Phú Riềng Đỏ or the Red Phú Riềng was a communist-instigated strike that took place in Michelin's Thuân-Loï rubber plantation near Phú Riềng in the Biên Hòa Province of Cochinchina on 4 February 1930. Most of the plantation labourers were peasants from Tonkin and Annam driven by poverty to seek livelihood in southern Vietnam. Working and living conditions on the plantations, however, were harsh and this situation was capitalised by the communists to launch the strike. Although the strike lasted only about a week, the unfolding of events at Phú Riềng Đỏ was significant as it served as a harbinger for important tactical and strategic considerations for other communist-led uprisings that followed later in the year. Hence, while the communists may not seem to have achieved much from Phú Riềng Đỏ, it actually offered them some valuable first lessons in their anti-colonial struggle.
Background
Rubber production began in Cochinchina after 1907 when the French wanted a share of the profits that rubber brought to British Malaya. The colonial government encouraged investment from metropolitan France by granting large tracts of land to cultivate rubber on an industrial scale. Soon, both labour and infrastructure were harnessed in earnest as the virgin rainforests in eastern Cochinchina, the highly fertile 'red lands', were cleared for rubber plantations.
In fact by 1921, about 29,000 hectares of Cochinchinese land had turned into rubber plantations, and Biên Hòa, where Phu Rieng Do took place, was one of the most heavily cultivated provinces. French colonial earnings from rubber export were given a further boost with the implementation of the Stevenson Plan in 1922, which mandated the reduction of rubber production from the British colonies of Malaya and Ceylon "precisely at the time when the astronomical growth of automobile production created upward pressure on demand." Consequently, in the whole of Indochina, 90,225 hectares of land had already been cleared for rubber plantations by 1929.
Rubber cultivation was practised by both French and native Vietnamese planters. However, each had a very different experience of “heveaculture”, with the French plantations being much larger and having more access to resources from the colonial government and to cultivation techniques. Even so, the working conditions on these large French plantations were not conducive. On the other hand, smaller Vietnamese plantations invested little to improve their production processes because to them, scientific knowledge and advanced technology was the conduit through which new ideas could be harnessed to modernise Vietnam. In other words, while the French were profit-driven, the Vietnamese put nationalism before production, and the net effect was overall hardship for rubber plantation workers.
Rubber was very profitable to both colonial government and large French metropolitan companies given that the latter's combined output was nearly equivalent to the total latex output in Indochina. As a result, the government was very involved in economic activity "[f]rom the control of goods prices and financial or fiscal support... to the policing of worker dissent" to safeguard this very profitable export industry. Hence, while rubber planters and colonial administrators did not always agree on matters relating to the rubber industry, these large European plantations were the main sources of revenue in inter-war Vietnam, and were powerful symbols of the intricate symbiotic relationship between the colonial government and French commercial interests. By the time Phu Rieng Do broke up in 1930, the largest rubber plantations had formed the Section autonome de l'Union des planteurs de Caoutchouc de l'Indochine (Indochina Rubber Planters' Union) to further their interests.
Given their close relationship, one area of cooperation between government and planter was in labour procurement. With the increase in rubber demand after the First World War, large European plantations began to expand from their original sites of an arc 300 km long and about 40 km wide southeast to northwest of Saigon, to areas further north. This expansion depleted local labour supplies and resulted in a severe labour shortage by mid-1920s. In response, the director of labour recruitment, Herve Bazin, provided thousands of coolies to these large rubber plantations from "the overcrowded villages of the Red River Delta in Tonkin and the coastal lowlands of Annam", swelling the ranks of these poor migrant workers from 3,242 in 1922 to 41,750 in 1928.
Diffusion of communist influence from north to south
What seemed like a simple solution of channelling excess labour to areas of need actually sowed the seeds for Phu Rieng Do as the growth of communism started in northern Vietnam and spread to the south through the many migrant workers employed by rubber plantations in Cochinchina during the "rubber boom" from 1923 to 1928. One such northern worker was Trần Tử Bình, and he was to play a significant role in the strike.
Hence, although the colonial authorities tried to stamp out the danger of communist infiltration in 1929 – 1930 by getting the Sûreté to screen and "to weed out workers deemed politically undesirable and potential trouble-makers", this attempt ultimately failed given the sheer numbers of labourers who were recruited. Moreover, the employment terms – where food, shelter and wage were given in exchange for three years of service – tied these northern labourers to a form indentured labour with its many unstated obligations. In other words, communist or communist-inspired elements who slipped through the screening found ready listeners among these impoverished workers who usually felt compelled to extend their unfavourable contract because the accumulation of debts necessitated their repeated borrowing from moneylenders.
Moreover, it did not help that many of these recruited northerners were driven to destitution in the first place by a money-based capitalist economy. This was an effect of colonialism where cash economy had penetrated the rural economy. Consequently, both land and individual taxes had "to be paid in... solid silver piasters, which peasants often had to acquire solely for this purpose at marked-up rates of exchange from money lenders or landlords." Hence, these peasants had to resort to borrowing at inflated rates which resulted in many of them being trapped in unending indebtedness.
