Studied by 4 people
empire
“Empires are large political units, expansionist or with a memory of power extended over space, polities that maintain a distinction and hierarchy as they incorporate new people.” Cooper and Burbank 2010
Empires are incorporative and differentiated.
Long-term dynasties
Ethno-confessional plurality
‘Shatterzones’: Galicia, Macedonia, Caucasus
Limited industrialization and integration into capitalism, considered semi-peripheries in the world economy by I. Wallerstein
Surge of revolts and opposition against the dynasty, seeking national self-determination, new ideas of empire (Ottomanism, Panturkism)
Differences in their relation to Western Europe: Ottoman and Qing subjugated to informal imperialism
nation state
Based on the idea of a single people in a single territory constituting itself as a unique political community.
Treaties proclaiming wilsonian national self-determination: Versailles, Trianon, Sèvres, Lausanne.
“While this was not foreseeable at the time, it quickly became clear that, in the multi-ethnic lands of Eastern and Central Europe, ‘national self-determination’ was a dangerous concept”. Gerwarth 2017
“an analysis of the ways in which empires ended in Europe and its eastern margins is crucial for understanding the cycles of violence that characterized the twentieth century.” Gerwarth 2017
In the Balkans, new nations became expansionist, incorporative and differentiated and not only looking for their self-determination.
Persistence of Empire after WW1: colonial empires grow (mandates in the middle east), ideological empires (US and Soviet union), fascist empires (Japan, Germany and Italy).
Scars of Empire left in Europe and the Middle east for the whole 20th century and until today (Balkan Wars in the 90’s, Isis and Sykes-Picot, invasion of Ukraine).
WWI Causes
1. Mutual Defense Alliances
→ Russia and Serbia
→ Germany and Austria-Hungary
→ France and Russia
→ Britain and France and Belgium
→ Japan and Britain
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia got involved to defend Serbia. Germany declared war on Russia. France drawn in against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Germany attacked France through Belgium pulling Britain into war. Then Japan entered the war. Later, Italy and the United States would enter on the side of the allies.
2. Imperialism
3. Militarism
4. Nationalism
Much of the origin of the war was based on the desire of the Slavic peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina to no longer be part of Austria Hungary but instead be part of Serbia.
5. Immediate Cause: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
(serbian nationalist)
In protest to Austria-Hungary having control of this region. Serbia wanted to take over Bosnia and Herzegovina. This
6. break down in ottoman empire?
Revolution
H. Arendt: “the course of history suddenly begins anew, that an entirely new story, a story never told before, is about to unfold”.
→ Karl Marx: revolution as “the spring of the peoples.”
Overturning a regime; 2. Appealing to the masses; 3. Overturning the social structure/the ruling class
The Radetzky March
All people equal because subject of the Empire (Jews, slovenian, polish, czech) / same political structure
the description of the slovenian Nephew → 18 hours (times evolve) ⇒ people relatively free because of the distance with the government (centralized government)
Borderlands (Galicia)
Charles & Barbara Jelavich
• First Constitutional Monarchy (1876-1878) • Second Constitutional Monarchy (1908 - ) : “restoring the constitution” • Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)
Ideological solutions:
(1) Pan-Islamism: “a state based on the unity of the Muslim world”
(2) Ottomanism: based on the equality of “Ottoman” citizens regardless of their primary language and religion
(3) Pan-Turanism: “the unity of the Turkic people including those in Russia”
Practical Solutions
Investment in schooling (Abdülhamid II)
Investment in the constitution and the promise of equal ity to all citizens.” (214)
Obstacles
Independentist movements: Bulgaria (214)
Imperial competition: annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina by the Habsburg Empire (215)
“The great problem of the disposition of Macedonia, Albania, and the Aegean Is lands remained, but it was now clear that the great powers rather than the Balkan allies would determine the final fate of these territories.” (219)
Rosa Luxemburg
→ Internationalizing the Bolchevik revolution:
“The problems of the Russian Revolution, moreover – since it is a product of international developments [war] plus the agrarian question – cannot possibly be solved within the limits of bourgeois society.”
→ A criticism of German ‘opportunists’ : especially Kautsky
→ The development of a revolutionary theory: teleology, dialectics, criticisms of Leninism
→ using Bolsevik revolution for the German context (strategy of author). Transversal ideas:
Making the revolution international
Rejecting more moderate visions
At the time, huge criticism of “attentism”: wait for revolution to unfold before expressing support
teleological; expression of history going towards revolution as necessity
Discussing with 2 elements of german left: Social Democrats (in power even before war in germany, she hates them), and more moderate socialists (also against, like Kautsky)
Spartacus movement: 1919, Luxemburg and friends tried to launch a similar revolution that was crushed by the Social Democratic gov (or in marxist terms by the bourgeois).
1917 February and October revolutions in Russia.
3 major criticisms of the policies implemented by the Bolshevik Party:
nationalist policy of self-determination for ethnic minorities,
distribution of land to individual farmers instead of collectivization, and
anti-democratic dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly.
Critical of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin's centralization of power in the hands of a single political party and the suppression of civil liberties (eg freedom of the press, association, and assembly).
Wang Fan-Hsi
→ to understand the processes under which an individual becomes a revolutionary:
involvement & belief in action, sacrifice, martyrdom
access to theory and publications, involvement in printing
connections beyond the state especially to other revolutionary movements.
→ to understand the temporality of revolution:
popular uprising, “honeymoon”, rivalry and civil war, polarization of society through ideology (especially in China between nationalism and communism).
→ to understand the geography of the Chinese revolution:
foreign concessions in port-cities, Guangdong as a revolutionary hub, the role of peripheries like Wuhan, the pressure and aid of foreign powers.
Chinese dates
→ 1644 Qing took over
→ 1839-42, 1856-60 - Opium Wars
→ 1850-1864 - Taiping rebellion
→ 1898-1901 - Boxer Rebellion
→ 1911 - Xinhai Revolution
→ 1912 – The end of the Qing dynasty
→Japanese invasion during WW1
→ Yuan Shih-kai
1916-1928 – The Warlord Era: divided among former military cliques of the Beiyang Army and other regional factions
1919 – May Fourth Movement
→The foundation of Comintern in 1919
Students boycotted classes
→ The Kuomintang (KMT) reborn in 1919 under Sun Yat-sen
→ 1921 The Communist Party of China
→ 1923 Comintern sent Mikhail Borodin to Guangzhou, Soviets established friendly relations with the KMT.
→ The First United Front; became better organized, running a diplomatically unrecognized Soviet-backed administration in southern province of Guangdong.
KMT tried to foment pro-Chinese, anti-imperial, anti-Western organizations and propaganda in major Chinese cities.
CCP groups particularly involved in sowing dissent in Shanghai through the farleft Shanghai University.
Shanghai's native Chinese strongly unionised compared to other cities and better educated and recognised their plight as involving lack of legal factory inspection, recourse for worker grievances or equal rights.
→ 1925 – early months of 1925, conflicts and strikes on those matters intensified.
→ The May Thirtieth Incident (Shanghai) 1925
A major labor and anti-imperialist movement
began when the Shanghai Municipal Police opened fire on Chinese protesters in Shanghai's International Settlement on May 30, 1925 (Shanghai massacre of 1925).
shootings sparked international censure and nationwide antiforeign demonstrations and riots.
incident shocked and galvanized China, and the strikes and boycotts, coupled with further violent demonstrations and riots, quickly spread across the country, bringing foreign economic interests to near standstill:
Canton Hong-Kong General Strike, 1925,1926
The Shake Shootings in Canton, 1925
“the tragic events of 18 March 1926”, Tiananmen Square
→ 1926 - The Northern Expedition
(military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords from 1926 to 1928)
A march against warlords and imperialism led by Chiang Kai-shek
First phase ended in a 1927 political split between two factions of the KMT.
