Rebellion
rebellion in French Indochina, 1940
The Cochinchina uprising (Vietnamese: Nam Kỳ khởi nghĩa) was an armed peasant uprising against the French colonialists by the Vietnamese in the south (at that time known as Cochinchina) in 1940, led by the Indochinese Communist Party.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Cochinchina Uprising”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Cochinchina uprising (Vietnamese: Nam Kỳ khởi nghĩa) was an armed peasant uprising against the French colonialists by the Vietnamese in the south (at that time known as Cochinchina) in 1940, led by the Indochinese Communist Party.
In June 1940, France was invaded by the Germany troops. Given this opportunity, in September, the Japanese invaded the colonised-by-France Indochina peninsula. From here, Vietnam was controlled by two foreign powers, the French and the Japanese. The Vietnamese appear to have expected Japanese support for the uprising, given the fact that the Japanese had been aiding most other Southeast Asian nations with the hope that they would support the plan for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Instead, the Vietnamese denounced the Japanese as traitors for not helping them achieve independence from French colonial rule. With the anti-French spirit and the Bac Son Uprising, many people from South Vietnamese provinces revolted against the French and Japanese. In Southern Indochina, the French had to deal with claims from Thailand which, backed by the Japanese, demanded territories situated to the Northwest of Cambodia's Tonle Sap and on the right bank of the Mekong River in Laos. Units of Vietnamese troops were sent to the front to fight the Thais. Some of these units stationed in Saigon decided to rebel against being sent to the front. This plan was part of the program of the Party Committee for Cochinchina which from June 1940 on had actively prepared for an uprising. A plan of action was worked out with the aim of combining the actions of military units in revolt with those of worker and peasant organizations throughout Cochinchina. As it so happened, the French did not go to war with Thailand, and thus they could devote their whole strength against the insurgents and easily decimated the South Vietnamese ICP. With this, it can be said that the insurgents who carried out the uprising had initially believed that Thailand would involve themselves in the conflict, causing a distraction to the French, which would help them, unfortunately for them, this would not happen.
In March 1940, the Standing Committee of the Party, headed by Võ Văn Tần, drafted the outline to prepare for an anti-French movement, and then prepared for armed uprising. Many demonstrations occurred during that time.
Self-defense forces and guerrillas which directly led by Võ Văn Tần, Phan Đăng Lưu were formed in big factories in Saigon such as Ba Son, FACI, pier, Cho Quan lamp. In rural areas, most communes had a squadron or even a guerrilla platoon.
Popular discontent was on the rise in the South and provided, at least momentarily, an opportunity for the ICP to release its frustration at the events since the previous September. At the root of the unrest in the South was economics. High taxes, a fall in the price of rice, and an increase in unemployment all served to cut the standard of living for the average Vietnamese. Throughout the spring and summer of 1940, peasant riots against French conscription for military service along the Cambodian-Thai border, where the threat of war was high. Peasant protests against conscription took place in several towns and villages throughout the delta.
As the wave of discontent in the South rose, the Party's Regional Committee for Cochinchina attempted to ride the crest, concentrating its propaganda on peasants and newly drafted Vietnamese troops. Since the restoration of the Party apparatus in Cochinchina in the early 1930s, the regional Party organization under the direction of Stalin School graduate Tran Van Giau had possessed a unique degree of autonomy and under Giau's autocratic leadership was somewhat inclined toward making decisions independent of the national party leadership. Now, with almost all members of the ICP central Committee in the South in jail, regional leaders took matters in their own hands and began to plan for a general uprising in response to the decisions reached at the Sixth Plenum the previous November. After the French surrender to Nazi Germany in June, they hastily convened an expanded Party conference in My Tho, deep in the heart of the Mekong delta and agreed to initiate preparations for the insurrection. By autumn, half the indigenous troops in Cochinchina were allegedly sympathetic to the Communists, with ICP sources estimating that up to 30 percent of the entire population of the colony was on its side.
All blacksmiths produced weapons day by day in order to provide ammunition to army. The anti-war movement, combating the soldiers with the slogan "no soldier, no penny for imperial war" took place the people and soldiers community. Due to good military service, most of the 15,000 Vietnamese soldiers in the French army stationed in Saigon were willing to co-ordinate the uprising.
Party leaders in Cochinchina, however, were understandably hoping to seek support for the uprising from revolutionary elements elsewhere in the country, and in October they sent Phan Đăng Lưu, representative of the Central Committee of the Indochinese Communist Party, to consult with members of the ICP Regional Committee for Tonkin. North Vietnamese delegates had not been able to attend the Sixth Plenum in November 1939 and were thus not well informed about the Central Committee's plans to move toward a general insurrection against French colonial rule.
