Vietnam War Bibliography:

Vietnamese Communism Before 1945

Mark Philip Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. xiv, 304 pp.

William Duiker, The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam, 1900–1941. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. 313 pp.

Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism: 1925–1945. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982. 379 pp. This excellent study shows how Ho Chi Minh, who was the most important single person in the founding of the Vietnamese Communist movement between 1925 and 1930, lost control of it in the early 1930's. Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist, but the leaders who ran the Communist movement in the mid 1930's were much more concerned with Communism as an international movement than they were with Vietnamese nationalism. Ho regained control only around the beginning of World War II.

David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. xi, 468 pp. Superb study, though not easy to read, of what was happening among educated Vietnamese, including the Communists.

Scott McConnell, Leftward Journey: The Education of Vietnamese Students in France, 1919–1939. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1989. 195 pp.

Shawn McHale, Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the Making of Modern Vietnam, 1920–1945. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003.

L. Puiseux, ed., Récits de la résistance vietnamienne (1925-1945). Cahiers Libres, no. 80. Paris: Maspero, 1966. 214 pp. Accounts by Nguyen Luong Bang, Bui Lam, Le Van Luong, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Hoang Quoc Viet. All authors' names are given correctly on the title page, but Hoang Quoc Viet (whose account takes up almost half the volume, pp. 119–199) is called "Nguyen Quoc Viet" on the cover, and "Houang Quoc Viet" in the table of contents. Nguyen Luong Bang is called "Nguyen Liong Bang" on the cover. I don't know whether any changes were made when the volume was reprinted (Paris, Maspero, 1971. 188 pp.). I hope the publisher at least corrected the spelling of the authors' names.

Sophie Quinn-Judge, "Nguyen Ai Quoc in Moscow: Ho Chi Minh's Trail in the Comintern Archives."  Viet Nam Forum no. 14 (1994).

Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years, 1919–1941. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xii, 356 pp.

Sophie Quinn-Judge, "Sex, Lies and Liberation: Women in the Early Vietnamese Communist Movement," in South East Asian Research, November 2001.

Cedric Allen Sampson, "Nationalism and Communism in Vietnam, 1925–1931." Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1975. 392 pp. 75-21694. The generalizations in the abstract look dubious, but the sources look good; this should contain interesting information.

A.A. Sokolov, Komintern i V´etnam: podgotovka V´etnamskikh politicheskikh kadrov v kommunisticheskikh vuzakh SSSR: 20–30-e gody. Moskva: Institut vostokovedeniia, 1998.

Ton That Thien, Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern: Was Ho Chi Minh a nationalist?  Singapore: Information & Resource Center, 1990.  59 pp.

Tran Bach Dang, ed., Mua thu roi, ngay ham ba. 4 vols. Hanoi: Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 1995–96. The growth of the Viet Minh and the August Revolution. Has an appendix containing useful biographical data on some important people in the South.

Trinh Van Thao, Les compagnons de l'oncle Hô: une histoire de l'engagement politique au Viet Nam (1925–1945). Paris: Karthala, forthcoming.

Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xix, 351 pp.

Return to Table of Contents

Next section: North Vietnam

Copyright © 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, Edwin E. Moïse. This document may be reproduced only if this copyright notice is reproduced with it. Revised June 22, 2005.