The split was partially motivated by Chiang's Shanghai Massacre of Communists within the KMT, which marked the end of the First United Front.
Italy key dates
→ 1919 - March First meeting of Fascist movement,
Treaty of Versailles failed to award any German colonies to Italy.
→ 1919/1920 - “the red two years”
eg bologna in po valley Italian socialist party 3/4 of vote in 1919 (destroyed march-may of 21)
→ 1920:
Sept. Occupation of the factories by 400k engineering workers
Nov. Fascist squad violence began
→ 1921:
May: Fascists gained 35 seats in general election
Oct: National Fascist Party org created
→ 1922:
Increasing Fascist violence
300k members of the Fascist party in 1922 in Italy
Oct 27 Fascists seized key buildings in northern cities, the first move in the ‘March on Rome’
Oct. 28 Resignation of final Liberal government
Oct. 29 Mussolini invited to become PM
→ Until 1924 : still type of democracy
⇒ ACERBO LAW introduced in Parliament ⇒ Italian electoral law proposed by Baron Giacomo Acerbo and passed by the Italian Parliament in November 1923
Next national elections,
only 35 deputies were fascists
235 for 139 against → clear majority
Art and economy in Weimar
Humiliation of Versailles treaty: 15% of the territory lost, lost property over industrial and pharmaceutical patents, limited army, subject to international law. Associated by nationalist groups to undeutschlichkeit (ungermanness).
Rise of mass culture, mass cinema, major exhibitions, artistic and design movementsinvolving more ‘the mass’ (Bauhaus).
Regime in constant crisis: 1922 currency crisis, structural unemployment (20 M in 1930), financial plans with limited success (Dawes 24 and Young 29), 30 financial crisis.
Parallel radical artistic movements which document mass culture, post-“WW1 moral crisis and rising inequalities: New Objectivity, Dadaism.
Rising discourse on the corruption of values by both left-leaning artists and right-wing nationalist movements.
Association of Weimar to decay, decadence, degeneration, becomes the major intellectual force of national-socialism until the exhibition on ‘Degenerate Art’ in 1937.
Fascism
R. Paxton , The Anatomy of Fascism: “fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the brain.
→ “authoritarian, social, and popular”/“Action has buried philosophy” Mussolini.
→ Anti-revolutionary revolution
→ The “aestheticization of violence” (L. Young);
Imperialist foreign policy, against Wilsonianism and the League of Nations
→ a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood & by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity
→ in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties & pursues with redemptive violence / without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion”
A Tasca
Author: working-class background, member of socialist unions, member of the Communist International, slowly distanced with Stalinism. And … involved with the Vichy government during WW2…
The aim of the text is to understand how Italian society failed and let fascism take over but also a precise overview of all of post-WW1 Italian society.
Context of the events: Post-WW1 brutalization of society / Giolitti’s government / parliamentary crisis
Context of the source 1938: rise of Nazism and fascist takeover of Europe
Germnay Key Dates
WWI – 2 million German dead, 150 billion marks debt.
→ Jan 1923 – Ruhr Crisis – French troops invade causing German workers to strike leading to Weimar Government printing more money.
→ Nov 1923 – Hyperinflation – German Mark is worthless.
→ Nov 1923 – MUNICH PUTSCH - H gathers with 1K SA marches on Munich and declares himself President of Germany. Arrested
→ 1925- Hitler establishes the SS
→ 1920s - A Hugenburg newspaper empire; Nazi propaganda and blaming communists for disturbances
→ 25-29 - economy upswing
→ 1929 – Wall St Crash – Led to cancelation of the Dawes Plan, raising of taxes and around 3 million people losing their jobs.
→ April 1932 – Election, no party has majority.
