Anarchism in Vietnam first emerged in the early 20th century, as the Vietnamese, through demonstrations, strikes and armed insurrection, continued their struggle against the French colonial government and its puppet feudal dynasty. Some popular anti-colonial figures such as Phan Bội Châu and Nguyễn An Ninh were exposed to strands of anarchist thought in Japan, China, and France. But in the course of the 1920s and 30s, such influence these may have had upon popular movements were more than countered by the Marxism-Leninism of the emerging Vietnamese communist movement. In recent years, Anarchist ideas in Vietnam has attracted new adherents.
History The roots of anarchism in Vietnam lay in the early resistance to French colonial rule, organized among various secret societies. Among these were the Heaven and Earth Society, which in 1884 had assassinated a colonial collaborator in Saigon. Other attacks against the French colonial authorities included the Cần Vương movement, which attempted to overthrow the French during the late 1880s, the Hanoi Poison Plot, in which indigenous Vietnamese troops attempted to assassinate the entire French garrison in the Citadel of Hanoi, as well as subsequent anti-colonial uprisings in Cochinchina and Tonkin.
Official French colonial publications implied that these Vietnamese secret societies and religious sects could be easily coopted by revolutionaries, due to their status as indigenous methods of organizing, echoing Mikhail Bakunin's claim that social bandits were "instinctive revolutionaries".
International origins
Anarchism was first introduced to the Vietnamese anti-colonial movement during the 1900s by the early nationalist leader Phan Bội Châu. In January 1905, Phan moved to Japan, where he was exposed to a variety of new political ideas being propagated among Chinese expatriates, including the constitutionalism of Liang Qichao, the republicanism of the Tongmenghui, and the anarchism of the Tokyo group. Initially a utilitarian, Phan began to rapidly move through a variety of political ideologies and made acquaintance with a number of politically diverse groups and individuals in Japan. In 1907, Phan founded the Constitutionalist Association (), an organization of Vietnamese expatriate students which advocated for constitutional monarchy, but by 1908 it was forcibly disbanded by the Japanese authorities, at the request of the French. That same year, Phan joined the Asian Friendship Association, an organization founded by the exiled Chinese republicans and anarchists, as well as Japanese socialists. The Association was largely directed by Liu Shipei, a prominent member of the Tokyo anarchist group and editor of its newspaper Natural Justice, and included many other Chinese anarchists such as Chang Chi, who was a close friend of Phan's.
But by 1909, Phan Bội Châu was ordered to leave Japan and spent the subsequent years drifting around East Asia. After the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the 1911 revolution, Phan was invited to the newly established Republic of China by his old Chinese republican friends from Japan, Zhang Binglin and Chen Qimei. In January 1912, Phan arrived in China and settled in Guangdong, now under the governorship of his friend Hu Hanmin, who was actively providing a place of refuge for Vietnamese exiles. Here, with the financial aid of the Guangzhou anarchist Liu Shifu, Phan formed a new republican and nationalist organization called the Vietnamese Restoration League (), modeled after Sun Yat-Sen's Tongmenghui and drawing its name from Zhang Binglin's Restoration Society. Shifu also encouraged Phan to establish the Association for the Revitalization of China, an organization dedicated to soliciting Chinese support for the independence movements in colonized Asian countries, including Indochina, India, Burma and Korea. Upon moving to Shanghai, Phan joined the Worldwide League for Humanity, a clandestine anarchist organization which went unrecognized by the new Beiyang government due to its "extreme-left program."
As more Vietnamese expatriates joined up with internationalist organizations in China, they increasingly came into contact with anarchist individuals and groups. Phan Bội Châu himself, who had developed ties with the Tokyo strand of Chinese anarchism led by Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei, was inspired by their traditionalist approach to anarchism and socialism. Phan was particularly inspired by the anarchist positions on anti-imperialism and direct action, leading him to defend the violent overthrow of the French colonial authorities, even to the chagrin of his republican allies like Hu Hanmin and Chen Qimei. Developing on propaganda of the deed, Phan admired past assassination attempts against state officials and encouraged the targeting of French colonial officials, leading to a series of bombings in Hanoi, which brought both increased publicity and reprisals against the Restoration League. Several of the League's activists were executed, internationalist organizations in China began to disintegrate and Phan himself was arrested and imprisoned by the Beiyang government. While Phan was in prison, Liu Shifu died of tuberculosis in 1915, Chen Qimei was assassinated in 1916 and Zhang Binglin abandoned anarchism and gave up on political pursuits, leaving Phan politically isolated by the time of his release in February 1917. After briefly coming under the influence of a collaborationist advocate, Phan turned his interests towards socialism, inspired by the socialist currents of the Russian and Chinese revolutions.
