The Yunnan Clique was one of several mutually hostile cliques or factions that split from the Beiyang Government in the Republic of China's warlord era. It was named for Yunnan Province.
Cai E is regarded as the founder of the clique when at the request of Liang Qichao in 1915, he declared Yunnan's opposition to . Cai died from natural causes shortly after the successful National Protection War. His chief lieutenant, Tang Jiyao, took over Yunnan and demanded that the be restored. When this was accomplished, Yunnan officially reunified with the national government but kept its provincial army separate due to the Beiyang Army's grip in Beijing politics.
After the second dissolution of the National Assembly, the Manchu Restoration debacle, and the complete domination of the central government by the Beiyang generals, Yunnan joined several other southern provinces in forming a rival government in Guangzhou during the Constitutional Protection Movement. Tang Jiyao was chosen as one of the seven executives of its ruling committee. Within the committee, there was a power struggle between Sun Yatsen's supporters and the Old Guangxi clique. Tang sided with Sun and helped in the expulsion of the Guangxi executives. In 1921, he was ousted by Gu Pinzhen, whose rule was recognized by Sun. The following year, Gu's army defected back to Tang. Tang sided with Sun again during Chen Jiongming's betrayal. Less than a week after Sun died in 1925, Tang claimed to be his rightful successor and made a move on Guangzhou in a bid to overthrow Hu Hanmin and put himself in charge of the Kuomintang. His forces were routed by Li Zongren during the Yunnan-Guangxi War. Thereafter, Tang joined Chen Jiongming's China Public Interest Party as its vice premier. In 1927, Long Yun seized control of the clique; Tang died shortly after.
Long then re-aligned Yunnan under the Nationalist government in Nanjing but stringently guarded the province's autonomy. Long was a critic of Chiang Kaishek and after the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, he was removed from office.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang
The Vi?t Nam Qu?c D?n ??ng , also known as the Vi?t Qu?c, is the Vietnamese Nationalist Party, a revolutionary political party that sought independence from French colonial rule in Vietnam during the early 20th century. Its origins lie in the mid-1920s, when a group of young Hanoi-based intellectuals began publishing revolutionary material. In 1927, after the publishing house failed because of French harassment and censorship, the VNQDD was formed under the leadership of Nguyen Thai Hoc. Modelling itself on Republic of China's Kuomintang, the VNQDD gained a following among northerners, particularly teachers and intellectuals. The party, which was less successful among peasants and industrial workers, was organised in small clandestine cells.
From 1928, the VNQDD attracted attention through its assassinations of French officials and Vietnamese collaborators. A turning point came in February 1929 with the , a French labour recruiter widely despised by the Vietnamese people. Although the perpetrators' precise affiliation was unclear, the French authorities held the VNQDD responsible. Between 300 and 400 of the party's approximately 1,500 members were detained in the resulting crackdown. Many of the leaders were arrested, but Hoc managed to escape.
In late 1929, the party was weakened by an internal split. Under increasing French pressure, the VNQDD leadership switched tack, replacing a strategy of isolated clandestine attacks against individuals with a plan to expel the French in a single blow with a large-scale popular uprising. After stockpiling home-made weapons, the VNQDD launched on February 10, 1930 at Yen Bai with the aim of sparking a widespread revolt. VNQDD forces combined with disaffected Vietnamese troops, who mutinied against the French colonial army. The mutiny was quickly put down, with heavy French retribution. Hoc and other leading figures were captured and executed and the VNQDD never regained its political strength in the country.
Some remaining factions sought peaceful means of struggle, while other groups fled across the border to Kuomintang bases in the Yunnan province of China, where they received arms and training. During the 1930s, the party was eclipsed by Ho Chi Minh's Indochinese Communist Party . Vietnam was occupied by during World War II and, in the chaos that followed the Japanese surrender in 1945, the VNQDD and the ICP briefly joined forces in the fight for Vietnamese independence. However, after a falling out, Ho purged the VNQDD, leaving his communist-dominated Vietminh unchallenged as the foremost anti-colonial militant organisation. As a part of the post-war settlement that ended the First Indochina War, Vietnam was . The remnants of the VNQDD fled to the anti-communist , where they remained until the Fall of Saigon in 1975 and the reunification of Vietnam under communist rule. Today, the party survives only among overseas Vietnamese.
In late 1925, a small group of young Hanoi-based intellectuals, led by a teacher named Pham Tuan Tai and his brother Pham Tuan Lam, started the Nam Dong Thu Xa . They aimed to promote violent revolution as a means of gaining independence for Vietnam from , and published books and brochures about Sun Yat-sen and the , as well as opening a free school to teach ''quoc ngu'' to the working class. The group soon attracted the support of other progressive young northerners, including students and teachers led by Nguyen Thai Hoc. Hoc was an alumnus of Hanoi's Commercial School, who had been stripped of a scholarship because of his mediocre academic performance.
Harassment and censorship imposed by the French colonial authorities led to the commercial failure of the Nam Dong Thu Xa. By the autumn of 1927, the group's priorities turned towards more direct political action, in a bid to appeal to more radical elements in the north. Membership grew to around 200, distributed among 18 cells in 14 provinces across northern and central Vietnam.
The Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang was formed at a meeting in Hanoi on December 27, 1927, with Nguyen Thai Hoc as the party's first leader. It was Vietnam's first home-grown revolutionary party, established three years before the Indochinese Communist Party. The party advocated socialism, but at the outset there was considerable debate over its other fundamental objectives. Many wanted it to promote worldwide revolution, rather than limiting itself to campaigning for an independent Vietnamese republic; but there were fears that this would lead to accusations of communism, putting off potential Vietnamese supporters who yearned above all for independence. In a bid for moderation, the final statement was a compromise that read:
Although the VNQDD modelled itself on Sun Yat-sen's Chinese Nationalist Party , even down to copying the "Nationalist Party" designation, it had no direct relationship with its Chinese counterpart and in fact did not gain much attention outside Vietnam until the Yen Bai mutiny in 1930. Like the KMT, it was a clandestine organisation held together with tight discipline. Its basic unit was the cell, above which there were several levels of administration, including provincial, regional and central committees. Also like the KMT, the VNQDD's revolutionary strategy envisaged a military takeover, followed by a period of political training for the population before a constitutional government could take control.
Most party members were teachers, employees of the French colonial government or non-commissioned officers in the colonial army. The VNQDD campaigned mainly among these facets of society—there were few workers or peasants in its ranks. The VNQDD admitted many female members, which was quite revolutionary for the time. It set about seeking alliances with other nationalist factions in Vietnam. In a meeting on July 4, 1928, the Central Committee appealed for unity among the Vietnamese revolutionary movements, sending delegates to meet with other organisations struggling for independence. The preliminary contacts did not yield any concrete alliances.
Financial problems compounded the VNQDD's difficulties. Money was needed to set up a commercial enterprise, a cover for the revolutionaries to meet and plot, and for raising funds. For this purpose, a hotel–restaurant named the ''Vietnam Hotel'' was opened in September 1928. The French colonial authorities were aware of the real purpose of the business, and put it under surveillance without taking further preliminary action. The first notable reorganisation of the VNQDD was in December, when Nguyen Khac Nhu replaced Hoc as chairman. Three proto-governmental organs were created, to form the legislative, executive and judicial arms of government. The records of the French secret service estimated that by early 1929, the VNQDD consisted of approximately 1,500 members in 120 cells, mostly in areas around the Red River Delta. The intelligence reported that most members were students, minor merchants or low-level bureaucrats in the French administration. The report stated that there were landlords and wealthy peasants among the members, but that few were of scholar–gentry rank.
Beginning in 1928, the VNQDD attracted substantial Vietnamese support, provoking increased attention from the French colonial administration. This came after a VNQDD death squad killed several French officials and Vietnamese collaborators who had a reputation for cruelty towards the Vietnamese populace.
The assassination of Hanoi-based French labour recruiter Hervé Bazin on February 9, 1929, was a turning point that marked the beginning of the VNQDD's decline. A graduate of the ?cole Colonial in Paris, Bazin directed the recruitment of Vietnamese labourers to work on colonial plantations. Recruiting techniques often included beating or coercion, because the foremen who did the recruiting received a commission for each enlisted worker. On the plantations, living conditions were poor and the remuneration was low, leading to widespread indignation. In response, Vietnamese hatred of Bazin led to thoughts of an assassination. A group of workers approached the VNQDD with a proposal to kill Bazin. Hoc felt that assassinations were pointless because they would only prompt a crackdown by the French ''S?reté'', thereby weakening the party. He felt that it was better to strengthen the party until the time was ripe to overthrow the French, viewing Bazin as a mere twig on the tree of the colonial apparatus.
Turned down by the VNQDD leadership, one of the assassination's proponents—it is unclear whether or not he was a party member—created his own plot. With an accomplice, he shot and killed Bazin on February 9, 1929, as the Frenchman left his 's house. The French attributed the attack to the VNQDD and reacted by apprehending all the party members they could find: between three and four hundred men were rounded up, including 36 government clerks, 13 French government officials, 36 schoolteachers, 39 merchants, 37 landowners and 40 military personnel. The subsequent trials resulted in 78 men being convicted and sentenced to jail terms ranging between five and twenty years. The arrests severely depleted the VNQDD leadership: most of the Central Committee were captured, though Hoc and Nhu were among the few who escaped from a raid on their hideout at the Vietnam Hotel.
In 1929, the VNQDD split when a faction led by Nguyen The Nghiep began to disobey party orders and was therefore expelled from the Central Committee. Some sources claim that Nghiep had formed a breakaway party and had begun secret contacts with French authorities.
Perturbed by those who betrayed fellow members to the French and the problems this behaviour caused, Hoc convened a meeting to tighten regulations in mid-1929 at the village of Lac Dao, along the Gia Lam–Haiphong railway. This was also the occasion for a shift in strategy: Hoc argued for a general uprising, citing rising discontent among Vietnamese soldiers in the colonial army. More moderate party leaders believed this move to be premature, and cautioned against it, but Hoc's stature meant he prevailed in shifting the party's orientation towards violent struggle. The plan was to provoke a series of uprisings at military posts around the Red River Delta in early 1930, where VNQDD forces would join Vietnamese soldiers in an attack on the two major northern cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The leaders agreed to restrict their uprisings to Tonkin, because the party was weak elsewhere.
For the remainder of 1929, the party prepared for the revolt. They located and manufactured weapons, storing them in hidden depots. The preparation was hindered by French police, particularly the seizure of arms caches.
At around 01:30 on Monday, February 10, 1930, approximately 40 troops belonging to the 2nd Battalion of the Fourth ''Régiment de Tirailleurs Tonkinois'' stationed at Yen Bai, reinforced by around 60 civilian members of the VNQDD, attacked their 29 French officers and warrant officers. The rebels had intended to split into three groups: the first group was to infiltrate the infantry, kill French NCOs in their beds and raise support among Vietnamese troops; the second, supported by the VNQDD civilians, was to break into the post headquarters; and the third group would enter the officers' quarters. The French were caught off guard; five were killed and three seriously wounded. The mutineers isolated a few more French officers from their men, even managing to raise the VNQDD flag above one of the buildings. About two hours later, however, it became apparent that the badly-coordinated uprising had failed, and the remaining 550 Vietnamese soldiers helped quell the rebellion rather than participate in it. The insurrectionists had failed to liquidate the ''Garde indigène'' town post and could not convince the frightened townspeople to join them in a general revolt. At 07:30, a French Indochinese counterattack scattered the mutineers; two hours later, order was re-established in Yen Bai.
That same evening, two further insurrectionary attempts failed in the Son Duong sector. A raid on the ''Garde indigène'' post in Hung Hoa was repelled by the Vietnamese guards, who appeared to have been tipped off. In the nearby town of Kinh Khe, VNQDD members killed the instructor Nguyen Quang Kinh and one of his wives. After destroying the ''Garde indigène'' post in Lam Thao, the VNQDD briefly seized control of the district seat. At sunrise, a new ''Garde indigène'' unit arrived and inflicted heavy losses on the insurgents, mortally wounding Nhu. Aware of the events in the upper delta region, Pho Duc Chinh fled and abandoned a planned attack on the Son Tay garrison, but he was captured a few days later by French authorities.
