Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
The theocratic movements were also Cochinchinese phenomena, but, unlike the reformist parties, commanded wide popular support. Cao Daism swiftly took hold in the late 20's and 30's, and became a genuine political force among the peasants in Tay Ninh Province (northwest of Saigon) and in the Mekong Delta. The Hoa Hao movement grew even more rapidly from its inception in the late 30's among the peasants of the Delta southwest of Saigon.
The revolutionary parties were, by contrast, concentrated chiefly in the North, their more radical and conspiratorial complexion reflecting both necessity — given the repressive policies of the French and the mandarins through whom they ruled — and foreign intellectual influences, especially those emanating from China, and from the universities in Hanoi and Hue. All the revolutionary parties were active among Vietnamese living abroad. The Vietnamese Restoration League was chiefly based in Japan (and eventually became the Japanese backed vehicle for Vietnamese entry into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere). The remainder were principally Chinese based, and strongly influenced by Sun Yat Sen's philosophy, Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomintang, and Mao Tse Tung's Chinese Communist Party. Of the group, only the Indochinese Communist Party and the Vietnamese Nationalist Party achieved real political power, but not even these were successful in dislodging French control; a brief recounting of their failures, however, reveals much concerning the political antecedents of modern Vietnam.
- (2) The Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNQDD)
The Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD) was formed in 1927 chiefly out of dissatisfaction among young Vietnamese with movements, such as the ineffectual Revolutionary Association and the early communist organizations, which were dominated by men of mandarinal of alien intellectual backgrounds. The VNQDD prided itself on identification with the Vietnamese peasantry, and modeled itself after the Kuomintang; cellular and covert, advocating Sun Yat Sen's program of "Democracy, Nationalism, and Socialism." As the diagram (Figure 1)4 indicates, the history of the Nationalist Party is one of fragmentation — both from factional disputes and from French counter-action — and merger with other movements. In a fashion appealing to a people who value historic lineage, the Nationalist Party traced its origins to one of the few modern Vietnamese national heroes, Phan Boi Chau; to a Viet movement in Yunnan under Phan Boi Chau's disciple, Le Phu Hiep; and to a Kuomintang-oriented Vietnamese publishing house called the Annamese Library. The Nationalists initially were a Tonkin party, but became allied with the Vietnam Revolutionary Party of Annam (and, in a minor fashion, the same party in Cochinchina). The relationship never amounted to much more than liaison, and the Nationalists remained Tonkin-centered. There, however, they acquired a significant following, and succeeded in forming a number of cells among Vietnamese serving in the French armed forces. In 1930 the Nationalist Party leader, Nguyen Thai Hoc, ordered a mass uprising against the French. On February 10, 1930, the insurrection began with a mutiny of troops at
