The Birth of Vietnamese Anticolonial Bases in Asia (1885–1925)
The Birth of Vietnamese Anticolonial Bases in Asia (1885–1925) If we could resurrect Dang Thuc Hua from his Ban Chik grave and ask him in an imaginary interview why he had dedicated so much of his life to working in Siam, he would undoubtedly begin by citing the heroic struggle he and his partisans had led to regain Vietnam’s lost independence. He would surely review the actions of such well-known patriotic figures as Phan Dinh Phung, Pham Hong Thai, and Phan Boi Chau. Yet if we were to press him for more details of his own revolutionary career, our conversation would quickly turn to an in-depth discussion of the Vietnamese populations living in northeastern Siam and, to a lesser degree, southern China. Hua would tell us a little of his brief travels to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and southern China. But it was Siam that he knew best: above all Bangkok, Phichit, Udon Thani, and Nakhon Phanom. This is where ancient patterns of immigration had concentrated Vietnamese communities in...