On February 10, a VNQDD member injured a policeman at a Hanoi checkpoint; at night, Arts students threw bombs at government buildings, which they regarded as part of the repressive power of the colonial state. On the night of February 15–16, Hoc and his remaining forces seized the nearby villages of Phu Duc and Vinh Bao, in and Hai Duong Provinces respectively, for a few hours. In the second village, the VNQDD killed the local mandarin of the French colonial government, Tri Huyen. On February 16, French warplanes responded by bombarding the VNQDD's last base at Co Am village; on the same day, Tonkin's Resident Superior René Robin dispatched 200 ''Gardes indigènes'', eight French commanders and two S?reté inspectors. A few further violent incidents occurred until February 22, when Governor-General Pierre Pasquier declared that the insurrection had been defeated. Hoc and his lieutenants, Chinh and Nguyen Thanh Loi, were apprehended.
A series of trials were held to prosecute those arrested during the uprising. The largest number of death penalties was handed down by the first Criminal Commission, which convened at Yen Bai. Among the 87 people found guilty at Yen Bai, 46 were servicemen. Some argued in their own defence that they had been "surprised and forced to take part in the insurrection". Of the 87 convicted, 39 were sentenced to death, five to deportation, 33 to life sentences of forced labour, nine to 20 years imprisonment, and one to five years of forced labour. Of those condemned to death, 24 were civilians and 15 were servicemen. Presidential pardons reduced the number of death penalties from 39 to 13. Hoc and Chinh were among the 13 who were executed on June 17, 1930. The condemned men cried "Viet Nam!" as the guillotine fell. Hoc wrote a final plea to the French, in a letter that claimed that he had always wanted to cooperate with French authorities, but that their intransigence had forced him to revolt. Hoc contended that France could only stay in Indochina if they dropped their "brutal" policies, and became more amiable towards the Vietnamese. The VNQDD leader called for universal education, training in commerce and industry, and an end to the corrupt practices of the French-installed mandarins.
Following Yen Bai, Le Huu Canh—who had tried to stall the failed mutiny—attempted to reunite what remained of the party under the banner of peaceful reform. Other factions, however, remained faithful to Hoc's legacy, recreating the movement in the Hanoi–Haiphong area. A failed assassination attempt on Governor-General Pasquier led to French crackdowns in 1931 and 1932. The survivors escaped to Yunnan in southern China, where some of Nghiep's supporters were still active. The Yunnan VNQDD was in fact a section of the Chinese Kuomintang, who protected its members from the Chinese government while funds were raised by robbery and extortion along the Sino-Vietnamese border. This eventually led to a Chinese government crackdown, but VNQDD members continued to train at the Yunnan Military School; some enlisted in the nationalist Chinese army while others learned to manufacture weapons and munitions in the Yunnan arsenal.
Nghiep was briefly jailed by Yunnan authorities, but continued to run the party from his cell. Upon his release in 1933, Nghiep consolidated the party with similar groups in the area, including some followers of Phan Boi Chau who had formed a -based organisation with similar aims in 1925. Chau's group had formed in opposition to the communist tendencies of Ho Chi Minh's Revolutionary Youth League. With nationalist Chinese aid, Chau's followers had set up a League of Oppressed Oriental Peoples, a Pan-Asian group that ended in failure. In 1932 the League made the point of declaring a "Provisional Indochinese Government" at Canton. In July 1933, Chau's group was integrated into Nghiep's Yunnan organisation. In 1935, Nghiep surrendered to the French consulate in Shanghai. The remainder of the VNQDD was paralysed by infighting and began losing political relevance, with only moderate activity until the outbreak of World War II and in 1940. They attempted to organise workers along the Yunnan railway, threatening occasional border assaults, with little success.
The VNQDD was gradually overshadowed as the leading Vietnamese independence organisation by Ho's Indochinese Communist Party . In 1940, Ho arrived in Yunnan, which was a hotbed of both ICP and VNQDD activity. He initiated collaboration between the ICP and other nationalists such as the VNQDD. At the time, World War II had broken out and Japan had conquered most of eastern China and replaced the French in Vietnam. Ho moved east to the neighbouring province of Guangxi, where Chinese military leaders had been attempting to organise Vietnamese nationalists against the Japanese. The VNQDD had been active in Guangxi and some of their members had joined the KMT army. Under the umbrella of KMT activities, a broad alliance of nationalists emerged. With Ho at the forefront, the was formed and based in the town of Chinghsi. The pro-VNQDD nationalist Ho Ngoc Lam was named as the deputy of Pham Van Dong, later to be Ho's Prime Minister. The front was later broadened and renamed the Viet Nam Giai Phong Dong Minh . The cooperation in the border area lasted for only a few months before VNQDD officials complained to the local KMT officials that the communists, led by Dong and Vo Nguyen Giap, were attempting to dominate the league. This prompted the local authorities to shut down the front's activities.
In August 1945, Ho's Vietminh seized power and set up a provisional government in the wake of Imperial Japan's withdrawal from Vietnam. This move violated a prior agreement between the member parties of the Viet Nam Cach Mang Dong Minh Hoi , which included the VNQDD as well as the Vietminh, and Ho was pressured to broaden his government's appeal by including the VNQDD .
After the seizure of power, hundreds of VNQDD members returned from China, only to be killed at the border by the Vietminh. Nevertheless, the VNQDD arrived in northern Vietnam with arms and supplies from the KMT, in addition to its prestige as a Vietnamese nationalist organisation. Nationalist China backed the VNQDD in the hope of gaining more influence over its southern neighbour. Ho tried to broaden his support in order to strengthen himself, in addition to decreasing Chinese and French power. The VNQDD dominated the main control lines between northern Vietnam and China near Lao Cay. They funded their operations from the tribute that they levied from the local populace. Once the majority of the non-communist nationalists had returned to Vietnam, the VNQDD banded with them to from an anti-Vietminh alliance. Armed confrontations between the Vietminh and the nationalists occurred regularly in major northern cities. Ho scheduled elections for December 23, but he made a deal with the VNQDD and the Dong Minh Hoi, which assured them of 50 and 20 seats in the new national assembly respectively, regardless of the poll results. This only temporarily placated the VNQDD, which continued its skirmishes against the Vietminh. Eventually, Chinese pressure on the VNQDD and the Dong Minh Hoi saw them accept a coalition government, in which Tam served as foreign minister.
The Ho Sainteny agreement, signed on March 6, 1946, saw the return of French colonial forces to Vietnam, replacing the Chinese nationalists who were supposed to be maintaining order. As a result, the VNQDD were further attacked by the French, who often encircled VNQDD strongholds, enabling Vietminh attacks. Giap's army hunted down VNQDD troops and cleared them from the Red River Delta, seizing arms and arresting party members, who were falsely charged with crimes ranging from counterfeiting to unlawful arms possession. The Vietminh massacred thousands of VNQDD members and other nationalists in a large scale purge. Most of the survivors fled to China or French-controlled areas in Vietnam. When the National Assembly convened in Hanoi on October 28, only 30 of the 50 VNQDD seats were filled. Of the 37 VNQDD and Dong Minh Hoi members who turned up, only 20 remained by the end of the session. By the end of the year, Tam had resigned as foreign minister and fled to China, and only one of the three original VNQDD cabinet members was still in office.
After Vietnam gained independence in 1954, the into a communist north and an anti-communist south, but stipulated that there were to be 300 days of free passage between the two zones. During Operation Passage to Freedom, most VNQDD members migrated to the south.
The VNQDD was deeply divided after years of communist pressure, lacked strong leadership and no longer had a military presence. The party's disarray was only exacerbated by the actions of autocratic President Ngo Dinh Diem, who imprisoned many of its members. During the Diem era, the VNQDD were implicated in two failed coup attempts. In November 1960, a paratrooper revolt failed after the mutineers agreed to negotiate, allowing time for loyalists to relieve the president. In 1963, VNQDD leaders Tam and Vu Hong Khanh were among those arrested for their involvement in the plot; Tam committed suicide before the case started, and Khanh was jailed. In February 1962, two Vietnam Air Force pilots, Nguyen Van Cu—son of a prominent VNQDD leader—and Pham Phu Quoc, bombarded the in a bid to kill the president's family, but their targets escaped unharmed. Many VNQDD members were part of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which sought to prevent South Vietnam from being overrun by communists during the Vietnam War.
After the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, the remnants of the VNQDD were again targeted by the victorious communists. Some VNQDD members fled to the , where they continued their political activities. The VNQDD remains respected among some sections of the overseas Vietnamese community as Vietnam's leading anti-communist organisation.
From 1928, the VNQDD attracted attention through its assassinations of French officials and Vietnamese collaborators. A turning point came in February 1929 with the , a French labour recruiter widely despised by the Vietnamese people. Although the perpetrators' precise affiliation was unclear, the French authorities held the VNQDD responsible. Between 300 and 400 of the party's approximately 1,500 members were detained in the resulting crackdown. Many of the leaders were arrested, but Hoc managed to escape.
In late 1929, the party was weakened by an internal split. Under increasing French pressure, the VNQDD leadership switched tack, replacing a strategy of isolated clandestine attacks against individuals with a plan to expel the French in a single blow with a large-scale popular uprising. After stockpiling home-made weapons, the VNQDD launched on February 10, 1930 at Yen Bai with the aim of sparking a widespread revolt. VNQDD forces combined with disaffected Vietnamese troops, who mutinied against the French colonial army. The mutiny was quickly put down, with heavy French retribution. Hoc and other leading figures were captured and executed and the VNQDD never regained its political strength in the country.
Some remaining factions sought peaceful means of struggle, while other groups fled across the border to Kuomintang bases in the Yunnan province of China, where they received arms and training. During the 1930s, the party was eclipsed by Ho Chi Minh's Indochinese Communist Party . Vietnam was occupied by during World War II and, in the chaos that followed the Japanese surrender in 1945, the VNQDD and the ICP briefly joined forces in the fight for Vietnamese independence. However, after a falling out, Ho purged the VNQDD, leaving his communist-dominated Vietminh unchallenged as the foremost anti-colonial militant organisation. As a part of the post-war settlement that ended the First Indochina War, Vietnam was . The remnants of the VNQDD fled to the anti-communist , where they remained until the Fall of Saigon in 1975 and the reunification of Vietnam under communist rule. Today, the party survives only among overseas Vietnamese.
Origins
In late 1925, a small group of young Hanoi-based intellectuals, led by a teacher named Pham Tuan Tai and his brother Pham Tuan Lam, started the Nam Dong Thu Xa . They aimed to promote violent revolution as a means of gaining independence for Vietnam from , and published books and brochures about Sun Yat-sen and the , as well as opening a free school to teach ''quoc ngu'' to the working class. The group soon attracted the support of other progressive young northerners, including students and teachers led by Nguyen Thai Hoc. Hoc was an alumnus of Hanoi's Commercial School, who had been stripped of a scholarship because of his mediocre academic performance.
Harassment and censorship imposed by the French colonial authorities led to the commercial failure of the Nam Dong Thu Xa. By the autumn of 1927, the group's priorities turned towards more direct political action, in a bid to appeal to more radical elements in the north. Membership grew to around 200, distributed among 18 cells in 14 provinces across northern and central Vietnam.
