How Useful is the Concept of Colonial Legacy for the Study of Political Dynamics in the Developing World? The Vietnamese Question

Edward Said (1994) once observed, “the past is rarely over and done with but haunts the present.” Postcolonial studies emerged as an academic field in the second half of the 20th century, with the aim of conceptualising the past and present realities of ex-colonies. It has become commonplace to accept the notion that the colonial experience has deeply shaped the modern world. Colonial policies and practices are often observed to be a reason for the underdevelopment of countries, ethnic strife, authoritarian rule, corruption, weak state capacity, illiteracy and an absence of industrialisation. Despite this, colonialism is also argued to have not had an extreme impact on the conditions of its postcolonial states and cited as having furthered development in certain instances. Indeed, the question of colonial legacy is a central issue of dispute in the scholarly community. Following a brief examination of the concepts and issues of colonial legacy, this essay will investigate the Vietnamese postcolonial experience and question the political impacts on the nation. The assessment will be carried out through the examination of; The Colonial Prison Experience, Divide and Rule Tactics, Impacted International Relations and the Vietnamese Diaspora.

Concepts of Postcolonialism and the idea of ‘Colonial Legacy’

Upon the immediate aftermath of decolonisation, independence was often met with feelings of euphoria in the new state and among sympathisers in the international community. Klein (1992), in a presidential address to the African Studies Association, reflected on the “excitement of watching the destruction of an oppressive colonial order and being involved in the creation of a new one.” However, in the following years as any progress made under colonisation faded, states found themselves in both political and economic crises. Davidson (1973), a prominent scholar in the politics of Africa at the time suggested that decolonisation did not present itself as a clean slate. The ‘dish’ that leaders were handed following independence:

“was old and cracked and little fit for any further use. Worse than that, it was not an empty dish. For it carried the junk and jumble of a century of colonial muddle and ‘make do,’ and this the new . . . ministers had to accept along with the dish itself. What shone upon its supposedly golden surface was not the reflection of new ideas and ways of liberation, but the shadows of old ideas and ways of servitude”.

Eruption of violence, a weakness of democracy and the pervasiveness of corruption often prevailed. Nationalist rhetoric was employed in an “Orwellian fashion” to give support to ineffective leaders who did little to navigate from the exploitive and repressive form of governing of the colonisers. These nations faced being “crippled at their birth by the continuing institutions, arrangements, and culture of their colonizers” which were not easily remolded (Wiener, 2013). Furthermore, wars waged by European powers against the colonises were replaced with postcolonial civil wars throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In examining Africa, Crawford Young (1994) notes that “a genetic code for the new states of Africa,” in summing up the idea of colonial legacy, “was already imprinted on its embryo within the womb of the African colonial state.”

In postcolonial argument, the new state appeared in many respects to be ‘alien’ to its inhabitants and its very existence blocked natural development. Despite positive growth in areas such as medicine and technology under Western influence, Ashcroft (2001) argues, “that these colonized peoples, cultures and ultimately nations were prevented from becoming what they might have become: they were never allowed to develop into the societies they might have been.” The postcolonial state inherited a fourfold legacy from the coloniser: authoritarian state structures and a system readily prepared to employ laws to supress personal liberties, economic structures based off foreign exploitation of the nation’s resources, colonial promotion of a ‘divide and rule’ system encouraging religious and ethnic distrust and finally set relationships in the international system, politically and economically, which would preserve this colonial inheritance through ‘neocolonialism’. This final concept explores the argument that political independence is of little significance to postcolonial states when they remain economically bound to international capitalists and Western states. Colonialism reflected a lack of modernisation in crucial areas and a level of ‘backwardness’ was already built into the system and continued under the postcolonial successor (Rodney, 1972).

The ’Othering’ of Colonial Subjects

In discussing concepts of colonialism, the work of Edward Said on Orientalism (1978) remains important. Building off ideas from figures such as Fanon and Foucault, Said conveys the importance of colonialism’s psychological and cultural exploitation, particularly through representation of the colonised subjects and their internalisation of this. In a “neocolonialism of the mind”, the effects of this exploitation also outlived the decolonisation process (Wiener, 2013). Colonial officials focused attention on creating a definite divide and emphasising differences between rulers and subjects, and among subjects, in attempts to preserve the desired society and facilitate rule. Young (1994) defined “the essence of the colonial state tradition” to be “autocracy” and historian Michael Crowder (1987) believed that, “if the colonial state provided a model for its inheritors, it was that government rested not on consent but force.” Young (1994) concludes that efforts to move towards a more democratic and representative form of government in the final years of colonisation were ‘inauthentic’ and as evidenced by Rodney (1973), eighteen out of twenty-one newly independent African states failed to uphold their parliamentary institutions. These were instead succeeded by ‘presidential’ ones or single party regimes with institutions often becoming a mask for dictatorships. As scholar, Mbembe (2001) states, “the potentate that emerges as the ruler after independence simply assumes the role of the colonial Lord and the citizens remain slaves.”

