Neil Jamieson's Use Of Traditional Vietnamese Political Groups From The 1940s To The 1960s

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Vietnam’s political landscape leading up to, during, and after the First Indochina War was exceptionally complex, with numerous foreign and domestic political forces vying for control. Particularly interesting are the triumphs and successes of the many Vietnamese political groups, who were very diverse in their goals and ideologies, but shared an overlapping cultural background. To varying degrees, groups invoked the values of “traditional Vietnamese society,” which Neil Jamieson defines as society in Vietnam’s Red River Delta and central plains during the nineteenth century. How did the use of traditional Vietnamese values function as a political tool for Vietnamese political groups from the 1940s to the 1960s? Essentially, these values were …show more content…

Over the next couple years, it mounted a “cultural front” and adopted patriotic sentiments, attracting students, artists, and academics to its anticolonial Communist cause. Despite their conflicts with Vietnamese nationalists, Vietminh ideology claimed to embrace traditional Vietnamese society’s familial and village-based hierarchy that was framed as part of the “natural order.” The Vietminh rhetorically embraced these values, establishing a code of ethics that Jamieson summarizes as “behave toward the party as if it were your family.” Additionally, the Vietminh’s Communist ideology has elements of both the Yin and Yang forces that Jamieson describes and argues traditional Vietnamese culture tried to balance. On the one hand, the Vietminh was ideologically dedicated to egalitarianism, a key element of Yin, while on the other, it emphasized strict ideological orthodoxy and male dominance, characteristics of Yang. In striking this balance, Vietminh ideology aligned in important ways with traditional Vietnamese values, though its modernizing goals were no doubt a divergence from traditional …show more content…

Diem’s failure to establish a united political community contributed to his downfall. Without Diem, various “supervillages” vied for political control of the South while appealing to traditional values. Loose coalitions made up of members of the groups who had left the North several years earlier resisted Diem’s regime and expressed their want to change the political environment in the Republic. They began to take over many institutional Yang positions in Saigon, though they were not strongly united under one “supervillage” banner. Outside of Saigon, a group of insurgents looking to usurp southern control united themselves not just as a “supervillage,” but as an even more closely knit “superfamily,” appealing to the most interdependent traditional social unit. Meanwhile, the Northern Communist “supervillage” moved south in an attempt to reclaim control over all of Vietnam. These three factions all outlasted the Bao Dai and Diem regimes, and all invoked the traditional system of interconnected, mutually obligated society. Appeals to traditional values were likely successful because these traditional values were still held across much of Vietnamese society during this

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