→ May 1932 – Von Hind re-elected President, H increases vote promising “work and bread”. Von Papen takes over as chancellor.
→ July 1932 – Election - NAZI vote increase 18% → 38%. H demands to be Chancellor (Hind refuses).
→ Nov 1932 – Election – Von Schleicher warns Hin that if Von Papen stays as Chanc. There will be Civil War.
→ Dec – Von Schleicher becomes Chanc.
→ Jan 1933 – Von Schleicher does not have NAZI support. Persuade Hind to form military dictatorship. Hind refuses. Von P persuades Von Hind to appoint H as Chanc.
January 1933 - Nazis obtain control of the German state with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor, marking the beginning of the Third Reich.
→ 27 Feb 1933 – Reichstag Fire. 4k communists arrested.
→ MARCH: Enablement Act (nazi won vote for this 444 to 94)
→ 1933: other:
Gestapo set up.
Joseph Goebbel Propaganda minister (33-45)
Communists banned.
Other political parties banned (months later)
The Marriage Law Marriage (loans to married couples; Expected not to work but look after the home).
→ June 1934 – Night of the long Knives (Rohm & ~100 leaders of the SA arrested and executed giving H the power to assimilate the SA.)
→ 1936: fewer than 1.6 million men still unemployed (1.3 1929 to 6 in 1932 out of 60 mill total)
Battle of images Spanish Civil War
war 1936-39
april 26 1937 bombing of Guernica (in basque, with strong republican base) by francos allies Nazi Germany and the Fascist Italy
→illiteracy 32.4% 1936 (importance of posters as visual)
→ most represented conflict ever at the time, surge of paintings, documentaries, posters and journalistic and literary references (J. Evans, G. Orwell, E. Hemingway).
→ Images became weapons in the time of mass propaganda.
→ Context: lack of foreign support for the Republicans (some weapons from USSR) vs full support by fascist regimes for the Nationalists, slow division between Republicans accelerated by Stalinist communism, escalation of violence and the need for documentation of the conflict.
3 main purposes of images during the war:
Mobilization of fighters and seeking consent of civilans: enrolling rural youth within nationalist forces, heroic representation of the fighters in posters and film
Demanding foreign intervention through empathy, ideology or proclaiming international strength: « This morning's collection contains the photograph of what might be a man's body, or a woman's; it is so mutilated that it might, on the other hand, be the body of a pig. But those certainly are dead children, and that undoubtedly is the section of a house. A bomb has torn open the side; there is still a bird-cage hanging in what was presumably the sitting room... » V. Wolf on images of the Spanish Civil War
Documenting the truth: debates on falsification of images, source of inspiration for novels on the early threat of Stalinism, professional and transnational world of (photo)-journalism fully involved in the conflict (look at Robert Capa’s work).
Other aspects of total war: destruction of civilian-inhabited areas (air bombing by Nationalists, attack on churches and the clergy for Republicans, inherent transnational links (refugees fleeing to France, debates within countries on intervention), will to annihilate the enemy.
Russia Key dates
→ 1894 Nicholas II (Romanov) becomes Tsar.
→ 1903 Russian Marxist Party splits: Mensheviks & Bolsheviks (Lenin)
→ 1904-05 Russo – Japanese War: Russian troops are defeated on land and sea. Russia makes territorial and diplomatic concessions to Japan.
→ 1905 Bloody Sunday Massacre & the Revolution of 1905 – major uprising of striking workers halted by gunfire from the Imperial Guards. Russia establishes a Duma (parliament) with few powers.
→ 1908: The formation of the soviets; organizations of workers that serve as local governments
→ 1915: Nicholas II assumes control of the Army, moves headquarters to the front; therefore the Tsar is not present to run the government from St. Petersburg (Petrograd)
→ 1917 March Revolution: lead Nicholas II to abdicate. Provisional Government is established but chooses to continue the war.
