The Case Against French Colonization

Ho Chi Minh, President of Vietnam during the Vietnam War, tells what motivated a nation of illiterate peasants to sacrifice millions of their own people to defeat some of the world's most technologically advanced military machines: Japanese, French, and American. Ho explains what the Vietnamese people were angry about in this point-by-point indictment of colonialism written in 1924. For example, Ho writes about a mutiny of Vietnamese sailors when ordered to take Vietnamese infantrymen to fight in Syria, while also detailing Syrian objections to French occupation.