From: knguyen@emr1.emr.ca (Kim Nguyen)
Subject: Re: POL/HIS Some books: Hoang Van Chi
Organization: Energy, Mines, and Resources, Ottawa
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 02:20:38 GMT

In article <9212201708.AA21802@eehp22.cen.uiuc.edu> nguyenxuan@uiuc.edu writes:
>
>
>
>>Date:         Wed, 16 Dec 1992 13:51:00 EST
>>From:         EEMOISE@CLEMSON.BITNET
>>Subject: Re: POL/HIS Some books: Hoang Van Chi
>...
>>Dear Hie^?n
>>
>>     I have read "From Colonialism to Communism" and found it most
>>unreliable.  The mistranslations from "Nhan Dan" are the most
>>famous errors in this book; see pages 210 and 225 of the American
>>edition of the book, where among other things Chi uses the word
>>"executed" in English translations of passages that had not, in
>>the original Vietnamese, mentioned executions (the page numbers
>>would be different in the edition published in India).  Among the
>>other striking errors is the claim on page 163 that the land reform
>>was temporarily halted in late 1954 and early 1955, a period when
>>in fact the program was not halted but accelerated.  In general,
>>I would place no faith in this book.
>>
>>     Could you please provide more details on the publications
>>that Tra^\n Tha'i Linh has sourced?
>>
>>Edwin E. Moise
>>History Department
>>Clemson University
>>EEMOISE@CLEMSON.BITNET
>
>
>Dear Professor Moise:
>
>
>I would like to express my apreciation for your generous comments on a
>large number of publications about the Vietnam war.  However, I beg to
>to differ in a few points.
>
>
>I have no Vietnamese versions of the "Nha^n Da^n" articles to verify how
>inaccurate Mr. Chi was in translating them. He did not quite specify the
>same period of temporary interruption of land reform as you claim he wrote
>in his book. ["...The second campaign was interrupted in 1955 owing to the
>mass exodus of nearly a million people from North to South Vietnam...
>The communists temporarily halted the terror in order to avoid an
>even larger exodus..." (p. 163)]
>
>
>However, I believe Mr. Chi did make errors in writing "From
>Colonialism to Communism".  An example is in pages 95-96 in
>which he described the account of the death of Dr. DDa<.ng Va<n
>Hu*o*'ng in the Land Reform program despite the fact that Dr. Hu*o*'ng
>himself was a minister in the Ho Chi Minh government and his son was
>the famed Colonel DDa<.ng Va<n Vie^.t, who defeated the French in
>the Cao-Ba<'c-La.ng battle in '50.  Chi wrote that it happened in Dr.
>Hu*o*'ng's native village and "it must have been a severe shock
>to him to find himself denounced and beaten as a reactionary, while
>his colleagues in the central government did nothing to intervene.
>Both he and his wife committed suicide after that incident."
>
>
>Actually only his wife committed suicide.  Hu*o*'ng was put in starvation
>and died one day after being released from prison.  No common peasants
>for no reason dared to torture their own high level government official and
>father of their much praised "Tiger of the Colonial Route No 4" who commanded
>the troops that gave France what B. Fall called its greatest colonial
>defeat since the fall of Quebec to the British in 1759.
>It was in fact carried out through an order issued by Ho Chi Minh himself
>because Ho suspected Dr. Hu*o*'ng being a spy after receiving the
>news that Dr. Phan Huy Qua't, one of Hu*o*'ng's sons-in-law, became the
>Minister of Defense in the Bao Dai government.  [Dr. DDa<.ng Ta^m-
>Hu*o*'ng's daughter- said that she later met in Geneva the communist agent
>who conveyed Ho's order to local party members, and had him confirm this story.
>Col. Vie^.t was forced out of the Vietnam People's Army after 1954 and has
>lived in obscure and in poverty since then.  Recently he has been somewhat
>rehabilitated and allowed to publish his memoirs on the war.]
