Chapter 3 - Résistantes Against the Colonial Order: Women’s Grassroots Diplomacy During the French War in Vietnam (1945-1954)

Summary

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Vietnamese outreach toward Algerian and French women’s activists during the French war in Vietnam, through the prism of the Women’s International Democratic Federation. This Leftist international platform gathered women from colonizing and colonized countries, which allowed for the development of transnational anti-imperialist solidarity. At these meetings, pro-independence Vietnamese women easily connected with Algerian women who were also actively resisting French colonialism. WIDF also created an ideal space for women’s grassroots diplomacy where women from colonized countries confronted French women with their deeply rooted colonial bias. Indeed, Vietnamese and Algerian speeches paved the way for the dismantling of ingrained colonial culture amongst European Leftist women, who consequently further echoed the voices of anti-colonial resisters in their home country.

Keywords: French War in Vietnam, anti-imperialism, Leftist women, women’s internationalism, WIDF

Mothers and spouses from Europe, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, France … who suffered the atrocities committed by the bloodthirsty brutes of Nazism: … If the bloodiest drama could unfold this way in Europe, if the cruelest and barbarous actions could be committed by the most civilized countries of the globe, it is because even before this war, even during peacetime, this barbarity already existed there at a latent state, it has always existed, in real and permanent ways in the colonies.

In December 1945, Duong The Hauh addressed a crowd of women from forty countries at the first Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) meeting in Paris. In her straightforward address, she reached out to European women who were just recovering from the Nazi occupation and violence. Empathizing with the recent ordeal of European women, she nevertheless wanted them to realize that colonies were not yet rid of “barbarity,” which dated back to European colonization. At this peace conference, Duong The Hauh confronted both the victory narrative over barbarity and the exceptionalism of Nazi violence by sharing her own experience of colonialization. To her, the reality of living under French soldiers and administrators’ brutal rule was comparable to French women’s experience of Nazi occupation, a point that strongly resonated with Algerian women. Beyond the shared rejection of colonialism, Algerian and Vietnamese women’s destinies were deeply intertwined considering the great numbers of Algerian soldiers sent to fight in Vietnam.