Formation
The Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang was formed at a meeting in Hanoi on December 27, 1927, with Nguyen Thai Hoc as the party's first leader. It was Vietnam's first home-grown revolutionary party, established three years before the Indochinese Communist Party. The party advocated socialism, but at the outset there was considerable debate over its other fundamental objectives. Many wanted it to promote worldwide revolution, rather than limiting itself to campaigning for an independent Vietnamese republic; but there were fears that this would lead to accusations of communism, putting off potential Vietnamese supporters who yearned above all for independence. In a bid for moderation, the final statement was a compromise that read:
Although the VNQDD modelled itself on Sun Yat-sen's Chinese Nationalist Party , even down to copying the "Nationalist Party" designation, it had no direct relationship with its Chinese counterpart and in fact did not gain much attention outside Vietnam until the Yen Bai mutiny in 1930. Like the KMT, it was a clandestine organisation held together with tight discipline. Its basic unit was the cell, above which there were several levels of administration, including provincial, regional and central committees. Also like the KMT, the VNQDD's revolutionary strategy envisaged a military takeover, followed by a period of political training for the population before a constitutional government could take control.
Most party members were teachers, employees of the French colonial government or non-commissioned officers in the colonial army. The VNQDD campaigned mainly among these facets of society—there were few workers or peasants in its ranks. The VNQDD admitted many female members, which was quite revolutionary for the time. It set about seeking alliances with other nationalist factions in Vietnam. In a meeting on July 4, 1928, the Central Committee appealed for unity among the Vietnamese revolutionary movements, sending delegates to meet with other organisations struggling for independence. The preliminary contacts did not yield any concrete alliances.
Initial activities
Financial problems compounded the VNQDD's difficulties. Money was needed to set up a commercial enterprise, a cover for the revolutionaries to meet and plot, and for raising funds. For this purpose, a hotel–restaurant named the ''Vietnam Hotel'' was opened in September 1928. The French colonial authorities were aware of the real purpose of the business, and put it under surveillance without taking further preliminary action. The first notable reorganisation of the VNQDD was in December, when Nguyen Khac Nhu replaced Hoc as chairman. Three proto-governmental organs were created, to form the legislative, executive and judicial arms of government. The records of the French secret service estimated that by early 1929, the VNQDD consisted of approximately 1,500 members in 120 cells, mostly in areas around the Red River Delta. The intelligence reported that most members were students, minor merchants or low-level bureaucrats in the French administration. The report stated that there were landlords and wealthy peasants among the members, but that few were of scholar–gentry rank.
Beginning in 1928, the VNQDD attracted substantial Vietnamese support, provoking increased attention from the French colonial administration. This came after a VNQDD death squad killed several French officials and Vietnamese collaborators who had a reputation for cruelty towards the Vietnamese populace.
Assassination of Bazin
The assassination of Hanoi-based French labour recruiter Hervé Bazin on February 9, 1929, was a turning point that marked the beginning of the VNQDD's decline. A graduate of the ?cole Colonial in Paris, Bazin directed the recruitment of Vietnamese labourers to work on colonial plantations. Recruiting techniques often included beating or coercion, because the foremen who did the recruiting received a commission for each enlisted worker. On the plantations, living conditions were poor and the remuneration was low, leading to widespread indignation. In response, Vietnamese hatred of Bazin led to thoughts of an assassination. A group of workers approached the VNQDD with a proposal to kill Bazin. Hoc felt that assassinations were pointless because they would only prompt a crackdown by the French ''S?reté'', thereby weakening the party. He felt that it was better to strengthen the party until the time was ripe to overthrow the French, viewing Bazin as a mere twig on the tree of the colonial apparatus.
Turned down by the VNQDD leadership, one of the assassination's proponents—it is unclear whether or not he was a party member—created his own plot. With an accomplice, he shot and killed Bazin on February 9, 1929, as the Frenchman left his 's house. The French attributed the attack to the VNQDD and reacted by apprehending all the party members they could find: between three and four hundred men were rounded up, including 36 government clerks, 13 French government officials, 36 schoolteachers, 39 merchants, 37 landowners and 40 military personnel. The subsequent trials resulted in 78 men being convicted and sentenced to jail terms ranging between five and twenty years. The arrests severely depleted the VNQDD leadership: most of the Central Committee were captured, though Hoc and Nhu were among the few who escaped from a raid on their hideout at the Vietnam Hotel.
Internal split and change in strategy
In 1929, the VNQDD split when a faction led by Nguyen The Nghiep began to disobey party orders and was therefore expelled from the Central Committee. Some sources claim that Nghiep had formed a breakaway party and had begun secret contacts with French authorities.
Perturbed by those who betrayed fellow members to the French and the problems this behaviour caused, Hoc convened a meeting to tighten regulations in mid-1929 at the village of Lac Dao, along the Gia Lam–Haiphong railway. This was also the occasion for a shift in strategy: Hoc argued for a general uprising, citing rising discontent among Vietnamese soldiers in the colonial army. More moderate party leaders believed this move to be premature, and cautioned against it, but Hoc's stature meant he prevailed in shifting the party's orientation towards violent struggle. The plan was to provoke a series of uprisings at military posts around the Red River Delta in early 1930, where VNQDD forces would join Vietnamese soldiers in an attack on the two major northern cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The leaders agreed to restrict their uprisings to Tonkin, because the party was weak elsewhere.
For the remainder of 1929, the party prepared for the revolt. They located and manufactured weapons, storing them in hidden depots. The preparation was hindered by French police, particularly the seizure of arms caches.
Yen Bai mutiny
At around 01:30 on Monday, February 10, 1930, approximately 40 troops belonging to the 2nd Battalion of the Fourth ''Régiment de Tirailleurs Tonkinois'' stationed at Yen Bai, reinforced by around 60 civilian members of the VNQDD, attacked their 29 French officers and warrant officers. The rebels had intended to split into three groups: the first group was to infiltrate the infantry, kill French NCOs in their beds and raise support among Vietnamese troops; the second, supported by the VNQDD civilians, was to break into the post headquarters; and the third group would enter the officers' quarters. The French were caught off guard; five were killed and three seriously wounded. The mutineers isolated a few more French officers from their men, even managing to raise the VNQDD flag above one of the buildings. About two hours later, however, it became apparent that the badly-coordinated uprising had failed, and the remaining 550 Vietnamese soldiers helped quell the rebellion rather than participate in it. The insurrectionists had failed to liquidate the ''Garde indigène'' town post and could not convince the frightened townspeople to join them in a general revolt. At 07:30, a French Indochinese counterattack scattered the mutineers; two hours later, order was re-established in Yen Bai.
That same evening, two further insurrectionary attempts failed in the Son Duong sector. A raid on the ''Garde indigène'' post in Hung Hoa was repelled by the Vietnamese guards, who appeared to have been tipped off. In the nearby town of Kinh Khe, VNQDD members killed the instructor Nguyen Quang Kinh and one of his wives. After destroying the ''Garde indigène'' post in Lam Thao, the VNQDD briefly seized control of the district seat. At sunrise, a new ''Garde indigène'' unit arrived and inflicted heavy losses on the insurgents, mortally wounding Nhu. Aware of the events in the upper delta region, Pho Duc Chinh fled and abandoned a planned attack on the Son Tay garrison, but he was captured a few days later by French authorities.
On February 10, a VNQDD member injured a policeman at a Hanoi checkpoint; at night, Arts students threw bombs at government buildings, which they regarded as part of the repressive power of the colonial state. On the night of February 15–16, Hoc and his remaining forces seized the nearby villages of Phu Duc and Vinh Bao, in and Hai Duong Provinces respectively, for a few hours. In the second village, the VNQDD killed the local mandarin of the French colonial government, Tri Huyen. On February 16, French warplanes responded by bombarding the VNQDD's last base at Co Am village; on the same day, Tonkin's Resident Superior René Robin dispatched 200 ''Gardes indigènes'', eight French commanders and two S?reté inspectors. A few further violent incidents occurred until February 22, when Governor-General Pierre Pasquier declared that the insurrection had been defeated. Hoc and his lieutenants, Chinh and Nguyen Thanh Loi, were apprehended.
A series of trials were held to prosecute those arrested during the uprising. The largest number of death penalties was handed down by the first Criminal Commission, which convened at Yen Bai. Among the 87 people found guilty at Yen Bai, 46 were servicemen. Some argued in their own defence that they had been "surprised and forced to take part in the insurrection". Of the 87 convicted, 39 were sentenced to death, five to deportation, 33 to life sentences of forced labour, nine to 20 years imprisonment, and one to five years of forced labour. Of those condemned to death, 24 were civilians and 15 were servicemen. Presidential pardons reduced the number of death penalties from 39 to 13. Hoc and Chinh were among the 13 who were executed on June 17, 1930. The condemned men cried "Viet Nam!" as the guillotine fell. Hoc wrote a final plea to the French, in a letter that claimed that he had always wanted to cooperate with French authorities, but that their intransigence had forced him to revolt. Hoc contended that France could only stay in Indochina if they dropped their "brutal" policies, and became more amiable towards the Vietnamese. The VNQDD leader called for universal education, training in commerce and industry, and an end to the corrupt practices of the French-installed mandarins.
Exile in Yunnan
Following Yen Bai, Le Huu Canh—who had tried to stall the failed mutiny—attempted to reunite what remained of the party under the banner of peaceful reform. Other factions, however, remained faithful to Hoc's legacy, recreating the movement in the Hanoi–Haiphong area. A failed assassination attempt on Governor-General Pasquier led to French crackdowns in 1931 and 1932. The survivors escaped to Yunnan in southern China, where some of Nghiep's supporters were still active. The Yunnan VNQDD was in fact a section of the Chinese Kuomintang, who protected its members from the Chinese government while funds were raised by robbery and extortion along the Sino-Vietnamese border. This eventually led to a Chinese government crackdown, but VNQDD members continued to train at the Yunnan Military School; some enlisted in the nationalist Chinese army while others learned to manufacture weapons and munitions in the Yunnan arsenal.
Nghiep was briefly jailed by Yunnan authorities, but continued to run the party from his cell. Upon his release in 1933, Nghiep consolidated the party with similar groups in the area, including some followers of Phan Boi Chau who had formed a -based organisation with similar aims in 1925. Chau's group had formed in opposition to the communist tendencies of Ho Chi Minh's Revolutionary Youth League. With nationalist Chinese aid, Chau's followers had set up a League of Oppressed Oriental Peoples, a Pan-Asian group that ended in failure. In 1932 the League made the point of declaring a "Provisional Indochinese Government" at Canton. In July 1933, Chau's group was integrated into Nghiep's Yunnan organisation. In 1935, Nghiep surrendered to the French consulate in Shanghai. The remainder of the VNQDD was paralysed by infighting and began losing political relevance, with only moderate activity until the outbreak of World War II and in 1940. They attempted to organise workers along the Yunnan railway, threatening occasional border assaults, with little success.
The VNQDD was gradually overshadowed as the leading Vietnamese independence organisation by Ho's Indochinese Communist Party . In 1940, Ho arrived in Yunnan, which was a hotbed of both ICP and VNQDD activity. He initiated collaboration between the ICP and other nationalists such as the VNQDD. At the time, World War II had broken out and Japan had conquered most of eastern China and replaced the French in Vietnam. Ho moved east to the neighbouring province of Guangxi, where Chinese military leaders had been attempting to organise Vietnamese nationalists against the Japanese. The VNQDD had been active in Guangxi and some of their members had joined the KMT army. Under the umbrella of KMT activities, a broad alliance of nationalists emerged. With Ho at the forefront, the was formed and based in the town of Chinghsi. The pro-VNQDD nationalist Ho Ngoc Lam was named as the deputy of Pham Van Dong, later to be Ho's Prime Minister. The front was later broadened and renamed the Viet Nam Giai Phong Dong Minh . The cooperation in the border area lasted for only a few months before VNQDD officials complained to the local KMT officials that the communists, led by Dong and Vo Nguyen Giap, were attempting to dominate the league. This prompted the local authorities to shut down the front's activities.
Post World War II
In August 1945, Ho's Vietminh seized power and set up a provisional government in the wake of Imperial Japan's withdrawal from Vietnam. This move violated a prior agreement between the member parties of the Viet Nam Cach Mang Dong Minh Hoi , which included the VNQDD as well as the Vietminh, and Ho was pressured to broaden his government's appeal by including the VNQDD .