>
>
>Mr. Chi was not a communist.  But he held several important positions
>in the Ho government and knew many inside stories among the Party's high
>level officials.  For example, as a brother-in-law of Nguye^~n So*n's wife,
>Chi gave a  rather informative description of this general who was made
>a hero in the Chinese Communists' Long March and received much admiration
>in the war against the French from his subordinates in the interzone IV [for
>example, see the famous songwriter Pha.m Duy's recent memoirs.] Chi's FCTC
>contains vivid personal accounts that the author himself witnessed or told
>by those who experienced through.  I consider part IV of the book very
>helpful in studying the communists' techniques in "thought struggle."
>Sure, there are shortcommings in this part of FCTC, too.  And the
>same thing can be concluded on  his Vietnamese work "Tra<m Hoa DDua
>No*? Tre^n DDa^'t Ba<'c," which was about the intellectuals' rebellion
>against Ho's regime during the so-called Nha^n Va<n & Giai Pha^?m movement.
>But one can still gain a good knowledge of what really happened in
>North Vietnam right after the Geneva Accord by carefully reading Chi's works,
>and by comparing it with accounts from the many who suffered in that
>period and with works published in Hanoi, especially the recent ones-
>around 1987-1989 when some degree of freedom in the press was given-
>have revealed clearly the terror committed by the communists.
>
>
>Discarding Chi's FCTC for its errors without considering its helpful
>information is a pretty harsh judgment- in my point of view.  Should we
>discard all publications from North Vietnam because as one of the North
>Vietnamese writers, Ms Duong Thu Huong, recently commented: they are allowed
>to carry only half the truth?  How about works by French and American authors?
>To clarify the matter further, let's consider Karnow's "Vietnam: A History",
>which you have nothing to say but praising "quite good".  I'd like to
>have a quick look on chapter 2 - which I wish to choose  since it deals
>with Vietnam's much known past history, thus avoiding any dispute on
>purely political subjects which may be difficult to be judged.
>
>
>P. 47: "Francis Garnier, a heroic French officer, led an attack against the
>Citadel in Hue'.  He was killed..."
> Should be corrected as the Citadel in Hanoi.
>
>
>P. 48: Karnow's note under the sketch of "the City of Cha-Cho" was: "An
>eighteenth-century European view of Tonkin, the northern area of Vietnam."
>That's untrue.  The picture was drawn by a Vietnamese artist in the 17th-
>century.  It was about the city of Ke? Cho*. [the common name of the
>present Hanoi- and was collected by a Vietnamese-Dutch author, Mr. Samuel
>Baron.  Samuel Baron's "A Description of the Kingdom of Tonqueen" was
>written around 1683 and published in Churchill's "A Collection of Voyages
>and Travels" (1732).  All European "factories" ceased to exist in North
>Vietnam in the 18th-centuries, however their presence was clearly noted
>in that sketch.
>
>
>P. 49: Karnow's note on Alexandre de Rhodes: "An accomplished linguist,
>he devised a system, still in use today, to transcribe the Vietnamese
>language in Roman letters instead of Chinese ideographs."
>De Rhodes by himself did not devise the Quo^'c Ngu*~ writing system. It
>was the work by many Jesuit priests who came to Vietnam and mastered the
>native language.  Among them, de Rhodes was not one of the most fluent
>as his manuscripts still preserved in Rome reveal his shortcomings. His
>great achievement was having his works published in Rome including a
>dictionary in which he credited the works for two other Portuguese priests.
>
>
>P. 50: "The port of Faifo, ... was founded by Portuguese merchants..."
>P. 57: "But the first European to plant a durable settlement there was
>Anto^nio Da Faria, who in 1535 found a suitable site for the harbor
>at Faifo..."
>Also in p. 57: "In 1557, the Portuguese built a base at Macao".