The new agrarian capitalism also divided society into the haves and the have-nots of land ownership, with the latter having to "sell their labour in order to subsist." For those peasants who thought they could continue to live off subsistence farming, the aforementioned tax system was actually pulling them deeper into the cash economy. As a result, many smallholders were expropriated while tenants, sharecroppers and wage-labourers were trapped in debts. Given the impoverished socio-economic condition of these peasants, the communists were winning these northerners over to their cause when they went to work in rubber plantations such as the one at Phu Rieng.
Communist activities before the strike
In the decade prior to the outbreak of Phu Rieng Do, "a small politically conscious laboring [sic] class" had emerged in the 22,000 Vietnamese workers of which 36.8% were found in the modern agricultural sector. This, however, "made up no more than 2 per cent of the population." In other words, the pool of potential followers of the communist movement was small. Moreover, the communists were also fragmented in their various parties. In early 1930, "party leaders therefore opposed the use of revolutionary violence until the Communist movement could be unified and more fully developed." As such, the Viet Nam Cong San Dang (VNCSD) or the Communist Party of Vietnam began to strengthen itself through "the establishment of cells in factories, railroad works, mines, plantations, schools and military units." Popular-based organisations such as self-defence and mutual aid groups were also targeted in order to bring more people into their orbit of influence.
Unsurprisingly then, at Michelin's plantation in Phú Riềng, "the party branch position was to... organize mutual aid associations, sports teams, and arts groups to bring the masses together and to win them over." In fact, the Lao Dong Cong San or Communist Workers was already preparing for Phu Rieng Do as early as October 1929. To ensure success of the strike, members of this communist cell began to establish "hidden food caches, and making a pact with some of the local tribespeople whereby the latter promised not to serve as strikebreakers for the French." In reality, however, many of these coolies "had little or no intention of remaining in the position of full-time proletarians" but were instead more eager to return to their homes in northern Vietnam after fulfilling their contracts or having earned enough to pay the obligatory colonial taxes and other debts. This did not hinder the communists from capitalising on the grim day-to-day experience of these coolies whose squalid living quarters "were reportedly littered with communist pamphlets."
The Phu Rieng Do strike
The strike at the sprawling 5,500 hectares Michelin rubber plantation in Phú Riềng took place on 4 February 1930, the sixth day of Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year. It was noted that an air of "millenarian excitement [had] gripped Phu Rieng workers" where emotions ran high at this time of "spiritual renewal". Consequently, the strike began when 300 workers refused to work "under the pretext of attending the burial of a co-worker." The communists had capitalised on the man's death to stir up anti-French emotions by attributing it to oppressive plantation management. However, by the time the local Delegue Administratif went to investigate the incident on 5 February, the workers had resumed their duties. The peace did not last when a foreman was arrested on the same day for alleged theft from the workers.
This foreman was a certain "Comrade Lu" who was said to be sympathetic to the workers. When he discovered a spy sent by the plantation management to gather intelligence for the work cessation the day before, he gave chase but was arrested by French foremen who accused him of theft instead. When the workers got news of this, 1,300 of them gathered "in a village on the plantation and would not disperse on orders from the Delegue and his twenty police escorts." Instead, they demanded the release of Lu. The workers also repeated their demands made earlier on 30 January, the first day of Tết, for the dismissal of two greatly despised assistant managers and to have eight-hour work day amongst others. This implies that Soumagnac, the plantation manager, had underestimated the situation when the workers first articulated their demands on 30 January.
These earlier demands were made in a veiled fashion when Trần Tử Bình, together with two other communists, "comrade Hong" and "comrade Ta", reciprocated Soumagnac's customary Tết greeting with their own, cleverly weaving in other requests of "not to steal or dock our pay, not to beat us... not to collect head taxes from us any more". In response, Soumagnac "hemmed and hawed and promised he would consider the demands." Things came to a head when "his office was surrounded by angry workers three days later" to demand Lu's release and only then "did he telephone the nearest military post for reinforcements." However, the workers were able to "disarm seven soldiers and send an entire platoon into retreat."
Discrepancies in the dates of events
At this juncture, it may be of interest to highlight discrepancies in the dates of events in the narrative by Tran Bu Binh and David Marr with that by Cedric Allen Sampson. From Trần's account, the funeral for a fellow worker seemed to have taken place on 31 January, the second day of Tết, and the arrest of Lu on 1 February, the third day of Tết. This culminated in the surrounding of Soumagnac's office on that same day till 2 February, the fourth day of Tết. This agrees with Marr's reading of the event that Soumagnac only made a telephone call to the military post three days after 30 January, on 2 February.
On the other hand, Sampson wrote that the strike began on 4 February, the sixth day of Tết, with the workers stopping work on the pretext of a fellow worker's burial. To Sampson, the arrest of foreman Lu took place on 5 February or the seventh day of Tết. Regardless of the actual dates, however, both narratives agree that the funeral and the arrest of Lu were trigger events for the strike, which culminated in the workers surrounding Soumagnac's office, forcing him to telephone for military aid.