After the seizure of power, hundreds of VNQDD members returned from China, only to be killed at the border by the Vietminh. Nevertheless, the VNQDD arrived in northern Vietnam with arms and supplies from the KMT, in addition to its prestige as a Vietnamese nationalist organisation. Nationalist China backed the VNQDD in the hope of gaining more influence over its southern neighbour. Ho tried to broaden his support in order to strengthen himself, in addition to decreasing Chinese and French power. The VNQDD dominated the main control lines between northern Vietnam and China near Lao Cay. They funded their operations from the tribute that they levied from the local populace. Once the majority of the non-communist nationalists had returned to Vietnam, the VNQDD banded with them to from an anti-Vietminh alliance. Armed confrontations between the Vietminh and the nationalists occurred regularly in major northern cities. Ho scheduled elections for December 23, but he made a deal with the VNQDD and the Dong Minh Hoi, which assured them of 50 and 20 seats in the new national assembly respectively, regardless of the poll results. This only temporarily placated the VNQDD, which continued its skirmishes against the Vietminh. Eventually, Chinese pressure on the VNQDD and the Dong Minh Hoi saw them accept a coalition government, in which Tam served as foreign minister.
War against French colonial rule
The Ho Sainteny agreement, signed on March 6, 1946, saw the return of French colonial forces to Vietnam, replacing the Chinese nationalists who were supposed to be maintaining order. As a result, the VNQDD were further attacked by the French, who often encircled VNQDD strongholds, enabling Vietminh attacks. Giap's army hunted down VNQDD troops and cleared them from the Red River Delta, seizing arms and arresting party members, who were falsely charged with crimes ranging from counterfeiting to unlawful arms possession. The Vietminh massacred thousands of VNQDD members and other nationalists in a large scale purge. Most of the survivors fled to China or French-controlled areas in Vietnam. When the National Assembly convened in Hanoi on October 28, only 30 of the 50 VNQDD seats were filled. Of the 37 VNQDD and Dong Minh Hoi members who turned up, only 20 remained by the end of the session. By the end of the year, Tam had resigned as foreign minister and fled to China, and only one of the three original VNQDD cabinet members was still in office.
Post-independence
After Vietnam gained independence in 1954, the into a communist north and an anti-communist south, but stipulated that there were to be 300 days of free passage between the two zones. During Operation Passage to Freedom, most VNQDD members migrated to the south.
The VNQDD was deeply divided after years of communist pressure, lacked strong leadership and no longer had a military presence. The party's disarray was only exacerbated by the actions of autocratic President Ngo Dinh Diem, who imprisoned many of its members. During the Diem era, the VNQDD were implicated in two failed coup attempts. In November 1960, a paratrooper revolt failed after the mutineers agreed to negotiate, allowing time for loyalists to relieve the president. In 1963, VNQDD leaders Tam and Vu Hong Khanh were among those arrested for their involvement in the plot; Tam committed suicide before the case started, and Khanh was jailed. In February 1962, two Vietnam Air Force pilots, Nguyen Van Cu—son of a prominent VNQDD leader—and Pham Phu Quoc, bombarded the in a bid to kill the president's family, but their targets escaped unharmed. Many VNQDD members were part of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which sought to prevent South Vietnam from being overrun by communists during the Vietnam War.
After the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, the remnants of the VNQDD were again targeted by the victorious communists. Some VNQDD members fled to the , where they continued their political activities. The VNQDD remains respected among some sections of the overseas Vietnamese community as Vietnam's leading anti-communist organisation.
Siege of Tuyen Quang
The Siege of Tuyen Quang was an epic confrontation between the French and the Chinese armies in Tonkin during the Sino-French War . A French garrison of 630 men, including two companies of the French Foreign Legion, successfully defended the French post of Tuyen Quang against vastly-superior Chinese forces in a four-month siege from 24 November 1884 to 3 March 1885. 'Tuyen Quang 1885' remains one of the Legion's proudest battle honours.
The French installed a post at Tuyen Quang in June 1884, in the wake of their capture of Hung Hoa and Thai Nguyen. Tuyen Quang, an isolated settlement on the Clear River, was the most westerly French outpost in Tonkin, and was 80 kilometres from the nearest French post at Phu Doan. During the summer and autumn of 1884 it was garrisoned by two companies of the 1st Battalion, 1st Foreign Legion Regiment , under the command of ''chef de bataillon'' Frauger. The outbreak of the Sino-French War on 23 August 1884 exposed the post to attack by Tang Jingsong's Yunnan Army and Liu Yongfu’s Black Flags. Supply difficulties delayed the Chinese concentration around Tuyen Quang, but advance elements of the Yunnan Army began to harass the post in October 1884, and Frauger's garrison had to fight off a number of nuisance attacks by the Chinese. Malaria had also taken a heavy toll of Frauger's men, and by the end of October 170 men out of the garrison's total strength of 550 men were unfit for duty.
In November 1884 General Louis Brière de l'Isle, the commander of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, took steps to resupply and reinforce Hung Hoa, Thai Nguyen and Tuyen Quang. On 19 November a column making for Tuyen Quang under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Duchesne was ambushed in the Yu Oc gorge by the Black Flags but was able to fight its way through to the beleaguered post. Frauger and his men were relieved, and replaced by a fresh garrison of 400 legionnaires and 160 Tonkinese riflemen under the command of ''chef de bataillon'' Marc-Edmond Dominé of the 2nd African Light Infantry Battalion. Duchesne left Tuyen Quang on 23 November, and on the following day Dominé formally declared Tuyen Quang to be in a state of siege. The siege of Tuyen Quan would last for just over four months.
The new garrison of Tuyen Quang, just under 630 men strong, consisted of two companies of the 1st Battalion, 1st Foreign Legion Regiment under the overall command of Captain Cattelin, a company of riflemen under the command of the French marine infantry officer Captain Dia, a scratch battery of six light cannon and small engineering and field hospital detachments. The garrison was supported by the Farcy gunboat ''Mitrailleuse'' , at anchor in the Clear River close to the French post.
The Chinese army besieging Tuyen Quang was under the overall command of Tang Jingsong . The Chinese forces consisted of 9,000 men of the Yunnan Army and 3,000 men of Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army. The Yunnan Army forces were divided into two divisions, commanded by Tang's lieutenants Ding Huai and He Xiulin .
The French fortress at Tuyen Quang was typical of the small, remote outposts of France’s colonial empire. Lying on the western bank of the Clear River next to the Tonkinese village of Tuyen Quang, it consisted of a square masonry citadel, each of whose walls was 300 yards long. Inside the citadel’s perimeter were several barrack buildings, a lake and a large earthen mound in the shape of a sugar loaf. This hill, which looked just like a natural formation, took the place at Tuyen Quang of the tower traditionally found in Tonkinese citadels.
The citadel was overlooked by a number of wooded hills, which the Chinese were bound to occupy. There was little Dominé could do to stop Chinese snipers from using these hills to fire down into the citadel, but he could at least delay the main enemy assault by building outworks to keep the Chinese at a respectable distance from the main perimeter. Accordingly, he had a blockhouse built on a hill 300 metres to the south of the citadel, which was occupied by a strong force of legionnaires. He also built a separate defensive perimeter to the southeast of Tuyen Quang which was occupied by Captain Dia and his company of Tonkinese riflemen. This position, centred on a fortifed pagoda on the river bank, was christened ‘Little Gibraltar’. These positions could be evacuated if necessary, and as long as they held they would severely limit the pressure the Chinese could exert on the fortress itself.
In November 1884 the Yunnan Army gradually advanced down the Red River from Lao Cai towards Tuyen Quang, building a chain of entrenched camps at Pho En, Man Lanh, Ao Loc, Van Kieng and Son Long. In December the Chinese built three enormous fortified camps as bases for the siege of Tuyen Quang, at Thanh Quan, Ca Lanh and Phu An Binh. For much of this period the only enemy troops around Tuyen Quang were Liu Yongfu's Black Flags and an advance guard of the Yunnan Army under Tang Jingsong's personal command . The Chinese investment of the French post only began to bite in the second half of December. By the beginning of January 1885 the Chinese had 4,000 men facing the French at Tuyen Quang, 5,000 men protecting their long and vulnerable supply line back to Lao Cai, and 3,000 men deployed between Tuyen Quang and Phu Doan, who were busy fortifying a strong blocking position at Hoa Moc. The besiegers gradually drew their lines closely around the French post at Tuyen Quang, occupying the villages of Phu An Binh, Dong Yen and Ya Ho to the west of the fortress and Yla, Ung Di and Truong Mu to the northwest.
On 31 December 1884 the Chinese launched an initial attack, which was repelled with losses. They attacked again on 10 January and 26 January 1885, but with no more success. But at the same time they had diverted more than 1,000 men to work on digging saps, to approach the walls of the fortress from the southwest and the north simultaneously. On 27 January their trenches were less than 1,000 metres from the French walls, and they began to sap towards the blockhouse. Its communications with the citadel were threatened, and it had to be abandoned on 30 January. The guns which Dominé had at his disposal were of too low a calibre to do any serious damage to the enemy trenches.
The Chinese converted the abandoned French blockhouse into a fortified position for a battery of four cannon and drew their encirclement of the French post closer. From then on, attacks were made on the French positions almost daily and the defenders were subjected to an almost continual barrage of cannon, mortar and rifle fire from all sides. The French did what they could to respond. Dominé posted 25 crack Legion marksmen on the citadel's watchtowers with orders to fire at Chinese soldiers working as labourers on the approach saps in order to disrupt the progress of the Chinese siege works. The Legion snipers normally took nine or ten victims a day, and by the end of the siege estimated that they had accounted for over 700 enemy soldiers. Occasionally Dominé brought his own artillery into play, and the gunboat ''Mitrailleuse'' harassed the Chinese positions on the Clear River with Hotchkiss fire. The Chinese responded by deploying their own snipers on hill positions around the French post. They rarely hit their targets, but the weight of plunging fire they were able to bring to bear severely restricted movement inside the fortress.
Having successfully forced the French from the outlying blockhouse by siege tactics, the Chinese sapped relentlessly towards the French perimeter wall. If they could mine the walls and collapse sections of the defence perimeter, they could assault with superior numbers across open breaches. The Chinese intentions were obvious, and the French engineering sergeant Jules Bobillot did his best to frustrate them. Both the French and the Chinese feverishly dug galleries and counter-galleries. On 11 February a pick-axe blow severed the membrane which separated a French from a Chinese miner, and an underground revolver fight took place. The French tried vainly to flood the Chinese saps, which were lower than theirs. On the evening of 12 February the first Chinese mine was exploded beneath the perimeter wall, but its effect was weakened by the counter-galleries and a subsequent Chinese assault was repelled with heavy losses.
Another mine, which exploded on 13 February, made a 15-metre breach in the southwest wall of the citadel. Captain Moulinay rushed to the threatened point with his company, halted an enemy attack, and threw the assailants back to their forward trenches. The body of a French legionnaire was thrown onto the enemy parapets by the force of the explosion, and on the following night Corporal Beulin of the Legion took a party of three soldiers to go out into no-man's-land and recover it.
On 17 February the Chinese brought up fresh guns, and the bombardment now continued without a pause. Most of the buildings became uninhabitable, and the French had to abandon them and live in foxholes. Supplies of cigarettes had by now run out, trying the defenders' nerves still further. Sleep became increasingly difficult, and in daytime most French soldiers not on duty at the perimeter wall were busy digging additional inner defences. Dominé had a redoubt built in the southeast corner of the fortress, where a final stand could be made if the Chinese carried the perimeter walls by assault.