>The Portuguese in no doubt founded a settlement in Macao first.  It is
>hard to imagine any port at Faifo in 1535 when the area was probably
>unpopulated.  The first Nguyen lord was assigned to Thua^.n Hoa' (the province
>around Hue^') in 1558.  There is no proof that the Portuguese founded
>Faifo.  Many Japanese and Chinese merchants and immigrants arrived in Faifo
>(and still left many building structures there) at the time Nguyen lords
>developed commerce with foreigners.  It can be said more accurately that
>the Portuguese craft from Macao followed the Chinese and Japanese junks to
>do business in Faifo.
>
>
>P. 57: "They [the Portuguese] labeled the area Cauchichina, deriving
>"Cauchi" from "Giao Chi," the Chinese characters for Vietnam, and adding
>"China" to distinguish it from Cochin, another of their colonies in India."
>The term "CochinChina" and its variations had been used before the
>Portuguese arrived in Vietnam.  The Spaniard priests used it in the 16th-
>century for Vietnam which at that time was limited only to the present
>northern part.  In the 17th-century, it became the European name for
>the land the Nguyen lords controlled which is the present central Vietnam.
>The French colonists used it to call the southern part of Vietnam.
>The term probably originated from the much earlier Persian and Arabian
>"Kawci Min Cin" [see Leonard Aurousseau in BEFEO (1924) for a complete
>discussion.]
>
>P. 59: "The Vietnamese rulers were particularly disturbed by the
>achievement of Alexandre de Rhodes, the seventeenth-century French
>Jesuit who perfected the simplified script quoc ngu ... The innovation
>endangered the traditional Vietnamese structure..."
>Karnow must have extracted the above statement from some French source
>which gave de Rhodes a more important place in history than he deserved.
>He was in fact one of two (or three) Jesuit priests in Macao who voted
>against the use of Vietnamese in baptism.  That explained why he was not
>allowed by his superiors to return to Vietnam during 1630-1640, according
>to Father DDo^~ Quang Tri' in his "Li.ch Su*? Chu*~ Quo^'c Ngu*~" [History
>of the Quoc Ngu Script.]  Karnow might not realize a simple fact that
>Quoc Ngu was taught only to a limited number of missionaries and catechists,
>and indeed in his work, de Rhodes wished that "it might be useful for
>those who would like to come help us preach Jesus Christ in these languages,
>which have been used up to now only to honor the demons."  There is no
>proof that Quoc Ngu was used extensively among the Vietnamese Catholics,
>not considering the entire Vietnamese population in that period!
>
>
>P. 59: " ... the imperior court was never without a contingent of
>Jesuit physicians, astronomers, mathmaticians, and other scholars."
>This is exaggerated, too.  The Vietnamese lords occasionally gave Jesuit
>priests audience because they admired the priests' knowledge in mathematics
>and astronomy.  But  "never without a contingent" is an overstatement. In
>medicine, for example, western science did not achieve much advance yet, and
>Jesuit priests such as de Rhodes and Borri(1631) were thankful for receiving
>medical care from Vietnamese physicians, who they said could cure many
>diseases which European physicians considered hopeless.
>
>
>Pp. 59-60: "Rhodes came to Vietnam under Portuguese tutelage in 1627,
>when he was twenty-eight...  Impressed by his linguistic skills, the
>Jesuit hierarchy assigned Rhodes to Hanoi, where he wooed the northern
>emperor, Trinh Trang,..."
>Rhodes was born in March 13, 1593, and first landed in central
>Vietnam at the end of December, 1624 and stayed there until 1626.
>He arrived in Thanh Hoa, north Vietnam in 1627 and met Lord Trinh Trang
>there- not the Le emperor.
>
>
>P. 62: "After subduing the south, they [the Tay Son brothers] marched
>north, eventually ousting the Trinh rulers and unifying Vietnam for
>the first time in a century."
>Vietnam was never unified by the Tay Son brothers since they were in
>conflict themselves once gaining power and de facto divided the country
>into three separate states.  The credit for Vietnam reunification
>after two centuries of division should be given to Nguyen Anh.
