Ho Chi Minh at Versailles
Hello group,
My friend is doing a research on Ho Chi Minh's efforts to represent
Vietnam at the Versailles conference. She asked me to give her some
references on this topic.
I wonder whether you can provide me with some information on books and
articles relating to this topic. Books on Ho Chi Minh's life are also
welcomed.
Thanks you very much.
Best wishes,
Thuy-Linh Nguyen
Hello,
you can read Daniel Hemery's book : Ho chi Minh, de l'Indochine au
Vietnam, Gallimard
Best regards
M. Verney Sébastien
there is a skeptical tradition in Vietnamese scholarship on Ho which
suggests that the whole incident, if it happened, was the work of a
group calling itself Nguyen Ai Quoc, later appropriated in the
historical record by the man we know as Ho, as fictive as the prison poems.
there is a huge compendium of Ho scholarship from this point of view.
don't have the cite here and now. walk into any overseas Vietnamese
bookstore to find it.
Dan
Pierre Brocheux's Ho Chi Minh. Du revolutionnaire a l'icone (Payot, 2003)
was awarded a publisher's price in 2004. It contains an until now unknown
photograph with Ho and Leon Trotsky at the 3rd Comintern Congress in 1921
(while his official biography pretends that he hadn't visited Moscova before
1923). The photographer is unknown. Brocheux did a thorough research and his
book is a welcome addendum to Bill Duiker's biography.
John Kleinen
See also Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh: The missing years, 1919-1941.
Ed Miller
I in fact went to the archives in Aix after reading the emigre accounts which attempt to diminish Ho's role at the Paris Peace Conference. But there was no evidence in the archives, which is really all that any of us have as first-hand evidence, that HCM was not an equal partner in the Group of Patriots originally organized by Phan Chu Trinh and Phan Van Truong. (Ho himself admits that he relied on Phan Van Truong to write the French version of the Demands of the Vietnamese People, which was delivered to delegates to the Conference and circulated in Paris by Vietnamese activists.) I do recommend that anyone interested consult the references in my book.
On the picture of Ho with Trotsky, clearly taken in Moscow at a Comintern gathering, there is no way of knowing whether it was taken in 1924 or earlier. Trotsky did make a speech at the 1924 Fifth Congress of the Comintern. I have found that pictures taken of Ho in 1924 have also been mis-labelled as dating to 1935. But it now seems to be widely accepted that Ho was not a delegate to the Seventh Congress in that year. (Check the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi.)
Sophie Quinn-Judge
Dear group,
Maybe this will be helpful:
When Ho went to Versailles in 1946 with the government delegation, two
cameramen went around France with them and made a film. The two
cameramen were the painter Mai Trung Thu and then-amateur photographer
Pham Van Nhan, who later went on to make several feature films in the
1950s. Prints of this film (President Ho Chi Minh in France) can be
found in the Vietnam Film Institute archives in Hanoi, as well as at
the VTV studios. It includes scenes from numerous functions during the
trip, which began in Biarritz. The most current version is a composite
of three short films: Ho's visit to France, the Fontainebleau
conference with various Paris functions, and rallies with overseas
Vietnamese where Ho spoke. A musical soundtrack with patriotic songs
and then-current press images were added later.
Dean