At 7 a.m. on 22 February the Chinese delivered their fourth assault. After exploding a mine and making a feint attack to draw the defenders onto the breach, they exploded a second mine under them which killed 12 legionnaires and wounded 20 more. Captain Moulinay, the ranking officer, and 2nd Lieutenant Vincent were both killed in the explosion. The Chinese then charged across the open breach. They were thrown back by a countercharge led by Commandant Dominé in person. Meanwhile, the Chinese exploded a third mine under another section of the perimeter which collapsed almost 60 yards of wall. This explosion was the signal for a Chinese general assault. Hundreds of Chinese soldiers poured out of their trenches and advanced towards the two gaping breaches in the French defences, but the French had now recovered from the shock of the second mine, and drove them back with relative ease.
A fifth Chinese assault was delivered on 24 February, and a sixth on 25 February. Like their predecessors, both assaults were decisively repulsed. But although the garrison had beaten off six attempts to storm its positions, it had lost over a third of its strength sustaining a heroic defence against overwhelming odds. By the end of February it was clear that Tuyen Quang would fall unless it was relieved immediately.
During January and February 1885 the besiegers were able to place enormous pressure on the garrison because the bulk of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps was committed to the Lang Son Campaign . However, the capture of Lang Son on 13 February 1885 allowed the French to come to the relief of Tuyen Quang.
General Brière de l’Isle personally led Lieutenant-Colonel Laurent Giovanninelli's 1st Brigade back to Hanoi, and then upriver to the relief of Tuyen Quang. The brigade, reinforced at Phu Doan on 24 February by a small column from Hung Hoa under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel de Maussion, found the route to Tuyen Quang blocked by a strong Chinese defensive position at Hoa Moc.
On 2 March 1885 Giovanninelli attacked the left flank of the Chinese defensive line. The Battle of Hoa Moc was the most fiercely-fought action of the Sino-French War. Two French assaults were decisively repulsed, and although the French eventually stormed the Chinese positions, they suffered very high casualties. Nevertheless, their costly victory cleared the way to Tuyen Quang. The Yunnan Army and the Black Flags raised the siege and drew off to the west, and the relieving force entered the beleaguered post on the afternoon of 3 March.
Three days earlier, on 28 February, the Chinese had made a seventh and final assault on the Tuyen Quang perimeter. Knowing that the relief column was close and that it would be their last chance to capture the post, the Chinese attacked with fanatical courage but once again failed to force the breach. On 2 March the men of the Tuyen Quang garrison listened anxiously to the sounds of rifle and cannon fire from the Yu Oc gorge, where the 1st Brigade was fighting to break through to the beleaguered post. Hopes of relief faded as the sounds of battle continued well into the night. It seemed all too likely that Giovanninelli's men had been halted by the Black Flags.
On the morning of 3 March, to their amazement, the defenders awoke to find that the Chinese had abandoned the siege. Dominé sent out fighting patrols to scout the enemy trenches. The last French fatality of the siege was suffered during a skirmish with a small Chinese rearguard. Legionnaire Striebler saw a Chinese soldier sighting on Captain de Borelli and threw himself between the two men. Striebler was killed instantly by the bullet intended for his captain. The incident, unsurprisingly, haunted de Borelli for the rest of his life. Several years later he made what amends he could by publishing a moving poem to the fellowship of the French Foreign Legion, ''A mes hommes qui sont morts''.
The arrival of the relief column on the afternoon of 3 March was greeted with jubilation by the defenders. Captain Jean-Fran?ois-Alphonse Lecomte, who had marched with Giovanninelli's brigade, recorded the encounter between Captain de Borelli and General Brière de l'Isle:
We approached the fortress. At the head of a group of officers we saw a captain with a long white beard, who was flourishing his cane and dancing an impromptu jig. The first man he met in the relief column was a bugler. He threw his arms around him. Then he embraced the second bugler. The band tried to keep its dignity, but to no avail. He then abandoned the buglers and fell on the neck of the first drummer. For a moment the drum stood between him and the object of his affections, but eventually he managed to plant two loud kisses on the drummer’s cheeks. Then he made for the general-in-chief. There was a sudden hush, as when an orchestra falls silent at the end of a dance. He recovered himself, solemnly clicked his heels, and saluted General Brière de l’Isle. We recognised Captain de Borelli.
‘Good afternoon, Captain, how are you? We’re delighted to see you!’
‘Indeed! Me too! Especially as I only just escaped being killed this morning!’
The casualties of the Tuyen Quang garrison during the siege were 50 dead and 224 wounded. The dead included the engineering sergeant Jules Bobillot, whose energetic countermeasures had delayed the progress of the Chinese siege works. Bobillot became a national hero in France after his death, and streets in many French towns and villages still bear his name. Casualties in Giovanninelli's 1st Brigade at the Battle of Hoa Moc were 76 dead and 408 wounded.
The Chinese and Black Flags are believed to have suffered casualties of around 1,000 dead and 2,000 wounded during the siege of Tuyen Quang and the battle of Hoa Moc. The dead included two senior Chinese officers: the general Liu Jiegao , shot dead while leading a charge during the fourth Chinese assault on 22 February, and Tan Jingde , one of Tang Jingsong’s battalion commanders, who was also killed while leading an assault.
In France, the defence of Tuyen Quang became the defining image of the Sino-French War. Dominé's day-by-day diary of the siege was published in full in the ''Journal officiel'', and an order of the day issued by Brière de l'Isle to the men of the Tuyen Quang garrison on 4 March 1885 enjoyed instant celebrity:
Under the orders of your gallant commander ''chef de bataillon'' Dominé, you 600 men held off an entire army for 36 days, in a small outpost overlooked from all sides.
You victoriously repelled seven assaults. One man in every three of you and nearly all your officers were scorched by mines or struck by Chinese bullets and shells; but the bodies of the enemy still choke the three breaches vainly made in your defences.
Today, you enjoy the admiration of the brave soldiers who have relieved you at the cost of so much hardship and bloodshed. Tomorrow, all France will applaud you.
Furthermore, you will all be able to say with pride: 'I served in the Tuyen Quang garrison; I was on the gunboat ''Mitrailleuse''.'
The defence of Tuyen Quang holds a place second only to the Battle of Camerone in the roll of battle honours of the Foreign Legion, and is commemorated in the first verse of ''Le Boudin'', the Legion's celebrated marching song: ''Au Tonkin, la Légion immortelle à Tuyen-Quan illustra notre drapeau'' .
The siege also reflected credit on Tang Jingsong's generalship and the professional skills of the Yunnan Army. The Yunnan Army contained a large number of officers and men who had learned the art of siege warfare under Marshal Ma Rulong , who crushed a Moslem insurrection in Yunnan in the early 1870s. Captain Jean-Fran?ois-Alphonse Lecomte, one of the more discerning officers of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, paid tribute to the skill the Yunnan Army had shown in its siegecraft at Tuyen Quang:The mandarins had directed the attack on Tuyen Quang in a very intelligent manner. Owing to the Moslem insurrection in Yunnan, an insurrection that had nearly engulfed the entire province and was only put down by Marshal Ma after several sieges, they were now experts in the art of siegecraft. Their troops were excellent, and although they were unable to capture the fortress, defended as it was by a handful of heroes and relieved in the very nick of time by Giovanninelli’s brigade, this siege was nonetheless a glorious feat of arms for the Celestials and showed that when necessary they could rise to the occasion.
Background
The French installed a post at Tuyen Quang in June 1884, in the wake of their capture of Hung Hoa and Thai Nguyen. Tuyen Quang, an isolated settlement on the Clear River, was the most westerly French outpost in Tonkin, and was 80 kilometres from the nearest French post at Phu Doan. During the summer and autumn of 1884 it was garrisoned by two companies of the 1st Battalion, 1st Foreign Legion Regiment , under the command of ''chef de bataillon'' Frauger. The outbreak of the Sino-French War on 23 August 1884 exposed the post to attack by Tang Jingsong's Yunnan Army and Liu Yongfu’s Black Flags. Supply difficulties delayed the Chinese concentration around Tuyen Quang, but advance elements of the Yunnan Army began to harass the post in October 1884, and Frauger's garrison had to fight off a number of nuisance attacks by the Chinese. Malaria had also taken a heavy toll of Frauger's men, and by the end of October 170 men out of the garrison's total strength of 550 men were unfit for duty.
In November 1884 General Louis Brière de l'Isle, the commander of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, took steps to resupply and reinforce Hung Hoa, Thai Nguyen and Tuyen Quang. On 19 November a column making for Tuyen Quang under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Duchesne was ambushed in the Yu Oc gorge by the Black Flags but was able to fight its way through to the beleaguered post. Frauger and his men were relieved, and replaced by a fresh garrison of 400 legionnaires and 160 Tonkinese riflemen under the command of ''chef de bataillon'' Marc-Edmond Dominé of the 2nd African Light Infantry Battalion. Duchesne left Tuyen Quang on 23 November, and on the following day Dominé formally declared Tuyen Quang to be in a state of siege. The siege of Tuyen Quan would last for just over four months.
Forces involved
The new garrison of Tuyen Quang, just under 630 men strong, consisted of two companies of the 1st Battalion, 1st Foreign Legion Regiment under the overall command of Captain Cattelin, a company of riflemen under the command of the French marine infantry officer Captain Dia, a scratch battery of six light cannon and small engineering and field hospital detachments. The garrison was supported by the Farcy gunboat ''Mitrailleuse'' , at anchor in the Clear River close to the French post.
The Chinese army besieging Tuyen Quang was under the overall command of Tang Jingsong . The Chinese forces consisted of 9,000 men of the Yunnan Army and 3,000 men of Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army. The Yunnan Army forces were divided into two divisions, commanded by Tang's lieutenants Ding Huai and He Xiulin .
The fortress of Tuyen Quang
The French fortress at Tuyen Quang was typical of the small, remote outposts of France’s colonial empire. Lying on the western bank of the Clear River next to the Tonkinese village of Tuyen Quang, it consisted of a square masonry citadel, each of whose walls was 300 yards long. Inside the citadel’s perimeter were several barrack buildings, a lake and a large earthen mound in the shape of a sugar loaf. This hill, which looked just like a natural formation, took the place at Tuyen Quang of the tower traditionally found in Tonkinese citadels.
The citadel was overlooked by a number of wooded hills, which the Chinese were bound to occupy. There was little Dominé could do to stop Chinese snipers from using these hills to fire down into the citadel, but he could at least delay the main enemy assault by building outworks to keep the Chinese at a respectable distance from the main perimeter. Accordingly, he had a blockhouse built on a hill 300 metres to the south of the citadel, which was occupied by a strong force of legionnaires. He also built a separate defensive perimeter to the southeast of Tuyen Quang which was occupied by Captain Dia and his company of Tonkinese riflemen. This position, centred on a fortifed pagoda on the river bank, was christened ‘Little Gibraltar’. These positions could be evacuated if necessary, and as long as they held they would severely limit the pressure the Chinese could exert on the fortress itself.
The investment
In November 1884 the Yunnan Army gradually advanced down the Red River from Lao Cai towards Tuyen Quang, building a chain of entrenched camps at Pho En, Man Lanh, Ao Loc, Van Kieng and Son Long. In December the Chinese built three enormous fortified camps as bases for the siege of Tuyen Quang, at Thanh Quan, Ca Lanh and Phu An Binh. For much of this period the only enemy troops around Tuyen Quang were Liu Yongfu's Black Flags and an advance guard of the Yunnan Army under Tang Jingsong's personal command . The Chinese investment of the French post only began to bite in the second half of December. By the beginning of January 1885 the Chinese had 4,000 men facing the French at Tuyen Quang, 5,000 men protecting their long and vulnerable supply line back to Lao Cai, and 3,000 men deployed between Tuyen Quang and Phu Doan, who were busy fortifying a strong blocking position at Hoa Moc. The besiegers gradually drew their lines closely around the French post at Tuyen Quang, occupying the villages of Phu An Binh, Dong Yen and Ya Ho to the west of the fortress and Yla, Ung Di and Truong Mu to the northwest.
