History of Vietnam during World War I
At the onset of World War I, Vietnam, nominally under the Nguyễn dynasty, was under French protectorate and part of French Indochina. While seeking to maximize the use of Indochina's natural resources and manpower to fight the war, France cracked down all Vietnamese patriotic movements.[1] Many Vietnamese fought later in the conflict.
World War I service[edit]
In Europe and the Middle East[edit]
The French entry into World War I saw the authorities in Vietnam press-gang thousands of "volunteers" for service in Europe, leading to uprisings in Tonkin and Cochinchina.[2]
Almost 100,000 Vietnamese were conscripts and went to Europe to fight and serve on the French battlefront, or work as laborers.[3] Several battalions fought and suffered loss of lives at the Somme and Picardy, while others were deployed at Verdun, the Chemin des Dames, and in Champagne.[4] Vietnamese troops also served in the Balkans[5] and the Middle East. Exposed to new political ideals and returning to a colonial occupation of their own country (by a ruler that many of them had fought and died for), resulted in some sour attitudes. Many of these troops sought out and joined the Vietnamese nationalist movement focused on overthrowing the French.[1]
Post-war[edit]
Following World War I, foreign investment in Vietnam mushroomed. As a result, coal mines in the North, rubber plantations in Central and South Vietnam, and the rapid increase of production for rice farmers in the south spawned a working class, as well as a landlord class, rice exporters in Saigon and a modern intelligentsia.
An important development in the early part of the 20th century was the increased use of quốc ngữ in the northern part of the country through a proliferation of new journals printed in that script. There had been quốc ngữ publications in Cochinchina since 1865, but in 1898 a decree of the colonial government prohibited publication without permission, in the protectorate areas, of periodicals in quốc ngữ or chữ nôm that were not published by a French citizen. In 1913 Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh succeeded in publishing Đông Dương Tạp Chí (Indochinese Review), a strongly antitraditional but pro-French journal. He also founded a publishing house that translated such Vietnamese classics as the early 19th century poem "The Tale of Kieu," as well as nôm classics into quốc ngữ. Nguyen Van Vinh's publications, while largely pro-Western, were the major impetus for the increasing popularity of quốc ngữ in Annam and Tonkin.
In the years immediately following World War I, the scholar- led Vietnamese independence movement in Cochinchina began a temporary decline as a result, in part, of tighter French control and increased activity by the French-educated Vietnamese elite. The decrease of both French investments in and imports to Vietnam during the war had opened opportunities to entrepreneurial Vietnamese, who began to be active in light industries such as rice milling, printing, and textile weaving. The sale of large tracts of land in the Mekong Delta by the colonial government to speculators at cheap prices resulted in the expansion of the Vietnamese landed aristocracy. These factors, combined, led to the rise of a wealthy Vietnamese elite in Cochinchina that was pro-French but was frustrated by its own lack of political power and status.