Following the end of World War I, many more Vietnamese radicals went into exile, looking for knowledge that was being suppressed in French Indochina. People from Annam and Tonkin largely went to China or Japan, where they were exposed to social anarchist tendencies, whilst those from Cochinchina went to France, where they became influenced by French strands of individualist anarchism. While Vietnamese expatriates that took up the Chinese strand of anarchism tended to employ aspects of traditionalism, expatriates inspired by French anarchism employed a more radical, youth-oriented and forward-looking philosophy.
Growth and spread of anarchism This diversity of opinion among Vietnamese anarchists was reflected upon the exiles' return to Vietnam. Political opposition was harshly repressed in the northern colonies of Annam and Tonkin, the anti-colonial movement turned to illegal activism and violent actions against colonial authorities. This, combined with the social anarchism brought back from abroad, laid the groundwork for the formation of political organizations. But in the southern colony of Cochinchina, freedom of the press existed, allowing Vietnamese radicals to participate in open political discourse, which defused political tensions. Upon his return from France, Nguyễn An Ninh found a place in radical journalism, publishing political tracts in his journal La Cloche Fêlée which encouraged the synthesis of the social struggle for individual liberties with the national struggle for Vietnamese independence. Ninh called for the youth of Vietnam to reinvent itself and take control of its own destiny, becoming incredibly popular amongst his peers, as his rhetorical tone marked a stark contrast to the tendency towards moderation and compromise. Ninh critiqued the Confucian family values of parental authority and gender inequality, as well as traditional morality, encouraging people to "break with the past and free themselves from tyranny of all kinds" and create a genuinely new culture. He also attacked the bureaucratism of the colonial state, the native Vietnamese bourgeoisie and traditional Confucian society. Ninh revealed his libertarian sympathies in his article Order and Anarchy, quoting such authors as Rabindranath Tagore and Leo Tolstoy. Ninh's anti-authoritarianism also extended into his personal life, as he got himself into a number of conflicts with colonial officials. In addition, while Ninh admired the Soviet Union, he positioned himself firmly against a Bolshevik-style revolution due to its human cost, preferring the route of individuals directly undermining social inequalities rather than partaking in revolutionary violence. However, as time passed, Ninh increasingly saw revolution as inevitable and began to agitate for organized resistance to achieve social justice.
By this time, Phan Bội Châu's political influence was largely marginalized and his followers in the Restoration League began to leave him behind. Despite attempts to keep the League alive, its prominent members started to criticize it for its elitism and called for Vietnamese revolutionaries to immerse themselves among the common people. In 1923, the Society of Like Hearts ( emerged from these critical anarchist currents of the revolutionary movement, inspired in particular by the works of Liu Shifu, and attempted to unite disparate Vietnamese anti-colonial activists around collective decision-making. The Society also employed the use of direct action to destabilize the colonial administration, with Phạm Hồng Thái launching an assassination attempt against Governor-General Martial Henri Merlin. Although the attempt itself failed, it reinvigorated the Vietnamese anti-colonial movement and Thái became known as a revolutionary martyr. In response, Phan Bội Châu attempted to open a military academy to train Vietnamese revolutionaries, meeting with the anarchist elder Cai Yuanpei and agents of the Communist International to discuss this project, but it ultimately did not materialize. With the Restoration League failing to reform itself along the lines of the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Society of Hearts unable to successfully follow the assassination attempt, both organizations began to decline into irrelevance. Following a reorganization in 1924, the Phuc Viet party attempted to mobilize public opinion towards anti-colonialism, with Ton Quang Phiet writing the article Southern Wind, highlighting the need for organization. However, none of these anarchist organizations had presented a clear vision of a future society and had not developed a solid analysis of the present society, thus were left without a strong ideological foundation to unite behind. In 1925, French agents seized Phan Bội Châu in Shanghai. He was convicted of treason and spent the rest of his life under house arrest in Huế. On March 21, 1926, Nguyễn An Ninh was also arrested and only days later, Phan Chu Trinh died, causing mass protests against the government in April 1926. It was in this atmosphere that a young Marxist called Nguyễn Ái Quốc emerged onto the scene, having links to both strands of Vietnamese anarchism and taking on a role as a fierce critic of radicalism.
Revolutionary socialism and anarchist populism