Jean de Raymond

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Jean Léon François Marie de Raymond (* 1907 - October 29, 1951 in Phnom Penh ) was a high-ranking French colonial official in Indochina .

Life

Second World War

Raymond had made a career in the colonial infantry in the 1930s and was admitted to the École supérieure de guerre in 1939 ; the Second World War prevented the completion of the training.

Towards the end of the war, in the early summer of 1945, he headed the French diplomatic mission in Calcutta with responsibility for the Japanese-occupied French Indochina - now as civil representative of the Colonial Ministry . Although Raymond had little knowledge of the actual situation there, as an idealistic Gaullist, he was preferred to colonial officials with a Vichy background with more experience in the region.

In August 1945 he was a member of the diplomatic-military delegation that was sent to Kunming in southern China with British support . The French group (including Jean Sainteny and Léon Pignon ) met there with the troops under General Alessandri who had escaped from Indochina after the Japanese takeover in March 1945. It was planned to return to northern Indochina from here immediately after the collapse of Japan and to restore French rule. However, the Chinese and the Americans, who were still critical of the colonial era at the time, prevented a prompt return, so that the Vietnamese August Revolution took place without French intervention.

Laos

From the end of 1945 to the spring of 1946, Raymond was involved as a military advisor in the suppression of the Lao independence movement Lao Issara . After the fighting had largely ended in April 1946, he was appointed as the civilian successor of the military commander Hans Imfeld to the Commissaire de la République for Laos and thus the highest representative of France in the country. In this position he successfully negotiated the creation of a united kingdom of Laos under French rule; on August 27, 1946, a corresponding modus vivendi was signed . He showed himself willing to negotiate with the Lao Issara government in exile in Bangkok , which was criticized by the military and the intelligence service. In July 1947 he was replaced in his office by Maurice Auguste Michaudel .

Cambodia

In February 1949, in the middle of the Indochina War , Raymond returned to the political scene in the region and succeeded Lucien Vincent Loubet as Commissaire de la République in Cambodia. Here he made friends with King Norodom Sihanouk and supported him in his (pro-French) autonomy efforts. At the same time, he repeatedly accused the elected Cambodian parliament of incompetence and portrayed it as a negative counterpoint to the king's patriotism. Sihanouk felt flattered and soon shared Raymond's dislike of parliamentary institutions.

On October 29, 1951, Raymond was brutally murdered by his Vietnamese houseboy while he was sleeping. The boy then managed to escape to the Việt Minh , who celebrated him as a hero. It is believed that the boy was placed as a spy in Raymond's household by the Việt Minh from the very beginning, taking advantage of the inspector's suspected pedophile tendencies. Since the anti-French nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh was allowed to return to Cambodia on the same day , the assassination attempt possibly took place deliberately on that date. After the assassination of General Charles Chanson († July 31), it was the second prominent assassination attempt within a short time.

The French-Cambodian authorities sentenced those behind them to death in absentia. King Sihanouk and Indochina Commander-in-Chief De Lattre de Tassigny took part in the pompous funeral service in Phnom Penh . The new Commissaire in Cambodia was the local military commander General Yves Digo .

For the Việt Minh, the assassination attempt was a clear failure from a strategic point of view, as Cambodia remained a bastion of France until the end of the war.

Jean de Raymond left a son, the diplomat and professor Jean-François de Raymond .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ École Supérieure de Guerre: Les admis du concours de 1939
  2. ↑ David G. Marr: Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power , University of California Press, Berkeley 1997, pp. 338/339
  3. ↑ Ellen Joy Hammer: The Struggle for Indochina, 1940-1955 , Stanford University Press, 1966, Chapter 6, pp. 128/29
  4. ^ King C. Chen: Vietnam and China, 1938-1954 , Princeton University Press, 2015, p. 116
  5. ↑ Geoffrey C. Gunn: Political struggles in Laos (1930-1954) , White Lotus Press, 2005, p. 177
  6. ↑ The War in Laos, 1945-54
  7. ↑ Martin Stuart-Fox : Historical Dictionary of Laos , Scarecrow Press, 2008, entry: Franco-Lao Modus Vivendi , p. 111
  8. ↑ Jean Deuve: Le service de renseignement des forces françaises du Laos: 1946-1948 , Harmattan, 2000, p 58
  9. ^ David P. Chandler: The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution Since 1945 , Yale University Press, 1991, p. 42
  10. ^ David P. Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution Since 1945 , Yale University Press, 1991, p. 58
  11. ↑ Jean-Michel Rocard, Jean-François de Raymond: l'assassinat de Jean de Raymond, dernier Commissaire de la République au Cambodge, et l'indépendance du royaume
  12. ^ Karl-Heinz Golzio: History of Cambodia , Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 175
personal data
SURNAME Raymond, Jean de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Raymond, Jean Léon François Marie de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French colonial official in Laos and Cambodia
DATE OF BIRTH 1907
DATE OF DEATH October 29, 1951
Place of death Phnom Penh