Case Study: Vietnam

In Vietnam, the ambiguity of national identity generated through historical periods of Chinese occupation, was only intensified by the definite French takeover in the mid-1880s and solidified in 1887 with the proclamation of Indochinese Union. The first French colonial exhibition, intended to boost trade and increase support for the colonial empire, opened in Hanoi in 1887. At its centre, an exact replica of sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s ‘Statue of Liberty’ was placed, which had just been unveiled in New York Harbour five months previously as a gift from France to the US. Neglecting the irony between the ideals of liberty which the statue was created to represent and France’s imperial vision, “Hanoi’s Statue of Liberty… was intended to dramatize the political, economic, and cultural promises of French rule and tutelage to its new colonial subjects” (Bradley, 2003). Over 50 years later, the statue which had been permanently placed on Avenue Puginier, stood meters from a crowd of almost 400,000 people who gathered to hear Ho Chi Minh declare Vietnamese Independence from French colonial rule at Ba Dinh Square. In his speech, Ho Chi Minh emphasised the differences between the revolutionary ideas of liberty through quotations from the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and what he deemed to be years of French colonial oppression. However, colonisation of Vietnam did not stop with the defeat of the French. The postcolonial experience of the Vietnamese became complicated by the protracted experience of national unification struggles and the ultimate resistance war against America 1955-1975, subjecting the Vietnamese to American military and cultural imperialism.

The Current Political Situation

Since 1975, Vietnam has been known as the ‘Socialist Republic of Vietnam’. With the birth of the republic came a new constitution declaring the state to be a “proletarian dictatorship” and the Communist Party as the “only force leading the state and society” (Truong-Chinh, 1976). There has been major reforms and revisions since this, including the recognition of the private sector and the private land use. However, at present the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) is the country’s only legal political party, with all independent political parties and unions banned. The constitution designates a 450-member National Assembly as the state’s supreme organ, but considerable influence is exercised by the VCP’s Central Committee and Politburo. With constitutional reforms in 1992, the president is elected by and from the National Assembly, who in turn then elects the vice-president, the prime minister, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and the head of the Supreme People’s Inspectorate. On the 24th of October 2018, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong was confirmed as that country’s new president, following the sudden death of his predecessor. This is the first time that the Party General Secretary and the Presidential position have been held by the same person since the Communist Party’s founder Ho Chi Minh in the 1960s. Of the country’s traditional ‘four-pillar’ power diffusion approach, Trong now holds half, with the remaining two the National Assembly chair and the prime minister (Campbell, 2018).

Transparency International (2018) rank Vietnam 107 out of 180 countries in terms of its corruption, which remains a major threat to the legitimacy of the Party. In the business environment, the current system strongly relies on patronage and personal relationships with the ruling party, with more than 50% of companies surveyed indicating facilitation payments to public officials (World Bank and IFC, 2012). In 2010, over 40% of citizen’s surveyed reported having paid a bribe to public service providers (Transparency International 2010). Nepotism is considered a massive issue with appointments to positions in the police, judiciary or public administration sectors often based on close relationships (US Department of State, 2011). However, since 2017 there have been anti-corruption campaigns which have seen rankings slowly improve. Efforts have been focused on high level public officials, as well as leading bankers and business executives. Freedom House’s most recent findings from 2017, find Vietnam’s press to remain tightly controlled and one of the harshest in Asia. Although the 1992 constitution recognizes freedom of expression, the criminal code prohibits speech that is critical of the government, a definition which is vaguely worded and broadly interpreted. Amnesty International’s human rights report for Vietnam 2017/2018 finds

“at least 98 prisoners of conscience were detained or imprisoned… They included bloggers, human rights defenders working on land and labour issues, political activists, religious followers and members of ethnic minority groups. The authorities continued to grant early release to prisoners of conscience only if they agreed to go into exile.”

Legislation approved in June 2018 now requires global tech firms with operations in Vietnam to store user data and social media companies must now remove any content deemed ‘offensive’ within one day of receiving requests from authorities. Amnesty International (2018) also found that freedoms of assembly were routinely neglected, with excessive and unnecessary police force carried out to prevent peaceful gatherings. Despite this, political change does not seem to be apart of most people’s agenda with many young people uninterested. Duong (2017) notes

“young people rise up when they feel their rights are denied, that’s clearly happened in certain parts of the world, such as the Occupy Movement or the Arab Spring… in Vietnam, I think as long as young people have other options to distract themselves, it provides a pressure release from politics, Vietnamese youth don’t participate in politics simply because it’s not meaningful to their lives.”

As a result, the VCP remains stable in Vietnam. With newly elected President Trong prioritising increased ties with Beijing economically, analysts find that this also stretched politically with Trong believing China’s authoritarian governance is a model to be replicated (Campbell, 2018).

Colonial Experiences Aiding Political Dynamics

The Prison Experience and Communism Spread

Similarly to the idealised accounts that the Long March 1934 plays in the cultural role of Chinese communism, colonial prison narratives, most notably during the French era, feature prominently in the VCP’s accounts of their rise to power. Following independence and the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1954, many revolutionary memoirs from party members were released pointing to the role of imperialist jails in acting as almost schools of revolutionaries. Additionally, in the years that followed massive collections of prison poetry were created and distributed, including often into school curriculums. The most notorious Indochinese prisons, including Son La, Hoa Lo * and Con Dao, were turned into museums to highlight the inhumane conditions prisoners suffered and emphasise their struggles under French rule. Ho Chi Minh’s colonial-era prison diary titled Nhat Ky Trong Tu and released in 1960, is probably the most famous both nationally and internationally of this postcolonial project. However, the role of the colonial prisons was much more important than aiding propaganda following independence. In the 1930s, mass incarcerations of communists occurred in Vietnam by the French following a period of anticolonial activism. The Indochinese prisons now created a stable environment for the growth and expansion of the party. Zinoman (2001) finds that,

“jailed communists established ICP cells and mutual aid associations, organized political education and training programs, and agitated unceasingly against brutal treatment, bad food, and poor sanitary conditions. Not only were communist inmates able to wrest a measure of control over the institutions in which they were held from their captors, but they contributed decisively to the regeneration of the revolutionary movement in the wider community.”

By subjecting hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese from very diverse backgrounds – both culturally, economically and politically – to the same ordeal, the prison system aided a sense of nationalism and a shared identity among Vietnamese. Furthermore, gradual increase of released and escaped communist activists allowed the invigoration of the movement into civilian society with hardened and dedicated comrades skilled in underground organisation. Mass incarceration highlighted components of secrecy, hierarchy and centralisation involved in the party. Pike (1987) notes that the VCP could be said to be founded by individuals who shared “the same common experience, the same development, the same social trauma.” This created lifelong bonds and commitment. In fact, having experience in colonial era prisons was often viewed as a necessary credential to advance into the Party’s higher ranks following independence (Tin, 1995). Ho Chi Minh proudly declared in a Party anniversary speech in 1960 that of the current members of its Central Committee, thirty-one people had been imprisoned in French colonial jails culminating a total of 222 years (Zinoman, 2001).

Despite the arguments that the colonial era allowed colonies to act as “laboratories of modernity” in which the latest developments in social engineering could be employed, Zinoman (2001) points to the fact that “colonial prison officials introduced no such innovations and ignored many of the putatively modern methods of prison administration that had been developed in Europe and the United States”. Continued campaigns for prison reform among ill-treatment, torture and poor conditions facilitated anticolonial sentiment and feelings of rebellion.

Divide and Rule

Ethnic classificatory projects in Vietnam were used as a means of social engineering for control and domination over highland groups. Salemink’s (2003) study on the Montagnard ethnic identity demonstrates how for political reasons, the French were inclined to group a lot of tribal identities into one ethnic grouping. This was despite each group encompassing different cultures, languages and having their own defined territories. The term Montagnard as a collective identity for Vietnamese tribal people ceased to exist prior colonisation, however, the term became common following colonial administration policies. Narratives put forward by the French included provisions to “prohibit ethnic Vietnamese, i.e. the Viet or ‘national majority’, from entering the area, to counteract Vietnamese claims over the highland people and even to imagine an autonomous highland zone” (Raffin, 2008). In efforts to prevent a sense of Vietnamese nationalism, the central highlands of the nation were also an important asset for the French during the First Indochina War (1946-1954) in order to regain control. In 1948, this region was renamed the Pays Montagnard du Sud Indochinois (PMSI), under the French assigned alternative to Ho Chi Minh’s DRV, Emperor Bao Dai. Although the PMSI was retracted by the South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1955, the creation of this ethno-nationalism in the region proved to be an issue in the postcolonial state.

In 1958, the Forces United for the Liberation of Races Oppressed (FULRO) was created. By design FULRO was a movement to unify tribal people against the Viet and restore the special status they had enjoyed under the French. Demands for regional autonomy lasted until 1992, with guerrilla soldiers at their peak totalling 7,000 people (Salemink, 2003). The division that was created between the tribes and the Viet resulted in a number of tribal people joining American soldiers in their efforts during the resistance war. As stated by Raffin (2008),

“Montagnard ethno-nationalism was mostly molded during and inherited from the colonial era as a divisive element which has become embedded in the politics of the postcolonial state. Here we can see the complexity of colonial and postcolonial identities and how the colonial encounter might influence ethnic subjectivity.”

Since colonisation, the current communist government has reverted back to the different classifications for tribal groupings. The idea of a Montagnard identity has proved unhelpful to the desired creation of Vietnamese nationalism.

Chinese Relations

Offering help to Vietnam in the first half of the 20th century, bonds of dependence on China grew in Vietnam. For the two decades following the 1950s, China also gave considerable aid to the DRV to assist with the new state’s economic problems. Vietnamese children were set to southern China to increase the capacity of teachers to be a part of building the new socialist nation in Chinese-run Vietnamese schools (Bayly, 2007). However, tension surrounding the power of China in the region and memories of past-colonial projects had always been an issue in Vietnam. In the 1960s and 1970s differing opinions of the USSR emerged between the two nations. As discussed by Pelley (2002) obsessions with origins grew in the postcolonial state and efforts to ‘decolonise the past’ ensued. As “a large number of colonial writers had presented Vietnam as a smaller and less glorious replica of China”, efforts to de-Chinese Vietnam through cultural disengagement was perceived as necessary (Raffin, 2008). Links between Vietnam and mythical ages such as that of the Hùng Kings tracing to the third millennium BCE and removing Chinese origins took place. Due to countless periods of occupation throughout the nation’s history, national identity today mostly rests on concepts “formed and recorded in written sources by the middle of the 2nd millennium CE” (Raffin, 2008). The importance of folklore through myths and legends forms an integral part of Vietnamese heritage with an ambiguous line drawn between them and what would be classified as actual history.

Diaspora

Other than China, the USSR also became an important center for Vietnam during the 20th century. As part of modernisation during the Cold War period, Vietnamese were sent to the Soviet Union for training projects and Marr (2003) estimates the figure to be more than 70,000 between 1955 and 1985. Furthermore, following the downsizing of the Vietnamese army between 1987 and 1989 when the Cold War drew to a close, Vietnamese ex-soldiers and defence personnel were sent through labour cooperation programmes. By 1989, of the 150,000 Vietnamese abroad, 40% of them were estimated to be in this category and living in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries (Thayer, 2000). Despite the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, many Vietnamese stayed on. For example, in the city of Berlin today there are approximately 40,000 Vietnamese residents (Redaktion, 2018).

Although US involvement in Vietnam was not one of a colonial enterprise, the experience still marked a period of “a forceful deployment of the former’s authority over the latter” (Raffin, 2008). It could be stated that the heavy military presence may have deepened residues of previous colonisation and the destructive impact of the war certainty impacted the psyche of Vietnamese people. Southern Vietnamese soldiers, officials and supporters fearing capture and persecution, led to a large outflow of people from the region as they sought asylum abroad. In the final days before the fall of Saigon in 1975 and it was clear the war was coming to an end, the US helped to evacuate some 140,000 people to be resettled in the United States (UNCHR, 2000). This was followed by an outflow of Vietnamese to neighbouring countries of which 62,000 were in camps throughout Southeast Asia by the end of 1978 and 250,000 refugees existed in China by the end of 1979 (UNCHR, 2000) Those fleeing by boat quickly increased throughout 1979, with 54,000 people fleeing in June alone and thousands of Vietnamese perishing at sea (UNCHR, 2000). This new category of people created from the communist victory, Viet Kieu (Vietnamese Overseas), adds another level of hybridity to the postcolonial order. Raffin (2008) concludes that there is “the need to look beyond the traditional centre, France, to places such as China, the Soviet Union, the ‘‘other empires’’ and the cultural American centre, all of which seem to have a more far-reaching impact on contemporary Vietnam than colonial residues”.

Critiques of Focusing on ‘Colonial Legacy’:

While reversing the direction of discourse of colonialism, Weiner (2013) argues that scholars have “reproduced the central faults of colonialist historiography: its moral simplification; its disregard for the history and legacy of the long centuries before colonialism; its exaggeration of the power and influence of colonialism; and finally, its dismissal of the agency—for good and for ill—of colonized peoples themselves.” Certain scholars have researched the prominence of authoritarianism, racial distinctions and violence before European conquest in certain parts of Africa and South Asia. Newbury (2003) in documenting colonial legacy throughout Africa, Asia and the Pacific found that “the more closely the politics of colonial over‐rule are examined in different regions, the more they are seen to derive in large part from pre‐colonial structures.” Similarly, Ballantyne (2010) notes a “tendency for some works within the field to offer a thin treatment of pre‐colonial social structures, economic practices, and mentalities.” Through ignorance or political prejudices, there is a concern of the possibility of idealizing the precolonial period. Peterson (2007) expresses that historians of colonial Africa often represent this period as “pristine”. A result of neglecting precolonial history is that “readings of colonialism can easily misread the extent to which colonialism changed things” which allows historians to “see the British or any colonial actor as always being the primary historical actors, unfettered and unchanged by the communities they interacted with and ruled over” (Ballantyne, 2010). As a consequence, there can be an overestimation of the colonial regime’s influence and power. However, through a more thorough examination of the colonial regimes and in the context of what preceded them, “they can be seen as both more complex and less powerful” (Wiener, 2013).

As so much of Vietnamese history is seeped in periods of colonialism, it is difficult to asses its precolonial era. Politically speaking, Vietnam followed a Confucian philosophy based on the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-478BC). The majority of the first-generation communist leaders of Vietnam came from a Confucian background, with Ho Chi Minh’s father a scholar in the teachings for example. As a code of conduct, Confucian stressed the importance of loyalty, obedience and a respect for education. However, as a system of governing, the philosophy incorporated both indigenous beliefs and norms and so its application differed from country to country. The focus on loyalty in Vietnam, for example, stressed that “the collective interest of society is supreme over individual interests” and loyalty to one’s country rather than a particular imperial family was absolute (Nghia, 2005). In terms of obedience, Confucian values stressed that each person should behave appropriately in relation to their status in society. Although the people were “once considered to be the roots of the country and the ruler’s mission was to serve the people. Later, the feudal mandarins shifted this to focus more on the obedience of the subjects to the rulers” (Nghia, 2005). With the creation of a Temple of Literature (Van Mieu) in Hanoi in 1070, a centre dedicated to Confucius teachings ensued. It could be stated, therefore, that Vietnam’s way of governance was already deeply rooted in the nation and was not as influenced by the colonial way of governance. Marxism and Confucianism may have merged in areas such as the primacy of “common interests over individual interests, the broad and active role of the ruler or state to serve the common interests of the people, and the conception that law is just one of the tools used by the state to maintain social order” (Nghia, 2005). However, it is also true that Confucianism is a Chinese philosophy, implanted and incorporated into Vietnamese tradition during the thousand years of occupation by China. Although the tradition grew and changed under Vietnamese independence in the years between Chinese and French colonialism, from this argument it is just another aspect of colonial legacy.

Conclusion

Disappointments emerging from the aftermath of decolonisation is a rightful mainstream consensus, with political dynamics in postcolonial nations directly impacted by their colonial experience. As Dirks (2004) informed UN officials:

“Now, well after the first flushes of excitement in the immediate aftermath of decolonization—when it seemed possible that movements of national liberation might overthrow colonial regimes along with their pervasive legacies—it is generally accepted that colonialism did not die so quick a death after all. Instead, it has become increasingly clear that colonialism lived (and lives) on in many forms and ways.”

Although Vietnam has a long and deeply complex history of colonisation, from the brief explanatory study I have provided using limited examples, it is clear that their colonial experiences shape the way in which the state conducts itself. Colonial legacy has also given legitimacy to the way in which current leaders wish to conduct the political order. Communist prison narratives and memories of repression have enabled Vietnam to create a propaganda campaign of the image of the founding fathers of the VCP as national heroes. Although the economy has opened up to a capitalism in the 1980s, the teachings of Marxism-Leninism are still taken seriously. Ho Chi Minh was indeed drawn towards Leninist responses to colonial subjugation which impacted on the nation’s ultimate turn towards communism. Issues which were escalated during the French colonial period including the question of tribal identity are still seen to play a role in contemporary Vietnam today. Other political factors including Vietnam’s international relations, their national identity and the factor of having a large diaspora abroad can all be traced back to having links in their colonial experience. Nonetheless, in examining colonial legacy it is important not to neglect criticisms whose objective is to look beyond simplifying realities. Colonial legacy is therefore just one such tool to be employed, rather than a complete theoretical lens in which to study the developing world.

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