The siege
On 31 December 1884 the Chinese launched an initial attack, which was repelled with losses. They attacked again on 10 January and 26 January 1885, but with no more success. But at the same time they had diverted more than 1,000 men to work on digging saps, to approach the walls of the fortress from the southwest and the north simultaneously. On 27 January their trenches were less than 1,000 metres from the French walls, and they began to sap towards the blockhouse. Its communications with the citadel were threatened, and it had to be abandoned on 30 January. The guns which Dominé had at his disposal were of too low a calibre to do any serious damage to the enemy trenches.
The Chinese converted the abandoned French blockhouse into a fortified position for a battery of four cannon and drew their encirclement of the French post closer. From then on, attacks were made on the French positions almost daily and the defenders were subjected to an almost continual barrage of cannon, mortar and rifle fire from all sides. The French did what they could to respond. Dominé posted 25 crack Legion marksmen on the citadel's watchtowers with orders to fire at Chinese soldiers working as labourers on the approach saps in order to disrupt the progress of the Chinese siege works. The Legion snipers normally took nine or ten victims a day, and by the end of the siege estimated that they had accounted for over 700 enemy soldiers. Occasionally Dominé brought his own artillery into play, and the gunboat ''Mitrailleuse'' harassed the Chinese positions on the Clear River with Hotchkiss fire. The Chinese responded by deploying their own snipers on hill positions around the French post. They rarely hit their targets, but the weight of plunging fire they were able to bring to bear severely restricted movement inside the fortress.
Having successfully forced the French from the outlying blockhouse by siege tactics, the Chinese sapped relentlessly towards the French perimeter wall. If they could mine the walls and collapse sections of the defence perimeter, they could assault with superior numbers across open breaches. The Chinese intentions were obvious, and the French engineering sergeant Jules Bobillot did his best to frustrate them. Both the French and the Chinese feverishly dug galleries and counter-galleries. On 11 February a pick-axe blow severed the membrane which separated a French from a Chinese miner, and an underground revolver fight took place. The French tried vainly to flood the Chinese saps, which were lower than theirs. On the evening of 12 February the first Chinese mine was exploded beneath the perimeter wall, but its effect was weakened by the counter-galleries and a subsequent Chinese assault was repelled with heavy losses.
Another mine, which exploded on 13 February, made a 15-metre breach in the southwest wall of the citadel. Captain Moulinay rushed to the threatened point with his company, halted an enemy attack, and threw the assailants back to their forward trenches. The body of a French legionnaire was thrown onto the enemy parapets by the force of the explosion, and on the following night Corporal Beulin of the Legion took a party of three soldiers to go out into no-man's-land and recover it.
On 17 February the Chinese brought up fresh guns, and the bombardment now continued without a pause. Most of the buildings became uninhabitable, and the French had to abandon them and live in foxholes. Supplies of cigarettes had by now run out, trying the defenders' nerves still further. Sleep became increasingly difficult, and in daytime most French soldiers not on duty at the perimeter wall were busy digging additional inner defences. Dominé had a redoubt built in the southeast corner of the fortress, where a final stand could be made if the Chinese carried the perimeter walls by assault.
At 7 a.m. on 22 February the Chinese delivered their fourth assault. After exploding a mine and making a feint attack to draw the defenders onto the breach, they exploded a second mine under them which killed 12 legionnaires and wounded 20 more. Captain Moulinay, the ranking officer, and 2nd Lieutenant Vincent were both killed in the explosion. The Chinese then charged across the open breach. They were thrown back by a countercharge led by Commandant Dominé in person. Meanwhile, the Chinese exploded a third mine under another section of the perimeter which collapsed almost 60 yards of wall. This explosion was the signal for a Chinese general assault. Hundreds of Chinese soldiers poured out of their trenches and advanced towards the two gaping breaches in the French defences, but the French had now recovered from the shock of the second mine, and drove them back with relative ease.
A fifth Chinese assault was delivered on 24 February, and a sixth on 25 February. Like their predecessors, both assaults were decisively repulsed. But although the garrison had beaten off six attempts to storm its positions, it had lost over a third of its strength sustaining a heroic defence against overwhelming odds. By the end of February it was clear that Tuyen Quang would fall unless it was relieved immediately.
The relief
During January and February 1885 the besiegers were able to place enormous pressure on the garrison because the bulk of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps was committed to the Lang Son Campaign . However, the capture of Lang Son on 13 February 1885 allowed the French to come to the relief of Tuyen Quang.
General Brière de l’Isle personally led Lieutenant-Colonel Laurent Giovanninelli's 1st Brigade back to Hanoi, and then upriver to the relief of Tuyen Quang. The brigade, reinforced at Phu Doan on 24 February by a small column from Hung Hoa under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel de Maussion, found the route to Tuyen Quang blocked by a strong Chinese defensive position at Hoa Moc.
On 2 March 1885 Giovanninelli attacked the left flank of the Chinese defensive line. The Battle of Hoa Moc was the most fiercely-fought action of the Sino-French War. Two French assaults were decisively repulsed, and although the French eventually stormed the Chinese positions, they suffered very high casualties. Nevertheless, their costly victory cleared the way to Tuyen Quang. The Yunnan Army and the Black Flags raised the siege and drew off to the west, and the relieving force entered the beleaguered post on the afternoon of 3 March.
Three days earlier, on 28 February, the Chinese had made a seventh and final assault on the Tuyen Quang perimeter. Knowing that the relief column was close and that it would be their last chance to capture the post, the Chinese attacked with fanatical courage but once again failed to force the breach. On 2 March the men of the Tuyen Quang garrison listened anxiously to the sounds of rifle and cannon fire from the Yu Oc gorge, where the 1st Brigade was fighting to break through to the beleaguered post. Hopes of relief faded as the sounds of battle continued well into the night. It seemed all too likely that Giovanninelli's men had been halted by the Black Flags.
On the morning of 3 March, to their amazement, the defenders awoke to find that the Chinese had abandoned the siege. Dominé sent out fighting patrols to scout the enemy trenches. The last French fatality of the siege was suffered during a skirmish with a small Chinese rearguard. Legionnaire Striebler saw a Chinese soldier sighting on Captain de Borelli and threw himself between the two men. Striebler was killed instantly by the bullet intended for his captain. The incident, unsurprisingly, haunted de Borelli for the rest of his life. Several years later he made what amends he could by publishing a moving poem to the fellowship of the French Foreign Legion, ''A mes hommes qui sont morts''.
The arrival of the relief column on the afternoon of 3 March was greeted with jubilation by the defenders. Captain Jean-Fran?ois-Alphonse Lecomte, who had marched with Giovanninelli's brigade, recorded the encounter between Captain de Borelli and General Brière de l'Isle:
We approached the fortress. At the head of a group of officers we saw a captain with a long white beard, who was flourishing his cane and dancing an impromptu jig. The first man he met in the relief column was a bugler. He threw his arms around him. Then he embraced the second bugler. The band tried to keep its dignity, but to no avail. He then abandoned the buglers and fell on the neck of the first drummer. For a moment the drum stood between him and the object of his affections, but eventually he managed to plant two loud kisses on the drummer’s cheeks. Then he made for the general-in-chief. There was a sudden hush, as when an orchestra falls silent at the end of a dance. He recovered himself, solemnly clicked his heels, and saluted General Brière de l’Isle. We recognised Captain de Borelli.
‘Good afternoon, Captain, how are you? We’re delighted to see you!’
‘Indeed! Me too! Especially as I only just escaped being killed this morning!’
Casualties
The casualties of the Tuyen Quang garrison during the siege were 50 dead and 224 wounded. The dead included the engineering sergeant Jules Bobillot, whose energetic countermeasures had delayed the progress of the Chinese siege works. Bobillot became a national hero in France after his death, and streets in many French towns and villages still bear his name. Casualties in Giovanninelli's 1st Brigade at the Battle of Hoa Moc were 76 dead and 408 wounded.
The Chinese and Black Flags are believed to have suffered casualties of around 1,000 dead and 2,000 wounded during the siege of Tuyen Quang and the battle of Hoa Moc. The dead included two senior Chinese officers: the general Liu Jiegao , shot dead while leading a charge during the fourth Chinese assault on 22 February, and Tan Jingde , one of Tang Jingsong’s battalion commanders, who was also killed while leading an assault.
Significance
In France, the defence of Tuyen Quang became the defining image of the Sino-French War. Dominé's day-by-day diary of the siege was published in full in the ''Journal officiel'', and an order of the day issued by Brière de l'Isle to the men of the Tuyen Quang garrison on 4 March 1885 enjoyed instant celebrity:
Under the orders of your gallant commander ''chef de bataillon'' Dominé, you 600 men held off an entire army for 36 days, in a small outpost overlooked from all sides.
You victoriously repelled seven assaults. One man in every three of you and nearly all your officers were scorched by mines or struck by Chinese bullets and shells; but the bodies of the enemy still choke the three breaches vainly made in your defences.
Today, you enjoy the admiration of the brave soldiers who have relieved you at the cost of so much hardship and bloodshed. Tomorrow, all France will applaud you.
Furthermore, you will all be able to say with pride: 'I served in the Tuyen Quang garrison; I was on the gunboat ''Mitrailleuse''.'
The defence of Tuyen Quang holds a place second only to the Battle of Camerone in the roll of battle honours of the Foreign Legion, and is commemorated in the first verse of ''Le Boudin'', the Legion's celebrated marching song: ''Au Tonkin, la Légion immortelle à Tuyen-Quan illustra notre drapeau'' .
The siege also reflected credit on Tang Jingsong's generalship and the professional skills of the Yunnan Army. The Yunnan Army contained a large number of officers and men who had learned the art of siege warfare under Marshal Ma Rulong , who crushed a Moslem insurrection in Yunnan in the early 1870s. Captain Jean-Fran?ois-Alphonse Lecomte, one of the more discerning officers of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, paid tribute to the skill the Yunnan Army had shown in its siegecraft at Tuyen Quang:The mandarins had directed the attack on Tuyen Quang in a very intelligent manner. Owing to the Moslem insurrection in Yunnan, an insurrection that had nearly engulfed the entire province and was only put down by Marshal Ma after several sieges, they were now experts in the art of siegecraft. Their troops were excellent, and although they were unable to capture the fortress, defended as it was by a handful of heroes and relieved in the very nick of time by Giovanninelli’s brigade, this siege was nonetheless a glorious feat of arms for the Celestials and showed that when necessary they could rise to the occasion.
Santikhiri
The village of Santikhiri , formerly known as Mae Salong , is situated on the mountain of Doi Mae Salong, in , Chiang Rai Province, the northernmost province of Thailand. The area has an -like landscape and climate, and is known for its hill tribe villages, tea plantations and cherry blossoms.
Santikhiri's early history centered around the 's opium trade, in which its distinctive population – the "lost army" of the Republic of China Army's 93rd – became involved. At the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, some remnants of the anti-communist Kuomintang forces refused to surrender, including the 93rd Division, led by General Tuan Shi-wen . The division fought its way out of Yunnan in southwestern China, and its soldiers lived nomadic lives in Burma's jungles before seeking asylum in Mae Salong. In exchange for their asylum, they fought for Thailand until 1982, helping to counter the communist insurgency at the Thai frontier. In reward, the granted citizenship to most of the KMT soldiers and their families.
Cash crops, especially tea, have now replaced the growing of opium poppies, and Santikhiri today is a tourist attraction known as Little Switzerland.
The origins of the Santikhiri community go back to the end of the Chinese Civil War. In October 1949, after Mao Zedong's communist party victory in China, the defeated Kuomintang armies led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, except for the 3rd and 5th Regiment of the 93rd Division, which refused to surrender. Fighting between the communist and KMT troops continued in some remote parts of China, including Yunnan in the southwest. When the Communists marched into the provincial capital of Kunming in January 1950, 12,000 troops from the 3rd and 5th Regiment, commanded respectively by Generals Lee Wen-huan and Tuan Shi-wen, fought their way out of Yunnan and escaped into Burma's jungles.
The soldiers' war did not end after their own "Long March" from Yunnan to M?ng Hsat in Burma's Shan State. The Burmese soon discovered that a foreign army was camped on their soil and launched an offensive against them. The fighting continued for 12 years, and several thousands of the KMT soldiers were eventually evacuated to Taiwan. When China entered the Korean War, the Central Intelligence Agency had a desperate need for intelligence on China. The agency turned to the two KMT generals, who agreed to slip some soldiers back into China for intelligence-gathering missions. In return, the agency offered arms to equip the generals to retake China from their bases in the Shan State. The KMT army tried on no less than seven occasions between 1950 and 1952 to invade Yunnan, but was repeatedly driven back into the Shan State. The ending of the Korean War in 1953 was not the end of the KMT's fight against the communist Chinese and Burmese armies, which continued on for many years, supported by Washington and Taiwan and subsequently funded by the KMT's involvement in the 's drug trade.
In 1961, Tuan led some battle-weary KMT troops out of Burma to a mountainous sanctuary in Mae Salong in Thailand. In exchange for asylum, the Thai government allowed them to stay on the understanding that they would assist in policing the area against communist infiltration. As a result, most of the village's inhabitants today are ethnic and direct descendants of those KMT soldiers. At the same time, General Lee of the 3rd Regiment established his headquarters at Tham Ngob, northwest of Chiang Mai. The KMT army was renamed Chinese Irregular Forces and was placed directly under the control of a special task force, code-named "04", under the Supreme Command in Bangkok.
After the soldiers reached Mae Salong, China and Thailand struck an agreement to transfer the administration of the group to the Thai government. The governor of southern Thailand, Pryath Samanmit, was reassigned as the governor of Chiang Rai, to oversee the KMT division, but upon taking up his position, Samanmit was killed by communist insurgents. Soon afterwards, the KMT division was ordered to assist the Thai government to counter the advancing armies on Thailand's northern borders and the internal threat from the Communist Party of Thailand. Fierce battles were fought in the mountains of Doi Laung, Doi Yaw, Doi Phamon and Mae Aabb, and the communist uprising was successfully countered. The bloodiest operation was launched on 10 December 1970, a five-year long campaign that claimed over lives, many from landmines. It was not until 1982 that the soldiers were able to give up their arms and were discharged to settle down to a normal life at Mae Salong. As a reward for their service, the Thai government gave citizenship to most of the KMT soldiers and their families.
Despite the Thai government’s attempts to integrate the KMT division and their families into the Thai nation, the inhabitants of Mae Salong preferred for many years to engage in the illegal opium trade, alongside the drug warlord Khun Sa of the Shan United Army. In 1967, Tuan said in an interview with a British journalist:
According to a CIA report in 1971, Mae Salong was then one of the largest heroin refineries in Southeast Asia. Only in the late 1980s, after Khun Sa's army was finally routed and pushed over the border into Myanmar by the Thai military, was the Thai government able to make any headway in taming the region – part of which involved crop substitution plans and giving the area a new name. ''Santikhiri'' meaning "hill of peace" was introduced by the Thai government in an effort to disassociate the area from its former image as an established opium zone. King Bhumibol Adulyadej and other members of the made regular visits as a sign of their support for the old soldiers who had fought against their own country for Thailand.
As late as the mid-1970s, Doi Mae Salong was strictly off-limits to outsiders. Since 1994, Santikhiri has capitalised on its unique history and has developed into a tourist attraction, with its narrow winding streets lined with inns, noodle shops and teashops. As a result, Santikhiri has become one of Thailand's top ten destinations among backpackers today. The former soldiers had already settled down, some of them having married ethnic Chinese brides who crossed the border after the fighting stopped, and others having married local . The old soldiers and their descendants, carry on their normal lives peacefully now, but still retain their Chinese identity; the main language spoken remains . As of 2007, General Lue Ye-tien, aged 90 and Tuan's former right-hand man, is the leader of the group, after taking over the leadership on Tuan's death in 1980.
The crop substitution programs successfully encouraged the cultivation of tea, coffee, corn and fruit trees, replacing the opium poppies that had previously been grown. New fruit orchards and tea factories were also set up, followed by production facilities for fruit wines and Chinese herbs, which are particularly popular amongst the Thai and Chinese tourists from Taiwan, Southeast Asia's Chinese communities and China today.
Santikhiri is a hilltop village in the of Thailand's Chiang Rai Province, about 80 kilometres from Chiang Rai. It forms one of the 13 ''amphoes'' under Chiang Rai's administration. Santikhiri is on the highest peak of the Doi Mae Salong range of mountains, at an elevation of 1,800 metres above sea level. It has an alpine-like climate, with crisp cool air all year round and chilly in the winter months of November through February. Santikhiri is accessible via two routes – Route 1130 from Ban Basang and Route 1234 from the south, which until being paved were only accessible by pack horses. Now regular minibus services, running from 6 am to 4 pm, are available from Chiang Rai to Santikhiri.
Santikhiri has long been the home of many hill tribes such as the Akha, , , and that originated from southern China and Myanmar. Each tribe has its own language, and follows animist customs and practices. Living among the native inhabitants are the ethnic Chinese, who form the majority of Santikhiri's estimated population of 20,000.
Santikhiri is noted for its ''High Mountain Oolong,'' a high grade traditional Chinese tea, which makes up about 80% of all tea production in Chiang Rai. The province produces about of tea a year. The combination of climate and soil conditions at Santikhiri is ideal for growing high quality Oolongs . Such teas are cultivated at elevations ranging from 1,200 to 1,400 metres . In 2005, Santikhiri was selected by the Tourism and Sports Ministry as an OTOP tourism village in recognition of its fine oolong tea. The goals are to stimulate the grassroots economy, increase the number of tourists, and develop Thailand's products and services. Taiwanese experts work alongside local farmers in tea processing plants which produce top-quality tea for both the local and export markets. The number of tea plantations in the village has increased significantly since the mid-1990s, and includes Choke Chamroen Tea, Wang Put Tan and 101 Tea.
From 28 December to 2 January each year, Santikhiri hosts the annual cherry blossoms festival, which is organised by Mae Salong Nok Tambon Administration Organisation in association with Mae Fa Luang District. The festival celebrates the culture of the hill tribe people from the Chiang Rai area, and includes a handicraft sale, a light and sound show, a parade by the tribes people, and a beauty contest.
General Tuan Shi-wen died in 1980, and was buried in a pagoda-like tomb on a hill-top reached via a 300-metre climb. From the top, there is a panoramic view of the village. There is a also a memorial to the KMT soldiers who died in their fight against communism, The Martyrs' Memorial, a museum whose wooden panels bear the names of the dead, set on an altar in the main building. It was constructed in the style of a large Chinese shrine. The museum also features exhibits describing the struggles of the KMT soldiers and the development of the Doi Mae Salong valley.
Phra Boromathat Chedi is a built on a hill near the village, in honour of the late Princess Mother, Srinagarindra. There is an excellent view of the Myanmar frontier from the top, an area that was off-limits when it was under the control of the warlord Khun Sa.
Santikhiri's early history centered around the 's opium trade, in which its distinctive population – the "lost army" of the Republic of China Army's 93rd – became involved. At the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, some remnants of the anti-communist Kuomintang forces refused to surrender, including the 93rd Division, led by General Tuan Shi-wen . The division fought its way out of Yunnan in southwestern China, and its soldiers lived nomadic lives in Burma's jungles before seeking asylum in Mae Salong. In exchange for their asylum, they fought for Thailand until 1982, helping to counter the communist insurgency at the Thai frontier. In reward, the granted citizenship to most of the KMT soldiers and their families.
Cash crops, especially tea, have now replaced the growing of opium poppies, and Santikhiri today is a tourist attraction known as Little Switzerland.
History
The origins of the Santikhiri community go back to the end of the Chinese Civil War. In October 1949, after Mao Zedong's communist party victory in China, the defeated Kuomintang armies led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, except for the 3rd and 5th Regiment of the 93rd Division, which refused to surrender. Fighting between the communist and KMT troops continued in some remote parts of China, including Yunnan in the southwest. When the Communists marched into the provincial capital of Kunming in January 1950, 12,000 troops from the 3rd and 5th Regiment, commanded respectively by Generals Lee Wen-huan and Tuan Shi-wen, fought their way out of Yunnan and escaped into Burma's jungles.
The soldiers' war did not end after their own "Long March" from Yunnan to M?ng Hsat in Burma's Shan State. The Burmese soon discovered that a foreign army was camped on their soil and launched an offensive against them. The fighting continued for 12 years, and several thousands of the KMT soldiers were eventually evacuated to Taiwan. When China entered the Korean War, the Central Intelligence Agency had a desperate need for intelligence on China. The agency turned to the two KMT generals, who agreed to slip some soldiers back into China for intelligence-gathering missions. In return, the agency offered arms to equip the generals to retake China from their bases in the Shan State. The KMT army tried on no less than seven occasions between 1950 and 1952 to invade Yunnan, but was repeatedly driven back into the Shan State. The ending of the Korean War in 1953 was not the end of the KMT's fight against the communist Chinese and Burmese armies, which continued on for many years, supported by Washington and Taiwan and subsequently funded by the KMT's involvement in the 's drug trade.
Refuge in Thailand
In 1961, Tuan led some battle-weary KMT troops out of Burma to a mountainous sanctuary in Mae Salong in Thailand. In exchange for asylum, the Thai government allowed them to stay on the understanding that they would assist in policing the area against communist infiltration. As a result, most of the village's inhabitants today are ethnic and direct descendants of those KMT soldiers. At the same time, General Lee of the 3rd Regiment established his headquarters at Tham Ngob, northwest of Chiang Mai. The KMT army was renamed Chinese Irregular Forces and was placed directly under the control of a special task force, code-named "04", under the Supreme Command in Bangkok.
After the soldiers reached Mae Salong, China and Thailand struck an agreement to transfer the administration of the group to the Thai government. The governor of southern Thailand, Pryath Samanmit, was reassigned as the governor of Chiang Rai, to oversee the KMT division, but upon taking up his position, Samanmit was killed by communist insurgents. Soon afterwards, the KMT division was ordered to assist the Thai government to counter the advancing armies on Thailand's northern borders and the internal threat from the Communist Party of Thailand. Fierce battles were fought in the mountains of Doi Laung, Doi Yaw, Doi Phamon and Mae Aabb, and the communist uprising was successfully countered. The bloodiest operation was launched on 10 December 1970, a five-year long campaign that claimed over lives, many from landmines. It was not until 1982 that the soldiers were able to give up their arms and were discharged to settle down to a normal life at Mae Salong. As a reward for their service, the Thai government gave citizenship to most of the KMT soldiers and their families.
Despite the Thai government’s attempts to integrate the KMT division and their families into the Thai nation, the inhabitants of Mae Salong preferred for many years to engage in the illegal opium trade, alongside the drug warlord Khun Sa of the Shan United Army. In 1967, Tuan said in an interview with a British journalist:
According to a CIA report in 1971, Mae Salong was then one of the largest heroin refineries in Southeast Asia. Only in the late 1980s, after Khun Sa's army was finally routed and pushed over the border into Myanmar by the Thai military, was the Thai government able to make any headway in taming the region – part of which involved crop substitution plans and giving the area a new name. ''Santikhiri'' meaning "hill of peace" was introduced by the Thai government in an effort to disassociate the area from its former image as an established opium zone. King Bhumibol Adulyadej and other members of the made regular visits as a sign of their support for the old soldiers who had fought against their own country for Thailand.
Santikhiri today
As late as the mid-1970s, Doi Mae Salong was strictly off-limits to outsiders. Since 1994, Santikhiri has capitalised on its unique history and has developed into a tourist attraction, with its narrow winding streets lined with inns, noodle shops and teashops. As a result, Santikhiri has become one of Thailand's top ten destinations among backpackers today. The former soldiers had already settled down, some of them having married ethnic Chinese brides who crossed the border after the fighting stopped, and others having married local . The old soldiers and their descendants, carry on their normal lives peacefully now, but still retain their Chinese identity; the main language spoken remains . As of 2007, General Lue Ye-tien, aged 90 and Tuan's former right-hand man, is the leader of the group, after taking over the leadership on Tuan's death in 1980.