>
>
>P. 63: "On November 28, 1787, Pigneau and the Comte de Montmorin, the
>French foreign minister, signed a treaty...  Vietnam would cede Tourane
>and the island of Poulo Condore to France..."
>Actually, from La Correspondance Generale III (1785-1791),  Article III
>of the treaty was: "... La Roi de la Cochinchine, dans l'attente du
>service important que le Roi Tre`s Chre'tien est dispose'  a` lui rendre,
>lui ce`de e'ventuellement, ansi qu'a` la courone de France, la properie'te'
>absolue et la souverainete' de l'i^le formant le port principal de la
>Cochinchine, appele' Hoi-nan, et par les Europe'ens Touron ..."
>The names in that article were very confusing indeed.  The port which
>the Vietnamese called Hoi-An (Ho^.i An) is Faifo to the Europeans, and
>the port of Danang (DDa` Na<~ng) is Touron (or Tourane).  It was because
>Pigneau had never visited the central part of Vietnam and had an
>inadequate knowledge of the geography of the area.  However, by mentioning
>the "i^le formant le port principal", it had to be refered to Cu` Lao
>Cha`m (Cham island), which is a small island east of Hoi-An (Faifo),
>not the much larger port of Tourane.
>
>
>P. 65: On Pigneau's tomb:  "...Nguyen Anh later built a tomb on the spot...
>The tomb has since disappeared."
>Up to the late 1970s, I believe the tomb was still there under the
>name "La<ng Cha Ca?" [the Mausoleum of the Principle Father].  Unless
>the communist government removed it just like they did to all cemeteries
>in South Vietnam's cities in the '80s.
>
>
>P. 66: On Emperor Minh Mang's character: "A gentle, almost effeminate
>scholar, Minh Mang reinforced the Confucian administration..."
>Minh Mang was effeminate?  Just wonder where Karnow got this information
>from for a man who was known for his callousness, willing to use forces
>to occupy land from Cambodia and Laos or to fight against the Thais,
>having harsh treatment to his subordinates, and using capital punishment
>against his own relatives.  Not counting he had about 150 children ;-)...
>
>
>P. 51 & p. 78:  "Phan Thanh Giang"
> Should be written as "Phan Thanh Gian" or "Phan Thanh Gia?n".
>
>
>P.84: "The humiliated Vietnamese governor, Hong Dieu, hang himself..."
>The correct name is "Hoang Dieu" or "Hoa`ng Die^.u" [in SCV writing style.]
>
>
>P. 85: "In August 1883... "The word 'Vietnam' will be erased from history." "
>I'm suspicious that Francois Harmand really knew and used the term "Vietnam".
>It existed then only in a few correspondence with the Chinese government.
>The official name was "DDa.i Nam" chosen by the Nguyen court since Emperor
>Minh Mang, while the common name for the country was still "Nam" or "An Nam."
>
>
>p.87: "The former ruler [Emperor Ha`m Nghi] betrayed by Hmong mountaineers..."
>Emperor Ha`m Nghi was betrayed by the Mu*o*`ng- a minorities sharing
>the same origin with the Vietnamese.  "Hmong" is a newer name for different
>mountaineers whom were called earlier by the Vietnamese and Chinese as
>"Me`o" or "Mie^u" (cat people) and whom the CIA had good cooperation with
>during the Vietnam War.
>...
>
>
>Still, I think Karnow's work is very informative.  I read it with a
>caution on biased opinions- that's understandable since he relied mostly
>on other western authors' works, on Vietnamese governments' official
>publications in French and in English, and on contact with many high level
>Vietnamese officials through interpreters (one of those turned out to
>be a communist colonel named Phan Xua^n An.)
>
>
>Regards,
>
------

These revelations are incredible. This is one of works-of-art I never see

on this forum. Thanks Mr. Nguyen for your useful research.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese