paul
Bernard had already dreamed of turning Indochina into a capitalist bloc, linked to Southeast Asia
and beyond through expanded road, rail, canal and sea routes. However, before reorienting their
Indochinese tack along economic currents, Vietnamese communists now becoming capitalists
417
might remind themselves that there is more to an Indochinese "vital space" than "Vietnam".
92
List of Selected References
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Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
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Sud-Est, forthcoming.
Bonet, Jean, Dictionnaire Annamite-Français, Paris: Impr. Nationale, 1898.
Braudel, Fernand, La Méditarranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, Paris:
9th Edition, Armand Colin Editeur, 1990.
Brocheux, Pierre and Daniel Hémery, Indochine : la colonisation ambiguë, 1858-1954, Paris:
La Découverte, 1995.
Brocheux, Pierre, The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy, and Revolution, 1860-1960, Madison:
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Monograph N° 12, 1995.
Brown, MacAlister and Joseph J. Zasloff, Apprentice Revolutionaries: The Communist
Movement in Laos, 1930-1985, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1986.
Cac Van Kiên co ban cua hôi Nghi thanh lap Dang, Hanoi: Nhà Xuât Ban Su That, 1983.
Caply, M. [Jean Deuve], 'Le Japon et l'indépendance du Laos (1945)', Revue d'histoire de la
deuxième guerre mondiale, (1971).
Chanda, Nayan, Brother Enemy: The War After the War, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Publishers, 1986.
Chandler, David P., Brother Number One:
Westview Press, 1993.
A Political Biography of Pol Pot.
Boulder:
Chandler, David P., The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War and Revolution since
1945. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
93
Dao Duy Anh, Phat Viet Tu Dien, Paris: Minh Tan, 1936.
Dorgelès, Roland, Sur la route mandarine, Paris: Albin Michel, 1925.
Ducoroy, Maurice, Ma trahison en Indochine, preface by the Admiral Decoux, Paris: Les
Editions Internationales, 1949.
Duiker, William J., The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, Boulder (USA): Westview
Press, 1981.
Fall, Bernard, Hell in a Very Small Place, New York: Vintage Books, 1966.
Fall, Bernard, Street Without Joy, Harrisburg: The Telegraph Press, 4th edition, 1964.
Forest, Alain, Le Cambodge et la colonisation française, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1980.
Génibrel, J.F.M., Dictionnaire Annamite-Française, Saigon: Impr de la Mission à Tan Dinh,
1898.
Goscha, Christopher E. and Thomas Engelbert, Falling Out of Touch: Vietnamese Communist
Policy towards an Emerging Cambodian Communist Movement (1930-1975), Clayton,
Australia: Monash Monograph Series, forthcoming.
Goscha, Christopher E., 'Repenser l'Indochine: Pham Quynh et les deux débats de 1931 sur les
limites géographiques du nationalisme vietnamien', 1995, Revue française d'histoire
d'outre-mer, forthcoming.
Goscha, Christopher E., Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance against the French, Canberra:
MA Thesis, ANU, 1991.
Gunn, Geoffrey Charles, Political Struggles in Laos (1930-1954): Vietnamese Communist
Power and the Lao Struggle for National Independence, Bangkok: Editions Duang Kamol,
1988.
Hannah, Norman B., The Key to Failure: Laos and the Vietnam War, New York: Madison
Books, 1987.
Harmand, Jules, L'Indo-Chine française, politique et administrative, Paris: C. Pariset, 1887.
94
Hémery, Daniel, Révolutionnaires vietnamiens et pouvoir colonial en Indochine, Paris:
Maspero, 1975.
Henley, David E.F., 'Ethnographic Integration and Exclusion in Anticolonial Nationalism:
Comparative Notes on Indonesia and Indochina', Comparative Studies in Society and
History (1994).
Hickey, Gerald, Sons of the Mountains, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Isoart, Paul, 'La création de l'Union Indochinoise', Approches Asie, N° 11, (November 1992).
Isoart, Paul, 'Rêver l'Indochine: A propos d'un film!', Approches Asie, N° 12, (March 1994), pp.
222-243.
Isoart, Paul, Le phénomène national viêtnamien, Paris:
juridprudence, 1961.
Librairie générale de droit et de
Ivarsson, Søren, and Thommy Svensson and Stein Tønnesson, The Quest for Balance in a
Changing Laos: A Political Analysis, Copenhagen: NIAS, Report N° 25, 1995.
Joyaux, François, Géopolitique de l'extrême-orient, frontières et stratégies, Paris: Editions
Complexe, 1991.
Joyaux, François, La chine et le règlement du premier conflit d'Indochine, Genève 1954, Paris:
Publications de la Sorbonne, 1979.
Khy Phanra, 'La communauté vietnamienne au Cambodge à l'époque du protectorat français
(1863-1953), Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1974.
Kiernan, Ben, How Pol Pot Came to Power: A History of Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975.
London: Verso, 1985.
Larcher, Agathe, 'D'un réformisme colonial à l'autre : la redécouverte de l'identité culturelle
vietnamienne, 1900-1930', Aix-en-Provence, unpublished essay presented during the
Journée indochinoise, March 1994.
Larcher, Agathe, 'L'Ordre par la concorde: Essai sur les réformismes coloniaux en Indochine,
1902-1945', Mémoire de DEA d'histoire, Paris VII, 1994.
95
Lebovics, Herman, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1992.
Leyden, John, Comparative Vocabulary of the Barma, Maláyu and T'hái Languages, Serampore,
Mission Press, 1810.
Lockhart, Greg, Nation in Arms: The Origins of the People's Army of Vietnam, Sydney: Allen
and Unwin, 1989.
Lombard, Denys, Le Carrefour javanais, essai d'histoire globale, Tome I-II, Paris: Editions de
l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1990.
Lombard, Denys, Rêver l'Asie, Paris:
Sociales, 1993.
Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Malleret, Louis. L'Exotisme indochinois dans la littérature française depuis 1860, Paris: Larose
Editeurs, 1934.
Malte-Brun, V.A., Géographie universelle Asie et Afrique, Paris: 1874.
Marquet, Jean, L'Avenir du pays d'Annam, Quinhon: Impr de Quinhon, 1926.
Marquet, Jean, Les Cinq Fleurs, L'Indochine expliquée, Hanoi:
publique en Indochine, 1928.
Direction de l'instruction
Meyer, Roland, Komlah: visions d'Asie, Paris: Editions Pierre Roger, 1930.
Meyer, Roland, Le Laos, exposition coloniale internatonale, Paris 1931, Hanoi: IDEO, 1931.
Motoo Furuta, 'The Indochina Communist Party's Division into Three Parties: Vietnamese
Communist Policy toward Cambodia and Laos, 1948-1951', in Takashi Shiraishi and
Motoo Furuta, Indochina in the 1940s and 1950s, Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, 1992,
pp. 143-163.
Nguyen Tien Lang, Indochine La Douce, Hanoi: Editions Nam Ky, 1935.
Nguyen Van Quê, Histoire de l'Union française, Saigon: 1932.
Nhung Su Kiên Lich Su Dang, Tâp I, (1920-1945), Hanoi: Nha Xuât Ban Su That, 1976.
96
Pasquier, Pierre, L'Annam d'autrefois, essai sur la constitution de l'Annam avant l'intervention
française, Paris: Société d'éditions géographiques, maritimes et coloniales, 1930.
Patti, Archimedes L.A., Why Vietnam? Prelude to America's Albatross, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980.
Rochet, Charles, Pays lao. Le Laos dans la tourmente, 1939-1945, Paris, 1946.
Roubaud, Louis, Viet-nam: la tragédie indo-chinoise, Paris: Librairie Valois, 1931.
Sarraut, Albert, L'Union française et les états associés de l'Indochine: Discours de M. Albert
Sarraut à l'Assemblée plénière de la Conférence Inter-Etats à Pau, 14 October 1950.
Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, Honolulu: Univ.
of Hawaii Press, 1994.
Tim Hiêu vê Dang CPC [Cam-pu-chia/Cambodia], Hanoi: Military Library, undated but clearly
post-1979.
To-Hoai, Récit du pays thai, Hanoi:
Georges Boudarel.
Editions en Langues Etrangères, 1958, translated by
Tønnesson, Stein, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945, London: Sage Publications, 1991.
Tran Van Trai, Les chemins de fer de l'Indochine, Paris: Librairie L. Rodstein, 1941.
Tran Phu, compiler, 'Luân Cuong Chinh tri Nam 1930 cua Dang', Hanoi: NXBST, 1983.
Van Kien Dang, Hanoi: Nhà Xuât Ban Su That, 1977.
Woodside, Alexander Barton, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, Cambridge (USA): Harvard
University Press, 1971.
Zasloff, Joseph J., ed., Postwar Indochina: Old Enemies and New Allies, Washington: Foreign
Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, 1988.
1
Benedict Anderson first posed this question in his Imagined Communities, London: Verso, 1991, second
edition, pp. 120-133. David E.F. Henley takes it in new directions in his 'Ethnographic Integration and
Exclusion in Anticolonial Nationalism: Comparative Notes on Indonesia and Indochina', Comparative
Studies in Society and History, (1994).
97
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Nguyen Van To, 'Quoc Hieu Nuoc ta', Tri Tan, N° 1, (3 June 1941), pp. 3 and 17; 'Bao Cao Nhan Dan Dai
Viet', Dong Phat, N° 5,966, (16 March 1945), p. 1; Interview with Hoang Xuan Han, 1 August 1993, Paris;
Khuong Viet, 'Nam Moi Noi Chuyen cu', Dai Viet Tap Chi, N° 31, (16 January 1944), p. 6; Nguyen Tien
Lang, 'Annam ou Dai Nam', La Tribune Indochinoise, N° 2,163, (16 July 1941), p. 2; and Nguyen Van
Luyên, 'Van De Giao-Thiep giua Viet-Nam va Cao-mien, Ai-lao', Trung Bac Chu Nhat, N° 256, pp. 2-4 and
27 and N° 257, pp. 7 and 24. Cuong De shifted between "Viet-Nam" and "Indo-China", see Cuong De, 'But
de la révolution annamite': 1) "Garantir le pays d'Indochine . . . ", Annexe à la dépêche du 11 juillet 1913 du
Consulat de France à Hong Kong au Gouvernement Général de l'Indochine', N° 18, in d. Lettres du Consulat
de France à Hong Kong, c. 3, PA9, Papiers Sarraut, CAOM.
Author's interview with Hoang Xuan Han, 1 August 1993, Paris.
Stein Tønnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945, London: Sage Publications, 1991, pp. 376-377 and
393-94 and Vu Ngu Chieu, 'The Other Side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution between 1940 and 1946',
Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1985, as cited by Tønnesson, Vietnamese Revolution, p.
289.
Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1994 and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 'The Frontiers of Japanese Identity', in Tønnesson and Antlöv,
eds., Asian Forms of the Nation . . . My thinking on this subject has also been stimulated by the works of
Denys Lombard, Le Carrefour javanais, essai d'histoire globale, Tomes I-III, Paris: Editions de l'Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1990 and Fernand Braudel, La Méditarranée et le monde méditerranéen
à l'époque de Philippe II, Paris: 9th Edition, Armand Colin Editeur, 1990.
Nguyen Tinh [Nguyen An Ninh], 'Vers la Nation Indochinoise', La Cloche Fêlée, N° 14, (21 April 1924), p.
1. All translations from French and Vietnamese are mine, unless otherwise noted.
I cannot consider here how "Vietnam" came to have its present borders, especially in the non-Viet areas of
present day southern "Vietnam". It should be recalled that the "Vietnam" that we see on the map today does
not necessarily coincide, ethnically or spatially, with the one that existed on the eve of French colonisation.
On Vietnam's borders, see: Pierre Lafont, et. al., Les frontières du Vietnam, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1989. On
counter visions of "Vietnam" and its space, see: Oscar Salemink, 'Primitive Partisans: French Strategy and
the Construction of a Montagnard Ethnic Identity in Indochina', in Hans Antlöv and Stein Tønnesson, eds.,
Imperial Policy and Southeast Asian Nationalism, London: Curzon, 1995, pp. 261-293; Georges
Condominas, We Have Eaten the Forest, New York: 1977; Gerald Hickey, Sons of the Mountains, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1982; and David Streckfuss, 'The Mixed Colonial Legacy in Siam: Origins
of Thai Racialist Thought, 1890-1910', in Laurie Sears, Autonomous Histories, Particular Truths: Essays in
Honor of John Smail, Madison: University of Wisconsin Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph N°
11, 1993, pp. 123-143.
Nguyen Khac Hieu [Tan Da], 'Kinh ngo cung Doc-gia chu vi', An-Nam Tap Chi, N° 14, (July 1930), pp. 1-3;
Nguyen Khac Nhu, 'Du Luan', An-Nam Tap Chi, N° 10, (1 March 1927), pp. 10-13; Nguyen Ai Quoc, Le
Procès de la colonisation française, Paris: 1924; and Nguyen An Ninh, Cao Vong cua Bon thanh Nien Annam, Dan Uoc, Saigon: Xua nay, 1926.
Already in June 1946, Paul Mus had captured this idea: "[I]l irait contre tout sens de prétendre que l'Annam
d'hier s'est évanoui sans laisser de trace et qu'un Viet-Nam en est sorti tout armé et sans commun mesure
avec l'Annam". Paul Mus, Le Viet-Nam Chez Lui, Paris: P. Harmattan, 1946.
For the sake of clarity, I will use the terms 'Lao', 'Khmer' and 'Viet' when referring to ethnic groups, while the
terms 'Laotian', 'Cambodian' and 'Annamese/Vietnamese' will be employed when speaking of nations. Søren
Ivarsson, Thommy Svensson and Stein Tønnesson, The Quest for Balance in a Change Laos: A Political
Analysis, Copenhagen: NIAS, Report N° 25, 1995, p. 12, note.
The origin of the word "Cochinchine" remains unclear. One hypothesis advanced by Nguyen Van To is that
"Cochin" is the product of the europeanisation of an early Chinese name of Annam, "Giao Chi", pronounced
by the Chinese as "Kiao-Tche", whereas the Indians and Malays said "Kutchi". The Europeans added
"China" to locate it on the southern flank of the Celestial Empire, thus giving us "Cochin-China" in English
and "Cochin-Chine" in French. Nguyen Van To, 'Quoc Hieu . . .', p. 17. For the sake of clarity, I will not
show the hyphens in "Viet-Nam" and "An-Nam" from this point of my text.
V.A. Malte-Brun, Géographie Universelle Asie et Afrique, Paris: 1874, p. 200 and J.M.J., Dictionnaire
Annamite-Français, Tan Dinh: Imprimerie de la Mission, 1877, p. 263.
98
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
This discrepancy would be cause for confusion throughout the colonial period. On the French creation of
Annam/Vietnam's western borders, see: Sarin Chhak, Les frontières du Cambodge, Paris: Dalloz, 1966,
Volumes I-II.
Yet "Indo-Chine" must not be confused with "Indo-Chine française". Malte-Brun wrote in 1874 that
politically "Indo-Chine" constituted seven distinct "states": 1) l'Indo-Chine anglaise, 2) la Birmanie, 3) le
Royaume de Siam, 4) l'Empire d'An-nam, 5) la Cochinchine française, 6) le Royaume du Cambodge, 7) les
Etats indépendants de la Presqu'île de Malacca. V.A. Malte-Brun, Géographie, p. 192. There is no mention
of Lao principalities.
Jean Bonet, Dictionnaire Annamite-Français, Paris: Impr. Nationale, 1898, Volume II, pp. 11, 197, 320 and
411; F.M. Savina, Dictionnaire Tày-Annamite-Français, Paris: 1910, p. 174; J.M.J. Dictionnaire AnnamiteFrançais, p. 82; and Dao Duy Anh, Phap Viet Tu Diên, Paris: Minh Tan, 1936, pp. 68, 205, and 923.
The Indo-Chinese Gleaner containing miscellaneous communications on the Litterature, History,
Philosophy, Mythology, [etc.] of the INDO-CHINESE NATIONS, Vol. I, Malacca, Anglo-Chinese Press,
1818-1821; Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochine : la colonisation ambiguë, 1858-1954, Paris: La
Découverte, 1995; John Leyden, Comparative Vocabulary of the Barma, Maláyu and T'hái Languages,
Serampore, Mission Press, 1810, pp. V et VII; and 'Extrait de la leçon inaugural de Lucien Bernot au Collège
de France, 2 March 1979', Lettre de l'AFRASE, (2nd Semester 1992), p. 10. Bernot claims that Leyden was
the first to use the term, "Indo-China", and not Malte-Brun.
V. Malte-Brun, Géographie, p. 184.
J.F.M. Génibrel, Dictionnaire Annamite-Française, Saigon: Impr de la Mission à Tan Dinh, 1898.
Bonet, Dictionnaire, pp. 161 and 197 and Interview with Hoang Xuan Han, 1 August 1993, Paris.
J.M.J., Dictionarium Latino-Anamaticum, Tan Dinh: Typis Missionis,1878, p. 214.
'Appellation officielle de l'Indochine française', signé [Maurice] Long, in La Tribune Indochinoise, (24 June
1920), p. 1. In Chinese, "Dong-Phap" was "Dong Fa". My thanks go to Agathe Larcher for bringing this
legislation to my attention.
See also: François Joyaux, Géopolitique de l'extrême-orient, frontières et stratégies, Paris: Editions
Complexe, 1991, pp. 176-186. For the sake of clarity, I will drop the hyphen in "Indo-China". However, I
will return to its symbolic value later in my text.
Cited by Paul Isoart, 'La création de l'Union indochinoise', in Approches Asie, N° 11, (November 1992), p.
54, confirmed in J. Harmand, L'Indo-Chine française, Politique et administrative, conférence faite à
l'Association républicaine du centenaire de 1789, Paris: C. Pariset, 1887, pp. 26-27. On Harmand's idea of
"association", see p. 27.
On this subject, see Isoart, op. cit., pp. 45-71 and Brocheux and Hémery, La colonisation ambiguë . . .
Harmand, op. cit., p. 12. Italics are his.
See: David Streckfuss, 'The Mixed Colonial Legacy in Siam', pp. 123-143.
As Paul Beau put it: "Les Siamois ont compris bien avant nous le parti qu'ils pouvaient tirer pour leurs
ambitions de cette dispersion de la race Thai. Ils savent que leur longeur peut servir de truchement comme à
toutes les communautés thais et ils ont formé le dessein, plusieurs fois avoué, d'une grande 'unité Thai' ".
'Paul Beau à M. Etienne,' Hanoi, 19 February 1903, p. 428, Papiers Paul Beau, PA/AP 11, MAE. I am very
grateful to Gilles de Gantès who brought my attention to Paul Beau's private papers. Forthcoming work by
De Gantès will add greatly to our knowledge this matter.
'Paul Beau à M. Etienne,' pp. 426-433.
Cited by Isoart, op. cit., pp. 54-65.
Chambre des Députés, N° 1904, session de 1887, 'Annexe du procès-verbal de la séance du 1 juillet 1887,
Proposition de résolution', p. 32, Mémoires et Documents, Asie—Indochine, v. 102, MAE.
On the importance of the French preservation of the local Indochinese kingdoms and principalities, see:
Henley, 'Comparative Notes on Indonesia and Indochina', op. cit.
Pierre Brocheux, The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy, and Revolution, 1860-1960, Madison: University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Monograph N° 12, 1995, pp. 1-50 and for examples from the period, Gouvernement
Général de l'Indochine, Dragages de Cochinchine: Canal Rach Gia-Hatien, Saigon: Inspection générale
des travaux publics, 1930, pp. 12-14; Pierre Pasquier, La colonisation des terres incultes et le problème de la
main-d'œuvre en Indochine, Saigon: C. Ardin et fils, 1918, pp. 3-14.
'Paul Beau à M. Etienne,' p. 425.
'Rapport d'Albert Sarraut au Ministre des Colonies', Hanoi, 20 April 1912, p. 33, in Papiers Sarraut, PA9, c.
1, CAOM.
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Albert Sarraut, 'Discours prononcé le 17 avril 1919 au Van-Mieu', p. 1. However, to say that an Indochinese
"space" is the reincarnation of Dai Nam is too simplist, if not teleological. Though the French used
Annamese historical claims on western territories to consolidate their hold on the eastern part of the
peninsula, French "Indochina" was by no means the geographical replica of "Dai Nam". It was an entirely
new geo-political entity, defined by French geographers and not Annamese ones. It was expanded transport
and communications systems that allowed the Annamese to think and move in Indochinese terms, quite
unlike anything that existed before the arrival the French. On what makes space, Fernand Braudel and
Denys Lombard have helpful things to say. Fernand Braudel, La Méditarranée, pp. 338-347 and Denys
Lombard, Le Carrefour javanais . . . Also see Martin Stuart-Fox, 'The French in Laos, 1887-1945', Modern
Asian Studies, Vol. 29, N° 1, (1995), pp. 127-128.
Alain Forest, Le Cambodge et la colonisation française, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1980, pp. 446 and 460 and
above all Khy Phanra, 'La communauté viêtnamienne au Cambodge à l'époque du protectorat français (18631953), Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1974, pp. 203-207.
Nguyen Van Luyen, 'Van de . . ', N° 257, p. 1; 'Enquête N° 1-A sur l'alimentation des indigènes,
Questionnaire destiné aux administrateurs,' p. 1 in Commission Guernut [CG], dossier Laos, Province de
Vientiane, carton 96, Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer [hereafter, CAOM]; Ministère des Colonies,
Inspection générale des Colonies, 'Utilité du remplacement par étapes des auxiliaires annamites de
l'administration française au Laos par des Laotiens', 13 March 1936, pp. 3-6, in NF, d. 2494 (2), c. 287,
CAOM; and Geoffrey C. Gunn, Rebellion in Laos : Peasants and Politics in a Colonial Backwater, Boulder
(Etats-Unis), Westview Press, 1990, pp. 34-37. Vientiane was the administrative capitol of Laos, while
Luang Prabang was home to the most influential Lao monarchy.
Roland Meyer, Le Laos, exposition coloniale internatonale, Paris 1931, Hanoi: IDEO, 1931, p. 63. Meyer is
slightly off the mark. While preparations were made to link Laos by train to Annam, this never occurred.
His point, however, is still valid for the roads.
Annamese soldiers were some of the first travelers to "discover" the western outlines of French Indochina
with the French. See: 'Annexe : Tableau fixant pour l'année 1909 les effectifs des différentes Brigades de
Garde Indigène du Laos', Bulletin administratif du Laos, (1908), p. 291.
'Circulaire du Gouvernement général au sujet du transport des officiers et fonctionnaires se rendant au
Yunnan', N° 46, Bulletin Officiel de l'Indochine, (4 January 1908), pp. 67-68 and Association amicale du
personnel indigène de la Compagnie française des Chemins de fer de l'Indochine et du Yunnan, Bulletin
Semestriel, (Semesters 1-2, 1924).
In 1914, it was estimated that there were 2,000 Annamese residing in Yunnan province alone. Consul de
France à Mongtseu à M. Ministre des Affaires étrangères, 20 April 1914, in GG, Amiraux, c. 19193, CAOM.
I will treat the question of Annamese immigration to Southeast Asia elsewhere, in particular how Vietnamese
revolutionaries would turn this extra-Indochinese system of immigration against the French.
André Touzet, Le réseau radiotélégraphique indochinois, Hanoi[?]: La Revue Indochinoise, 1918, pp. 3-22
on the creation of an intra- and extra-Indochinese telegraph system. Touzet was close to Albert Sarraut.
List of Siamese visitors to Angkor Wat in: Hotel des Ruines d'Angkor, 'Cambodge, Mouvement touristique
par nationalités du 16 nov. 1928 au 16 nov. 1929', Papiers Madrolle, PA42, c. 3, CAOM. That Annamese
worked in Cambodian and Laotian frontier posts is based on my research of the Bulletins administratif du
Cambodge et du Laos and Sûreté files.
The western Indochinese bureaucracy was divided into two administrative sub-systems, the first being the
"adminstration française", the Indochinese level, in which the Annamese moved. The second was the local,
racially indigenous one under Lao and Khmer royal prerogative, subordinate to French Résident Supérieurs,
and staffed by Khmer chaifaikhets and Lao chaomuongs. The Indochinese level dealt with such matters as
customs, immigration, security, and the governing administrative matters of Laos and Cambodia in relation
to the larger Indochinese system. For racial, spatial, legal and tax purposes, it was necessary that each person
be defined precisely within this system: 1) "Personnel Européen" was usually used to englobe the "the"
French; 2 "Personnel indigène de l'administration française" was the rubric within which Annamese civil
servants circulated in the Cambodian and Laotian bureaucratic systems and 3) "Personnel de l'administration
indigène du Laos/Cambodge" referred to the Laotians and Cambodians.
Hoang Xuan Han confirmed to me that during his visit to Cambodia in the early 1940s he met several of his
former Annamese students working in the bureaucracy, where the second language of the Indochinese level
of the French administration was Annamese and not Khmer. Author's interview with Hoang Xuan Han, 1
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54
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56
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63
August 1993, Paris. Several bureaucratic Amicales conducted their correspondence in Annamese, and not
French or Khmer. This was particularly true in Laos. See previous note on the civil service set-up.
For continued Annamese colonisation southwestwards, see the land concessions made to Annamese colons
in Cambodia and published in the Bulletin Administratif du Cambodge, (February 1928 is a nice example),
pp. 146-179.
'Vœux de M. Tran Trung Hoa, Représentant du Peuple de Bac Ninh', CG, c. 27, CAOM; 'Vœux présentés par
M. Pham Le Bong,' Hanoi, 8 April 1938, in CG, C. 23Bc, CAOM; 'Laos, Voeux, Lettre N° 5235, 21
December 1937 and Vœux de l'Association amicale des fonctionnaires et de l'Association mutuelle et
sportive des Annamites [au Laos]', pp. 2-5 in Ibid.
'Destinations : Arrêté, février 1928', Bulletin Administratif du Cambodge, (1928), p. 238.
'Arrêté du Résident Supérieur au Cambodge du 2 février 1928', Bulletin Administratif du Cambodge, (1928),
pp. 128-129. I could cite dozens of such decrees for Cambodia alone.
'Vœu présenté par M. Cao Van Tuan relatif à la jouissance des congés administratifs à passer hors du pays où
est en service le bénéficiaire', in Association amicale du personnel indigène des résidences du Cambodge,
Procès-verbal de l'Assemblée générale, (19 February 1938), p. 16. My current research shows that these
local transport services were quickly absorbed at the village level in Cochinchina and Cambodia. It would be
interesting to know if these "mini-bus" and truck services brought people "together" in new ways, increasing
inner ethnic (and commercial) contacts between the Viet on the one hand and Chinese, Khmer, Lao and
upland ethnic groups on the other.
Association amicale du personnel indigène des résidences du Cambodge, 'Procès-verbal de l'assemblée
générale du 15 janvier 1933', p. 7 and Association amicale personnel indochinois des résidence du
Cambodge, 'Procès-verbal de l'assemblée générale du 19 février 1938', p. 17.
except for Indians and Chinese who were, with certain exceptions, considered "Asiatiques étrangers".
And mandatory Identity Cards made sure that everyone knew who he was racially and spatially in the eyes of
the authorities. Ngo Nhat Thanh, Titre d'identité/Luat phap giay can cuoc, (thong hanh), Hanoi: Trung Bac
Tan Van, 1921. That this is not a coy play on words on my part see the essay written by Phan Khoi on the
idea and definition of "identity" (dong-nhut) as a concept and as a juridical way of defining the
"person/nguoi". Phan Khoi, 'Dinh chanh lai cach xung ten cua nguoi Viet-Nam', Phu Nu Tan Van, N° 58,
(26 June 1930), pp. 11-12.
For even better examples of how those living within the Indochinese realm sought to "change" their racial
standing or their "nationality" before the courts in Indochina, see: Ernest Hoeffel, De la condition juridique
des étrangers au Cambodge, Strasbourg: Impr Central, 1932 and Khy Phanra, op. cit., pp. 273-288.
Dinh Van Toi, 'L'ouverture des portes des écoles publiques aux enfants annamites', La Vérité, (24 December
1938), p. 2.
Vietnamese communist materials could be purchased in the Vientiane bookstore, Ban tre. 'Sach cam', Tin
Tuc, N° 36, (21-24 September 1938), p. 2, while reading rooms in Vietnamese Amicaux in Cambodia offered
their readers a variety of eastern Indochinese papers. Association amicale du personnel indigène des
résidences du Cambodge, 'Procès-verbal de l'Assemblée Générale du 10 janvier 1932', p. 10.
'Arrêté du Gouverneur Général de l'Indochine du 28 janvier 1928' and 'Arrêté du Résident Supérieur au
Cambodge du 17 janvier 1928', in Bulletin administratif du Cambodge, (January 1928), pp. 12 and 31 among
many others.
The Cao Mien Huong Truyen was the Vietnamese edition of the Echo du Cambodge.
Le Nouveau Laos, N° 4, (15 February 1943), p. 2. The Bulletin des Amis du Royaume Laotien would later be
run by an Annamese editor.
This stems from my reading of the Viet Kieu Nhot Bao, Amicale bulletins, and the Bulletins Administratifs du
Laos et du Cambodge, (1925-1935). I have also consulted the Madrolle Guides to get a better feeling for
how the notion of "scheduling Indochinese time" might have been felt on the ground. These guides are
begging for an in-depth study of tourism.
Tran Huy Lieu, Hoi Kin, Hue: Nha Xuat Ban Dong Duong, 1935, p. 17 and my count at Bibliothèque
Nationale at Versailles.
Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 124.
Speech given by J. Loubet, Proviseur du Lycée Albert Sarraut, 'Enseignement en Indochine en 1929', Hanoi:
IDEO, 1929, p. 6. I realise that the French would later redirect Indochinese education in traditional ways by
the late 1920s. See below.
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78
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81
82
Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 125; Pascale Bezançon, 'La rénovation des écoles de pagode au
Cambodge', Paris: Mémoire de Maîtrise, Paris VII, 1992; and Ministère des Colonies, Inspection des
Colonies, N° 32, 20 June 1936, 'L'enseignement au Laos: les écoles de pagode', pp. 11-12, in d. 2495 (2), c.
287, NF, CAOM.
Cited by Paul Isoart, Le phénomène national vietnamien, Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de
jurisprudence, 1961, p. 199. My emphasis. I owe this quote to David Henly.
Jean Marquet, Les Cinq Fleurs, L'Indochine Expliquée, Hanoi: Direction de l'Instruction publique en
Indochine, 1928. I am grateful to Mr. P. Brocheux for having kindly brought this book to my attention.
Speech by A. Thalamas, 'L'enseignement populaire Indochinois', Hanoi: Direction de l'Instruction Publique,
1928, p. 9.
There are maps throughout Marquet's tale, each with Annamese subtitles—"nuoc cao-mien/Cambodia" and
"nuoc lao/Laos". Nothing is written in Lao or Khmer.
I thank Agathe Larcher who lent me her family's copy of Le Tour de France par deux enfants . . . and Serge
Thionn who brought the remarkable Tour de France parallel to my attention.
Marquet, Les Cinq Fleurs, pp. 160-161.
To introduce Indochina to young schoolchildren after WWI, a geography manual was put to verse by Cao
Dang Ngan, An-Nam, Cao-Mien Ai-Lao Dia-Du Dien Ca, Hanoi: Mac Dinh Tu, 1918.
Nguyen Van Ky: 'La société vietnamienne face à la modernité : Le Bac Bo de la fin du XIXème siècle à la
seconde guerre mondiale', Paris: Université Paris VII, June 1992, pp. 455-60 and p. 845. This emphasis on
Cambodian and Laotian "ruins", "monuments" and of course Angkor Wat tells us something about French
cultural preoccupations as well.
J. Loubet, Enseignement en Indochine en 1929, Hanoi: Direction Générale de l'Instruction Publique, IDEO,
1929, p. 6.
Premières notions de géographie de l'Indochine française: Cours préparatoire et cours élémentaires,
Quinhon: Imprimerie de Quinhon, 4th Edition, 1929.
Nguyen Van Que, Histoire de l'Union française, Saigon, 1932, p. 220. Professor Que forgot to tell us that he
lived in Phnom Penh where he taught at the Collège Sisowath. Bulletin administratif du Cambodge, (January
1928), p. 104.
Nguyen Phan Long, 'La lutte entre le chemin de fer et l'automobile', L'Eveil Economique de l'Indochine, N°
294, (28 January 1923), pp. 4-5 and 'Le tourisme et les Annamites', La Tribune Indochinoise, (16 April
1928), p. 1.
Nguyen Tien Lang's review of the Guide Indochinois, 1931 makes fascinating reading. He praised it for
accurate information on train schedules, routes and information on the pays of Indochina. Annam Nouveau,
N° 12, (8 March 1931), p. 2.
Again, I have tackled the question of local Annamese trucking and bus networks in Indochina through a
study of the decrees passed by Résident Supérieurs and listed in the Bulletins administratifs du Cambodge,
du Laos et de la Cochinchine (1927-1933) and Cahiers des Charges relatif à la concession de services
postaux subventionnées et de transport administratif par voitures-automobiles entre Donghà et Savannakhet,
Vinh et Thakhkek et vice-versa, Haiphong, 1928, p. 17 in d. 3, c. 13, Papiers Madrolle, PA42, CAOM.
Guide de la Navigation Fluviale en Cochinchine-Cambodge, Tome I, Instruction nautique, (November
1933); Marine en Indochine, Guide côtier de l'Indochine, (1931), both in c. 10H859, SHAT; Nguyen Due
Duong, Président de l'amicale du personnel indigène du cadastre et de la topographie du Cambodge,
Association amicale du personnel indigène des résidences du Cambodge, 'Procès-verbal', (second trimester,
1938), p. 8; 'Mouvements des paquebots des messageries fluviales au Laos : Service aux Hautes Eaux',
Bulletin administratif du Laos, (1908), p. 43, the time schedule in particular.
Nguyen Phan Long, 'La lutte entre le chemin de fer et l'automobile', pp. 4-5 and Khy Phanra, op. cit., on the
Cao Dai in Cambodia. Also see: Paul Mus, Vietnam: sociologie d'une guerre, Paris, Editions du Seuil,
1952, 'Sur la Route Vietnamienne' and the brilliant satire of the Annamese "indigenisation" of the "mini-bus"
into the village world depicted by Dong Son (Nguyen Tuong Tam/Nhat Linh) in his front-page cartoon in
Phong Hoa, (22 September 1932), p. 1. Notice the "mile-marker" in the lower left-hand margin.
Nguyen Van Vinh, 'Cochinchine et Cambodge', Annam Nouveau, (7 January 1932), pp. 1-2 et Nguyen Van
Vinh, 'Un mois avec des chercheurs d'or', Annam Nouveau, (March-April 1936), p. 1 each time.
This expression was used by Roland Meyer, Komlah: visions d'Asie, Paris: Editions Pierre Roger, 1930, p.
73. He said "Far West indochinois".
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105
106
Pham Van Anh, 'Di Choi tuc là hoc', Phu Nu Tan Van, (9 January 1930), pp. 9-10 and 'Cuoc du-lich SaigonAngkor', p. 18 in Ibid.
'Hotel des Ruines d'Angkor, Cambodge, Mouvement touristique par nationalités du 16 novembre 1928 au 16
novembre 1929', in Papiers Madrolle, PA42, d. 7, c. 3, CAOM.. In fact, 850 "Indochinese" allegedly visited
during this same period, but there are unfortunately no clues to their racial make-up.
'Photo Viet-Nam à Siemréap-Angkor', Mai, N° 21, (6 February 1938), p. 10 and Le Van Truong, Truoc canh
hoang tan De Thien De Thich, Hanoi: Trung Bac Tan Van, 1934.
Roland Dorgelès, Sur la route mandarine, Paris: Albin Michel, 1925.
'Etapes indochinoises: souvenirs d'un voyage avec le gouverneur général René Robin', L'Annam Nouveau,
(serialised throughout 1931-32) and Indochine La Douce, Hanoi: Editions Nam Ky, 1935, chapters on Laos,
Cambodia and the Moï, p. 171 for the quote. I have argued elsewhere that there was a parallel reorientation
in Annamese geography, represented by those Annamese revolutionaries opposed to French colonialism, and
who created a complicated "extra-Indochinese system" based on land and sea routes running from the ports
of Bangkok, Hong Kong and Canton and on to Nakhon Phanom and Kunming as well as Singapore, Paris
and Moscow. Annamese sailors, cooks and "boys" linked this remarkable system together for Phan Boi
Chau and Ho Chi Minh. Christopher E. Goscha, 'Réflexions sur le rôle joué par la Thaïlande dans la
révolution viêtnamienne et comme une porte ouverte sur l'Asie du Sud-est, 1885-1950', Aix-en-Provence,
Journée Indochinoise, March 1995, unpublished essay.
For an account of the crossing of this mountain range, see: Tran Viet Thanh, Ben Kia Day Trang Son (Du ky
qua Ai-lao va Cao-men), Vinh: Les Presses Annamites, 1941.
Pham Quynh, 'Du-lich xu Lao', Nam Phong, (January 1931), N° 158, p. 7.
Ibid., N° 158, pp. 5-6 and part II, Nam Phong, N° 159, (February 1931), p. 105.
'Du-Lich', N° 158, p. 7.
For more details, see: Christopher E. Goscha, 'Repenser l'Indochine : Pham Quynh et les deux débats de
1931 sur les limites géographiques du nationalisme viêtnamien', Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer,
forthcoming.
See: Nguyen Phan Long, 'La lutte entre le chemin de fer et l'automobile', pp. 4-5.
'Conclusion du Résident Supérieur au Laos, Eutrope' in Rapport de Tezenas du Montcel and 'Réponse du
Gouverneur Général de l'Indochine, René Robin', May 1936, in Ibid.
Oscar Salemink, 'Primitive Partisans . . . ', pp. 266-268.
See: Bulletins administratifs du Cambodge et du Laos, and for continued Annamese emigration to Cambodia
and Laos into the 1940s, see: Geoffrey C. Gunn, Rebellion in Laos: Peasants and Politics in a Colonial
Backwater, Boulder: Westview Press, 1990, pp. 32-57 and Annuaire Statistique de l'Indochine, 1941-1942,
Hanoi: IDEO, 1945, Table XVIII, p. 27.
Letter published as an advertisement in Tan-Thoi, N° 31, (29 August 1935), p. 23.
Eric Pietrantoni, 'La population du Laos de 1912 à 1945', Bulletin des Etudes Indochinoises, N° 1, (première
trimestre, 1953), pp. 35-37 and his 'La population du Laos en 1943 dans son milieu géographique', Bulletin
des Etudes Indochinoises, N° 3, (Third Trimester 1957), pp. 230 et 243. On the French role in Laos, see:
Martin Stuart-Fox, 'The French in Laos, 1887-1945', pp. 127-128 and Gunn, Rebellion in Laos.
Commission d'Etudes Franco-Khmère, 'Procès-verbal partiel de la séance du 29 mars 1946' et 'Compte Rendu
de la séance du 29 mars 1946', in Papiers Alessandri, 1K306, SHAT.
'Le Prince Souphanouvong répond au Commissaire de la République Française', La République, N° 8, (25
November 1945), pp. 1 et 4.
Sarraut, Van Mieu, p. 1 and 11. On the Sûreté, see the work of Patrice Morlat, La répression coloniale au
Vietnam (1908-1940), Paris: L'Harmattan, 1990.
Editorial [Bui Quang Chieu?], 'La Peur des Mots,' La Tribune Indigène, (23 March 1919), p. 1
'Ce que nous voulons: Le Parti Constitutionaliste Indochinois', La Tribune Indigène, (8 May 1919), p. 1
(italics in the original) and 'L'Autonomie Indochinoise', La Tribune Indigène, (13 May 1919), p. 1.
[Ho?] Bieu Chanh, 'Dong-Duong hiep-chung', Dai Viet Tap Chi, N° 1, (January 1918), pp. 23-25.
'Notes d'un Saigonnais: Cri d'Alarme', Le Courrier Saigonnais, N° 5,260, (23 July 1919), p. 1; La Tribune
Indigène, (5 August 1919), p. 1 and Nguyen Ai Quac, 'Le Droit des Peuples', L'Humanité, (18 June 1919), in
c. 365, Service de Protection du Corps Expéditionnaire [hereafter, SPCE], CAOM.
'Cri d'alarme', p. 1. This argument would be taken up forcefully by the Admiral d'Argenlieu in the wake of
WWII. See below.
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124
125
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127
128
129
'Union Intercoloniale', p. 1; 'Note Confidentielle à M. le Gouverneur Général de l'Indochine,' N° 443, 22
November 1922, in c. 365, SPCE, CAOM and Phan Chu Trinh, 'Des manifestations annamites en 1908,
demande d'aministie,' p. 1 in c. 372, SPCE, CAOM. Trinh wrote: "L'ancien Empire de l'Annam qui porte
aujourd'hui le nom d'Indo-Chine . . . " Working together in France in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Trinh
and Quoc were clearly more influenced here by the language of French colonial discourse than historic,
hegemonic designs on western Indochina.
Quoted by La Tribune Indigène, 'Notes d'un Saigonnais : Bas les Masques', (12 August 1919), p. 1.
Editorial, 'L'état indochinois', La Tribune Indigène, (19 April 1921), p. 1.
Editorial, 'La prépondérance politique des Annamites en Indochine est-elle justifiée? I-III', Tribune Indigène,
Part I, (26 April 1921), p. 1; Part II, (28 April 1921), p. 1; and Part III, in La Petite Tribune Indigène, (30
April 1919), p. 1.
'La prépondérance politique des Annamites en Indochine est-elle justifiée?' Part I, p. 1.
'La politique indigène en Indochine doit être avant tout une politique Annamite', Tribune Indigène, (7 August
1919), p.1 and Pham Quynh's travelogue, 'Du-Lich Xu Lao', Nam Phong, N° 158, pp. 5-6.
See the articles published in the late 1920s in Nam Phong by Annamese scholars on the Cham and Nam Tien
in Annamese historiography.
'Annamite colonisateur', Echo Annamite, (4 March 1927), p. 1 and Hung Giang, 'La formation du pays
d'Annam', Nam Phong, N° 131, (July 1928). It is worth noting that the Annamese word for Cambodia, CaoMien, refers to the "barbarians" from "above" and the word "Moi" is another term for this idea of the
"uncivilised other". The idea of the "barbarian" in Annamese thought is not necessarily pejorative in the
sense we understand it today, but rather a complicated cultural concept that has been analysed in
sophisticated and very complementary ways by Alexander B. Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 234-261 and Mus, Sociologie d'une guerre, 'Sur la route
vietnamienne'.
Also see: Grant Evans, 'Internal Colonialism in the Central Highlands of Vietnam', Sojourn, Vol. 7, N° 2,
(August 1992), pp. 274-302.
Pham Le Bong, 'De la nation annamite à la fédération indochinoise', La Patrie Annamite, N° 169, (10
October 1936), p. 1.
Tieu Vien, 'L'espace vital, le nôtre', La Patrie Annamite, N° 307, (1 July 1939), p. 1.
Nguyen An Ninh, 'Vers la nation indochinoise', p. 1. My emphasis.
This continued in the 1930s despite curricular moves towards the "Past". See: 'L'Inspecteur Général des
Colonies Moretti à M. le Ministre des Colonies: Le baccalauréat de l'enseignement secondaire local', pp. 7-9,
16 June 1936, NF, IC, c. 287, d. 2495 (2), CAOM and 'Utilité du Transindochinois', in Sujets donnés au
diplôme d'études primaires supérieures indochinoise, première session, Hue: Direction de l'Instruction
Publique, 1937, p. 36.
One might note that historians Hoang Xuan Han, Truong Chinh, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Tran Van Giau have
a similar colonial formation (but not Generals Hoang Sam or Nguyen Binh).
Nguyen An Ninh, 'Une révolution est-elle possible?', La Cloche Fêlée, N° 15, (19 May 1924), p. 1.
Trung Ky, 'La révolution est-elle possible?', La Cloche Fêlée, N° 18, (16 June 1924), p. 1.
'Pierre Pasquier : Gouverneur Général de l'Indochine', 30 January 1934, pp. 1-2, pièce 3, m. 15H103, SHAT
and 'Le discours du Gouverneur général de l'Indochine au Grand Conseil', L'Asie Française, N° 285,
(December 1930), p. 395.
'La politique indochinoise du gouvernement', L'Asie Française, N° 283, (October 1930), p. 306.
Cited by Paul Isoart, 'Rêver l'Indochine: A propos d'un film!', Approches Asie, N° 12, (March 1994), p. 232,
note 43.
'M. Varenne prononce à la Chambre un important discours au sujet de l'Indochine', La Revue FrancoAnnamite, N° 19, (1 April 1930), p. 13. On Indonesia, see the stimulating article of William H. Frederick,
'The Man Who Knew Too Much: Ch.O. van der Plas and the Future of Indonesia, 1927-1950', in Antlöv and
Tønnesson, Imperial Policy, pp. 34-62.
'Le Discours du Gouverneur général de l'Indochine', pp. 395 and 399; Georges Nouelle, 'Le Citoyen
colonial', Les Annales Coloniales, (29 November 1930); and 'Un important discours de M. le Gouverneur
Général', La Revue Franco-Annamite, N° 30, (16 September 1930), p. 15. My emphasis.
Charles Robequain, Images du monde : Indochine, Firmin Didot, 1930, preface by A. Sarraut.
Pham Quynh, 'Fédéralisme indochinois et nationalisme annamite', France-Indochine, N° 3,325, (28
November 1930), p. 1. 'Vers une constitution', Nam Phong, N° 151, (June 1930), pp. 39-46; Pham-Quynh,
104
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
'Anticipation : Ce que sera l'Annam dans cinquante ans', Nam Phong, N° 154, (September 1930), pp. 17-19
et A.E. Babut, 'Les idées de Pham-Quynh : Un projet de constitution', La Revue Franco-Annamite, N° 32,
(16 October 1930), pp. 1-4.
Nguyen Van Vinh, 'Le citoyen indochinois,' L'Annam Nouveau, (15 mars 1931), p. 1 and Nguyen Van Vinh,
'ENFIN un programme,' L'Annam Nouveau, (5 avril 1931), p. 1.
Nguyen Van Vinh, 'Chercheurs d'or au Laos', L'Annam Nouveau, (5 and 9 April and 7 May 1936), p. 1.
Pham-Quynh, 'Les conceptions politiques de M. Vinh', France-Indochine, N° 3,432, (10 April 1931), p. 1.
Nguyen Van Vinh, 'Mes conceptions politiques jugées par M. Pham-Quynh,' L'Annam Nouveau, Part I, (12
April 1931), p. 1.
Pham Quynh, 'Les conceptions politiques de M. Vinh', p. 1.
Thao-Oun, 'Réponse à M. Pham-Quynh', France-Indochine, N° 3,404, (7 March 1931), p. 1.
Interview by France-Indochine, 'La questionne laotienne: Opinions du Prince Phetsarath', N° 3,416, (21
March 1931), p. 1. Phetsarath is paraphrased in this interview.
Ibid., p. 1.
Signed "X" . . Cambodian mandarin and Paul Chassaing, 'La politique indigène de la France au Cambodge,
appréciée par un Mandarin Cambodgien', La Revue du Pacifique, N° 1, (15 January 1934), p. 147 and
Nguyen Van Vinh, 'Annamites au Cambodge', L'Annam Nouveau, N° 347, (7 June 1934), pp. 1-2. My
emphasis. Even if this is a French official "speaking" for Mr. X, it only reinforces my point that the Laotians
and Cambodians were not experiencing "Indochina".
On the emergence of a "Laotian" idea in opposition to the Vietnamese, see: Goscha, 'Repenser l'Indochine'
and Piermart, 'Routes et sentiment national', La Moniteur d'Indochine, N° 624, (21 March 1931), p. 6.
Cambodian intellectuals writing in the Nagarvatta journal were particularly hostile to Annamese domination
of French Indochina.
Roland Meyer, Komlah: Visions d'Asie, Paris: Editions Pierre Roger, 1930.
Roland Meyer, Cours de langue laotienne, Vientiane: Impr. du Gouvernement, 1924 and Cours de
cambodgien et lectures cambodgiennes, Phnom Penh: Impr. de A. Portail, 1929.
Komlah, pp. 105 and 151. Charles Rochet also wrote a Lao grammar.
Jean Marquet, L'Avenir du pays d'Annam, Quinhon: Impr de Quinhon, 1926, pp. 2-3 and 35.
Compare Pham Quynh, 'Vientiane la poussièreuse', p. 1, with Marquet, L'Avenir . . . , p. 3, and Woodside,
Vietnam and the Chinese Model, pp. 234-261 for a geo-cultural backdrop. Quynh cites Meyer in his travel
accounts. In 1940, Pham Quynh relied on his 1931 travelogue to Laos to describe to Annamese
schoolchildren the customs and living conditions of the Lao. See: 'Nha o cua nguoi Lao', Bulletin Général
de l'Instruction publique, N° 1, (September 1940), p. 9.
Cited by E. Pujarniscle, 'Ecrivains français d'Indochine: Jean Marquet', Sud-Est, N° 11, (April 1950), p. 12.
I owe the phrase, "cultural fault line", to David P. Chandler, 'The Tragedy of Cambodian History', Pacific
Affairs, Vol. 52, N° 3, (Fall 1979), p. 411.
Meyer, Komlah, p. 103 for the quote (my emphasis) and pp. 102-104 and 246-247 on valorising a Lao
identity. As Meyer wrote of himself on page 22: "Mais sa curiosité n'est pas satisfaite; il aspire à posséder,
outre la mentalité profonde du peuple, la notion exacte de son histoire obscure, de son art antique, de ses
croyances et de sa religion, et il se plonge dans ses méditations et dans ses études [..]". I am very grateful to
Agathe Larcher and Søren Ivarsson for help on this point.
See the report of Suzanne Karpelès and related documents on the Buddhist Institute in Bulletin de l'Ecole
Française d'Extrême-Orient, tome XXXI, N° 1-2, (January-February 1931), pp. 331-335 and Goscha,
'Repenser l'Indochine', op. cit.
See: Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, pp. 234-294. On "Indochinese" literature, see: Louis
Malleret, L'Exotisme indochinois dans la littérature française depuis 1860, Paris: Larose Editeurs, 1934;
Denys Lombard, Rêver l'Asie, Paris: Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1993 and
Henri Copin, 'L'Indochine dans la Littérature française des années vingt à 1954', Paris: Université de ParisSorbonne Paris IV, 1994.
Goscha, 'Repenser l'Indochine', op. cit.
Meyer, Komlah, p. 134. My emphasis.
The well-known communist author, To-Hoai, explained to Georges Boudarel in the 1950s that he
"discovered" Cambodia and the uplands of Annam while traveling as a journalist in the 1930s for Tieu
Thuyet Thu Bay. To-Hoai, Récit du pays thai, Hanoi: Editions en Langues Etrangères, 1958, translated by
105
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154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
Georges Boudarel, preface, p. XV and on Cambodia: N.B. and T.H. [To Hoai], 'Chut Nang Chieu con lai',
Tieu Thuyet Thu Bay, N° 433, (3 October 1942), pp. 7-8 and 25.
'Ve Van De Lap Dang Cong San Dong Duong', in Ban Nghien Cuu Lich Su Trung Uong Xuat Ban, Van
Kien Dang, 1930-1945, Tap I, Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Su That [hereafter, NXBST], 1977, pp. 9-17.
I am grateful to Stein Tønnesson for help on this point and also the articles by Bernard Frederick, 'Au cœur
des incertitudes en Russie, le problème national', Le Monde Diplomatique, (February 1995), pp. 22-23; and
Bohdan Nahaylo and Victor Swoboda, Après l'Union soviétique, les peuples et l'espace post-soviétique,
Paris: PUF, 1994.
Ban Nghien Cuu Lich Su Trung Uong, Nhung Su Kien Lich Su Dang, Tap I, (1920-1945), Hanoi: NXBST,
1976, pp. 148, 163, and 180; Khanh, op. cit., p. 124; and Conseiller Politique, Le Viet Minh et le Parti
Communiste Indochinois, French Intelligence Analysis, 1949, pp. 22-24.
See captured ICP documents from 1935-1939 in Troupes de l'Indochine, EM, 2ème Bureau, Service de
Renseignements Central, N° 206-2/SRM, 'Bulletins mensuels de renseignements N° 30-31, mois de janvier et
février', m. 15H103, SHAT and Part II of this essay.
Tran Cung and Trinh Dinh Cuu, in Ngon Duoc, Hanoi: NXBST, 1980, pp. 112 and 114 and Cac van Kien
co ban cua Hoi Nghi thanh lap Dang, Hanoi: NXBST, 1983, p. 29, note 2.
Nguyen Nghia, 'Gop them mot it tai lieu ve cong Cuoc hop nhat cac to chuc cong san dau tien o Viet-Nam va
vai tro cua dong chi Nguyen Ai Quoc, Nghien Cuu Lich Su, N° 59, (February 1964), p. 7.
See: Linh-Nam, 'Notre appellation nationale: Dai-Viet? Dai-Nam? Annam? Viet-Nam?', Sud-Est, N° 6,
(November 1949), p. 32 and Jean Rispaud, 'Un curieux problème historique: Les origines du nom de VietNam', Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 1er trimestre, (1959), pp. 199-207.
'Viet-Nam Hoi Quang Phuc Chuong Trinh', original in c. 354, SPCE, CAOM.
Pham Quynh, 'Luan thuyet: van quoc ngu', Nam Phong, (1917), p. 80.
Tran Trong Kim, Viet-Nam Su-Luoc, Hanoi: Trung Bac Tan Van, 1920, p. 1. Not counting the preface, the
first page of Tran Trong Kim's Outline History of Viet Nam is entitled: Quoc Hieu (National Appelation).
He lists all the names of the country, before insisting on "Viet-Nam". This work was a standard textbook for
students in southern schools until 1975. Tran Trong Kim, Viet-Nam Su Luoc, Vol. I, Saigon: Ministry of
Education, 1971, pp. 3-4.
Nguyen Ai Quoc, 'Hon Nam Viet', (15 May 1923), p. 1, in c. 3, SLOTFOM, III, CAOM. I am grateful to
Agathe Larcher who kindly provided me with a copy of this document.
'Qu'est-ce qu'un Annamite?', La Lutte, N° 31, (29 April 1935), pp. 2-3; Daniel Hémery, Révolutionnaires
vietnamiens et pouvoir colonial en Indochine, Paris: Maspero, 1975, pp. 105-106 and 113-147 and
Christopher E. Goscha, 'Tradition militante et rénovation culturelle au Vietnam: Réflexions sur le VNQDD
et le TLVD et la rupture d'un courant non-communiste, (1907-1946)', Paris: DEA, Paris VII, 1994, pp. 2348. According to Daniel Hémery, during the life of the famous revolutionary paper, La Lutte, the word
"Vietnam" only appeared one time, on 8 May 1935. Hémery, Révolutionnaires, p. 105.
Comité Central du VNQDD, 'Proclamation adressée au Peuple', pp. 1-3, in Recueil de documents relatifs à la
propagande révolutionnaire en Indochine au cours du 1ere trimestre 1930, Document 3, GG, 7F4, CAOM.
Also see Henly's discussion of this matter. Henley, 'Comparative Notes on Indonesia and Indochina', op. cit.
My discussion of Nguyen Thai Hoc's execution comes from Paul Arnoux's secret report to Pierre Pasquier:
Police de l'Indochine, secret, N° 7880/sg, Hanoi, 18 June 1930, 'Compte rendu de P[aul] Arnoux', pp. 1-2, in
NF, d. 2525, c. 323, CAOM and Louis Roubaud, Viet-nam, la tragédie indo-chinoise, Paris: Librairie
Valois, 1931, pp. 161-62.
'Arnoux à Monsieur le Résident Supérieur au Tonkin : Déclaration faite par Nguyen Van Nho', N° 3791-S,
Hanoi, 20 March 1930, in c. 353, d. N° 2 Phan Boi Chau, SPCE, CAOM. Nguyen Van Nho was Nguyen
Thai Hoc's brother.
Pierre Pasquier, L'Annam d'autrefois, essai sur la constitution de l'Annam avant l'intervention française,
Paris: Société d'éditions géographiques, maritimes et coloniales, 1930 and Phan Khoi (later a member of the
VNQDD), 'Dinh Chinh lai cach xung cua nguoi Viet-Nam', Phu Nu Tan Van, N° 59, (3 July 1930), p. 9;
Huong Giang, 'Faut-il appeler autrement l'Annam et les Annamites', Echo Annamite, (30 April 1927), p. 1;
Nguyen Van To, 'Quoc Hieu . . .', p. 3; Le Quang Van, 'Ta co the tay chay An-nam hay khong?', Luc Tinh
Tan Van, N° 3,716, (January 1931), p. 1 and Bui The My, 'Ve van de dat ten cho nuoc Nam', Luc Tinh Tan
Van, N° 3,745, (January 1931), p. 1.
I rely on the Vietnamese debates of 1930-31 on this very subject. Among others: Linh Chieu, 'Annam, VietNam, hay la Dai-Nam', Trung Lap, N° 6356, (26 January 1931), p. 1; Phan Khoi, 'Nen Xung Viet-Nam la
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171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
Phai', Trung Lap, N° 6367, (7 February 1931), p. 1; Le Quang Van, 'An-nam hay khong . . ?', p. 1 and Bui
The My, 'Dat ten cho nuoc Nam . . .', p. 1. I could cite several others.
Tan Da, 'Kinh ngo. . .', p. 1.
Quoted by Pierre Darcourt, Bay Vien: le maître de Cholon, Paris: Hachette, 1977, p. 95. Lexicographer, Dao
Duy Anh listed the word "Viet-Nam" in his 1931 Han-Viet Dictionary and in his Franco-Annamite
dictionary of 1936. It appears under the French entry for "Annam". However, his predecessor, Paulus Cua,
in his 1896 Annamese dictionary, did not list "Viet-Nam". He gave the country's name as Nam-Viet and Dai
Viet.
Roubaud, Viet-Nam . . . Roubaud was so moved by what he saw at Yen Bay that he could not wait for the
first page to define the term "Viet-Nam" for his readers. Perturbed by this move towards "Viet-Nam',
Nguyen Van Vinh countered in favour of "Annam" in 1932. See the debate in 'Annam, Dai Nam ou Viet
Nam?', L'Annam Nouveau, (9 June 1932), pp. 1-2. However, it would be too simplistic to assume that
"Vietnam" was off limits to conservatives nationalists like Vinh. Pre-1945 documents show that Pham
Quynh used it in 1917, 1931 and 1945.
'Goi cho nhung nguoi cong san o Dong Duong', in Van Kien Dang, Vol. I, pp. 31-49.
Cited by Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, Ithaca: Cornell Press, 1982, p. 185 and Sophia Quinn-Judge, 'Ho
Chi Minh: New Perspectives from the Comintern Files', Vietnam Forum, N° 14, (1994), updated version
kindly provided to the author by Mrs. Quinn-Judge.
This comes from an official communist source, writing in 1964 and not in 1976, Nguyen Nghia, op. cit., p. 7,
on the compromise solution and also Truong Chinh, 'Essai sur la révolution vietnamienne, rapport lu devant
le Congrès National du Parti (Février 1951)', Book I, pp. 33-34, published by the Central Executive
Committee, 1952, captured and translated by the French and Historique du PCI au Lao Dong, pp. 3-5, in 'Le
Parti Ouvrier Vietnamien ou Dang Lao Dong Viêtnam', Haut Commissariat de France en Indochine,
B.C.R.I., N° 1200/Y, 21 May 1952, c. 10H620, SHAT.
Unsigned, 'La Patrie', Thanh Nien, N° 77, (23 January 1927), complete collection translated by the French
and held in SLOTFOM, série V. c. 16, CAOM. For the entire debate, see: 'La Patrie', Thanh Nien, Nos. 7477, 79, 81-82, 1926-1927, p. 1 each time.
During this period, eighty copies of each edition were edited and printed by Ho Chi Minh and Nguyen Hai
Than, Annexe à la Note Noël N° 213 du 1 octobre 1925, 26 et 27 septembre 1925, Renseignements fournis
par Pinot au cours de l'entrevue avec N. chez M', c. 365, SPCE, CAOM.
Cac van Kien co ban . . ., p. 29, note 2. I have no way of checking this post-1979 edition, given that no
source is cited and the citation attributed to Ho is not fully reproduced.
Jean-Claude Demariaux, Les secrets des îles Poulo-Condor, le grand bagne indochinois, Paris: J. Peyronnet,
1956, pp. 171-73; Tran Huy Lieu, 'Phan dau de tro nen mot dang vien cong san' in Hoi ky Tran Huy Lieu,
Hanoi: NXBKHXH, 1991, p. 164; and my current research on the VNQDD.
See the ICP's critique of the Yen Bay uprising: 'Ky niem Cuoc tan sat o Yen Bay, chung ta nen nho nhung
deu gi?', Co Vo San, N° 3, (1 February 1931), pp. 1-3, in c. 48, Slotfom Série III, CAOM.
Mission Noël, Envoi 281, 4 May 1926, 'Rivalité entre Nguyen Ai Quoc et Nguyen Hai Than' and Annexe à
Note Noël, N° 201, 29 July 1925, 'Traduction d'un rapport de Pinot', dossiers 1925 and 1926, c. 365, SPCE,
CAOM.
Tran Phu, Luan Cuong Chinh tri Nam 1930 cua Dang, Hanoi: NXBST, 1983, pp. 11 and 16-17. This is a
post 1979 document.
Cited by Khanh, op. cit., p. 128.
'Dans l'Internationale : De très importantes questions ont été discutées', L'Humanité, (25 April 1931),
confirmed in 'Lich Su Dang Cong San Dong-Duong', Part III, Thoi-The, N° 14, (19 February 1938), p. 3.
Charles Robequain, L'Evolution économique de l'Indochine française, Paris: Centre d'études de politique
étrangère, 1939, p. 292; Hoang Van Hoan, Giot Nuoc trong Bien Ca, Peking, 1986, pp. 70-71; and above all
Gunn, Rebellion in Laos, pp. 32-57.
'Thai do cac nha cam quyen o Thakhek doi voi viec xin lap Ai Huu Tho Thuyen', Tin Tuc, N° 23, (3-8
August 1938), p. 4 and 'Cung ong Ha Van Thoat o Vientiane', Tin Tuc, N° 37, (24-28 September 1938), p. 2.
E. Delamarre, L'émigration et l'immigration ouvrière en Indochine, Hanoi: IDEO, 1931, pp. 17, 27 and 3337; 'Tim Hieu ve Dang CPC [Cam-pu-chia/Cambodia]', Hanoi: Military Library, undated but clearly post1979, pp. 7-8; and the Vietnamese tracts translated in Police de l'Indochine, Service de la Sûreté du
Cambodge, N° 270-SG, Phnom Penh, 1 April 1931, in c. 225, Résidence Supérieur, Cambodge, CAOM.
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190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
'Tim Hieu', pp. 8-9 and Georges Freysey, 'Le peuple cambodgien et la commission d'enquête parlementaire',
Le Travail, N°1, (16 September 1936), p. 4. The best discussion of this Congress is found in Hémery,
Révolutionnaires vietnamiens et pouvoir colonial en Indochine . . .
'La Défense de l'Indochine', Le Peuple, (5 April 1938), p. 1 and also 'Notre politique', L'Avant-garde, N° 1,
(29 May 1937), pp. 1 and 4.
Gouvernement Général de l'Indochine, Direction des Affaires Politiques et de la Sûreté Générale,
Contribution à l'histoire des mouvements politiques de l'Indochine Française, Documents— Vol. IV., Hanoi:
1933, 'Traduction de la lettre autographe de Nguyen Ai Quoc, Envoyée de Hong Kong, le 20 Avril 1931, au
comité central du Parti Communiste Indochinois,' p. 114, compared with original in c. 365, SPCE, CAOM.
'Nghi Quyet ve Cong tac trong cac Dan toc thieu so', in Van Kien Dang, Vol. I, pp. 528-535.
As this document read: "The frontier separating China from Indo-China stretches for several hundred
kilometres. [...] It is not the first time that the Communist Parties of China and Indo-China are linked up by
the closest fraternal bonds in the struggle against the common enemy". 'Open Letter to the Communist Party
of Indo-China from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China', August 1934, translated in
Straits Settlements Police, Political Intelligence Journal, (39 September 1934), pp. 77-80, GG, CAOM.
Cited by Hollis C. Hebbel, 'The Special Relationship in Indochina', in Joseph J. Zasloff, ed., Postwar
Indochina, Washington: Foreign Service Institute, 1988, p. 110. Hebbel is citing a Vietnamese communist
theorist writing in an official journal in 1985, in the wake of the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia.
Nhung Su Kien, p. 484.
Tønnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution, pp. 124 and 150, note 46, citing a French intelligence translation of
the Viet Minh's 1941 Political Programme and Tran Huy Lieu, et al., Tai Lieu Tham Khao Lich Su Cach
Mang Can Dai Viet Nam: Phong Trao Chong Phat Xit va Cac Cuoc Khoi Nghia Bac Son, Nam Ky, Do
Luong, Volume 10, Hanoi: NXBVSD, 1957, p. 49.
'Thu cua cu Nguyen Ai Quoc Gui ve Nuoc Nam 1941 (6 June 1941)', in Minh Tranh and Hoang Luong,
Nghien Cuu Lich Su, N° 249, (February 1990), p. 49; 'Thu cua cu Nguyen Ai Quoc Gui ve Nuoc Nam 1941
(6 June 1941)', as reproduced and translated from Chinese by Tran Huy Lieu, Tai Lieu tham khao lich su,
Vol. 10, p. 61; Trinh Van Thao, Vietnam du confucianisme au communisme, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1990, p.
220; and 'Letter from Abroad (1941)' in Bernard Fall, Ho Chi Minh on Revolution, Selected Writings, 19201966, New York: Frederick A Praeger, 1967, p. 132.
'Traduction d'une brochure en Annamite, Page de titre : 'Réglements sommaires du Parti, 2ème édition', p. 1,
signed "approuvé par l'ensemble de la VIIIème Assemblée du Comité Central, le 20 mai 1941". This
document was seized in the office of the Executive Committee of a "special V[iet] M[inh] cell" [rather an
ICP one] at Hanoi by an agent of the "US Intelligence Service". Haut Commissariat de France pour
l'Indochine, Le Conseiller Diplomatique, N° 3803/C.D., very secret, 4 August 1947, in v. 161, Asie-Océanie,
Indochine, MAE.
Hebbel, 'The Special Relationship in Indochina', p. 110.
Pham Le Bong, 'De la nation annamite à la fédération indochinoise', p. 4 puts it this way.
On Java, see: Deny Lombard, Le carrefour javanais, pp. 112-118, especially the maps on pp. 114-115.
Space limitations prevent me from exploring how expanded transportation networks reinforced national
identity, especially in Laos and Vietnam. A comparison of Java, Vietnam and Thailand in the 1920s and
1930s would be most instructive.
André Maignan, L'achèvement du transindochinois (La ligne Tourane—Nha-Trang), Paris: Larose Editeurs,
1936, pp. 14-23 for the quote (my emphasis) and Tran Van Trai, Les chemins de fer de l'Indochine, Paris:
Librairie L. Rodstein, 1941, pp. 78-83 for a good history of this line and the Mekong line that never came
into being.
Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 124-130.
See also: 'Rapport de Tezenas du Montcel', p. 12. One might note that Prince Souphanouvong was schooled
in eastern Indochina and France. He was as much at ease in French as in Vietnamese. His voyage east and
marriage to a Vietnamese gave perhaps more substance to his ability to go Indochinese in a Vietnamese way.
See, for example, the letter he penned in the Viet Minh's official mouthpiece to French officials in October
1945 criticising their efforts to turn eastern Indochina against its western half. 'Le Prince Souphanouvong
répond au Commissaire de la République Française', La République, N° 8, (25 November 1945), pp. 1 et 4.
As he concluded this letter: "Le Laos comme l'Indochine, n'est pas près de disparaître".
Direction de l'Instruction Publique, 20 May 1936, 'Le Directeur de l'Instruction Publique en Indochine à M.
l'Inspecteur Général des Colonies Moretti en Mission', p. 10, d. 2495 (2), c. 287, NF, CAOM.
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209
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225
226
'L'enseignement au Laos: Les écoles de pagode', pp. 11-12 and Pascale Bezançon, 'La rénovation des écoles
de pagode au Cambodge', Les Cahiers de l'Asie du Sud-Est, forthcoming, pp. 10, 11 and 14.
Anderson has also made this point, Imagined Communities, pp. 125-130. Scouts in Cambodia were divided
along strict racial lines. In Phnom Penh, Vietnamese youngsters belonged to the Le Van Duyet section, the
Khmer to the Sisowath and Norodom groups, and the French to Chanoine cornette. See: Chef, N° 51,
(December 1941), partie officielle, secteur de Phnom Penh. Lao or Rhadé scouts were hard to find.
Moreover, in comparison to the Vietnamese, there were hardly any Laotian or Cambodian students in France.
In 1946, Cambodian officials made it clear in negotiations on the Indochinese Federation that they would not
send students to study in Hanoi. They were to be educated either in France or Cambodia, but not in Hanoi.
Commissariat de la République Française au Cambodge, Commission d'Etudes Franco-khmère, Compte
rendu de la séance du 29 mars 1946, in. c. 1K306, SHAT. A notable exception, however, is the messianic
faith, Cao Daism, that had both Viet and Khmer followers in southern Vietnam and eastern Cambodia.
'Indochine ou Indo-Chine', Annam Nouveau, (5 March 1931), p. 3.
'Utilité du remplacement par étapes des auxiliaires annamites', p. 13.
'Note d'ensemble sur les problèmes évoqués par les vœux politiques', p. 27, in CG, c. Bk, IV, Tonkin,
CAOM. See also: Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochine : la colonisation ambiguë, 1858-1954,
Paris: La Découverte, 1995.
Morlat, La repression coloniale, p. 244, n. 69. This is almost certainly a reference to the Indochinese Federal
ideas advanced by Pham Huy Luc in 1936 and 1937.
'Truc-tri hay tu-tri', Tan Viet-Nam, N° 11, (6 October 1937), p. 1; 'Hoa-uoc chi la cai nha pha tuong', Tan
Viet-Nam, N° 14, (16 October 1937), p. 1 and 'Neu Dong-Duong duoc Tu-Tri', Tan Viet-Nam, N° 13, (13
October 1937), p. 1.
'The Party's Line in the Period of the Democratic Front (1936-1939)', in Fall, Ho Chi Minh on Revolution,
pp. 130-131.
