Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T12:06:12.321Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Millenarian Machines in South Vietnam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Frances R. Hill
Frances R. Hill
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The persistent vitality of groups that are neither traditional nor modern nor transitional poses one of the most stubborn conceptual and practical problems of political development. An examination of the political-religious sects of South Vietnam from the perspective of the paradox of non-modern and untraditional institutionalization questions the common hypothesis of unilinear development. It is facile to assume that such groups as tribes, castes, or millenarian movements will conveniently wither away under the onslaught of modernity or to condemn them as causes of the lack of development in the new states. Far from being aberrant vestiges of a past that is being overcome, the sects are but particular manifestations of historic and contemporary factionalism. What South Vietnam lacks is not a vigorous development of sub-national groups but a central government with responsive and directive capacity. Without such a center the concept of a system becomes meaningless and the sects have little reason for seeking security in interaction rather than incapsulation.

Type
Politics and Religion
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , July 1971 , pp. 325 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1971

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

1 Civic and praetorian polities are categories developed by Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 78–92.Google Scholar

2 Hobsbawm, E. J., Primitive Rebels (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1959), p. 59.Google Scholar

3 Wilson, Bryan R., Sects and Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), p. 1.Google Scholar

4 Mus, Paul, ‘Vietnam: A Nation Off Balance’, Yale Review, XLI, No 4 (06 1952), 124Google Scholar. Duncanson, Dennis J., Government and Revolution in Vietnam (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 62–3.Google Scholar

5 Fall, Bernard B., The Two Viet-Nams (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), p. 16.Google Scholar

6 Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. vii.Google Scholar

7 The problems of defining and analyzing the millenarian phenomenon have provoked a protracted discussion, much of it in this journal and summarized by Wilson, Bryan A., ‘Millenarianism in Comparative Perspective’, CSSH, VI, 1 (10 1963), 93–114Google Scholar. In suggesting that new religious movements have this-worldly goals while institutionalized religions have other-worldly orientations, Wilson underemphasizes the fusions of secular and sacred, terrestrial and celestial, that characterize millenarian movements. As Lucy Mair emphasizes, religion is an independent need, not merely a substitute for political action. [Independent Religious Movements in Three Continents’, CSSH, I, 2 (01 1959), 134–5.]Google Scholar I join H. W. Turner in lamenting ‘academic blindness’ to religious phenomena [‘A Methodology of Modern African Religious Movements’, CSSH, VIII, 3 (04 1966), p. 288]Google Scholar, but I do not emphasize doctrine to the degree seemingly desired by Shepperson, George, ‘Comment on E. M. McClelland's “The Experiment in Communal Living at Aiyotoro”’, CSSH, IX, 1 (1967), pp. 30–1Google Scholar. Margaret Mead's concern with the psychology of millenarian movements and the nature of commitment remains largely unexplored, certainly for the millenarian movements studied here. Further information on such aspects of the millenarian machines of South Vietnam can be found in Popkin, Samuel L., The Politics of Distrust (tentative title; forthcoming), based on extensive field research in Hoa Hao areas. Professor Mead's emphasis of a rigid ingroup-outgroup distinction is questionable as a defining characteristic and would not seem to separate millenarians from militant trade unionists. This study does not join directly this ongoing discussion but tries to look at the possible role of particular millenarian movements as they interact with their environment.Google Scholar

8 Mus, Paul, Viet-Nam: Sociologie d'une guerre (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952), pp. 237–8.Google Scholar

9 Examples can be found in Benda, Harry J., ‘The Structure of Southeast Asian History: Some Preliminary Observations’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, Vol. 3 (03 1962), 430CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sarkisyanz, Emmanuel, ‘Marxism and Asian Cultural Traditions’, Survey, No. 431 (1962), 62–3.Google Scholar

10 Coulet, Georges, Secret Societies in the Country of Annam, Trans, by Human Relations Area Files (Saigon: Imprimerie Commerciale C. Ardin, 1926), p. 535.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 332–3. Coulet suggested studying all Asian mass movements from this perspective.

12 Ibid., pp. 20 and 262.

13 Hobsbawm, , op. cit., p. 24.Google Scholar

14 Many scholars have a similar problem because they are unable to fit religion into their preferred analytical categories. Cohn, Norman, Pursuit of the Millenium (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), pp. 73–5, finds such traits as evidence for a collective paranoid fantasy. His attempt to interpret the millenarian sects as the lineal precursors of twentiethentury totalitarianism obscures important differences between the two social phenomena.Google Scholar

15 Worsley, Peter, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo’ Cults in Melanesia (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1957), p. 241.Google Scholar

16 Coulet, , op. cit., p. 323.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 99–100.

18 Gobron, Gabriel, Histoire el philosophic de caodgisme (Paris: Dervy, 1949), p. 41. Gobron was a French Caodaist.Google Scholar

19 Le Van Trung served on the Colonial Council and Privy Council and was appointed to the Legion of Honor, but business reversals plus gambling debts marred his success. Gouvernement General de l'lndochine, Direction des Affairs Politiques et de la Generale, Sureté, Le Caodaisme, 1926–1934, Documents, Vol. VII, p. 28, stresses the least desirable traits of Trung's character but does not deny his ability and experience.Google Scholar

20 Walzer, , op. cit., p. 309Google Scholar. Mus, , ‘Les sectes politico-religieuses et le traditionnalisme annamite', unpublished lecture, pp. 2–3 notes that many of these were very able men attracted to the new movement by the combined appeals of religious faith and opportunities for mobility.Google Scholar

21 Gobron, , op. cit., p. 116.Google Scholar

22 Gouvernement General de l'lndochine, op. cit., p. 70.Google Scholar

23 Fall, Bernard B., ‘The Political-Religious Sects of Viet-Nam’, Pacific Affairs, XXVIII, No. 3 (09 1955), 243.Google Scholar

24 Schlafer, Stephen, ‘The Hoa Hao: An Introduction’ (unpublished study for the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense under contract with the Simulmatics Corporation, September 1967), p. 88.Google Scholar

25 A translation of Huynh Phu So's writings can be found in Robert L. Mole, ‘A Brief Survey of the Phat-Giao Hoa Hao of South Vietnam’ (mimeograph by the Naval Medical School, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland).Google Scholar

26 Gouvernement General de l'lndochine, op. cit., pp. 81–2.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., p. 37.

28 Ibid., pp. 103–4.

29 ibid., p. 84.

30 Duncanson, , op. cit., p. 126.Google Scholar

31 Gouvernement General de l'lndochine, op. cit., p. 88.Google Scholar

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., p. 84 depicted the Cao Dai as the Communist vanguard in Cochinchina.

34 In June 1940, after the defeat of France, a pro-Vichy administration was installed in Indochina. This administration sought to salvage some French influence, especially in Cochinchina, the last area to be occupied by Japanese troops.

35 Balandier, Georges, ‘Messianismes et nationalismes en Afrique Noire’, Cahiers Internationale de Sociologie, XIV (1953), 54.Google Scholar

36 Jumper, Roy, ‘The Cao Dai of Tay Ninh: The Politics of a Political-Religious Sect in South Vietnam’, in Gokhale, B. G., ed., Asian Studies, I (New York: Humanities Press, 1967), p. 146.Google Scholar

37 Mus, Paul, ‘The Role of the Village in Vietnamese Polities’, Pacific Affairs, XXII (09 1949), 269–70.Google Scholar

38 Key, V. O. Jr., Southern Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949)Google Scholar. The machine's need for allies is stressed by Key, V. O. Jr., Political Parties and Pressure Groups (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1947), pp. 333–59Google Scholar. Banfield, Edward C. and Wilson, James Q., City Politics (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), pp. 115–27 show the importance of material incentives and ‘friendship’.Google Scholar

39 Wilson, Bryan, Sects and Society, p. 1.Google Scholar

40 On August 19, 1945, the provisional Republic of Vietnam was established in Hanoi and on August 25 its Southern branch, the United Front, held a rally of over 100,000 people in Saigon. For a detailed chronology of the events of this period, see M. Catala, ‘La Formation de la nation vietnamienne et les idées et mouvements politiques au Vietnam’ (Unpublished lectures given at École Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer et au Cours des Officiers Stagiaires pour l'lndochine, 1947–8), pp. 48–9.

