The Yen Bay Rebellion (1930) and internal security policy in French Indochina

Abstract

The article contents an analysis of the French experience of anti-colonial struggle in the era of Interbellum in the Indochina region. Special attention is devoted to the degree and speed of the response of the French colonial administration and the metropolis to the events taking place. The article presents the characteristics of French military thought regarding the specifics of conducting combat operations against the rebels using aviation and native units. Attention is focused on the problem of the loyalty of the Vietnamese people, their attitude to French rule. The main fears of the French in connection with the growth of Vietnamese national identity as a threat to the colonial order are revealed. The importance of the events in Yen Bai is emphasized from the point of view of further measures by Paris to ensure internal security in the Indochina region. The changes in the national composition of the French colonial army in Indochina are shown. The uprising affected not only the army, but also the political police of France – «Sûreté». The work shows that the uprising did not receive universal support from the local population. The reaction of a part of French society to the events in Yen Bai is analyzed. Special attention is paid to the personality of Pierre Pasquier, Governor-General of Indochina, who personified the conservative part of the French colonial bureaucracy, whose attitude towards local peoples in the Interbellum era rather complicated relations between the metropolis and dependent territories. On the other hand, attention is drawn to the impact of the events in Yen Bai on changes in both the composition and leadership of the driving political force of the revolutionary struggle in Indochina. It was at this time that the National Party of Vietnam lost its leading position in the vanguard of the anti-colonial struggle to the Communist Party of Indochina.