Code Civil et Code de Procedure Civile Cambodgiens, Phnom Penh: Imp. Société d'Editions Khmères, 1937,
Livre premier, chapitre premier, «de la nationalité», article 22 (nouveau), pp. 3-5 and Code Civil de l'Annam,
Hue: Impr. Phuc Long, 1936, Livre Premier des Personnes, titre premier de la Nationalité, p. 13.
Harlay, 'Un Dominion indochinois est-il possible?', Le Courrier de Haiphong, (17 December 1938).
Maurice Ducoroy, Ma trahison en Indochine, preface by Admiral Decoux, Paris: Les Editions
Internationales, 1949, p. 110 and 'Note du Vice-Amiral à Vichy', 3 April 1942, d. 1201, NF, CAOM.
On "discovering", see: Jean Saumont, 'Notre programme' and Duong Quang Ham, 'Culture française et
culture annamite', both in Indochine, N° 1, (12 September 1940), pp. 1-2 and p. 3 respectively. Wonderful
examples of the "real" Vietnam and Cambodia are in Premiers pas sur la piste, Fédération indochinoise de
scoutisme, manuel de l'aspirant, Hanoi: Taupin, March 1944, p. 11 and the scouting manual, Chef, N° 4649, (July-October 1941), p. 12, 'La Patrie et les Patries'. I borrow the idea of "True" from Herman Lebovics,
True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992 and Vichy
propaganda using it systematically in Indochina.
Thao Poui, 'Une voix laotienne : Qui sommes nous?' Indochine, N° 56, (25 September 1941), p. 5; Nhek
Suong, 'Opinion Cambodgienne', Indochine, N° 62, (6 November 1941), unpaginated; Ha Xuan Ta, 'Ces
images et ces symboles', Indochine et 'Discours du Vice-Amiral d'Escadre Decoux', La Patrie Annamite, N°
508, (10 January 1944), pp. 1-2. One of many examples of the "official voyage" being used to reinforce the
Indochinese idea is shown by the photo display in Indochine, N° 119, (10 December 1942), perfectly
entitled: Sous le signe du fédéralisme : Le Voyage des Souverains d'Annam en Cochinchine et au
Cambodge. I could cite other examples.
Ducoroy, op. cit., p. 169-189.
Ibid., p.119.
'En Indochine: La suppression du mot «indigène»', Indochine, N° 93, (June 1942).
'En marge du voyage des souverains d'Annam en Cochinchine et au Cambodge : Fédéralisme Indochinois',
Indochine, N° 119, (10 December 1942), pp. 1-2.
'Indochine: Création d'un Conseil Fédéral Mixte, décret N° 1525', 31 May 1943 and 'Note à Vichy de
Decoux sur la création d'un Conseil Fédéral Indochinois', both in NF, c. 344, d. 2762, CAOM. Yet it seems,
based on other sources, that a Conseil Fédéral was already in place by 1941.
'Fédéralisme Indochinois', pp. 1-2.
Ibid., p. 2.
Bui Quang Chieu, 'Fédération Indochinoise', La Tribune Indochinoise, (19 December 1941), p. 1.
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229
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235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
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Editorial, 'L'Union Indochinoise', L'Annam Nouveau, N° 1,064, (28 December 1941), p. 1. I have been
unable to determine why the French used "Union" and "Federation" interchangeably during the colonial
period. The two terms are juridically quite different.
Tan Nam Tu, 'Civilisation Indochinoise', Indochine, N° 42, (25 June 1942), pp. 1-5. Eric Hobsbawm and
Agathe Larcher have interesting things to say on this matter. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The
Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 1-14 and 211-262 and Agathe
Larcher, 'D'un réformisme colonial à l'autre : la redécouverte de l'identité culturelle vietnamienne, 19001930', Aix-en-Provence, Journée indochinoise, March 1994.
Phap-Nam [France-[Viet]-Nam], 'Fédération Indochinoise : Union et Paix', Indochine, N° 104, (27 August
1942), p. 2.
'Note sur l'orientation générale de l'activité de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient durant les dernières années',
Indochine, N° 113, (20 October 1942). In 1943, Paul Guilleminet, one of the strongest supporters of a
shared Montagnard "essential cultural unity", was also a member of the Ecole française. Salemink, op. cit.,
p. 273.
Roland Meyer was, in this sense, tens years ahead of his time. He had been pushing a cultural, religious and
nationalist "revival" in Laos and Cambodia since 1930 (if not earlier), noting already in that year the danger
of the "rebirth of the national sentiment of the Thai". Meyer, Komlah, pp. 101-102.
Tan Nam Tu, 'Civilisation Indochinoise', Indochine, N° 42, (25 June 1942), pp. 1-5. My emphasis.
On Marquet, see: Le Quang Luat, 'L'Esprit Nouveau', L'Annam Nouveau, N° 1,051, (28 September 1941), p.
1.
Letter to the editor, 'La Fédération Indochinoise', Indochine, N° 70, (1 January 1942), p. 12.
Ourot Souvannavong, in 'Les Annamites et Nous', Indochine, N° 57, (October 1941), pp. 3-5, tries to
reconcile the Lao and Viet brothers into this happy Indochinese family.
'Commissaire aux colonies à M. Nolde (Alger)', 23 June 1944, d. 1204, NF, CAOM. On the importance of
ethnicity, see Henly's excellent discussion, 'Comparative Notes on Indonesia and Indochina' . . . and Hymnes
et Pavillons d'Indochine, Hanoi: IDEO, 1941, in particular the words of the national anthems and the
national flags. The word "Campuchéa" was officially used for the first time here to get at the timeless
Cambodia. However, Roland Meyer was perhaps the first to use it in this nationalistic sense in his novel
published in 1919, Saramani: Danseuse Khmèr, Saigon: Impr. Nouvelle Albert Portail, 1919, used in the
dedication and on the last page, p. 238. One finds it again in Komlah. . . .
In 1936, it was admitted by a special education mission that the French Language was not being learned by
Lao pupils, unlike the Vietnamese or the "West" and "Equatorial Africans". 'L'Inspecteur Général des
Colonies Moretti à M. le Ministre des Colonies: Inspection Générale de l'Enseignement, Direction des
Affaires Politiques', p. 7, Saigon, 20 June 1936, d. 2495 (2), c. 287, NF, CAOM. The same was true in the
Pagoda Schools in Cambodia. 'Note pour M. l'Inspecteur Général des Colonies au sujet de l'enseignement
traditionnel au Cambodge: Mission 1935-36', pp. 3-5, in Ibid.
J. Lebas, 'Les mouvements de jeunesse en Indochine', Indochine, N° 37, (15 May 1941), p. 9.
See the wonderful photo in Indochine, N° 121, (28 November 1940), photo section.
Unlike the Indonesian case, archival documents show that it was never a question of creating an
"Indochinese" flag, be it prior to or after 1945: 'Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Service du protocole',
Paris, 9 November 1932, NF, c. 268, d. 2351: Drapeaux de l'Annam, Cochinchine, Cambodge, CAOM;
Hymnes et Pavillons d'Indochine for the Vichy period; M. Lipowski, Direction France-Asie, Ministère des
Affaires étrangères, N° 288/PI, bordereau, Paris, 22 June 1950, v. 22, Etats Associés, MAE.
See the updated Annamese Civil Code outlined during the Vichy period, especially Article 14, in d. 770, c.
75, NF, CAOM.
Cited by Charles Rochet, Pays lao, p. 205. Again, even if this is Rochet speaking for the Lao, it only
reinforces my point.
J. Parisot, 'Situation politique générale de la circonscription', 3ème trimestre 1938, p. 3, in c. F4, Résidence
Supérieure du Laos, GG, CAOM.
My thinking on this matter has been stimulated by the ideas of Agathe Larcher on Pierre Pasquier and the
French revalorisation of "national identities" in Indochina in the 1920s and 1930s. Agathe Larcher, 'L'Ordre
par la concorde: Essai sur les réformismes coloniaux en Indochine, 1902-1945', Mémoire de DEA d'histoire,
Paris VII, 1994; Agathe Larcher, 'D'un réformisme colonial à l'autre'; and the fascinating essay of Pham
Quynh, 'L'Accord politique de Confucius et de Maurras', La Patrie Annamite, N° 449, (29 April 1942), pp. 14.
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247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
Amiral J. Decoux, 'Allocution prononcée à l'Université indochinoise', Indochine, N° 112, (22 October 1942),
p. 11.
'Bai dien-van quan-trong cua quan Toan-quyen', Dan Bao, N° 986, (12 October 1942), p. 1 and 'Le VietNam et son élite', La Patrie Annamite, N° 465, (16 November 1942), pp. 1 and 4. Italics in original.
Decoux's move coincided nicely with celebrations in Hanoi of the 140th Anniversary of Gia-Long's
unification of "Viet-Nam". The allusion to Pasquier's Annam d'autrefois is the Patrie Annamite's—not mine.
On the idea of a "New Viet-Nam", see: Linh-Nam, 'Notre appellation nationale' . . . p. 32.
I am thinking of such hard-core militants as Ho Tung Mau, Nguyen Tai, Hoang Sam, Hoang Van Thai,
Vuong Thua Vu, Tran Huy Lieu and Nguyen Binh.
Cited by Tønnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution, p. 330, note 42.
'Conditions générales du statut dont bénéficiera l'Indochine libérée de l'envahisseur', 23 March 1945, Hors
série N° 16.
'Y Chung Toi doi voi Thoi Cuc: Quoc Hieu cua ta la gi?' Dong Phat, N° 6,000, (20 April 1945), p. 1 and
Dai-Nam, Dai-Viet, Annam and Viet-nam, see: Linh-Nam, 'Notre appellation nationale . . . ', pp. 29-32.
Dan Bao, N° 644, (12 March 1945), p.1.
'Bao Cao Nhan Dan Dai Viet', Dong Phat, N° 5,966, (16 March 1945), p. 1 and Interview with Hoang Xuan
Han, 1 August 1993, Paris. Ironically, Dong Phat [roughly, Greater Orient] was known until 9 March 1945
as Dong Phap—France d'Orient or by this time: French Indochina.
Nguyen Van To, 'Quoc Hieu Nuoc ta', Tri Tan, N° 1, (3 June 1941), pp. 3 and 17; 'Bao Cao Nhan Dan Dai
Viet', Dong Phat, N° 5,966, (16 March 1945), p. 1; Interview with Hoang Xuan Han, 1 August 1993, Paris;
Khuong Viet, 'Nam Moi Noi Chuyen cu', Dai Viet Tap Chi, N° 31, (16 January 1944), p. 6; and Nguyen Tien
Lang, 'Annam ou Dai Nam', La Tribune Indochinoise, N° 2,163, (16 July 1941), p. 2.
'Y Chung Toi doi voi Thoi Cuc: Quoc Hieu cua ta la gi?' Dong Phat, N° 6,000, (20 April 1945), p. 1.
'Noi Cac Viet-nam da hop ky dau tien', Dong Phat, N° 6,008, (7 May 1945), p. 1; 'A propos du drapeau
national de l'Empire du Viet-Nam', L'Opinion-Impartial, N° 50, (12 May 1945), p. 1; 'An-Dinh Quoc-Hieu,
Quoc-Ky va Quoc-Ca', Dong Phat, N° 6052, (28 June 1945), p. 1; and Linh-Nam, 'Notre appellation
nationale: Dai-Viet? Dai-Nam? Annam? Viet-Nam?', Sud-Est, N° 6, (November 1949), p. 32.
Interview with Ho Ta Khanh, 10 December 1993, Boulogne and Hoang Xuan Han, 4 March 1994, Paris and
'Bo chu «Bac ky Bao ho»', Dong Phat, (3 July 1945), p.1. Yet "bo" was officially used by the Kim
government to replace "ky" before Ho Chi Minh's government came to power. Compare: 'Kham Sai Bac Bo
Viet-nam', Dong Phat, N° 6055, (27 June 1945), p. 1 with N° 6022, (20 May 1945), p.1, using Bac Ky and
also 'Historique de la Libération de l'Indochine après la capitulation japonaise', 18 July 1946, p. 16, note 1.
'Thong-cao', Dong-phat, N° 5,979, (31 March 1945), p. 1.
Do Tu, 'Lien Bang Dong Duong', Binh Minh, N° 31, (25 April 1945), pp. 1-2. The son of Nguyen Van Vinh
was the chief editor of this paper. Khai Hung was the other editor.
Nguyen Van Luyen, 'Giao thiep . . ', N° 256, pp. 2-4, 27 and N° 257, pp. 7 and 24.
Tønnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution, p. 284.
M. Caply, 'Le Japon et l'indépendance du Laos (1945)', Revue d'histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale,
(1971), pp. 75-76.
'Bao Cao', in Dong Phat, N° 5,993, (17 April 1945), p. 1.
Co Giai Phong, N° 14, (28 June 1945) and N° 15, (17 July 1945), as cited by Stein Tønnesson, Vietnamese
Revolution, pp. 336-37 and p. 377 for Directive N° 1.
Nhung Su Kien, p. 643. However, I have not been able to consult the original to see if it really became
"Complete Vietnamese Independence" at this point in time.
Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, pp. 83-85.
Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, Viet-Nam Dan-Quoc Cong-Bao, N° 1, (29 August 1945), p. 13.
French translation of 'Décret N° 53, Article 2, Réglementant la nationalité vietnamienne, tel qu'il a été
modifié par le décret N° 25 du 25 février 1946' and 'Article 3', in Commissariat de la République pour le
Tonkin et le Nord Annam, Haut-Commissariat pour l'Indochine, 'Note à l'attention de Monsieur le
Commissaire Fédéral aux Affaires Politiques [Léon Pignon], Saigon, d. Relations avec le GRA, c. 157,
Conseiller Politique, CAOM. Decree N° 53 was not exactly inventing a new concept of "nationalité". One
must see this as a continuity stemming from earlier juridical definitions of "Annamese nationality" elaborated
during the colonial period in the Code Civil de l'Annam . . ., Article 13, pp. 13-14. This can, in turn, be
compared with the Common Law Code of Gia-Long, translated by P.L.F Philastre, Le Code annamite,
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269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
nouvelle traduction complète, Tome I, Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1876, Article 33, 'Des étrangers coupables', pp.
253-255.
Quoc Thuy, Van de Dan Toc, Hanoi: Dai Chúng, 1946 but signed 16 September 1945, pp. 28-32. On the
minority question, see: Salemink, 'Primitive Partisans', pp. 261-293 and 'Note sur les minorités ethniques',
Conférence franco-vietnamienne, Commission politique, 13/CP/N/Pol, Dalat, 8 May 1946, v. 68, AsieOcéanie, Indochine, MAE.
This is based upon my reading of the two papers at the Annex of the Bibliothèque Nationale. This is why I
do not think that the ICP really changed its slogan at Tan Trao in August 1945. Only by consulting the
original Vietnamese version will we be able to resolve this question.
I will not go into details on the "dissolution" of the ICP in November 1945.
'Lich su Mot Cay Co', Giai Phong, N° 1, (25 August 1945), p. 1, Fonds Julien, 47, c. 1, Entrée par voie
extraordinaire d'outre-mer, CAOM.
Archimedes L.A. Patti, Why Viet Nam ? Prelude to America's Albatross, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1980, 567-568, note 2. My emphasis. I am very indebted to Monsieur Pierre Brocheux for having
brought this wonderful citation to my attention. A French translation is in Brocheux and Hémery, La
colonisation ambiguë . . .
CSTFEO, EM, 2ème Bureau, 'Note de renseignements : Activité extérieure du gouvernement de Hanoi dans
certains pays du sud est asiatique', Saigon, 13 November 1946, p. 5, v. 161, Asie-Océanie, Indochine, MAE.
See the series of 50 front-page articles on the VNQDD and its glorious past published in mid-1945 in the
widely read Dong Phat as well as a fascinating historical resurrection of the VNQDD in Ngay Nay and Trung
Bac Chu Nhat by such leading cultural luminaries as Dao Trinh Nhat and Nguyen Tuong Long (Hoang Dao).
Trong Duc, 'Quoc-ky va Dang-ky', Doc Lap, N° 10, (5 October 1945), p. 1.
'Note Circulaire', 16 January 1947, N° 215/CP-CAB, signed by d'Argenlieu, pp. 1-3, d. Organisation
Politique et Adminstrative, c. 157, CP, CAOM. My emphasis. Also in Phillipe Devillers, Paris, Saigon,
Hanoi : Les archives de la guerre, 1944-1947, Paris, Editions Gallimard/Julliard, 1988.
Daniel Hémery, 'Le projet indochinois de la France au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale',
communication faite au colloque Décolonisations comparées, Aix-en-Provence, 30 September-3 October
1993, forthcoming. I regret that I have been unable to acquire a copy of Paul Isoart's article on the
"Associated States" presented during this same conference.
At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Allied powers decided that command boundaries in Indochina
would be divided along the 16th parallel, with the Chinese in charge of the northern part and the British
responsible for the southern section.
Nguyen Van Luyen, 'Van De Giao-Thiep', N° 256, pp. 2-4 and 27 and N° 257, pp. 7 and 24. My research
does not show that the French were behind all these ethnic outbreaks.
Haut Commissariat de France pour l'Indochine, Secrétariat de la conférence, Commission politique, N° 6,
N/CP, 'Le problème de la Fédération indochinoise', Dalat, 8 May 1946, v. 68, Asie-Océanie, Indochine,
MAE, my emphasis, and Hémery, 'Le projet indochinois de la France'.
See also Brocheux and Hémery, La colonisation ambiguë . . . and Daniel Hémery, 'Le projet indochinois de
la France'.
Haut Commissariat de France pour l'Indochine, Secrétariat de la conférence, commission politique, N° 6
N/CP, Dalat, 8 May 1946, p. 6.
Historique de la Libération de l'Indochine : L'Indochine après la capitulation japonaise, (15 août-15 octobre
1945), pp. 45-46, in Bulletin d'Etudes, N° 30, Documentation de l'Etat-Major de la Défense de l'Indochine,
Présidence du Gouvernement Provisoire de la République française, Paris, 18 July 1946.
Commissariat de France pour l'Indochine, Affaires Politiques, Hanoi, 11 August 1947, N° 28 H Dir Cab,
'Rapport politique du mois de juillet 1947', p. 9, in v. 140, Asie-Océanie, Indochine, MAE.
Commissariat de la République Française au Cambodge, Bureau des Affaires politiques, January 1947,
'Chronique politique pour le mois de décembre 1946', p. 5, c. 10H4300, SHAT. See also: Goscha, 'Repenser
l'Indochine . . . ' While I have no proof, I suspect that just as French colonial laws allowed the Vietnamese
to work and live in Cambodia and Laos during the colonial period, the post 9 March 1945 Laotian and
Cambodian governments tried to revise these colonial juridical categories on "nationality" and "French
subject" status in order to cut the Viet out of their "national" systems. The Vietnamese residing for decades
in Laos and Cambodia may have suddenly been on the outside looking in, excluded legally from the very
Laotian and Cambodian nation states that they had helped build during the colonial period.
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287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
Conférence préparatoire franco-vietnamienne, Secrétariat de la conférence, Commission Politique, 3CA/CP,
Annexe-1, Compte-rendu sténographique du séance du 6 mai 1946, pp. 9-10 for the quote, d. Notes diverses
sur l'Indochine, c. 1, Papiers Alessandri, 1K306, SHAT; Hoang Xuan Han, Mot vai Ki Vang ve Hoi Nghi Da
Lat, Paris: AVAC, 1987; and my interview with Hoang Xuan Han, 1 August 1993, Paris.
'Analyse [des] principes directeurs du Parti: Révolution Néo-Démocratique de l'Indochine', captured and
translated by the French and compared with the Vietnamese original, both in Archives sélectionnés du 2ème
Bureau/EMIFT, Section Indochine, in c. 10H620, SHAT. The Vietnamese original reads: "Tien toi Lien
Bang Cong Hoa Dan Chu Dong Duong", original quoc ngu version, p. 6, followed by points 1) cung dung
duoi ngon co Dang Cong San Dong Duong [Together they will stand under the banner of the ICP] and 2)
"Cung tien buoc tren con duong cach mang dan chu moi de gianh doc lap tu do va hanh phuc cho ca VietNam, Lao, Men" [Together they will advance on the new democratic revolutionary road in order to garner
independence, freedom and happiness for all the Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians].
'Fragments d'une brochure en Annamite' [ICP document, untitled and undated, but must be early 1940s], pp.
1-3 and 5.
'Situation et missions : résumé destiné à être commenté dans les chi bo', 24 March 1949, in Haut
Commissariat de France pour l'Indochine, CD, JG/EH, Saigon, 26 April 1949, d. 165-2, v. 161, AsieOcéanie, Indochine, MAE.
'Projet de statuts du Parti', réédité par le Comité de Propagande et d'Education de la Section urbaine de Dalat,
captured in March 1951, in Haut-Commissariat de France en Indochine, Affaires Politiques, Saigon, 30 June
1951, 'Note sur le Parti vietnamien et le Parti communiste indochinois', translated in Annex 2, p. 1, c.
10H620, SHAT.
Haut Commissaire de France en Indochine, Service Diplomatique, Saigon, 17 January 1953, N°
261/Cab/CD, Captured Vietnamese communist document dated 1 November 1951 and entitled:
'Considération sur l'apparition officielle du parti Ouvrier Vietnamien', p. 3, in v. 398, Asie-Océanie,
Indochine, MAE.
'Considération sur l'apparition officielle du parti Ouvrier Vietnamien', p. 3. While I have no direct proof, it
appears that a decision may have been taken in VWP circles in 1951 to replace the term "Indochina" with
"Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia" to avoid aggravating Laotian and Cambodian nationalist sensibilities. It would
also be interesting to know if and when Léon Pignon was able to turn the Indochinese line against
Vietnamese communists in his shrewd propaganda drives. He arrived in Phnom Penh in 1949.
Motoo Furuta, 'The Indochina Communist Party's Division into Three Parties: Vietnamese Communist
Policy towards Cambodia and Laos, 1948-1951,' in Takashi Shiraishi and Motoo Furuta, eds., Indochina in
the 1940s and 1950s, Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1992, pp. 143-163. Motoo Furuta was able to
consult a mass of ICP and VWP primary sources on the events of 1948-1951. I have relied heavily on
Motoo Furuta's work. Unfortunately, I cannot read Japanese and have thus been unable to cite properly his
other articles on "Indochina". My apologies. I have, however, consulted many of the same documents he
used in his article. They are held in c. 10H620, SHAT.
Comité des Délégues de la Zone Saigon/Cholon, N° 517/K, 'Programme de la cérémonie de réception de
membres du Parti', in Le Parti Ouvrier Viêtnamien, Annex, p. 1 and Truong Chinh, 'Conclusions de la
présidence du congrès [Third National Congress, see below] et du comité central au sujet des déliberations
du congrès', in c. 620, SHAT.
See: Motoo Furuta, 'The Indochina Communist Party's Division into Three Parties', op. cit.
For 1919-1920, I am thinking of the Sarraut's Indochinese Charter and Ho Chi Minh's linkage of Annam to
Indochina; for 1930-1931, the opposition between the VNQDD (Vietnam) vs. the ICP (Indochina) aligned
with the Comintern (Indochina) parallel to the debate between Pham Quynh (Annam) vs. Nguyen Van Vinh
(Etat indochinois de fait) aligned with French colonialism (Indochina); 1935-1939, Soviet Union of the
Indochinese Republic/Indochinese Congress vs. French Indochinese Federation; 1941-1942, Ho's
Indochinese Independence League/Vietnam vs. Decoux's Indochinese Federation/Vietnam; 1945-1946,
French Indochinese Federation vs. Vietnamese Indochinese Federation; and 1950-1951, ICP dissolved but
Indochinese Federation and Alliance of Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia remains vs. French Indochinese Federation
dissolved but Associated States of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia remain.
The best discussion of the dissolution of the ICP is Motoo Furuta, 'The Indochina Communist Party's
Division into Three Parties', op. cit., pp. 143-163.
'Haut Commissariat de France en Indochine à M. le Général Alessandri, Comrep au Cambodge', signed
d'Argenlieu, 17 December 1945 and Commission d'Etudes Franco-Khmère, séance du 6 décembre 1945
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300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
(3ème séance), p. 1, 1K306, SHAT. I am grateful to Thomas Engelbert who kindly provided me with a copy
of the 17 December 1945 document.
'Compte Rendu de Truong Chinh', Sinh Hoat Noi Bo, February-March 1950 Special edition, devoted to the
Third National Congress of the Party (21 January to 3 February 1950), c. 10H620, SHAT.
'Extraits du Manifeste du "Parti Lao Dong', in Le Parti Ouvrier Vietnamien . . . pp. 2 and 5. I have
unfortunately been unable to consult the original quoc ngu version.
'Conclusions de la présidence du Congrès et du Comité Central au sujet des déliberations du Congrès', p. 1
and Motoo Furuta, op. cit., pp. 143-163.
'Tim Hieu,' op. cit., p. 13; Nguyen Dinh Nhon, 'Chu Tich Ho Chi Minh voi Hoi Nghi can bo lien minh nhan
dan Viet-Lao nam 1952', Tap Chi Lich Su Dang, N° 1, (1993), p. 41; and Khmer Armed Resistance, The
Khmer Peace Committee, October 1952, p. 14.
Sinh Hoat Noi Bo, Special Edition, (February-March 1950), in c. 10H620, SHAT.
For a strategic discussion, see: William Turley, 'Vietnam/Indochina: Hanoi's Challenge to Southeast Asian
Regional Order' in Whan Kihl and Lawrence E. Grinter, Asian Pacific Security: Emerging Challenges and
Responses, Boulder (USA): Westview Press, 1986; Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War After the War,
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1986, pp. 119-123 and 372-374; and Thomas Engelbert
and Christopher E. Goscha, Falling Out of Touch: Vietnamese Communist Policy towards an Emerging
Cambodian Communist Movement (1930-1975), Clayton, Australia:
Monash Monograph Series,
forthcoming.
'Les missions militaires imminentes pour le passage dans la phase de la contre offensive générale', Rapport
fait au 3ème Congrès National du Parti, 21 January 1950, in Analyse : 'Directives du Parti Communiste
Indochinois pour l'année 1951', Bulletin de Renseignements N° 4882, Valeur : A/2, dated 4 April 1951, c.
10H620, SHAT. Also see: Motoo Furuta, op. cit., p. 151.
General de Langlade, Huit mois de pacification au Cambodge, (juillet 1952-février 1953): une méthode—des
résultats, pp. 89-107 and Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Cambodge, Le Général, N° 163/CAB,
Phnom Penh, 14 November 1952, both in c. 10H285, SHAT.
Truong Chinh, 'Chung Ta da Lam Gi va Con Phai Lam Gi de Chuyen Sang Giai Doan Moi?', Tap Chi Cong
San, N° 2, (August 1950) and Truong Chinh, 'Compte rendu : Réaliser la mission de préparation pour le
passage en force à la contre-offensive générale'.
Motoo Furuta, op. cit., pp. 149-151; 'Rapport de Truong Chinh à la sixième réunion du Comité Central du
Parti Communiste Indochinois (14-18 janvier 1949)', pp. 2-5 in Commissariat de France en Indochine,
Direction des Services de Sécurité, N° 6442/C/SG.1, Saigon, 17 October 1951, Note pour le Haut
Commissariat, c. 10H620, SHAT; and on French military moves in western Indochina, see: Commandement
en chef des forces armées en extrême-orient, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 3,715/FAEO/2S, Saigon, 23 August
1950, d. 5, c. 10H608, SHAT.
Hong Nam, ‘Pha Tan Cuoc Tan Cong Moi cua Giac', Sinh Hoat Noi Bo, N° 78, (16 August 1949) and
'Comité Exécutif, Section Centrale du Parti (Ban Chap Hanh Trung Uong Dang Bo), translated from
Vietnamese by the French, pp. 13, 18, and 22, c. 10H620, SHAT, confirmed by Greg Lockhart, Nation in
Arms, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989, p. 214.
'Les missions militaires imminentes: Pour le passage dans la phase de la contre offensive générale: Rapport
lu au IIIe Congrès National du Parti, du 21 janvier au 13 février 1950', p. 16 and 'Traduction d'un Discours
de Vo Nguyen Giap prononcé au 6 Congrès Militaire', [early 1950 according to 2ème Bureau/EM],
Commandement en chef des forces armées en Extrême-Orient, 2ème Bureau, Section Indochine, Saigon, 4
November 1950, N° 5344/FAEO/2S, Source: vietnamienne, Valeur: A/2, p. 17, both translated by 2ème
Bureau in c. 10H620, SHAT, in consultation with Motoo Furuta, op. cit., pp. 151-152.
William Turley, ‘Vietnam’s View of Regional Order,’ Address to the 26th Annual International Studies
Association, Washington, D.C., p. 6, as cited by Chanda, op. cit., pp. 120. In writing this essay in Europe, I
was regrettably unable to consult Turley's essay or Gareth Porter's ‘Vietnamese Policy and the Indochina
Crisis,’ in David W.P. Elliot, The Third Indochina Conflict. Boulder: Westview Press, 1981, on this subject.
'Les missions militaires imminentes pour le passage dans la phase de la contre offensive générale', pp. 26-27;
Truong Chinh, 'Compte rendu : Réaliser la mission de préparation pour le passage en force à la contreoffensive générale'; 'Projet de Statuts du Parti [VWP]', pp. 1-2; 'Analyse [des] principes directeurs du Parti :
Révolution Néo-Démocratique de l'Indochine', pp. 5 and 10-11; Furuta, op. cit., pp. 148-149; and 'Ce qu'un
membre du Parti communiste doit connaître et exécuter, 1951', pp. 1-4, captured document from the Central
Administrative Committee of the Party, in 10H620, SHAT.
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315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
Hoang Hoa, ‘Nam-bo se Danh Tan Moi Muu Mo Xam Luoc cua De Quoc Quoc Te’, Thong Nhat, N° 13,
(May 1950).
'Dai Hoi Dai Bieu Toan Quoc lan thu Hai cua Dang Cong San Dong Duong', 11-19 February 1951, in Van
Kien, Vol. II, p. 241 and confirmed by 'Considération sur l'apparition officielle du Parti Ouvrier Vietnamien,'
p. 5.
Truong Chinh, 'Compte rendu : Réaliser la mission de préparation pour le passage en force à la contreoffensive générale, Mission de préparation à la contre offensive générale', point 3.
Comité de Résistance et Exécutif du Nam Bo, Outre Mer, 'Conférence Extraordinaire des Cadres Politicoadministratifs-militaires Mien-Viet', 5 February 1949, c. 10H5585, SHAT; and 'Le communisme en
Indochine', 1 May 1954, DGD, N° 719/DGD, pp. 34-35, citing excerpts from Son's plan, in c. 10H279,
SHAT and also Ban Can Su Cao-Mien, Ban Thuong Vu, So 110/CS-TU, 29-7-1950, Ke Hoach Hoat dong o
Moi Vung Tren Lanh Tho Cao Mien', pp. 1-10, in S.E.C.A.M., N° 1370, Phnom Penh, 30 August 1950, c.
10H5585, SHAT. Nguyen Thanh Son became head of the External Affairs Office on 7 December 1948.
On preparations for this conference, see the captured Viet Minh documents in d. Front du Cambodge, c.
10H4129, SHAT. David Chandler brought our attention to the importance of this "meeting" in The Tragedy
of Cambodian History: Politics, War and Revolution since 1945, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991,
pp. 47-49 and his Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, Boulder: Westview Press, 1993,
pp. 32-33.
'Premier Congrès des Cadres du Cambodge (qui a eu lieu du 12 au 22 mars 1950) : Exposé relatif à la
situation et à la mission de la Révolution Khmère (présenté par le Camarade Nguyen Thanh Son)', c.
10H284; Service de Securité du Haut Commissariat du Cambodge, N° 346/PS-C, August 1952, 'Etude sur les
mouvements rebelles au Cambodge (1942-1952),' p. 67, GG, c. F7, CAOM; and 'Le communisme en
Indochine', op. cit., pp. 37-38. The order to open the Cambodian Front came on 15 September 1949, linked
obviously to the Chinese victory in the north. See the intercepted orders, deciphered by the FAEO, Forces
franco-vietnamiennes du Sud, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 5867/2S, d. D.Y., c. 10H4120, SHAT.
Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, chapters 3-6.
'Delegation in Siam to Resistance Committee Headquarters in Nam Bo', 5 November 1949, captured
document, in d. D.Y, c. 10H4120, SHAT. I have relied here on radio messages intercepted and/or decrypted
by French intelligence. They are rated A/1, considered to be of the surest reliability, that is, based on the
original document in hand.
Bruno Rajan, 'Dans le Far-West Cambodgien : Le train de la contrebande', Indochine-Sud-Est Asiatique,
(Second Semester, 1952), pp. 26-33 and Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, chapters 4 and 6.
Rajan wrote brilliantly of Thai-Cambodian relations: "Les rapports entre le Siam et le Cambodge sont
inscrits dans la nature des choses. La France, pour faire l'Indochine, a voulu que le Cambodge tourne le dos à
l'Ouest et il a fallu attendre l'occupation japonaise pour que le chemin de fer cambodgien soit raccordé mais
aucun train ne franchit encore la frontière entre Poïpet et Aranya, parce qu'il subsiste cette entité économique
: l'Indochine. Seulement les marchandises, elles, circulent à dos d'hommes parce que c'est l'offre et la
demande. La contrebande d'aujourd'hui est la théorie économique de demain".
The documentation for this paragraph is in Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, chapters 4 and
6; 'Arms Smuggling between Siam and Indochina', MI2/(b), 28 September 1950, FO371/83654, Public
Records Office; 'Detailed Comment on Notes on Arms Smuggled between Siam and the Rebels in IndoChina', secret, British Embassy, Bangkok, 1 November 1950, pp. 1-3, FO371/83654, PRO; British Embassy,
Bangkok, to Southeast Asia Department, 1 November 1950, pp. 1-2, FO371/83654, PRO, Britain; and
'Foreign Office Minute : Arms Trafic in Southeast Asia', 13 June 1950, Joint Intelligence Committee (Far
East), (49), 30 (Final), FZ1195/4G, PRO.
Hoang Van Hoan, op. cit., p. 175 for the quote. On the Western Front, see: Goscha, Thailand and the
Vietnamese Resistance, chapters 4 and 6 and CSTFEO, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 3.901/2; Saigon, 19
September 1947, 'Note de Renseignements: Trafic entre le Siam et l'Indochine' on Giap's order to create it.
Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, chapters 3-6; Christopher E. Goscha, 'Réflexions sur le
rôle joué par la Thaïlande dans la révolution viêtnamienne'; 'Organisation de l'autorité politico-militaire
adverse en Indochine', EMFTEO, 2ème Bureau, Documentation, pp. 36-44, c. 10H620, SHAT; and André
Clermont, 'Aperçu de l'économie du Viet Minh', Sud-Est Asiatique, N° 19, (January 1951), pp. 17-23.
Service de Securité du Haut Commissariat du Cambodge, N° 346/PS-C, August 1952, 'Etude sur les
mouvements rebelles au Cambodge (1942-1952)', op. cit., p. 67 and Direction des Services de Sécurité du
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329
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331
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333
334
335
336
337
338
339
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341
Haut Commissariat en Indochine, 'Note sur l'organisation politique et adminstrative Viet Minh au
Cambodge', GG. c. 65493, CAOM.
Nguyen Thanh Son, ‘Exposé relatif à la mission de la Révolution Khmère', p. 29; Report of Truong Chinh,
'Compte rendu: Réaliser la mission de préparation pour le passage en force à la contre-offensive générale';
and 'Tim Hieu', p. 14.
