"History
Revisited: World War I and the Rise of Communism in Southeast Asia"
Kimloan Hill, Viet Heritage Program, Department of Linguistics, UCSD
In
the 1920s, socialism, communism, and nationalism emerged as new political
movements challenging European colonialism in Southeast Asia. The Communist
movement, in particular, appeared to gain strength and was the force behind
popular unrest in Southeast Asia in the 1920s. Many historians have attributed
this to dissatisfaction with European rule. However, in my view those
historians do not adequately explain why this phenomenon occurred when
it did and not earlier. In this paper I argue that the timing was a consequence
of World War I. World War I had many repercussions in Southeast Asia:
it opened the boundaries between Europe and its colonies, paved the way
for a flow of Southeast Asian immigrants to Europe via France, intensified
social and political conflicts in the European colonies, and gave rise
to the communist movement in Southeast Asia. Indonesia and Viet Nam, for
example, produced two nationalist leaders in that period, namely Tan Malaka
and Ho Chi Minh. Both of them, however, were also leading figures in the
Comintern and founders of the communist parties in their respective countries.
This talk, therefore, will discuss the impact of World War I on Southeast
Asia, how it enabled communism to emerge as a political challenger to
colonialism in the postwar era, and why it was able to take deep roots
in Viet Nam and not elsewhere in Southeast Asia. In that context, it also
discusses why only Ho Chi Minh was able to successfully transplant communism
to Southeast Asia and use communism as a means to overthrow colonial rule.
In short, this talk will argue that while European colonialism in Southeast
Asia would eventually have ended without World War I, the ending would
have happened differently at a later time. In Viet Nam, World War I made
a Russian-Vietnamese encounter possible. Without the war, such encounter
would probably have taken place at some later time and in some other place,
if at all. The French colonial enterprise in Indochina would certainly
have come to an end eventually, but probably not at the hands of the Comintern
and its revolutionaries.
Kimloan
Hill
has been a Lecturer of Vietnamese language, literature, and history at
the University of California, San Diego since 1999. She received her BA
in General History at the University of Missouri, St. Louis in 1993, her
MA and Ph. D in Southeast Asian History in 1995 and 2001, respectively.
She has given talks on the subject of French colonialism at various national
and international institutions and organizations, such as the University
of California in Los Angeles; the School of Oriental and African Studies
at the University of London; and the National University of Singapore.
Her first article, "Strangers in a Foreign Land: Vietnamese Soldiers
and Workers in France During the Great War," is due to come out this
year in a book edited by Anthony Reid and Nhung Tuyet Tran, entitled Vietnam:
Borderless Histories (University of Wisconsin Press). Currently, she is
revising the manuscript for her book, A Westward Journey, An Enlightened
Path: Vietnamese Linh Tho, 1915-1930, which has been accepted for publication
by Indes Savantes in Paris. In addition to her work on history, she has
also served as Field Director for the Vietnamese Advanced Summer Institute
in Ha Noi (2003, 2004) and has attended conferences and workshops on teaching,
learning, and testing the Vietnamese language.
For current Yale SEAS Seminars and Events schedule, see: http://www.yale.edu/seas/Seminars.htm