Phan Boi Chau and The Dong-Du Movement
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PHAN BOI cu-|Zu
http://www.yale.edu/seas/phan%20boi%20chau.pdf
Vietnamese Political Movements in Thailand: Legacy of the Dong-Du Movement. The Vietnamese anti-French movement had built up a connection with Thailand from its early stage in the late nineteenth century....
Phan Boi Chau paid his first visit to Bangkom in 1908, asking the Thai imperial court to allow his colleagues to farm in Thailand. ...
With regard to Cambodia and Laos, Phan Boi Chau was well aware of the strategic importance of Vietnam's western mountainous region for his planned armed resistance agaisnt the French; however, he regarded the people living there as "man di" (barbarians). In addition, geographically he considered the territory of the existing French Indochina, including Cambodia and Laos, the same as the "lost Vietnam," which he wanted to recover. Nonetheless, he had little concern for cambodians and the Laotians. In short, peoplke living in Indochina were not included in his category of "fellow suffering from the same sickess."...
Until the latter part of 1920s, however, Thailand was thus nothing more than a route to South China. This route contributed to strengthen the Vietnamese revolutionary movement's ties with that of China. The Vietnamese nationalists by then, nonetheless, had little concern about other people around them like the Thais, Cambodians and Laotians.
It was the Communists who began to use Thailand not only an escape route but also as a base for political activists... Nguyen Ai Quoc was in Thailand from Autumn 1928 through the end of 1929...
He criticized the Vietnamese revolutionaries who were in Thailand but would not learn the Thai language, as most of the newly arriving members simply regarded Thailand as nothing more than a route to China. Nguyen Ai Quoc stressed the necessity for them to realize that Thailand might become a long-standing base for the Vietnamese revolution of they could gain an understanding of the Thai people. He thus suggested that his comrades study Thai and to make the revolutionary structure take firm root among the Vietnamese settlers who had been in Thailand for a long time...
The French requested the Thais to hand over these "Vietnamese Communists". The Thais detained them for a while but did not hand them over to the French on the ground that they were "Vietnamese Nationalists" and not "Communists"...