Table Of ContentASPECTS OF VIETNAMESE HISTORY
ASIAN STUDIES AT HAWAII
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Asian Studies at Hawaii, No. 8
ASPECTS OF VIETNAMESE HISTORY
Edited
by
Walter F. Velia
Asian Studies Program
University of Hawaii
The University Press of Hawaii
1973
This volume, the eighth in the series entitled Asian
Studies at Hawaii, is the fourth to concern Southeast
Asia. A complete list of all titles in the series
may be found at the end of this volume.
Southeast Asian Studies at the University of
Hawaii is administratively part of the Asian Studies
Program. The Program offers interdisciplinary majors
in Asian studies at both the undergraduate and M.A.
levels. The program also facilitates research, or-
ganizes lecture programs, sponsors publications, and
launches other efforts at broadening understanding of
Asia.
Further information about faculty and staff,
degree requirements, course offerings, and other re-
sources of Southeast Asian Studies may be obtained
by writing Southeast Asian Studies, Asian Studies
Program, 315 Moore Hall, University of Hawaii,
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 72-619626
ISBN 0-8248-0236-5
Copyright © 19 73 by The University Press
of Hawaii
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Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Preface vii
The Cycle of Confucianization in Vietnam
by R. B. Smith 1
The Bong Kinh Free School Movement,
1907-1908
by Vu fliic Bang 30
Alexandre Varenne and Politics in
Indochina, 1925-1926
by William H. Frederick 96
The Faithful Few: The Politics of
Collaboration in Cochinchina in
the 1920s
by Milton Osborne 160
rj
Quoc Ngtf and the Development of Modern
Vietnamese Literature
by Hoäng Ng<?c Thanh 191
Japan and the Disruption of the
Vietnamese Nationalist Movement
by Triton g Bifu Läm 237
Index 271
PREFACE
Here is a potpourri of papers on Vietnam. They
are by various authors and were written at various
times for various purposes. No central theme or
organizing idea directed the authors, yet through
most a theme emerges. The uniting thread running
through all but the first paper is Vietnamese
nationalism.
The first paper, which alone concerns the
period of "traditional" Vietnam (during its age of
independence from the tenth to the early nineteenth
century), discusses Vietnamese society before the
impact of the Western concept of nationalism. Most
writers have typified this period of Vietnamese
history as one in which Chinese Confucianism was the
dominant idea and organizing principle in Vietnamese
society. Professor Smith takes a closer look at
this generalization and perceives that, as in China
itself, Confucianism in Vietnam varied in strength
and content through history. In Vietnam Smith
postulates a cyclical pattern of Confucian strength,
with periods of Confucian orthodoxy alternating
with periods of absence of commitment to any politi-
cal philosophy. Smith suggests that this cyclical
interpretation may still have relevance in North
Vietnam today, accounting for the fluctuations in
policy between Marxist orthodoxy and nonphilosophic
pragmatism.
The next four papers presented here cluster in
time around the first two decades of the twentieth
century. This was an era during which affairs in
Vietnam, and, indeed, in Southeast Asia in general,
attracted scant notice outside the offices of colo-
nial administrators. This was an era during which
Southeast Asia was regarded, if it was regarded at
all, as the epitome of peace, order, and profitable
production. This view of Southeast Asia was, of
course, the view of the colonial power, the colonial
governor, the colonial investor. This was the view
that "mattered."
World War II not only transformed the history
of the area--encouraging nationalist leaders and
movements that weakened the colonial power both
physically and psychologically, leading to removal
of Western rule from one-time colonies--but it
transformed the historical view of what was import-
ant before the war. The meteoric rise of national
heroes such as H6 Chi Minh, Sukarno, and Aung San,
leading mass movements and politicized populations,
produced a scholarly search for antecedents in the
deceptive calm of the prewar years. This second
look at peaceful, orderly, and productive Southeast
Asia revealed a Southeast Asia in which resistance
to the West had never died, in which indigenous
cultures had been continually fighting for survival
and a new expression, in which Western means had
been conceptualized as contributing to Asian ends.
The essays in this volume by Hoang Ngoc Thanh,
•O / ^
Vu i)uc Bang, William H. Frederick, and Milton Osborne
are parts of the growing literature that is making
understandable the transformation of seas of apparent
tropic tranquillity into raging oceans of revolution.
The sixth and final paper, by Dr. Triidng BiAi
Lam, also focuses on the theme of nationalism, but
it brings the subject forward in time to the wartime
years of the 1940s. The special relationship between
the French and the Japanese had unique effects on
nationalism in Vietnam and served to hinder rather
than to foster the growth of a unified nationalist
sentiment.
A word about the authors and their articles:
Dr. Ralph Smith, Lecturer in the History of
Southeast Asia in the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London, is the author of
Viet-Nam and the West (Cornell, 1971) and of several
articles on Vietnamese history. His essay here was
written for presentation at the University of Hawaii
during the week he spent as consultant to and guest
of Southeast Asian Studies, Asian Studies Program,
in 1970.
, \
Dr. Vu Buc Bang produced his article on "The
fiong Kinh Free School Movement," 1907-1908 as a
master's thesis in education for his degree in Hawaii
\
in 1969. Mr. B&ng completed a Ph.D. degree in
education at the University of California at Los
Angeles in 1971. He has recently returned to Viet-
nam .
The article "Alexandre Varenne and Politics in
Indochina, 1925-26" was written by Mr. William H.
Frederick for a seminar in Southeast Asian history
at the University of Hawaii in 1968. Mr. Frederick
is now completing research for his dissertation
on the history of Surabaja between 1930 and 1950.
The fourth article, "The Faithful Few: The
Politics of Collaboration in Cochinchina in the
1920s" by Dr. Milton Osborne, was produced under the
same auspices as the first article by Dr. Smith;
that is, it was written for presentation at the Uni-
versity of Hawaii during the week he served as guest
consultant to Southeast Asian Studies of the Asian
Studies Program. Dr. Osborne is currently a member
