Hostname: page-component-669899f699-qzcqf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T00:41:44.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coercion and Co-optation of Indochinese Worker-Soldiers in World War I: Mort pour la France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Geoffrey Gunn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Alongside even larger numbers of contingents drawn from France's colonial empire, including a large pool of workers sourced from China, successive contingents of “Indochinese” -Vietnamese in addition to Cambodians - were also pressed into both military and labor battalions in World War I battlefields. Besides explaining the battlefield experiences of the Indochinese battalions in the European war – a little studied area – this article seeks to expose the contradictions raised by France's patriotic appeal for “volunteers,” versus the domestic anti-colonial movement. On another level, the article examines the juncture between the worker-soldiers in France and the burgeoning socialist and communist underground in Paris, and back home in Vietnam, as best exemplified by the activities and writings of Ho Chi Minh in the run-up to his now-famous oration at the Versailles Conference.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , e4
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

Geoffrey Gunn is emeritus professor, Nagasaki University, Japan, and adjunct professor, University of Macau, China. His recent books include Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam: The Great Famine and the Viet Minh Road to Power, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014; and Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong: Anti-Colonial Networks, Extradition and the Rule of Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021.

References

Bibliography

ArchivesGoogle Scholar
Archives Nationale du Cambodge (ANC)Google Scholar
Centre des archives d'Outre-mer (AOM)Google Scholar
Service Historique de la Défense (SHD), Départment de l'armée de TerreGoogle Scholar
Service de liaison avec les orginaires des territoires français d'Outre-mer) Fonds Ministèriel (SLOTFOM)Google Scholar
Ministère de la Défense. Memoires des hommes - Journaux des unités. Bataillons de tirailleurs indochinois > 7e bataillon: J.M.O. • 16 février 1916-15 mars 1919 • 26 N 874/5+7e+bataillon:+J.M.O.+•+16+février+1916-15+mars+1919+•+26+N+874/5>Google Scholar

References

anon. 1991. Les Troupes de Marine 1622–1984, Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle.Google Scholar
Bailey, Paul. 1988. “The Chinese Work-Study Movement in France”, The China Quarterly, Volume 115, pp. 441–461.Google Scholar
Blanc, M-E. 2004. “Vietnamese in France.” in Ember, Melvin, Ember, Carol R., and Skoggard, Ian, eds., Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures around the World. Vol. 2, Diaspora Communities, New York: Springer, pp. 1158–1166.Google Scholar
Borton, L. 2010. Ho Chi Minh: A Journey, Hanoi: The Gioi Publishers, (2nd ed.).Google Scholar
Brocheux, P. 2012. (September 20) “Une histoire croisée – l'immigration politique indochinoise en France, 1911-1945,” Mémoires d'Indochine, accessed December 1, 2013Google Scholar
Calvo, A. and Qiaoni, Bao. 2015. “Forgotten voices from the Great War: the Chinese Labor Corps”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 49, No. 1, December 21.Google Scholar
Duiker, W.J. 2000. Ho Chi Minh, New York: Hyperion.Google Scholar
Dutton, D.J. 1979. “The Balkans Campaign and French War Aims in the Great War,” The English Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 370. Jan., pp. 97–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fall, B. 1967. ed, intro., Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-66, New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Forest, A. 1980. Le Cambodge et la Colonisation Française: Histoire d'une colonisation sans heurts (1897-1920), Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Giebel, C. 2004. Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton Duc Thang and the Politics of History and Memory, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Gunn, G.C. 2014. Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam: The Great Famine and the Viet Minh Road to Power, Lanham, MA. Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Hill, K. 2006. “Strangers in a Foreign Land: Vietnamese Soldiers and Workers in France during World War I,” in Tran, Nhung Tuyet and Reid, Anthony, eds., Viet Nam Borderless Histories, Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 256–289.Google Scholar
Hill, K.. 2011a. “Sacrifices, sex, race: Vietnamese experience in the First World War,” in Das, Santanu, ed., Race, Empire and First World War Writing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 53–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, K. 2011b. Coolies into Rebels: The Impact of World War I on French Indochina. Paris: Les Indes Savant.Google Scholar
Kiernan, B. 1985. How Pol Pot Came to Power: A History of Communism in Kampuchea, 1930–1975, London: Verso.Google Scholar
Lockhart, G. 1989. Nation in Arms: The Origins of the People's Army of Vietnam, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Marr, D.G. 1971. Vietnamese Anti-Colonialism 1885-1925, Berkeley: University of California Press. New York TimesCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vien, Nguyen Khac 1975, Nguyen Khac Vien, The Long Resistance (1858-1975), Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House.Google Scholar
Osborne, M. E. 1969. The French Presence in Cochinchina & Cambodia: Rule and Response (1859-1905), Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Osborne, M. E. 1978. “Peasant Politics in Cambodia: The 1916 Affair,” Modern Asian Studies 12, pp. 217–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn-Judge, S. 2003. Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years 1919-41. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rettig, T. 2005. Contested Loyalties: Vietnamese Soldiers in the Service of France, 1927-1939, Ph.D. dissertation, University of London.Google Scholar
Rives, M. 2013. “Les militaires indochinois en Europe (1914-1918).” Website of L'Association Nationale des Anciens et Amis de l'Indochine (ANAI) Accessed 5 March 2013.Google Scholar
Rives, M. and Deroo, E.. 1999. Les Linh Tap: Histoire des militaires indochinois au service de la France, 1859-1960. Panazol: Lavauzelle.Google Scholar
My-Van, Tran 2005. A Vietnamese Royal Exile in Japan' Prince Cuong De (1882-1951), London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tully, J. 2005. A Short History of Cambodia: From Empire to Survival, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Sinh, Vinh. 2009. ed. and trans. Phan Châu Trinh and his political writings, Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program.Google Scholar