Philippe Peycam
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231158503
- eISBN:
- 9780231528047
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231158503.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This book is the first ever English-language study of Vietnam's emerging political press and its resistance to colonialism. Published in the decade that preceded the Communist Party's founding, it ...
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This book is the first ever English-language study of Vietnam's emerging political press and its resistance to colonialism. Published in the decade that preceded the Communist Party's founding, it established a space for public, political contestation that fundamentally changed Vietnamese attitudes and the outlook of Southeast Asia. It directly links Saigon's colonial urbanization to the creation of new modes of individual and collective political agency. To better justify their presence, French colonialists implemented a peculiar brand of republican imperialism to encourage the development of a highly controlled print capitalism. Yet the Vietnamese made clever use of this new form of political expression, subverting colonial discourse and putting French rulers on the defensive, while simultaneously stoking Vietnamese aspirations for autonomy. The book specifically considers the work of Western-educated Vietnamese journalists who, in their legal writings, called attention to the politics of French rule. It rejects the notion that communist and nationalist ideologies changed the minds of “alienated” Vietnamese during this period. Rather, it credits colonial urban modernity with shaping the Vietnamese activist-journalist and the role of the French, even at their most coercive, along with the modern public Vietnamese intellectual and his responsibility toward the group. Countering common research on anticolonial nationalism and its assumptions of ethno-cultural homogeneity, the book follows the merging of French republican and anarchist traditions with neo-Confucian Vietnamese behavior, giving rise to modern Vietnamese public activism, its autonomy, and its contradictory aspirations.Less
This book is the first ever English-language study of Vietnam's emerging political press and its resistance to colonialism. Published in the decade that preceded the Communist Party's founding, it established a space for public, political contestation that fundamentally changed Vietnamese attitudes and the outlook of Southeast Asia. It directly links Saigon's colonial urbanization to the creation of new modes of individual and collective political agency. To better justify their presence, French colonialists implemented a peculiar brand of republican imperialism to encourage the development of a highly controlled print capitalism. Yet the Vietnamese made clever use of this new form of political expression, subverting colonial discourse and putting French rulers on the defensive, while simultaneously stoking Vietnamese aspirations for autonomy. The book specifically considers the work of Western-educated Vietnamese journalists who, in their legal writings, called attention to the politics of French rule. It rejects the notion that communist and nationalist ideologies changed the minds of “alienated” Vietnamese during this period. Rather, it credits colonial urban modernity with shaping the Vietnamese activist-journalist and the role of the French, even at their most coercive, along with the modern public Vietnamese intellectual and his responsibility toward the group. Countering common research on anticolonial nationalism and its assumptions of ethno-cultural homogeneity, the book follows the merging of French republican and anarchist traditions with neo-Confucian Vietnamese behavior, giving rise to modern Vietnamese public activism, its autonomy, and its contradictory aspirations.
Patricia D. Norland
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781501749735
- eISBN:
- 9781501749759
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501749735.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter focuses on Thanh as one of the nine Vietnamese women known as the Saigon sisters, who were born in the early 1930s and attended Lycée Marie Curie. It describes Thanh as one of the most ...
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This chapter focuses on Thanh as one of the nine Vietnamese women known as the Saigon sisters, who were born in the early 1930s and attended Lycée Marie Curie. It describes Thanh as one of the most politicized of the sisters and an unexpected figure in the maquis for revering the language and culture of the French colonialists against which she chose to fight. It also details Thanh's transformation from being the child of Saigon's elite to joining the resistance against the French. The chapter shares specific events in Thanh's youth and her reflection on the toll that joining the maquis took on her family. It discusses how Thanh reveled in French novels, poems, movies, plays, and even, entertainment magazines as a child, as well as how she learned about American culture through her passion for movies.Less
This chapter focuses on Thanh as one of the nine Vietnamese women known as the Saigon sisters, who were born in the early 1930s and attended Lycée Marie Curie. It describes Thanh as one of the most politicized of the sisters and an unexpected figure in the maquis for revering the language and culture of the French colonialists against which she chose to fight. It also details Thanh's transformation from being the child of Saigon's elite to joining the resistance against the French. The chapter shares specific events in Thanh's youth and her reflection on the toll that joining the maquis took on her family. It discusses how Thanh reveled in French novels, poems, movies, plays, and even, entertainment magazines as a child, as well as how she learned about American culture through her passion for movies.
