NOT COLLABORATORS BUT REBELS: THE EDUCATION OF VIETNAMESE STUDENTS IN FRANCE, 1919--1939 (COMMUNISM)

Several thousand Vietnamese students came to France to study after World War I, not because of French design, but on their own initiative. France viewed the student migration with profound ambivalence; on one hand the French conceived of themselves as having a "civilizing mission" towards her colonial subjects; on the other hand they feared that exposure of the Vietnamese and other colonial subjects to French ideas would make them more difficult to rule. Consequently France neither shaped the student migration, nor prevented it.; The French Communist Party, instructed and aided by Moscow, did a more energetic job of providing the Vietnamese with political education than any other French institution; consequently many talented young Vietnamese returned to their homeland committed to Marxist-Leninism, having a significant effect on the ideological texture of the Vietnamese independence movement.; The thesis focuses on the Vietnamese experience in France, particularly during the crucial 1920-1930 decade. It also compares the Vietnamese experience with that of students who came to France from elsewhere in the French empire, speculating about why Communism was less successful with them.