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2 - Sacrifices, sex, race: Vietnamese experiences in the First World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2014

By
Kimloan Hill
Edited by
Santanu Das
Kimloan Hill
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Santanu Das
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
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Summary

With the mobilisation of its able-bodied men during the First World War, France turned to neighbouring countries and the colonies, including Indochina, for manpower. Between 1915 and 1919, 48,922 Vietnamese soldiers and 48,254 Vietnamese workers were recruited to serve in France. Some recruits were sent to Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, but the great majority went to France. They were sent to battlefields, factories, hospitals, construction sites, commercial businesses, and agricultural regions to work as soldiers, military labourers, factory workers and farmers. The Vietnamese experience of the First World War has not attracted much attention, apart from occasional discussion in histories of Vietnam, where it has been the source of some debate. Nguyen Ai Quoc (or Ho Chi Minh as he was later known) wrote in 1925 that all the recruits were conscripted, leading a number of historians to claim that the recruiting campaign, while ostensibly voluntary, was in fact based on conscription. However, fresh archival evidence and greater socio-historical contextualisation suggest, as I argue, that most recruits in fact did volunteer to serve for a variety of reasons: their desire to escape from their world of economic hardship, to see France, or to achieve some freedom from traditional social and moral codes.

Type
Chapter
Information
Race, Empire and First World War Writing , pp. 53 - 69
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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