Parti constitutionnaliste indochinois

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The Constitutionalist Party of Indochina (French Parti constitutionnaliste indochinois , vietn. Đảng Lập hiến Đông Dương ) was the first Vietnamese political party to be approved by the colonial authorities. It was founded in 1919 and 1923 in Saigon in Cochinchina , the southernmost part of French Indochina , and represented moderate nationalist and liberal positions. Its members and supporters came almost exclusively from the Francophile upper middle class of Cochinchina.

Members and political goals

The party was founded by Bùi Quang Chiêu , an agricultural engineer and publisher of the newspaper La Tribune Indigène (later La Tribune Indochinoise ). Other leading members were the editor Nguyen Phan Long (newspapers được Nhà Nam and L'Écho Annamite ), the lawyers Dương Văn Giáo and Vương Quang Nhuong , the ethnic Chinese oil and soap manufacturers Trương Văn Bền , the doctor Nguyen Van Thinh , the engineer Lưu Văn Lang and the landowner and journalist Lê Quang Liêm . The majority of them had studied in France and made great fortune after returning to Cochinchina.

The party members understood by " constitutionalism " primarily the demand for more equality between the Vietnamese and the French: First they advocated the abolition of economic and trade monopolies that discriminated against French colonists and Chinese overseas Chinese and demanded equal payment for the same services. Nobody should be allowed to be discriminated against on the basis of their parentage; instead, educational level and property should be decisive. In the years that followed, the constitutionalists cautiously advocated political reforms and called for more political participation, fundamental freedoms , better educational opportunities and a higher proportion of Vietnamese in the judiciary and administration. The colony was to receive internal autonomy (self-administration) while maintaining French supremacy (comparable to the British Dominions and the Commonwealth of the Philippines ); the issue of independence was not mentioned.

history

The founding of the Constitutionalist Party - initially in 1919 as an informal interest group - can be seen as a result of the political liberalization by Governor General Albert Sarraut (1911–1914 and 1917–1919 in Indochina). Sarraut had called on the pro-France sections of the population to engage in journalistic and political activities and, in this sense, promoted newspaper publishers such as Bùi Quang Chiêu and Nguyễn Phan Long.

In 1922, the constitutionalists were elected to the Cochinchina Colonial Council for the first time - thanks to an electoral reform implemented by Governor Maurice Long that increased the number of Vietnamese eligible voters tenfold. Ironically, the constitutionalists, as advocates of census suffrage, had previously rejected this reform because they did not consider it sensible to allow less educated sections of the population to decide on the political future of the colony. In 1923 the constitutionalists also formed as an organized party.

The influence of the constitutionalists within the colonial council remained very limited, as the French settlers, who still made up the majority there, saw their power threatened and therefore refused to cooperate with the Vietnamese. Even within the Vietnamese population, the constitutionalists did not find a mass base due to their pronounced elitism . However, their political rise served as an inspiration for a new generation to become politically active. In the years 1923 to 1926, the Jeune Annam movement came into being around the constitutionalists . During this time, the colonial administration under Martial Merlin and Maurice Cognacq tried to reverse the political and economic liberalization of the past few years, whereupon leading constitutionalists supported the youth movement. The most important Jeune Annam member was the aspiring journalist Nguyễn An Ninh , who was to have a decisive influence on Saigon politics over the next decade. In 1926 - while party leader Bùi Quang Chiêu tried in vain for reforms in France - massive youth protests broke out in the large cities of Cochinchina and Annam . The protests led to a break between the increasingly radicalizing youth movement and the Constitutionalist Party, whose mostly older members did not know how to deal with the demands of the youth. By the end of the year, the colonial authorities had largely suppressed the youth protests and dissolved their organizations. However, the former participants joined communist, Trotskyist and radical nationalist groups in the following years .

In 1930, the Indochinese Communist Party emerged from several communist groups . The communists refused to cooperate with the constitutionalists and accused them of being reactionary “false patriots”, “drooling French” and not a real political party, but only an association of corrupt business people. Indeed, during the uprisings of 1930/31 (" Nghệ-Tĩnh Soviets "), the constitutionalists sided with the French, shocked by the level of violence. In mid-1936, however, both parties briefly worked together as part of the Indochinese congress movement, until the constitutionalists left the movement in protest against the communist radicalization of the rural population.

In the following years the Constitutionalist Party lost more and more influence due to increasing fractionalism. The deputy party leader Nguyễn Phan Long turned to the emerging Cao Đài religion , which was rejected by most of the other members. In 1937 Nguyễn Văn Thinh left the party and founded the Democratic Party . In the April 1939 election, the remaining constitutionalists lost all their seats on the Colonial Council, mainly in favor of the Trotskyists . The party finally split with the beginning of the Second World War: the majority of the members swore allegiance to France and called on the Vietnamese in newspaper articles to fight for their colonial rulers. A group around Dương Văn Giáo, however, relied on Japan and formed the anti-French, pro-Japanese Revolutionary Party . However, none of the groups played a role during the further course of the war. In 1942 the constitutionalist party was finally dissolved.

During the August Revolution in 1945, a large part of the former leadership, including founders Bùi Quang Chiêu and Dương Văn Giáo, were murdered, probably on the orders of the southern Việt Minh leader Trần Văn Giàu .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b William J. Duiker : The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam , Second Edition, Westview Press, Boulder CO 1996, p. 11
  2. ↑ Nathalie Catillon: Le constitutionnalisme à la base du nationalisme vietnamien , Mémoires d'Indochine, 2013 (accessed in September 2017)
  3. ↑ KW Taylor : A History of the Vietnamese , Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 502
  4. ^ Anne L. Foster: Projections of Power: The United States and Europe in Colonial Southeast Asia, 1919-1941 , Duke University Press, Durham NC 2010, pp. 170f
  5. ↑ KW Taylor: A History of the Vietnamese , Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 497-499
  6. ^ Nancy Wiegersma: Vietnam: Peasant Land, Peasant Revolution: Patriarchy and Collectivity in the Rural Economy , Macmillan Press, Basingstoke 1988, p. 93
  7. ↑ KW Taylor: A History of the Vietnamese , Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 499–503
  8. ^ KW Taylor: A History of the Vietnamese , Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 515;
    William J. Duiker: The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam , Second Edition, Westview Press, Boulder CO 1996, p. 24;
    Kim Khánh Huỳnh: Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945 , Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY 1986, p. 43
  9. ↑ Bruce M. Lockhart, William J. Duiker: Historical Dictionary of Vietnam , Scarecrow Press, 2006, p. 51
  10. ↑ KW Taylor: A History of the Vietnamese , Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 516
  11. ↑ KW Taylor: A History of the Vietnamese , Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 504
  12. ↑ Allen Myers: The Vietnamese Revolution and Its Leadership , Resistance Books, Chippendale NSW 2004, p. 32
  13. ^ William J. Duiker: The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam , Second Edition, Westview Press, Boulder CO 1996, p. 60
  14. ^ Archimedes Patti : Why Viet Nam ?: Prelude to America's Albatross , University of California Press, Berkeley 1980, p. 529
  15. ^ Megan Cook: The Constitutionalist Party in Cochinchina: The Years of Decline, 1930-1942 , Center of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, Melbourne 1977
  16. ^ William J. Duiker: The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam , Second Edition, Westview Press, Boulder CO 1996, p. 119
  17. ↑ Philippe MF Peycam: The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon, 1916-1930 , Columbia University Press, New York 2012, p 219