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From: Diane Fox (dnfox) <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
Date: Mar 3, 2006 11:11 AM
Subject: [Vsg] query--Vietnamese in France in WWI--secondary sources?
Hi--
Another student question: any suggestions for secondary sources (or
even French language newspaper sources--from Vietnam???) on the
Vietnamese in France during WWI--especially those brought to France to
work in the factories??
cam on truoc!
Diane
From: Nhung Tuyet Tran <nhungtuyet.tran@utoronto.ca>
Date: Mar 3, 2006 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] query--Vietnamese in France in WWI--secondary sources?
Hi Diane and All:
Kim Loan Hill is currently working on a monograph on the topic. The monograph
is based on her Ph.D. Dissertation, "A Westward Journey, and Enlightened Path:
Vietnamese lính thợ, 1915–1930," at the University of Oregon. An
extract, "Strangers in a Foreign Land: Vietnamese Soldiers and Workers in
France during World War I," will be published in an edited volume forthcoming
from U. Wisconsin Press this summer.
She is also on the list and can speak more knowlegeably about her work.
Nhung
From: Paul Sager <paul.sager@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 3, 2006 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] query--Vietnamese in France in WWI--secondary sources?
Kim Loan Thi Vu Hill. A Westward Journey, An Enlightened Path: Vietnamese Linh Tho, 1915-1930. University of Oregon: Doctoral thesis, 2001.
Tyler Stovall. "The Color Line Behind the Lines: Racial Violence in France during the Great War." American Historical Review. June 1998.
For the period before WWI, see the primary source:
Phan Van Truong. Unie Histoire de Conspirateurs Annamites à Paris. Paris: L'insomniaque, 2003 [1925].
From: Erica Peters <e-peters-9@alumni.uchicago.edu>
Date: Mar 4, 2006 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] query--Vietnamese in France in WWI--secondary sources?
Hi all,
Phan Van Truong's Une Histoire de Conspirateurs Annamites à Paris also deals with his experiences during the war, standing up for fellow Vietnamese who had less facility with the French language.
Even though this is unlikely to help an undergraduate working with a short time-frame, it seems worth mentioning Mireille Favre's excellent thesis. When I read it in 1997, it was available at the Archives Nationales de France, but needed approval from the author before you could look at it. Call # AB XXVIII 328:
Mireille Favre (nom d’epouse: Le Van Ho): Travailleurs et tirailleurs indochinois en France pendant la premiere guerre mondiale: un milieu porteur de modernité (Ecole Nationale de Chartes 1986).
William T. Dean's 1998 thesis may be more accessible and may have some helpful background information: The Colonial Armies of the French Third Republic: Overseas Formation and Continental Deployment, 1871-1920 (Univ. of Chicago, 1998)
United States Air Force Air War College
One issue with the factory workers was the concern by French workers that the Vietnamese were really brought there to break up French strikes, whether as scabs or by actually firing on the strikers as true French soldiers would refuse to do. For instance:
"des agents provocateurs ... circulaient dans les groupes, excitaient les soldats à l'insubordination, ... les engageaient à refuser l'obéissance, à ne pas monter au front, à retourner à Paris où les annamites avaient fait feu sur des femmes en grève et en avaient tué ou blessé un grand nombre. Pour terminer la grève, disaient-ils, ce n'était pas à Berlin, où l'on n'arriverait jamais, mais sur Paris qu'il fallait marcher; ce n'était pas sur les boches qu'il fallait tirer, mais sur les généraux et sur tous les officiers."
ARTFL cite: Barres M. [1918], Mes Cahiers T. 11 1914-1918 (Paris, Plon, 1929-1957.) [Cah11].
Also a little self-promotion: I have a few pages on Vietnamese workers/soldiers' feelings about their military rations while in France in my dissertation: “Negotiating Power Through Everyday Practices in French Vietnam, 1880-1924” (Univ. of Chicago, 2000), pp. 195-200. I'd be happy to send those few pages along to your student if he or she is interested.
Erica
Erica J. Peters
Independent Scholar
From: Kimloan Hill <k1hill@ucsd.edu>
Date: Mar 5, 2006 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] query--Vietnamese in France in WWI--secondary sources?
Dear Diane, Nhung, Paul, Erica, and all:
Sorry I did not answer sooner. I do not check
email everyday. This is an issue that Tobias
Rettig already replied a while ago on this page.
Here, I should add also the dissertation of Henri
Eckert,(1998) "Les Militaires Indochinois Au
Service de La France (1859-1939) which, as the
title implies, deals exclusively with the history
of the Indochinese Army. He devotes one segment
of his dissertation to the experiences of
Indochinese soldiers during World War I.
About Mme Le Van Ho's thesis, I have never read
it. During my research in 1994, I tried to locate
it through the National Center for doctoral
dissertations in Nanterre and did not find it
listed. According to Mireille Ho late last year,
I think you can now can read it at Bibliothèque
de documentation internationale contemporaine,
Archives Nationales section outre-mer at Aix-en
Provence, Bibliothèque de l'Université Paris7.
The Archives Nationales has a microfilm of it.
Tyler Stovall also has another article dealt with
colonial labor, but it was after World War I,
"National Identity and Shifting Imperial frontiers...." or something like that.
Many historians in French labor history also
mention Indochinese workers in their work about
World War I period, but did not deal with the Vietnamese exclusively.
My dissertation deals with the question if they
were conscripted labor or volunteered and some
other issues related to their experiences in
France and how these experiences affect their
lives when they returned to Indochina. It is
more a social and economic history than a political history.
Best,
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