'Compte Rendu de Truong Chinh: Réaliser la mission de préparaton pour le passage en force à la contre
offensive générale', in Sinh Hoat Noi Bo, (February 1950), obtained by SEHAN and dated 10 August 1950.
Nguyen Thanh Son, 'Exposé', pp. 25-26.
Ibid., pp. 26-27.
Tin Tuc, Nam Bo Service of Information, broadcast 25 March 1950, pp. 1-2, in Etat du Vietnam, Direction
Régionale de la Police et de la Sûreté Nationales au Sud Vietnam, Police Spéciale de l'Est, N° 857/FSE-S,
Valeur : A, Saigon, 4 May 1950, c. 379, SPCE, CAOM.
Commandement en Chef en Indochine, Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Cambodge, EM, 2ème
Bureau, N° 566/2, Phnom Penh, 15 February 1952, 'Ordre de Bataille des Forces Rebelles au Cambodge', p.
12.
Nguyen Thanh Son, 'Exposé', p. 42.
Ibid., pp. 40-44; Motoo Furuta, op. cit., p. 152; HC de France en Indochine, Commandement en Chef en
Extrême-Orient, Forces Terrestres, EM, 3ème Bureau, N° 2371/3, Phnom Penh, 12 October 1951, 'Synthèse
d'Exploitation du Rallié [x], du Comité des Affaires Extérieures du Nam Bo', pp. 1-3; and 'Note sur
l'organisation politique', pp. 8-9.
'Le communisme en Indochine', p. 46; Motoo Furuta, op. cit., p. 153; Forces du Laos, 2ème Bureau, EM, N°
273/FL/2, Vientiane, 25 February 1950, 'Synthèse de Renseignement sur le Khu Ha Lao', pp. 3-5, c
10H5642, SHAT; and 'Le Parti Communiste Laotien', in Le Parti Ouvrier Vietnam, pp. 1-7 and 137-138.
According to VWP sources, of the 1,784 members of the Party in 1951 only 150 were Cambodian. As for
the Laotian Party, of 2,091 members only 91 were Laotian. 'Le communisme en Indochine', p. 38, note 1.
These numbers are confirmed by Motoo Furuta, op. cit., p. 162, note 85. Space limitations prevent me from
discussing intensive VWP activities in Laos at this time. Excellent studies are to be found in: MacAlister
Brown and Joseph J. Zasloff, Apprentice Revolutionaries: The Communist Movement in Laos, 1930-1985,
Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1986; Geoffrey Charles Gunn, Political Struggles in Laos (19301954): Vietnamese Communist Power and the Lao Struggle for National Independence, Bangkok: Editions
Duang Kamol, 1988; and Jean Deuve, Le Laos, 1945-1949: Contribution à l’Histoire du Mouvement Lao
Issara. Montpellier: Université Paul Valery, 1992.
'Ke Hoach Hoat Dong o moi vung tren lanh tho Cao-mien', c. 10H5585, SHAT and Commandement
Supérieur des Forces Terrestres en Extrême-Orient, EM, 2ème Bureau, Saigon, 9 June 1949, 'Forces
Adverses', pp. 1-8, c. 10H607, SHAT.
Both quotes cited in 'Note sur l'organisation politique', pp. 12-13.
'Le communisme en Indochine', p. 37 and 'Note sur l'organisation politique', pp. 19-20. Kiernan treats this
period best in How Pol Pot. . . .
'Le communisme en Indochine', pp. 45-46 and 'Note sur l'organisation politique', p. 19.
Ban Van Dong Thanh Lap Dang Nhan Dan Cach Manh Cao Mien, 'Statut du Parti Révolutionnaire du Peuple
du Cambodge' and 'La ligne politique du Parti', dated 5 August 1951 and also 'Statut Provisoire du Parti
Révolutionnaire du Peuple Cambodgien', pp. 2-3; 'Le Communisme en Indochine', p. 46; 'Le Parti
Communiste Laos', in Le Parti Ouvrier Vietnam, pp. 1-7 and 137-138 and 'Le gouvernement central transmet
à la délégation Viet Minh du Siam les projets à entrependre au Laos et au Cambodge', p. 3, translated in
Forces du Laos, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 1158/FL/2, Valeur: A, dated 17 April 1951, d.
Notes/Renseignements, 1951, c. 10H5642, SHAT.
'Le gouvernement central transmet à la délégation Viet Minh du Siam les projets à entrependre au Laos et au
Cambodge' and the captured Vietnamese document on strengthening Laotian and Cambodian
administrations, 'V. Consolidation de notre pouvoir et destruction de celui de l'ennemi en vue de la formation
du gouvernement d'union des peuples', pp. 1-7, marked: "to burn after reading", in 'Note sur l'organisation
politique', Annexe II, sections V-VII.
Nguyen Song Tung, 'Bai Tham Luan cua Dong Chi Nguyen Song Tung ve Chien Tranh Campuchia tai Hoi
Nghi Tong Ket Chien Luoc do Bo Tong Tu Lenh Trieu Tap tai Hanoi nam 1964', Hanoi: TVQDND, 1964,
p. 1 and also 'Le Communisme en Indochine', p. 20. The Provisional Statutes of this Party are in Annexe VI,
'Note sur l'organisation politique', pp. 1-7. Far from Chinese aid and having suffered heavy defeats in Nam
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346
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349
350
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Bo in 1950-1951, southern militants had a harder time in Cambodia than their northern counterparts did in
Laos.
Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power: A History of Communism in Kampuchea, 1930-1975, London:
Verso, 1985, p. 121 and Khmer Armed Resistance, p. 13, which says that a "Provisional National Liberation
Government" war formed during the early 1950 People's Congress. Tou Samouth was elected its chairman.
He had been admitted by Vietnamese cadres into the ICP in the wake of WWII.
'Le communisme en Indochine', p. 46; 'Note sur l'organisation politique', p. 21; Le Parti Ouvrier Vietnamien,
p. 137; and Motoo Furuta, op. cit., p. 153.
I am in no way suggesting that the "Khmer Issarak" or "Lao Issara" were "stooges" of the Vietnamese, no
more than I would say that Ho Chi Minh was a simple "creation" of the Comintern or Chinese Communist
Party—even though many of the earliest Vietnamese communist were first members of the CCP, French
Communist Party or Comintern. I am more concerned by what went into this creative process. The same
goes for the monarchical states negotiated after WWII with the French. Hans Antlöv and Stein Tønnesson
have insightful things to say on this matter in Imperial Policy and South East Asian Nationalism . . .
especially Antlöv's thought-provoking essay on 'Rulers in Imperial Policy'.
See: Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance against the French, chapters 4 and 6 and Nguyen
Thanh Son's orders from Bangkok in 1949 to the External Affairs Headquarters in Nam Bo on how to attack
in Cambodia. 'Bangkok Delegation to External Affairs, Nam Bô', 2 November 1949, captured document,
Haut Commissariat de France en Indochine, SDECE, N° 10.223/I, JP/sc, d. D.Y., c. 10H4120, SHAT.
Comité de Résistance et Exécutif du Nam Bo, Outre Mer, 'Conférence Extraordinaire des Cadres Politicoadministratifs-militaires Mien-Viet', 5 February 1949, pp. 4 and 8, in c. 10H5585, SHAT.
Commandement en Chef des Forces Terrestres Aériennes et Navales en Indochine, Commandement des
Forces Terrestres du Cambodge, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 897/2-S, Phnom Penh, 15 May 1953, 'L'économie
Viet-Minh au Cambodge', pp. 3-9, c. 10H5585, SHAT and above all FAEO, Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes
du Sud, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 4,355/2.S, Bulletin de Renseignements, valeur: B/3, 'Trafic au Profit des
V.M.', d. autos-camions, c. 10H3999, SHAT.
'Demande de cartes des Affaires Extérieures du Nam Bo au Comité des Conseillers du sud-ouest Cambodge',
26 November 1949, in HC de France en Indochine, SDECE, N° 10.067/8, d. D.Y, c. 10H4120, SHAT;
'L'économie Viet Minh au Cambodge', pp. 6-7; 'Est Cambodge : Service de Communication/liaisons de la
zone', valeur: B/3, Phnom Penh, 28 December 1950, in d. Circulation, c. 10H3999, SHAT; and
Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Cambodge, EM, 2ème Bureau, 'Ordre de Bataille des Forces
Rebelles au Cambodge', Phnom Penh, 1951-1953, c. 10H5586, SHAT.
See, for example, the letter sent by the service from upper Laos to Phu Tho in northern Vietnam by Mr. Huy
Thien in Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Laos, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 2242/FL/2, 18 August 1951,
d. 1951, c. 10H5642, SHAT. Compare with 'Le Service Postal au Bas Laos', L'Eveil Economique de
l'Indochine, (3 May 1931), p. 6.
The Viet Minh's Cambodian Headquarters had a special cartographic and topographical services in operation.
Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Cambodge, EM, 2ème Bureau, 'Ordre de Bataille des Forces
Rebelles au Cambodge', Phnom Penh, 15 February 1952, p. 10 and on the Viet Minh's Indochinese water
system, see: Jacques Mordal, Marine Indochine, Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1953, pp. 201-202 and Jean
Mauclère, Marins dans les arroyos, Paris: J. Peyronnet & Cie, 1950. For a background on the canal routes,
see: Brocheux, The Mekong Delta . . . ' Léon Archimbaud, Le Mékong, voie de pénétration indochinoise, La
Revue du Pacifique, N° 12, (December 1929), pp. 705-710; Serge de Labrusse, Economie maritime
indochinoise, Politique du cabotage en Indochine, Saigon, Impr française d'Outre-mer, 1950; and A.
Barthouet, La Jonque, Hanoi: Impr G. Taupin, 1938.
Mordal, op. cit., p. 201 and 'Aperçu de l'économie et des finances viet-minh', pp. 20-22.
Capitaine de Frégate Cazenave, 'Marins d'eau douce : La flotille du Mékong', Sud-Est Asiatique, N° 24, (May
1951), p. 1 for the quote and Maurice Duval, 'A l'assaut des sources du ravitaillement du Viet Minh', FranceIndochine, N° 79, (October 1951), pp. 156-157. My emphasis. Compare this with the Viet Minh document,
Nhung Nhat Xet Them ve convois Saigon-P.Penh, 5 March 1950, d. Jonques, c. 10H3999, SHAT.
One of the most important Viet Minh officials responsible for creating a Southern Indochinese Operational
Base explains this better than I. See: 'Carnet de notes de Vo Ba Nhac, Ex-chef des Services d'Intendance et
des Finances du Commandement supérieur du Nam Bô', pp. 5-6, documents recovered by the French in
Cambodia 30 October 1951, pp. 10-23, c. 10H636, SHAT. I discuss this Southern Base below.
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359
360
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362
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364
365
366
367
Haut Commissaire de France en Indochine, Sûreté Fédérale, Subdivision 1, Saigon, 5 November 1949,
'Navire contrebandier Song Lo dit Sinh Kong, Section technique de Transport du Nam bô', d. Direction de la
Sûreté : Enquête sur les survivants du Song Lô parmi contrebandier Viet Minh, c. 10H279, SHAT and
Goscha's interview with Tran Van Giau, April 1989, Ho Chi Minh City.
Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, chapters 4 and 6; author's interviews with Tran Van Giàu,
April 1989, Ho Chi Minh City; and It appears that the emergence of a Viet Minh Navy coincided with the
Chinese Communist victory. See: 'Les indices de la création d'un flotte Viet Minh' in Les marines
communistes en Extrême-Orient, SDECE, Base N° 1, valeur: c/3, 1 January 1951, c. 10H702, SHAT.
On Tran Van Giau and the contraband trade, see: Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, chapters
4 and 6 and Sûreté Fédérale, Police Spéciale de l'Est, N° 1762/PSE-S, 'Le Commissaire de la Police Spéciale
de l'Est M. le chef de la Sûreté Fédérale en Cochinchine; and Haut Commissariat de France en Indochine,
DGD, N° 883/DGD/LC/6, 'Note a/s approvisionnement en matériel de guerre du Viet Minh par le Siam', c.
10H608, SHAT. My comments on the tram comes from detailed studies by the 2ème Bureau in 'Ordre de
Bataille des Forces Rebelles au Cambodge, août 1952', entitled: 'Unités Viet Minh au Cambodge'. These
trams must have been key to the Viet Minh's war effort.
'Fiche hebdomadaire, Cambodge, 28 November 1950, c. 10H609, SHAT and Haut Commissariat de France
en Indochine et Commandement en Chef en Extrême-Orient, Forces Terrestres, Commandement des Forces
Terrestres du Cambodge, EM, 3ème Bureau, N° 2371/3, Phnom Penh, 12 October 1951, 'Synthèse
d'Exploitation du Rallié [x] : IV-Voies de liaisons V.M. Siam-Nam Bo', pp. 19-28, in 10H5585, SHAT.
Mordal, op. cit., pp. 200-205.
'Aperçu de l'économie et des finances viêt-minh', pp. 20-21.
Inspector General of the Nam Bo's Economic Affairs, Kha Van Cân, to Tran Van Giau and Tran Van Luan, 8
June 1947, and 'Nam Bo Economic Affairs, N° 143/KT-Z, Inspector General of Nam Bo Economic Affairs
to Tran Van Giau and Tran Van Luan, 24 May 1947, d. Cambodge 1947, c. 10H4300, SHAT, confirmed by
Mordal, op. cit., pp. 200-202.
Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, chapters 3, 4 and 6.
'Le sel, monnaie forte', Sud-Est Asiatique, N° 24, (May 1951), p. 40.
Pham Van Bach, 'Instructions on Recruiting for Cambodian Front', Comité Résistant et Exécutif du Nam Bo,
Front du Cambodge, 10 June 1949, translation, in c. 10H4120, SHAT; Commandement des forces du
Cambodge, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 131/2, Note de Renseignement, d. circulation, c. 10H3999, SHAT; Forces
Maritimes d'Extrême-Orient, 2ème Bureau, N° 45, EM/S/264/S, secret, Bulletin de Renseignements, N° 31,
'Trafic Maritime Rebelle', pp. 1-20, d. 1950, Circulation, c. 10H3999, SHAT; Pierre Derunes, 'Chevaux
d'Indochine', Indochine, Sud-Est Asiatique, N° 6, (May 1952), pp. 46-49; 'Charrettes Cambodgiennes', SudEst Asiatique, N° 18, (December 1950), pp. 46-47; Haut Commissariat de France en Indochine, DGD,
Bureau Technique de Liaison et de coordination, N° 870/DGD/LC/6, Saigon, 3 November 1950, Fiche N° 2,
p. 2, and Fiche N° 5, 'Organisation des transports de matériels Siam-Viet Minh', pp. 1-2, both in c. 10H608,
SHAT; and 'Aperçu de l'économie et des finances viêt-minh', pp. 20-22.
'Activités du Viet Minh, le transport des Marchandises dans le Golfe du Siam' in Directeur des Services de
Police et de Sûreté nationale au Sud Vietnam, 1ère Section, Saigon, 13 October 1953, Note N° 16806/1B-S,
in c. 10H3999, SHAT and 'Carnet de Notes de Vo Ba Nhac', pp. 10-23. An amazing "manual labour" service
recruited and transported hundreds of Vietnamese "coolies' to Phu Quoc to work in resistance maritime
networks.
See 'Synthèse d'exploitation du rallié [x]', op. cit., pp. 23-25 and 'Carnet de notes de Vo Ba Nhac', op. cit., pp.
18-20 and Forces du Laos, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 680/FL/2, très secret, 'Etude sur les liaisons Viet Minh
entre la Thailande et le Vietnam à travers le territoire du Laos', Vientiane, 19 May 1950, d. Etudes sur les
liaisons Viet Minh entre Thailande et Vietnam, 1950, c. 10H5642, SHAT.
See the quoc ngu pass (can cuoc) found on a Vietnamese soldier fallen on the Cambodian front, reproduced
in Le Parti Ouvrier Vietnam. He was from northern Vietnam.
'Compte Rendu de l'interrogatoire technique d'un dépanneur radio Viet Minh', Haut Commissaire de France
pour l'Indochine, SDECE, N° 799/STR/1, Saigon, 1 August 1950, d. 2, c. 10H608, SHAT; 'Schema des
liaison radio du Parti', in Le Parti Ouvrier Viêtnamien; Communications-Liaisons in 'Assemblée générale du
Comité de Résistance et Exécutif du Nam Bo: Situation de l'Appareil du Pouvoir, 1950', N° 299, 1950, pp.
37-41; and Commandment en chef des forces terrestres aériennes et navale en Indochine, EM, 2ème Bureau,
N° 236/FL/2, Note de service, 20 January 1954, c. 10H5642, SHAT. For the French side, see: 'Les
télécommunications et la vie', France-Indochine, N° 96, (April 1953), pp. 101-103.
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I am borrowing Fernand Braudel's expression, un espace-mouvement. Braudel, La Méditerranée, p. 338.
Braudel has some very illuminating things to say on space in his section entitled Routes de terre et route de
mer, and so does Paul Mus, Sociologie d'une guerre, above all 'Sur la Route Vietnamienne'. For a good
example of this moving space from the ground level, see the descriptions given by captured Vietnamese junk
and sampan pilots working on the Mekong Delta on how they were recruited by the Viet Minh to link the
"system". 'P.V. d'interrogatoire : Ngo Van Tot, Truong Van Mi, Nguyen Van Bay, etc', in d. Jonques, c.
10H3999, SHAT.
I am relying here on a collection of Vietnamese resistance logs, diaries and personal letters written by
common soldiers traveling in Thailand, southern China, Laos, Cambodia and through the Gulf of Thailand
and the South China Sea. I will discuss elsewhere the intersection between geography and war based on
these "unofficial" sources.
See captured documents in: Comité Résistant du Nam Bo, Comités des Affaires Extérieures, Comité de
Contre-Espionnage, N° PD.23/QD, 'Affectations et mutations au sud-ouest Cambodge', 1 May 1949, Valeur:
A/1, d. Questions mixtes, c. 10H4120, SHAT. I am relying on scores of captured documents here.
Forces du Laos, EM, 2ème Bureau, N°1095/FL/2, Vientiane, 14 April 1951, 'Bao cao chinh tri cua d.c. [dong
chi] Bi Thu NSTL da duoc NH Bo Xung thong qua' [original quoc ngu version] and Lao Issara
Administrative documents, all in c. 10H5642, SHAT.
Ivarsson, Svensson and Tønnesson, The Quest for Balance in a Change Laos, p. 17. According to French
intelligence, Bernard Thach—considered by many Viet revolutionaries as "the Lawrence of Viet-Nam"—
was, in fact, a Khmer Krom. Thach had extremely important responsibilities in the Viet Minh command
structure until his assassination.
'Note sur l'organisation politique', p. 21. On French efforts to get the Cambodian Royal Government to take
the Viet Minh threat seriously, see 10H285, SHAT.
'Note sur l'organisation politique du Viet Minh à Bangkok et sur ses dirigeants', in d. Attitude siamoise vis-àvis des Vietnamiens, SSHC, 12 October 1951, pp. 4-5, c. 95bis, SPCE, CAOM.
Commissariat Général de France, S.D.E.C.E., Section-43, N° 0298, 'Organisation P.M.A. de la zone Est
Cambodge', Ex. N° 8/11, 9 October 1953, pp. 17-18, c. 10H5586, SHAT and my study of the Viet Minh's
political and military organisation in Cambodia between 1951 and 1953, Forces Terrestres du Cambodge,
Secteur Est, 2ème Bureau, Ordre de Bataille des forces rebelles Kompong-Cham-Kratié-Stung-Treng, 19511953, d. 'Ordres de Bataille/F.T.Cambodge, 2ème Bureau, 1951-1953', c. 10H5586, SHAT.
Commandement des Forces du Cambodge, 2ème Bureau, EM, N° 773/22, Phnom Penh, 17 March 1950,
translation of the Report of Overseas Vietnamese organisations in northeast Cambodia, dated 18 October
1949. This Overseas Committee had sub-committees among the Vietnamese in Phnom Penh and above all in
the rubber plantations in eastern Cambodia. See Ibid., pp. 4-5.
Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, chapters 3-6; Commandement des Forces Terrestres du
Cambodge, Régiment Mixte du Cambodge, 1er Bataillon, N° 107/1/2B, Ordre de Bataille des Forces
Rebelles, 1951-1953; Direction des Services de Sécurité du Haut Commissariat en Indochine; Forces du
Laos, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 1095/FL/2, 14 April 1951, Translation of captured 'Rapport politique du front
du Laos occidental', p. 5, d. 1950-1951, c. 10H5642, SHAT.
'Rapport sur la Base Opérationnelle du Sud-Indochinois', Rapport établi par le Général V[iêt] M[inh] Nguyen
Binh à destination du Haut-Commandement [General Vo Nguyen Giáp] pendant son voyage à travers l'EstCambodge', pp. 1-19; 'Rapport du Général V.M. Nguyen Binh sur le Front Cambodgien', pp. 1-46, c.
10H636, SHAT and 'Carnet de notes de Vo Ba Nhac', pp. 5-24. According to the EM 2ème Bureau, the
report on the Cambodian Front was addressed probably to Le Duan, but I am not convinced.
'Base opérationnelle', pp. 1-2; 'Carnet de notes de Vo Ba Nhac', p. 6; and Lockhart, Nation in Arms, pp. 193
and 234-235. On Laos, see: Forces du Laos, Etat Major, 2ème Bureau, très secret, Renseignements, Valeur :
A, 22 January 1951, d. Renseignements, synthèse, c. 10H5642, SHAT. In 1949, a Central Government
Delegation had traveled to Nam Bo to discuss the question of creating an southern operational base. This
had also been discussed by the Party's Territorial Committee (Xu uy dang) at about the same time.
'Discours de Vo Nguyen Giap prononcé au 6ème Congrès Militaire', p. 11.
Goscha, Thailand and the Vietnamese Resistance, chapter 6, and Sûreté Fédérale au Cambodge, première
section, N° 3928/PS-C, undated but probably 1949, c.379, SPCE, CAOM.
Nguyen Binh, 'Base opérationnelle', pp. 3-4 and 'Carnet de Vo Ba Nhac', p. 18.
Greg Lockhart has noted this as well. See: Lockhart, Nation in Arms, above all p. 234.
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398
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'Carnet de notes de Vo Ba Nhac', pp. 20-21; Nguyen Binh, 'Base opérationnelle', pp. 4-5; Lockhart, op. cit.,
pp. 234-235; and confirmed in Haut Commissariat de France en Indochine, Commandement des forces
terrestres du Cambodge, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 2,281/2, Phnom Penh, 28 November 1951, 'Synthèse sur la
mission Nguyen Binh', p. 2. Attopeu must have also been a key strategic objective.
Nguyen Binh, 'Base opérationnelle', pp. 6-7 and 13-17 and 'Carnet de Vo Ba Nhac', pp. 18-19. Thailand was
a real worry for General Binh. Citing the Franco-Thai war of 1940-1941, he noted how the northeaster Thai
railroad could be rapidly transformed into a powerful weapon by the US for penetrating Indochina. The air
bases being constructed by the Americans in Thailand and the possibility of a rapid deployment of forces by
rail all the way to Phnom Penh and to Laos sent shivers down Binh's spine. For these reasons he advised
against placing the Central Committe of Cambodia in northeastern Cambodia. He wanted to put it just inside
the Cardomom Mountains to protect the resistance from a US attack from Thailand. Given space limitations,
I will reserve a detailed discussion of this plan for elsewhere. On Binh's fear of an attack from Oubon, see
pp. 18-19.
Trung Uong Cuc Mien Nam, N° 1/TC—T.U.C.M.N., 'Création de l'Office Central de la Région du Sud et
Suppression du 'Comité Région du Nam Bo', dated 7 June 1951, signed by Trung Nam [Thuong Vu] of the
Central Committee, in Le parti ouvrier vietnamien, pp. 1-3 and p. 134. Given the importance that this
organism would have during the war against the Americans, it is interesting to note who formed its
leadership: Ha Huy Giap, Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, Pham Hung, Thuong Vu, and Ung Van Khiem.
Nguyen Binh, 'Base opérationnelle', pp. 7 for the quote and pp. 8-9 for his investigation. On the advances
made by the Viet Minh in Cambodia since 1950, see: Commandement des Forces du Cambodge, 2ème
Bureau, EM, N° 1151/2, Annexe du N° 870/BS, Phnom Penh, 1 May 1951, 'Situation rebelle dans la
province de Stung Treng', pp. 2-8, c. 10H5585, SHAT.
'Rapport du Général Nguyen Binh sur le Front cambodgien', pp. 3-5, 17-27 and 31-33; 'Carnet de notes de
Vo Ba Nhac', pp. 4-5; 'Mission Nguyen Binh', pp. 4-5.
On the French side, see: Service français d'Information, Centre de Documentation, N° 94, September 1953,
'Independance économique du Cambodge?', in d. Vers une indépendance économique du Cambodge', c.
10H284, SHAT. But the French too were interested in keeping the Cambodian economy linked to southern
Vietnam. Like Nguyen Binh and Nguyen Thanh Son, one French expert argued as follows: 'Or, le
Cambodge occupe une position délicate de flanquement sur la moitié sud du Vietnam. Son idéologie est à
l'opposé de celle du Vietnam. Historiquement, éthnologiquement, il lui tourne le dos et cependant il a besoin
de la Cochinchine [Nam Bo] pour respirer. S'il ne trouve pas de satisfaction à ses aspirations de côté du
Vietnam ou de la France, il se tournera vers le Siam". 'Note au sujet du Cambodge', d. Cambodge 1951, c.
10H 284, SHAT.
Commandement en Chef des Forces Terrestres Aériennes et Navales en Indochine, Commandement des
Forces Terrestres du Cambodge, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 897/2-S, Phnom Penh, 15 May 1953, 'L'Economie
Viet Minh au Cambodge', pp. 1-2, in c. 10H 5585, SHAT; 'Organisation P.M.A. de la zone Est Cambodge',
op. cit., pp. 17-18; and 'Carnet de route de Vo Ba Nhac', pp. 6-7.
'L'Economie Viet Minh au Cambodge', p. 3; 'Demandes de permis de circulation adressées aux autorités Viet
Minh par diverses barques', valeur A/2, in Champagne, Extrait du Bulletin de Renseignements, N° 1, 10
February 1953, c. 10H3999, SHAT.
'L'Economie Viet Minh au Cambodge', pp. 1 and 6-8. Also see: 'Le sel, monnaie forte', pp. 36-39.
'L'Economie Viet Minh au Cambodge', 1-10.
'Aperçu de l'économie et des finances viet-minh', pp. 19-20 and 'Rapport du Général Nguyen Binh sur le
Front cambodgien', pp. 22-28.
'Carnet de notes de Vo Ba Nhac', op. cit.
General de Langlade, 'Note au sujet de la tactique à employer dans le secteur des poivrières', N° 222/CAB,
Phnom Penh, 30 December 1952, c. 10H285, SHAT. On the importance of pepper economically, see: J.
Biard et F. Roule, 'La culture du poivre et sa production dans le Sud-Indochinois', Bulletin économique de
l'Indochine, (1942).
Engelbert and Goscha, Falling Out of Touch and Kiernan, How Pol Pot, p. 121.
'Directives militaires Viet-Minh concernant le Front de la Zone Est-Cambodge (document en date du 25
février 1952)', in Synthèse de renseignements concernant les implantations, les effectifs, les liaisons et les
projets rebelles sur le territoire contrôlé au Cambodge par le Groupement Opérationnel du Bas-Mékong et
sur les territoires avoisinants (Bas-Laos, Hauts Plateaux-Nord Cochinchine), pp. 7-10, in Commandement
en Chef des Forces Terrestres Aériennes et Navales en Indochine, Groupement Opérationnel du Bas-
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404
405
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409
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Mékong, N 13/GM [Groupe Mobile], Kratie, 25 November 1953, c. 10H5616, SHAT. This information is
rated A/1. I have also consulted 'Plans et activités Viet Minh sur la rive gauche du Mékong', pp. 2-5, in
Commandement en Chef des Forces Terrestres aériennes et navales en Indochine, 2ème Bureau, EM, N°
1632/2.S, in c. 10H5589, SHAT.
Synthèse de Renseignements concernant les implantations . . . au Cambodge, p. 11, confirmed in
'Récapitulation générale des forces rebelles V.M. et Khmers Issaraks du Cambodge', in Commandement
français des forces terrestres du Cambodge, EM, 2ème Bureau, 'Ordre de Batailles des Forces Rebelles au
Cambodge au 1 février 1953', c. 10H5586, SHAT. 6,934 Viet Minh troops were active in Cambodia at this
time.
'Plan Viet-Minh dans l'Est-Cambodge' and 'Déplacement de Nguyen Thanh Son au Bac Bo', Synthèse de
Renseignements concernant les implantations . . . au Cambodge, pp. 11-12 and Commandement en chef des
forces terrestres, aériennes et navales en indochine, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 1512/T.S., 'Ordre de Bataille des
Forces rebelles au Cambodge', p. 3.
Synthèse de Renseignements concernant les implantations . . . au Cambodge, pp. 11-17 and 20-27. For the
troops that were being prepared to attack southwestern Indochina, see: pp. 13-16.
On Laos in 1953-1954, I have relied on my own research in French and Vietnamese archives, and also
Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy, Harrisburg: The Stackpole Company, fourth edition, 1964, pp. 116-130,
188-190, 274-279, and 316-320 and his Hell In a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, New York:
Vintage Books, 1966, pp. 72-76.
'Synthèse sur la mission Nguyen Binh'; General de Langlade, Huit mois de pacification au Cambodge,
(juillet 1952-février 1953): une méthode—des résultats, pp. 89-107 and Commandement des Forces
Terrestres du Cambodge, Le Général, N° 163/CAB, Phnom Penh, 14 November 1952, both in c. 10H285,
SHAT. I am thinking of the operations Anjou, Atlas and Marathon in particular. One could argue that the
American attacks on eastern Cambodia and Laos in 1970-1971 were part of a larger (if desperately late)
move to create an Indochinese-wide operational theatre, like the French before them and the Vietnamese
communist facing them. To the VWP, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was Indochina.
BRM [Bureau de Renseignements Mensuels], November 1953-June 1954, Commandement en Chef des
Forces Terrestres Aériennes et Navales en Indochine, Groupement Opérationnel du Bas-Mékong, Groupe
Mobile 51, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 13/G.M., 'Synthèse de Renseignements', pp. 11-12 and 27, c. 10H5616;
Synthèse de Renseignements concernant les implantations . . . au Cambodge; and EM, 2ème Bureau, N°
323/G.M., Fiche de Renseignements, Evolution de la Situation dans le Nord Est Cambodge; and
Renseignments-Cambodge, 2ème Bureau, S.P. 74.364, 4 January 1954, Commandement en Chef des Forces
Terrestres, Aériennes et Navales en Indochine, 'Bulletin Mensuel de Renseignements, Décembre 1953', pp.
2-5 in 10H5616.
'Synthèse de Renseignements, November 1953-June 1954', pp. 7-27 and Engelbert and Goscha, Falling Out
of Touch . . .
Motoo Furuta, op. cit., p. 147.
'Le communisme en Indochine', 1 May 1954, pp. 31-32. Underlined in the original.
According to Nayan Chanda, Chinese officials told him in 1982 that the VWP had outlined an Indochinese
Federation in the 1951 political programme. Chanda, op. cit., p. 129.
François Joyaux, La chine et le règlement du premier conflit d'indochine, genève 1954. Paris: Publications
de la Sorbonne, 1979 is the authoritative study of Geneva.
Kiernan, How Pol Pot, quoting his 1980 interview with Hoang Tung, p. 140 and fn. 3, p. 164 confirmed in
Hoang Van Thai, Lien Minh Doan Ket Chien Dau Vietnam, Lao, Campuchia, Hanoi: NXBST, 1983, p. 24.
Two divisions would have meant over 15,000 men.
William J. Duiker, 'China and Vietnam and the Struggle for Indochina', in Zasloff, op. cit., p. 154.
In September 1952, an important meeting of the "Vietnam-Khmer-Lao United Front" was held at Phu Tho.
There Ho Chi Minh, Ton Duc Thang, Hoang Quoc Viet, Souphanouvong, Kaysone and others fine-tuned
plans for the Indochinese Battlefield. There was no Cambodian delegate at this meeting. He had already left
for China on 3 September 1951 in the company of Sithon, Nouhak, Le Linh Tam and five other Vietnamese.
See: Commandment en chef des forces terrestre aérienne et navales en Indochine, Commandment des forces
terrestres du Laos, EM, 2ème Bureau, N° 1.612/FL/2, 'Interrogatoire de Thit Thai, Commissaire politique
Lao rebelle, capturé le 23.3.1953', confirmed by Nguyen Dinh Nhon, 'Chu Tich Ho Chi Minh voi Hoi Nghi
can bo lien minh nhan dan Viet-Lao nam 1952', p. 41.
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415
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417
Albert Sarraut, L'Union française et les états associés de l'Indochine: Discours de M. Albert Sarraut à
l'Assemblée plénière de la Conférence Inter-Etats à Pau, Toulouse: Impr. régionale, 14 October 1950, pp. 910.
Engelbert and Goscha, Falling Out of Touch . . . on the American period and on the importance of Indochina
in Vietnam's perception of security. Sarraut's expression, une création continue, was used by a French writer
to describe the dissolution of the ICP. P. Celerier, 'Création Continue : Le parti communiste indochinois',
Indochine-Sud-Est Asiatique, N° 28, (April 1954), p. 19.
William J. Duiker, Vietnam Since the Fall of Saigon, Ohio: University of Ohio, Monographs in International
Studies, Southeast Asia Series, No. 56A, 1989, p. 129. My emphasis on the idea of "creating". Compare the
post-1979 Vietnamese Indochinese-making propaganda with that of Decoux during the early 1940s. "True",
"immutable", "forever", "Indochina", "brothers", "taking form" dominate in both cases. I will treat this idea
elsewhere.
One of the major differences between the Laotian revolutionaries who came to power in Laos in 1976 and
those Cambodians who had taken Phnom Penh a year earlier was that Pol Pot and his closest allies came
from outside Vietnam's Indochinese system set up between 1945 and 1954. In fact, Pol Pot saw the Khmers
formed by the Vietnamese during this period and then repatriated to Hanoi from 1954 (tap ket ra bac) as a
potential threat to his state-building plans, a competing government in waiting in a way. In 1978 Pol Pot's
government consecrated an entire chapter to rejecting the idea of the "Indochinese Federation" and the "ICP".
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères du Kampuchea Démocratique, Livre Noir : Faits et preuves des actes
d'aggression et d'annexion du Vietnam contre le Kampuchea, Paris: Editions du Centenaire, September
1978, pp. 16-23.
Recently, two Vietnamese scholars living outside of Vietnam, in Australia and France, have resurrected the
idea of an "Indochinese Federation" as an economic model. See: Ky Cao, 'Indochina's Prospects for
Stability', Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 4, N° 15, (1994), pp. 385-405 and the paper of a Vietnamese
Professor from the Université Paris X during the 'Colloque International, L'état du Cambodge en 1994', 15
January 1994, Paris. The latter professor (un homme de gauche with the best of intentions that day) was
caught completely off guard by the strong "anti-Indochinese" reaction he provoked among the Khmer
audience and panel, including the Cambodian ambassador. It seems that the debates of 1930-1931 are still
with us . . .
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