→ 1917 April: Lenin returns to Russia from exile; Peace, Bread, and Land!
→ 1917 October (November) Revolution: Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky and with the support of the Russian Navy and Petrograd Guards take over the government.
→ 1917 Russia ends involvement in WWI with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; sacrifices 1/3 of its population and ¼ of its territory to Germany to keep from being invaded.
→ 1918-1921 Civil War between the Reds and the Whites
→ 1919 Comintern formed in Moscow
→ 1921 outlawed internal debate/external
→ 1921 Lenin issues the New Economic Policy
→ 1922 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was declared.
→ 1922 Lenin suffers a stroke, dies in 1924
→ 27/28 Grain crisis
→ 1928 Joseph Stalin takes control of the Communist Party in Russia; first 5-Year Plan to industrialize/collectivize agriculture of Russia
→ 30/31 Dekulakization
→ 1937-38: The Great Purge
Stalinism Definition
1927-1953
“Bureaucratic Absolutism with permanent revolutionary will justified by a rationalist doctrine” for Raymond Aron
“A Revolution from Above” R. Tucker
“An autocratic model based on extreme practices of which some were improvised according to inner and international context; justified by a revolutionary doctrine, and replicated by other regimes.” Paul Flewers
→ Creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, socialism in one country (until 1939),
→ collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, colonization of Eastern Europe (since 1939)
→ a cult of personality, subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to USSR’s (deemed by Stalinism to be the vanguard party of communist revolution)
C. Rakowski
Typical transnational trajectory of the socialist revolutionary, mastery of Marxist terminology, highly educated element of the revolutionary movement, close to Trotsky and member of the ‘Left Opposition’. Diplomat in G-B, France, sent to exile, imprisoned and executed.
Aim of the text: denounce the bureaucratisation of the USSR after Lenin’s death and the rise of the Nomenklatura (privileged class of bureaucrats).
The audience may well be international given the author’s own network and the debates in the 1920’s during the Comintern assemblies.
Published in Trostky’s Bulletin of the Opposition.
Context:
1925 declaration of “Socialism in one country”, massive rivalry in the Party between Stalin’s faction (Zinoviev and Kamenev), Trotskyists ‘leftists’ & the ‘rightist’.
→ By 1927, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trostky were banished.
1927: last years of the NEP, beginning of collectivization (creation of State-owned and collective owned farms, Sovkhoz/Kolkhoz) and dekulakization (mass deportation of wealthy farmers).
1928: Shakhty case, show trials against supposed ‘saboteurs’ building infrastructure in the Caucasus.
A return to pre-revolutionary Russia?
Party which lost its revolutionary spirit : 500k members in 1923, with only 10 000 who were Bolchevik before 1917.
“The majority of them lack the revolutionary class education acquired in the real-life struggle for the construction of socialism.”
Birth of a privileged administrative bourgeoisie: the nomenklatura
“Statistical charlatanism”
The working-class acting as immoral lumpenproletariat
“The task of the party leaders consists precisely in keeping the party and the working class from the corrupting influence of privileges, of favors, of special rights inherent in power through its contact with remnants of the ancient nobility and of the petty bourgeoisie”
Rise of Russian chauvinism (against the idea of internationalism and multiethnic federalism)
Analogy of Stalin’s rise with Thermidor, a reactionary turn to the revolution after Robespierre’s radicalism.
Stalinism Key Dates
After 1928: the elements that made Stalinism so particular and more like a totalitarian state appeared.
- Waves of famine in Kazakhstan (around 1,5 M dead) and Ukraine (around 4 M) linked to collectivization, historiographical debates on its actual intention for the suppression of opposition.
