Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T22:09:16.731Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Early Life in France and Move Back to Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2021

Geoffrey C. Gunn
Affiliation:
Nagasaki University
Get access

Summary

This chapter offers a portrait of the younger Ho Chi Minh, including his family background in Vietnam prior to him setting out on a series of sea journeys that would lead to France. Settling in Paris at the end of World War I, he soon gained local and even international attention by petitioning for Vietnamese autonomy at the Versailles Peace Conference. Through the prism of French police reports, in this chapter we see Ho Chi Minh, now calling himself Nguyen Ai Quoc, immersed in study and networking with a view to exposing the worst excesses of colonialism. He was beginning to distance himself from the Eurocentric preoccupation of French communists, and was persuaded by Lenin's own framing of the colonial and national question. In his early adulthood he published his own newsletter and organized other colonials before making a dramatic exit in the direction of Moscow. There he undertook studious preparation under Communist International auspices ready to launch his revolutionary career, from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (Canton) as it turned out.

Type
Chapter
Information
Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong
Anti-Colonial Networks, Extradition and the Rule of Law
, pp. 51 - 73
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×