Several members of the regional committee, including Truong Cinh, Hoang Van Thu, and Hoang Quoc Viet met with Phan Dang Luu in early November in a suburb of Hanoi. The meeting took place in the immediate aftermath of the abortive revolt in Bac Son, and its decisions reflected an understandable ambivalence about the possibilities of armed uprising. The session reaffirmed the decision of the Sixth Plenum to begin preparations for a future armed uprising against French power, and it affirmed the contention that, if conditions were favorable, a local uprising could be launched in one area of the country even if Vietnamese society as a whole was not in a revolutionary situation. But it condemned what it considered the mistakes committed at Bac Son. The local leadership at Bac Son, it claimed, did not know how to establish revolutionary power, did not know how to conduct propaganda activities and develop revolutionary strength, and, when the battle was over, did not know how to retreat. The decision to abandon the cities for the countryside was termed an error that weakened the Party's urban base. Then, it said, the Party had lost an opportunity to launch a general uprising after French surrendered in June 1940. Finally, it criticized the new united front as vaguely defined and not sufficiently focused on the worker-peasant alliance. Looking to the future, the plenum concluded that Vietnam was not yet in a directly revolutionary situation, but that the revolution could break out in the form of local uprising where conditions were appropriate, leading the way toward a general uprising that would result in a seizure of power in the country as a whole. In perpetration for that moment, the Committee members called for the conservation of the remnants of the Bac Son forces, which were to be reorganized as guerrilla units, and for a revolutionary base in the Viet Bac to wait for the appropriate moment to launch an uprising.
Given the judgments above, it is not surprising that the meeting suspected that conditions for an armed uprising were lacking in the South. Local forces were too small, and units in the Center and the North were in no position to give adequate support. So Phan Dang Luu was informed that an uprising in Cochinchina should be postponed until the Central Committee could send a representative to check on the national situation and provide proper leadership. If the uprising should fail in spite of such preparations, the rebels must be prepared to make an orderly retreat and transform the defeated forces into guerrilla units.
The meeting also took steps to reconstitute the ICP Central Committee, which had become nearly defunct as the result of the recent arrest of most of its members in the South. Acting on the authority of the one remaining member, Phan Dang Luu, those in attendance named themselves a new provisional central committee with Truong Cinh serving temporarily as general secretary until new elections could be held. This November meeting of the Regional Committee of Tonkin is thus known in Party histories as the Seventh Plenum of the ICP.
Immediately after the meeting, Phan Dang Luu returned to Cochinchina to give his colleagues the bad news that their comrades in Tonkin did not favor a general uprising. But on the evening of 22 November he was arrested by French police at the railway station in Saigon. Advised in advance of the revolt, the French declared martial law and disarmed all indigenous troops in the area.
In the Mekong delta, however, the Regional Committee was growing increasingly restive. With 15,000 in the uprising organization and the rebellious troops increasingly impatient for action, the Regional Committee now decided that it could wait no longer for the return of Phan Dang Luu and decided to schedule the outbreak for the night of 22–23 November. the uprising was concentrated on several district and provincial capitals throughout the Mekong delta. French military posts were to be attacked, communications links cut, and revolutionary power established at the village level. Attacks took place as scheduled in such delta towns as Soc Trang, Bac Lieu, Tan An, Vinh Long and Can Tho, as well as in rural areas along the edge of the Plain of Reeds. In some areas, the masses seized power, formed revolutionary tribunals to punish class enemies, and raised flags in the name of the National United Front. These were plans for an attack on Saigon as well, but the French prevented disturbances by confiscating weapons and blocking entrances to the city.
The course of the insurrection can be divided into three periods. The first period was from 22 to 30 November which was the most intense period of the insurgency. The second was from 30 to 13 December when the insurrection spread to the region of the inter-provincial committee of Long Xuyen and to Rach Gia and Bac Lieu. The final period from 12 to 31 December is centered on the Poulo-Obi incident in Bac Lieu
The revolutionary governments were existed in very short time, the longest one in My Tho was about 49 days. French colonialists vehemently oppressed, seeking to destroy the revolutionary government. It was during this uprising that the flag of North Vietnam was raised at Cao Lanh in the western delta. The revolt began in the Plaine des Joncs in the western delta and none of the northern provinces were affected. The slogans of the uprising included "Land to the Tillers, Freedom for the workers and independence for Vietnam". One of the leaders of the uprising was a man who later became the father of the trade union movement in Vietnam, Tran Quoc Buu. Buu was the founder of the CVT.
The most intense fighting occurred simultaneously on 22 and 23 November 1940 in Gia Dinh, Cholon, My Tho and Can Tho, which were centres of inter-provincial committees of the ICP. The attacks started at 10 pm on 22 November. The success of the insurrection in Gia Dinh My Tho and Can Tho on 22 and 23 November persuaded ICP insurgents in other provinces to fight. As a result, from 23 November, the insurrection spread to many provinces, even though by that time the government had started to retaliate by using all its force to suppress the rebellion. These included aerial bombardment and the leveling of many villages. However, the government was not able to stop the uprising in the provinces. Village notables were the main targets of the attacks because they were representatives of the colonial administration of the village level. Even though their administrative power was very limited, they were still the liaison between the colonial administration and the peasants.
Text from the Wikipedia article “1940 Cochinchina uprising”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.