Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-fv566 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T00:18:47.227Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Sacrifices, sex, race: Vietnamese experiences in the First World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2014

By
Kimloan Hill
Edited by
Santanu Das
Kimloan Hill
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Santanu Das
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
Get access

Summary

With the mobilisation of its able-bodied men during the First World War, France turned to neighbouring countries and the colonies, including Indochina, for manpower. Between 1915 and 1919, 48,922 Vietnamese soldiers and 48,254 Vietnamese workers were recruited to serve in France. Some recruits were sent to Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, but the great majority went to France. They were sent to battlefields, factories, hospitals, construction sites, commercial businesses, and agricultural regions to work as soldiers, military labourers, factory workers and farmers. The Vietnamese experience of the First World War has not attracted much attention, apart from occasional discussion in histories of Vietnam, where it has been the source of some debate. Nguyen Ai Quoc (or Ho Chi Minh as he was later known) wrote in 1925 that all the recruits were conscripted, leading a number of historians to claim that the recruiting campaign, while ostensibly voluntary, was in fact based on conscription. However, fresh archival evidence and greater socio-historical contextualisation suggest, as I argue, that most recruits in fact did volunteer to serve for a variety of reasons: their desire to escape from their world of economic hardship, to see France, or to achieve some freedom from traditional social and moral codes.

Type
Chapter
Information
Race, Empire and First World War Writing , pp. 53 - 69
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Becker, Jean-Jacques, The Great War and the French People, trans. Pomerans, Arnold (Dover, NH: Berg, 1985), 3–6.Google Scholar
Sarraut, Albert, La Mise en Valeur des Colonies Françaises (Paris: Payot, 1923), 42–3Google Scholar
Isoart, Paul, Le Phénomène National Vietnamien (Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit, 1961), 235Google Scholar
,Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris, Les Armées Françaises d'Outre Mer – Les Contingents Coloniaux du Soleil et de la Gloire (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1931), 74.Google Scholar
Quoc, Nguyen Ai, Le Procès de la Colonization Française (Hanoi: Édition en Langues Étrangères, 1962), 9–22Google Scholar
Thompson, Virginia, French Indo-china (New York: Macmillan Company, 1937), 90Google Scholar
Buttinger, Joseph, A Dragon Embattled, vol. i (London: Pall Mall Press, 1967), 96Google Scholar
Murray, Martin J., The Development of Capitalism in Colonial Indochina 1870–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 217.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), xiv–xvGoogle Scholar
Benda, Harry, ‘Peasant Movements in Colonial Southeast Asia’, in Continuity and Change in Southeast Asia: Collected Journal Articles of Harry J. Benda (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972), 223–5Google Scholar
Popkin, Samuel L., The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 4, 88.Google Scholar
Gourou, Pierre, The Peasants of the Tonkin Delta: A Study of Human Geography, trans. Miller, Richard (New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files, (1936) 1955), 80–1Google Scholar
Scott, James C., The Moral Economy of the Peasants: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), 127–8Google Scholar
Duiker, William J., Ho Chi Minh, A Life (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 53–4Google Scholar
Danh, Tran Ngoc, Tieu Su Ho Chu Tich [A Biography of President Ho] (Paris: Chi Hoi Lien Viet Tai Phap, 1949) 25–8.Google Scholar
Can, François Bertrand with Gurrwell, George, Carnet de Route d'un Petit Massouin Cochinchinois. Impressions et Souvenirs de la Grande Guerre (Saigon: Imprimerie Albert Portail, 1916), 1–9.Google Scholar
Marquet, Jean, Lettres d'Annamites – Lettres de Guerre, Lettres de Paix (Hanoi: Edition du Fleuve Rouge, 1929)Google Scholar
Hill, Kimloan, ‘A Westward Journey, An Enlightened Path – VietnameseLinh Tho in France, 1915–1930 (PhD dissertation, University of Oregon, 2001).Google Scholar
Bouhier, Emmanuel, ‘Les troupes coloniales d'Indochine en 1914–1918’ in Carlier, Claude and Pedroncini, Guy (eds.), Les Troupes Coloniales dans la Grande Guerre (Paris: Economica, 1997), 69–81.Google Scholar
Corbin, Alan, Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850, trans. Sheridan, Alan (London: Harvard University Press, 1990), 334–6.Google Scholar
Thiet, Phan, Phu Nu Viet Nam Truoc Phap Luat [Vietnamese Women and the Law] (Saigon: Tu Sach Pho Thong, 1955), 39–45.Google Scholar
Mead, Gary, The Doughboys: America and the First World War (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, Peter Mayer, 2000), 112–14Google Scholar
A History of the French Working Class, vol. ii (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 152.
Khanh, Huynh Kim, Vietnamese Communism 1925–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 57–67Google Scholar
Giau, Tran, Giai Cap Cong Nhan Tu Dang Cong San Thanh Lap Den Cach Mang Thanh Cong [The Working Class from the Establishment of the Vietnamese Communist Party to a Successful Revolution] (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Su Hoc, 1962), 317, 369.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×