COLONIAL VIỆT NAM AND THE RISE OF REVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS, 1920—1930

Oct 15

Context

This past summer, Sông2Sea held a public study series for the Vietnamese diaspora and organizers, focusing on revolutionary history leading to the Vietnamese August Revolution of 1945.

We share here a few main points, highlights, questions, and reflections from our study together, which help us use history to contextualize our families’ stories and draw lessons for our organizing.

Please note that these shareouts offer a peek into some of the topics we discussed and are not meant to be comprehensive recaps of our readings or presentations. We hope they pique your interest in learning more! If we have missed something or you find something unclear or inaccurate, please let us know at email@song2sea.com.

This first part of four looks at colonial Việt Nam and the rise of revolutionary consciousness in the 1920s.

We read from the following books and article:

Introduction

The French conquest of Việt Nam began in 1858 with an attack on Đà Nẵng. About 40 years later, France had established colonial control over what it called French Indochina, encompassing Cambodia, Laos, Guangzhouwan in China, and Việt Nam, which it divided into Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina.

The modern states of Việt Nam, Laos, and Cambodia did not yet exist with their current borders. The French carved the region into administrative territories, shaping what would become borders for these countries in the 1950s.

By the 1920s, Việt Nam had undergone profound change. Cochinchina was a direct colony, and although Annam and Tonkin were technically under Nguyễn rule, France had restructured the entire society from north to south.

Let's take a brief look at Vietnamese life under French colonialism and the conditions that created a new generation of revolutionaries and new forms of anti-colonial consciousness.

How colonial capitalism devastated Việt Nam: land dispossession & poverty

French colonial rule radically transformed people's relationship to the land. The Nguyễn dynasty used a system of land allocation called “quân điền” (equal-field). Though not exactly an equitable system, it gave communal farmland to peasant households for cultivation.

French rule imposed new laws, concentrating land in the hands of French and wealthy Vietnamese landowners. As a result, by the late 1930s, roughly two-thirds of rural households in Cochinchina were landless.

In Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants Under the French, Ngô Vĩnh Long estimated that the peasants made up 90% of the population. As they lost access to land, many became tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and wage laborers. Burdened by heavy rents and high-interest debt, many were impoverished and faced constant hunger.

Á Tế Á Ca (Song to Awaken the Nation)

“Làm cho thập thất cửu không
Làm cho đau đớn, khốn cùng chưa thôi”

Translation: They have made nine houses empty out of ten / Still the suffering and misery do not end

How colonial capitalism devastated Việt Nam: producing for export & taxing the daily meal

Colonial capitalism reorganized Việt Nam's economy around exports. Rice was grown to sell in international markets, and it alone made up more than two-thirds of Indochina's export value before the Great Depression hit.

The colonial state financed itself through monopolies on everyday goods like salt and alcohol. Traditional salt-making and rice wine brewing were restricted and heavily taxed, while people were forced to buy from official stores to meet quotas.

Phan Bội Châu captured this injustice with this line:

“Rượu ta nấu nó cho rượu lậu, muối ta làm nó bảo muối gian.”

Translation: The liquor we brew they call bootleg, the salt we make they call contraband.

How colonial capitalism devastated Việt Nam: land concessions to corporations & exploitation of labor

As peasants lost access to land, some became wage workers in French-owned mines and plantations, where conditions were brutal.

French companies like Michelin acquired vast land concessions for rubber plantations, where overwork, inadequate food, disease, and physical punishment led to such extremely high death rates that they were called “lò sát sinh” (slaughterhouses).

This is colonial capitalism: a system that reorganized land, labor, and production to generate profits for the colonial state, banks, and enterprises through the exploitation of Vietnamese workers.

Crisis of authority

Meanwhile, among urban, educated youth, discontent was growing.

Young Vietnamese whose families could afford school were told to study hard, yet the colonial administration offered few opportunities to advance. They were taught to respect authority, yet the mandarins were subordinated to the French. They learned lofty concepts like “liberty” and “equality” in colonial schools, yet lived in a society that had neither.

By 1919, the French had abolished the Confucian exam, ending a path for educated men to become scholar-officials and gain social status. This was another nail in the coffin of the old social order.

The result was what Hue-Tam Ho Tai called a crisis of authority in Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution: when existing institutions and leaders lose people's confidence in their right or ability to lead.

As educated youth lost trust in the Nguyễn court and French colonial institutions, they began searching for alternative paths.

Global events & exchanges shaped new revolutionary ideas

In the early 1900s, intellectuals like Phan Bội Châu were engaging with ideas about national independence through connections with Japanese and Chinese thinkers like Liang Qichao (梁啓超).

In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution overthrew China's last imperial dynasty. Six years later, in 1917, the Russian Revolution ended tsarist rule and later established the world's first socialist state.

These events showed that systems of power that seemed permanent were not. Monarchies and empires could fall. Societies could be organized in radically different ways.

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Woodrow Wilson's concept of national self-determination raised hopes among colonized peoples. A group of Vietnamese, the Annamite Five, presented the Demands of the Annamite People. Their demands were ignored, revealing the limits of politely asking colonial powers for basic civil rights.

New visions for how Việt Nam could achieve independence were brewing.

Different paths to liberation

Vietnamese resistance to French rule did not begin in the 1920s. Since 1858, Vietnamese groups and anti-colonial fighters experimented with different strategies based on the ideas and conditions of their time. These included:

The Cần Vương (“Aid the King”) movement, which sought to restore an independent monarchy;
Reformers advocating for modernization and reform of education and other institutions; and
Constitutionalists who sought more representation and rights through legal and constitutional reform.

Phan Bội Châu's views and strategies evolved over his lifetime as he searched for a path to independence. His arrest in 1925, followed by Phan Châu Trinh's death in 1926, marked the end of an era led by an older generation of anti-colonial leaders.

By now, a younger generation had inherited the lessons of those earlier movements, and they still faced the same question: What would it take to throw off the shackles of colonial rule?

Changing concepts of nationhood

While Vietnamese had long identified with their family, village, region, and traditions and as subjects of a dynasty, colonialism and the crisis of authority brought new questions:

Who should have political authority, if not the emperor?
What did it mean to be loyal to Việt Nam rather than the emperor?
What was Việt Nam?

The Nguyễn state's official name was Đại Nam. In 1905, Phan Bội Châu wrote Việt Nam vong quốc sử (History of the Loss of Việt Nam), and increasingly, anti-colonial thinkers envisioned “Việt Nam” as a nation whose people could unite and fight for independence, beyond loyalty to a dynasty.

On the question of loyalty, we explored how Phan Đình Phùng resisted French colonial rule while Hoàng Cao Khải worked with the French. This opened up discussions about how people—including our own families—make political choices within the circumstances they face.

Changes in Việt Nam by the 1920s

Changes in material conditions: Land became concentrated among wealthy landowners. The economy was reorganized for export. High taxes and monopolies on everyday goods impoverished peasants. Urbanization and plantations created new social groups such as workers and professionals.
Old power structures lost legitimacy: Young, educated Vietnamese questioned both colonial and traditional authorities.
New political ideas gained traction: Nationalism, socialism, and anti-colonial ideas were spreading.
A new national political identity developed: Anti-colonial thinkers conceived the idea of Việt Nam as a nation that Vietnamese people could fight for.

Out of these changes—and others that we have not discussed here—new organizations and strategies were emerging.

Á Tế Á Ca (Song to Awaken the Nation):

“Nghĩ lắm lúc bầm gan tím ruột
Vạch trời kêu mà tuốt gươm ra”

Translation: Thinking about it fills me with unbearable rage (literally: bruised liver and purple gut) / Cry out to Heaven and draw the sword.

What our study left us thinking about

What does studying Vietnamese history offer organizers and those of us in the diaspora? For us, history is a starting point to reflect on questions such as:

What makes people question a system of power they're living under?
What factors influence why people choose resistance, accommodation, or collaboration?
What crises of authority have we experienced?

We saw that Vietnamese thinkers and fighters agreed French colonial rule should end but differed on how and what should replace it.

We learned that poverty, hunger, and exhausting labor did not automatically produce revolutionary consciousness. This consciousness developed as more and more people connected their suffering to political and economic systems and organized to change their conditions.

From Á Tế Á Ca (Song to Awaken the Nation):

“Hồn mê mộng tỉnh chưa, chưa tỉnh
Anh em ta phải tính làm sao?”

Translation: Has the soul woken up from dreaming yet? / Brothers and sisters, what are we going to do?

Part 2 will explore Việt Nam's continuing struggle towards national liberation throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Glossary

Note: We offer these partial definitions of the concepts touched on in this post only as starting points. These concepts deserve more study and unpacking than what a brief glossary can provide.

Colony: A colony is a society where decisions about what governs it—such as laws, taxes, and military—are made by an outside power that claims authority over the territory. Example: Cochinchina was a colony of France.

Colonialism: a system where a political power takes control of another territory and subordinates the people. Example: The Nguyễn dynasty continued to rule formally in Tonkin and Annam, but France controlled the government.

Commodity: Something that is produced and sold primarily because it can generate profit. Rice grown to sell is a commodity. Rice grown by farmers mainly to feed themselves is not a commodity.

Capital: Money or other forms of wealth—such as land, buildings, or machines—that are used to produce more profit by employing someone who must work for a wage to survive. For example: plantations were capital, land used to grow rice for export was capital.

Capitalism: A system where commodities are produced to be sold for profit, people must work for a wage (which is as low as possible), and profits are reinvested to create more profit. Because of this, capitalists must continually search for new markets, labor, and resources.

Political identity: how people understand themselves as part of a (political) group with shared needs, common struggles, and relation to political power.

Peasants: nông dân in Vietnamese, literally “agricultural people,” were people whose livelihoods depended primarily on land and agricultural production. They typically used farmland to grow crops, raise livestock, and produce goods, and may rely on subsistence farming.

Sông2Sea creates space and material to learn and engage with Vietnamese political history. You can support our work on Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/supportsong2sea

Vinh Hua