![]() ![]() Taking the form of a diary, it is possible to track each of the battalions from their date of departure, arrival, deployment, service, and date of disbandment. In particular I have examined little known Journal de Marche et Opérations documents, in turn sourced to the French Service Historique de la Défense (SHD), Départment de l'armée de Terre, to offer details on the journey of the conscripts to France, as well as their labor and frontline deployment in France and, in one case, in the Balkans. In sequence, the article seeks first, to examine labor and military recruitment at the source, including the special roles of the royal courts second, to assess the role played by the Indochinese infantry battalions pressed into the trenches in the Somme as well as in the Balkans third, to expose the contradictions posed by France's patriotic appeal for "volunteers" versus the anti-colonial movement at home and in the colonies and, finally, to examine the juncture between the émigré worker-soldiers in France and the activities of the burgeoning socialist and communist underground in Paris and, back hone, as best exemplified by the activities and writings of Ho Chi Minh including the now-famous petition he presented on Jat the Versailles Peace Conference, the international gathering that literally bookended the war. I am also concerned to link Indochinese participation in the war with the "anti-war"and/or anti-colonial movement in Paris and in Indochina. ![]() A horrible war by any standards, it was not surprising that many thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians made the supreme sacrifice, or died for France (" mort pour la France)" as written on the epitaphs of those buried in France. While the transformative and emotional experiences of the soldier ( linh tho)-workers in France has been the subject of at least one dedicated study in English (Hill, 2006 2011a 2011b), I am equally concerned with the objective experience of the Indochinese en route to the battlefields, their wartime actions, and intellectual responses. ![]() While the lion's share of the "Indochinese" were Vietnamese, Cambodians also made up one battalion. Eventually Indochina would supply some 30 percent of France's colonial forces alongside even larger contingents of Senegalese, Madagascans, and Moroccans and Chinese, in all totaling about half a million. On another level, the article examines the juncture between the worker-soldiers in France and the burgeoning socialist and communist underground in Paris, and back home in Vietnam, as best exemplified by the activities and writings of Ho Chi Minh in the run-up to his now-famous oration at the Versailles Conference.įaced with early setbacks in World War I battles on the Western Front, alongside a massive attrition of manpower, France began to look to its empire and even China as sources of labor alongside soldiers. Besides explaining the battlefield experiences of the Indochinese battalions in the European war – a little studied area – this article seeks to expose the contradictions raised by France's patriotic appeal for "volunteers," versus the domestic anti-colonial movement. ![]() Alongside even larger numbers of contingents drawn from France's colonial empire, including a large pool of workers sourced from China, successive contingents of "Indochinese" - Vietnamese in addition to Cambodians - were also pressed into both military and labor battalions in World War I battlefields. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |