Riot of Thái Nguyên

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The uprising Thái Nguyên was an anti-colonial uprising of Vietnamese nationalists against French colonial rule in French Indochina in 1917 during the First World War . After a planned prison revolt, the insurgents brought the provincial capital Thái Nguyên under their control for several days before the uprising was suppressed by the French colonial troops.

prehistory

At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a class of modernly trained patriotic intellectuals in Indochina, with a focus on the north of the country in Tonkin . Their efforts to improve the education of the locals culminated in the establishment of a modern free school for Tonkin in Hanoi. This was banned by the colonial authorities in 1908 and several leaders, including Phan Châu Trinh, were imprisoned. The state university of the colony was also closed.

In view of the repression of its collaborative wing under the aegis of Phan Bội Châu , the intellectual movement took a militant swing, which was based on the monarchist resistance of the Cần Vương movement but was shaped by nationalist ideas based on Western models. This led to several armed attacks on the colonial power in 1912 and 1913, which however had no further effect. Shortly before the First World War, the colonial power crushed the resurgence of this movement after the successful assassination attempt on Hoàng Hoa Thám .

revolt

Against this background, three non-commissioned officers of the Indigenous Guard conspired with the intellectual and ex-Can Vuong partisan Luong Ngoc Quyen in Thai Nguyen to risk an armed uprising. Luong Van Can, imprisoned in Thai-Nguyen prison, convinced his Vietnamese guards to instigate a revolt in the prison in order to finally take over the provincial capital.

On August 31, 1917, the rebels took over the Thai Nguyen prison, the largest prison in Tonkin. They were recruited from the guards as well as political prisoners and common offenders. At the moment of the uprising, the insurgents were able to mobilize around 120 guards and 200 prisoners, some spontaneously. From there, they stormed the arsenal of the provincial capital and took control of the city with the weapons there. The rebels killed French and Vietnamese representatives of the colonial state. Using their example, they pursued a general uprising in the colony and published a provocation to comply with it. The French military operations to secure the city called for five days of street warfare . The operations in the countryside to eliminate dispersed groups of insurgents lasted half a year.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Pierre Brocheux, Daniel Hémery: Indochina. An ambiguous colonization, 1858-1954. Berkeley 2009, pp. 299f.
  2. ^ David G. Marr: Vietnamese Anticolonialism: 1885-1925. Berkeley, 1971, pp. 234f
  3. ↑ a b Peter Zinoman : Colonial Prisons and anti-colonial Resistance in French Indochina: The Thai Nguyen Rebellion, 1917. In: Modern Asian Studies. Volume 34, No. 1, 2000, pp. 57-98, doi: 10.1017 / S0026749X00003590