41 Schlafer, , op. cit., p. 103.Google Scholar

42 The manifesto appears in ibid., pp. 114–19.

43 Ibid., pp. 39–40.

44 Ibid., p. 122.

45 Fall, , ‘The Political-Religious Sects of Viet-Nam’, pp. 249–50.Google Scholar

46 Catala, , op. cit., p. 36.Google Scholar

47 Fall, , 'The Political-Religious Sects of Viet-Nam’, p. 252.Google Scholar

48 Gobron, , op. cit., pp. 184 and 186.Google Scholar

49 As with the Hoa Hao, this agreement provided for only a small proportion of the 20,000 troops affiliated in some manner with the Cao Dai. See Catala, , op. cit., p. 36.Google Scholar

50 Jumper, , op. cit., p. 153.Google Scholar

51 Fall, , ‘The Political-Religious Sects of Viet-Nam’, p. 249.Google Scholar

52 Smith, Harvey H., et al. Area Handbook for South Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1967), p. 321.Google Scholar

53 Pike, Douglas, Viet Cong (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1966), p. 13Google Scholar. Hobsbawm, , op. cit., pp. 52–3 describes the Mafia as inadaptable. It is not a movement of social protest but a complex of extortion rackets.Google Scholar

54 Fishel, Wesley R., ed., Vietnam: Anatomy of a Conflict (Itasca: F. E. Peacock Publishers, Inc., 1968), p. 84Google Scholar. Smith, , et al. op. cit., p. 411, suggests that the arrangement was initiated by Bao Dai, who was seeking to consolidate his personal position and who thus offered the gang a monopoly of organized vice if it would perform police duties.Google Scholar

55 Fall, , ‘The Political-Religious Sects of Viet-Nam’, p. 250.Google Scholar

56 Smith, , et al. op. cit., p. 411. An official American source may be suspected of magnifying the extent of the disorder prevailing before Diem took office.Google Scholar

57 September 24, 1954.

58 The defection may have been due in part to tension between the General and the Cao Dai clergy, whom The felt could never lead a truly national movement. Jumper, , op. cit., p. 153Google Scholar. Another factor was the close relationship between Thé and Colonel Lansdale, Diem's staunchest supporter in the American mission. See Shaplen, Robert, The Lost Revolution (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1966), p. 117.Google Scholar

59 Jumper, Roy, ‘Mandarin Bureaucracy and Politics in South Viet Nam’, Pacific Affairs, Vol. XXX, No. 1 (03 1957), 53–4.Google Scholar

60 Fall, , The Two Viet-Nams, p. 245.Google Scholar

61 Kornhauser, William, The Politics of Mass Society (New York: The Free Press, 1959), p. 90.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., pp. 93–107.

63 Hammer, Ellen J., The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), p. 348.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., pp. 276–7.

65 Stavrianos, L. S., The Balkans since 1453 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1958), p. 625.Google Scholar

66 Shaplen, , op. cit., pp. 191–2.Google Scholar

67 Fall, , The Two Viet-Nams, pp. 354–5, notes that in 1961 a Hoa Hao force was destroyed by a joint NLF-Diem regime offensive.Google Scholar

68 The New York Times, January 24, 1964.Google Scholar

69 Warner, Denis, ‘Vietnam Prepares for Elections’, The Reporter, Vol. 35, No. 2 (08 11, 1966), 14.Google Scholar

70 Joiner, Charles A., ‘Patterns of Political Party Behavior in South Vietnam’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, Vol. VIII, No. 1 (01 1968), 58–71.Google Scholar

71 Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1951), pp. 308–9. The comparison is with the Weimar authorities.Google Scholar

72 Tong, S. Y., ‘Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Chinese Secret Societies’, in Sakai, Robert K., ed., Studies on Asia, 1963 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), pp. 81–2 and 93Google Scholar. Schram, Stuart, ‘Mao Tse-tung and Secret Societies’, China Quarterly, No. 27 (07–09 1966), 7 and 10.Google Scholar