Forced hyper-industrialization: Stakhanovism (cult of productive workers)
“We have lagged behind the advanced countries by fifty to a hundred years. We must cover that distance in ten years. Either we’ll do it or they will crush us.” J. Stalin
Forced relocation of minorities: Koreans of the border moved to Kazakhstan
Great Terror: purge of the old Bolchevik bureaucratic elite during show trials but above all bureaucratic frenzy all over the USSR with around 700 000 people killed out of 1.3 M convicted
All this had transnational reasons, pushed by the coming of war, as explained by the fear of a ‘fifth column’ in the USSR:
“Over the course of Russian history in general and the history of Bolshevism in particular, war was not just a threat from without; it was a time of social cataclysm and political upheaval. After the Bolsheviks emerged from the Civil War as victors, no force within the country had been capable of overthrowing the regime. Soviet leaders themselves had achieved power as a result of war and always believed that they might succumb to a combined effort by a foreign enemy and domestic anti-Bolshevik forces.”
O.V. Khlevniuk
Key Dates Vietnam
→ 1885 french; 1887 french indochina (Cochin China, Annam and Tonkin)
→ 1890 May 19, Ho Chi Minh born.
Vietnam providing french natural resources and abundant cheap labor.
→ 1911: Ho traveled to Saigon and obtained a job as a cook aboard a French steam ship bound for the French city of Marseille.
→ 1917: Ho moved to Paris during the height of World War I. Became involved in leftist and anticolonial activism.
→ 1919: Ho worked to found the Association for Annamite Patriots (Vietnamese nationals living in France who opposed the French colonial occupation of Vietnam). Petition demanding end of the French colonial exploitation of Vietnam (attempted to present to world powers at the Versailles Peace Conference but never officially recognized).
→ 1920 Ho became a founding member of the newly created French Communist Party.
→ 1922 Ho founded the journal Le Paria (The Pariah), (anticolonial activists to disseminate views about the French colonial regime.)
→ 1923 Ho traveled to Moscow for the first time. Trained as an agent of the Comintern.
→ 1925 Ho traveled to China, foment socialist revolution in China. Formed the “Revolutionary Youth League” (Vietnamese exiles living in China and dedicated to revolution in Vietnam). Organization began to establish connections with other Vietnamese nationalist and revolutionary groups residing in Vietnam.
Also published the revolutionary journal Than Nien, which was secretly distributed throughout Southeast Asia.
→ 1927 Ho was forced to leave China after CHIANG Kai-shek instituted a vicious crackdown on left-wing radicals, imprisoning and executing hundreds of communists and labor activists. Ho fled to the USSR
→ 1930 Ho founded the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), later renamed the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP).
→ 1940 German forces invaded France. Japanese forces moved into Vietnam. French colonial authorities agreed to allow Japanese occupation under the condition that the French colonial administration not be dismantled.
→ 1941 Ho returned to Vietnam and founded the Viet Minh
→ 1945 close of WWII, Japan pushes french out. Ho organized the Viet Minh, large-scale uprising in Vietnam. Viet Minh captured major cities across Vietnam and declared Vietnam an independent state.
Key Dates Eastern Europe
Non aggression pact germany + ussr Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939)
→ USSR to impose its model in Eastern European countries
American / Western attempt of bringing down the communist regime in the USSR.
The US feared a Soviet expansion towards the West of Europe.
Wanted neutral counteis
Until 1948, there was no nationalization in any of the Eastern European countries but with the Cold War this changed. Shows that the original aim of the USSR was not to make Eastern European countries communist.
Policy of Appeasement:
Hitler openly denounced the Treaty of Versailles and began secretly building up Germany’s army and weapons.
Britain and France knew of Hitler’s actions, but thought a stronger Germany would stop spread of Communism from Russia.
eg Munich Agreement of September 1938.
In the Agreement, Britain and France allowed Germany to annex areas in Czechoslovakia where German-speakers lived.
Germany agreed not to invade the rest of Czechoslovakia /other country but in March 1939, Germany broke its promise and invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia.
1939: Germany invades Poland, inciting Poland’s allies Britain and France to declare war on Germany (beginning WWII)
Communism and anti-colonalism
WW1 as a catalyst for anti-colonial movements: demands for citizenship after participation in the war, influence of the Bolchevik revolution and the Leninist opposition to imperialism and influence of Wilsonian ‘self-determination’ proclaimed during the treaty of Versailles.
Wilson’s self-determination program was divided according to three ‘degrees of civilization’ with many racist connotations.
As a result, many anti-colonial movements benefitted from Soviet backing and resorted to communism as a path for national independence.
1927 creation of the League against Imperialism through a congress in Brussels, encouraged by the Komintern, directed for a while by Indian figure M. N. Roy, ended in 1937 with very limited success, due to ideological obstinacy, inner rivalries and the Great Purges.
Crucial experience of China as a laboratory for anti-imperial movement partly led by communist regimes and the lessons learnt from a coalition with nationalist movements.
rise of vietnamese communism
A colonial context: ‘Vietnam’ was a creation of 1945 by Ho Chi Minh. It united three regions of French Indochina: Annam, Tonkin (protectorates) and Cochinchina (colony). Indigenous populations do not have French citizenship and other political rights. Annam and Tonkin were also ruled by an Emperor: Bao Dai.
Long-standing nationalist thought starting in the 19th century and studied by B. Anderson.
The turn to socialist thinking in the 1920’s:
“Even in a country under direct colonial rule, like the Vietnam of the thirties, the national struggle (against French domination) does not necessarily precede the emergence of class conflict within the indigenous society itself”.
“The hopes of Vietnamese Marxists centered upon the possible conjunction of an upsurge of workers’ struggles in metropolitan France and national struggles in colonial Vietnam.”
As a result, communism triggers popular uprisings against French rule: Yen Bai 1930 / Nghe Tinh Soviets 1931. Communism and anti-colonialism become intertwined in a mass movement.
1930’s Vietnam as “a huge, illiterate, exploited peasantry, a minuscule working class, a fragmentary bourgeoisie, and a tiny, divided intelligentsia” / “93-95% of the Vietnamese population was still living in rural areas. No more than 10% of the population was functionally literate in any script.” B. Anderson
Communism resorts to National Independence: disappointed by the Stalinist shift of the Kominterm.
China as a (counter)-model: similar socio-economic and cultural context. But errors made: alliance with Kuomintang, revolutionary urge in the late 1930’s, too late to break ties with the Kominterm + Kuomintang, not a colonized country.
Local version of communism: Confucian morality, peasant-driven revolution, cult of personality of Uncle Ho, Vietnamese patriotism, development of modern warfare (resulting in Dien Bien Phu French military loss in 1954) .
Indochinese war turned out to be the most violent colonial wars of the 20th century not fought as a guerilla war, use of napalm, starvation, air-bombing, massacre of villages…
Anti-colonial paris interwar (Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis 2015)
Presence of various anti-colonial figures in interwar Paris: Zhou Enlai, Ho Chi Minh, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Messali Hadj etc.
Creation of ethnic migrant organizations (unions, mutual aid associations, meetings in restaurants, cantines and cafés) more or less linked to anti-colonialism but contributing to the introduction of these ideas to migrants.
“a practical school of curtailed citizenship”: experience of everyday life as a migrant nurtured the idea of independence, highlighting the contradictions of French republican values.
Initial intellectual acquaintance with communism in Paris. Anti-imperial conferences at the Sorbonne. Lamine Senghor, WW1 veteran, became communist in Paris.
Inter-ethnic relations in Paris: creation of the Union Intercoloniale “under the auspices of the Parti Communiste Français” and then of the Kominterm.
Newspapers spreading anti-imperialist views: Le Paria, Journal des Peuples Opprimés in Paris*, The African Times and Orient review* in London.
Possible criticism of M. Goebel’s work: how and where did anti-colonial nationalism, communist or not, become mass movements? Probably not in Parisian cafés…
Note
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