The crop substitution programs successfully encouraged the cultivation of tea, coffee, corn and fruit trees, replacing the opium poppies that had previously been grown. New fruit orchards and tea factories were also set up, followed by production facilities for fruit wines and Chinese herbs, which are particularly popular amongst the Thai and Chinese tourists from Taiwan, Southeast Asia's Chinese communities and China today.
Geography and climate
Santikhiri is a hilltop village in the of Thailand's Chiang Rai Province, about 80 kilometres from Chiang Rai. It forms one of the 13 ''amphoes'' under Chiang Rai's administration. Santikhiri is on the highest peak of the Doi Mae Salong range of mountains, at an elevation of 1,800 metres above sea level. It has an alpine-like climate, with crisp cool air all year round and chilly in the winter months of November through February. Santikhiri is accessible via two routes – Route 1130 from Ban Basang and Route 1234 from the south, which until being paved were only accessible by pack horses. Now regular minibus services, running from 6 am to 4 pm, are available from Chiang Rai to Santikhiri.
Santikhiri has long been the home of many hill tribes such as the Akha, , , and that originated from southern China and Myanmar. Each tribe has its own language, and follows animist customs and practices. Living among the native inhabitants are the ethnic Chinese, who form the majority of Santikhiri's estimated population of 20,000.
Landmarks and attractions
Santikhiri is noted for its ''High Mountain Oolong,'' a high grade traditional Chinese tea, which makes up about 80% of all tea production in Chiang Rai. The province produces about of tea a year. The combination of climate and soil conditions at Santikhiri is ideal for growing high quality Oolongs . Such teas are cultivated at elevations ranging from 1,200 to 1,400 metres . In 2005, Santikhiri was selected by the Tourism and Sports Ministry as an OTOP tourism village in recognition of its fine oolong tea. The goals are to stimulate the grassroots economy, increase the number of tourists, and develop Thailand's products and services. Taiwanese experts work alongside local farmers in tea processing plants which produce top-quality tea for both the local and export markets. The number of tea plantations in the village has increased significantly since the mid-1990s, and includes Choke Chamroen Tea, Wang Put Tan and 101 Tea.
From 28 December to 2 January each year, Santikhiri hosts the annual cherry blossoms festival, which is organised by Mae Salong Nok Tambon Administration Organisation in association with Mae Fa Luang District. The festival celebrates the culture of the hill tribe people from the Chiang Rai area, and includes a handicraft sale, a light and sound show, a parade by the tribes people, and a beauty contest.
General Tuan Shi-wen died in 1980, and was buried in a pagoda-like tomb on a hill-top reached via a 300-metre climb. From the top, there is a panoramic view of the village. There is a also a memorial to the KMT soldiers who died in their fight against communism, The Martyrs' Memorial, a museum whose wooden panels bear the names of the dead, set on an altar in the main building. It was constructed in the style of a large Chinese shrine. The museum also features exhibits describing the struggles of the KMT soldiers and the development of the Doi Mae Salong valley.
Phra Boromathat Chedi is a built on a hill near the village, in honour of the late Princess Mother, Srinagarindra. There is an excellent view of the Myanmar frontier from the top, an area that was off-limits when it was under the control of the warlord Khun Sa.
Prehistoric Malaysia
Prehistoric Malaysia may be traced back as far as 60,000 years ago from stone tools found at Kota Tampan, an archaeological site in Lenggong Perak. The earliest human skeleton, Perak Man, dating back 11,000 years and Perak Woman aged 8000
years, were also discovered in Lenggong. The site has an undisturbed stone tool production area, created using equipment such as anvils and hammer stones. The Tambun Cave paintings are also situated in Perak. From East Malaysia, Sarawak's Niah Caves, there is evidence of the oldest human remains in Malaysia, dating back some 40,000 years.
Early peoples, probably from the first wave humans as postulated in the '' theory, lived a simple lifestyle of hunting-gathering. Paleolithic Malaysia had no defined border or countries, no known government, religion, money, etc. Descendants of these early inhabitants still live in the hills of Malaysia, some of their villages are accessible, they are known as Orang Asli, meaning 'the original people' or aborigines. Today the Orang Asli, together with the and indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak, are known as . The make up 65% of the population.
Anthropologists traced a group of newcomers Proto Malay seafarers who migrated from Yunnan to Malaysia. Negrito and other Aborigines were forced by late comers into the hills. In this period, people learnt to dress, to cook, to hunt with advanced stone weapons. Communication techniques also improved.
People learnt to build simple houses and to have families. Simple moral and simple society concept germinated.
More people arrived, including new tribes and seafarers. The Malay Peninsula became the crossroads in maritime trades of the ancient age. Seafarers who came to Malaysia's shores included Indians, Egyptians, peoples of the Middle East, Javanese and Chinese. Ptolemy named the Malay Peninsula the Golden Chersonese.
Mekong River, approximately 4180km in length, originated from Tibet and runs through Yunnan province of China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam. Anthropologists traced the migration of Proto Malays, who were seafarers, to some 10,000 years ago when they sailed by boat along the Mekong River from Yunnan to the South China Sea and eventually settled down at various places.
Inhabitants of early Yunnan may be traced back into prehistory from a homo erectus fossil, 'Yuanmou Man', which was unearthed in the 1960s. In year 221 BC, Qin Shihuang conquered Yunnan and unified China. Yunnan has since become a province of China. They were the ancestors of rice eating peoples, with their culture of cultivating rice spread throughout the entire region. The native name of the Mekong River peoples' home in Yunnan is Xishuangbanna which literally means "twelve thousand rice fields", it is the home of the minority. Xishuangbanna sits at a lower altitude than most of the Yunnan mountainous ranges.
The theory of Proto Malay originating from Yunnan is supported by R.H Geldern, J.H.C Kern, J.R Foster, J.R Logen, Slametmuljana and Asmah Haji Omar. The Proto Malay who first arrived possessed agricultural skills while the second wave Deutero Malay who joined in around 1500 BC and dwelled along the coastlines have advanced fishery skills. During the migration, both groups intermarried with peoples of the southern islands, such as those from , and also with aboriginal peoples of Australoid, Negrito and Melanesoid origin.
Other evidences that support this theory include:
Stone tools found at Malay archipelago are analogous to Central Asian tools.
Similarity of Malay customs and Assam customs.
Malay language & Cambodian language are kindred languages because the ancestral home of Cambodians originated from the source of Mekong River.
Numerous scholars including J. Fergusson , G. Coedes , D. G. E. Hall , Dr B. R. Chatterjee , Dr Buddha Prakash and many others etc accept the ancient historical, political and cultural connections between the Ancient Kambojas of the north-west and the Kambujas of the Indochina archipelago .
Related articles:
Migration of Kambojas
Kambojas and Cambodia
Kamboja colonists of Sri Lanka
Etymology of Kamboja
A section of the Kambysene hordes settled on north-west of India later came to be known as Kambojas and their province as Kamboja in ancient Indian traditions . A section of these Scythianised Kambojas is believed to have reached Tibetan plateau where they mixed with the locals; as a result some Tibetans are still called Kambojas . Through Tibet, they went further to Mekong valley where they were called Kambujas , now represented by the s, still a tall, fair, dolichocephelic people with non-mongoloid eyes, of the Mon-Khmers .
According to , was founded by Maharaja Derbar Raja of , Persia around 630 CE, and also alledged that the bloodline of Kedah royalties coming from Alexander The Great. The other Malay literature, Sejarah Melayu too alledged that they were the descendants of Alexander The Great.
Combination of the colonial Kambujas of Hindu-Buddhism faith, the Indo-Persian royalties and traders as well as traders from southern China and elsewhere along the , these peoples together with the aborigine Negrito Orang Asli and native seafarers and Proto Malays intermarried each others and thus a new group of peoples was formed and became to be known as the Deutero Malays, today they are commonly known as the Malays.
According to Khmer history, the earliest known civilisation was the 1st century Indianised- culture of Funan, in the Mekong Delta. The Khmer empire of Angkor was the last before the kingdom fled to various places seeking refuge. Palembang and later Malacca were among the places. Archeological evidences found that inhabitants of early Cambodia were peoples of Neolithic culture. They possessed good technical skills while the more advanced groups, who lived near the coast and in the lower delta of Mekong, cultivated irrigated rice. It is believed that they were the ancestors of the people living in insular Southeast Asia and islands of Pacific Ocean. They were also knowledgeable in iron and bronze works as well as possessing good navigational skills.
The Kedukan Bukit Inscription of 682 CE found at Palembang and the modern Yunnan Dai minority's traditional writings were of the same language family of Pallava, also known as . Dai ethnic of Yunnan is one of the aboriginal inhabitants of modern Yunnan province of China. is taken from Jinghong city of Yunnan, a modern doorframe with Dai minority texts & Chinese, at right is the ancient Kedukan Bukit inscription.
The similarity of the Cambodian Cham language and the Malay language can be found in names of places such as Kampong Cham, Kambujadesa, Kampong Chhnang, etc and Sejarah Melayu clearly mentioned a Cham community in Parameswara's Malacca around 1400s. Cham is related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar and the Philippines. In mid 1400s, when Cham was heavily defeated by the Vietnamese, some 120,000 were killed and in the 1600s the Champa king converted to Islam. In 1700s the last Champa Muslim king P? Chien gathered his people and migrated south to Cambodia while those along the coastline migrated to the nearest peninsula state Terengganu, approximately 500km or less by boat, and Kelantan. Malaysian constitution recognises the Cham rights to Malaysian citizenship and their status. Now that the history is interlinked, there is a possibility that Parameswara's family were Cham refugees who fled to Palembang before he fled to Tumasik and finally to Malacca. Interestingly, one of the last Kings of Angkor of the Khmer Empire had the name Paramesvarapada.
years, were also discovered in Lenggong. The site has an undisturbed stone tool production area, created using equipment such as anvils and hammer stones. The Tambun Cave paintings are also situated in Perak. From East Malaysia, Sarawak's Niah Caves, there is evidence of the oldest human remains in Malaysia, dating back some 40,000 years.
Chronology
60,000-35,000 years ago- Paleolithic
Early peoples, probably from the first wave humans as postulated in the '' theory, lived a simple lifestyle of hunting-gathering. Paleolithic Malaysia had no defined border or countries, no known government, religion, money, etc. Descendants of these early inhabitants still live in the hills of Malaysia, some of their villages are accessible, they are known as Orang Asli, meaning 'the original people' or aborigines. Today the Orang Asli, together with the and indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak, are known as . The make up 65% of the population.
35,000-10,000 years ago - Mesolithic
Anthropologists traced a group of newcomers Proto Malay seafarers who migrated from Yunnan to Malaysia. Negrito and other Aborigines were forced by late comers into the hills. In this period, people learnt to dress, to cook, to hunt with advanced stone weapons. Communication techniques also improved.
10,000-5,000 years ago- Neolithic
People learnt to build simple houses and to have families. Simple moral and simple society concept germinated.
2,500 years ago - Bronze Age
More people arrived, including new tribes and seafarers. The Malay Peninsula became the crossroads in maritime trades of the ancient age. Seafarers who came to Malaysia's shores included Indians, Egyptians, peoples of the Middle East, Javanese and Chinese. Ptolemy named the Malay Peninsula the Golden Chersonese.
Mekong River Migration
Mekong River, approximately 4180km in length, originated from Tibet and runs through Yunnan province of China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam. Anthropologists traced the migration of Proto Malays, who were seafarers, to some 10,000 years ago when they sailed by boat along the Mekong River from Yunnan to the South China Sea and eventually settled down at various places.
Yunnan
Inhabitants of early Yunnan may be traced back into prehistory from a homo erectus fossil, 'Yuanmou Man', which was unearthed in the 1960s. In year 221 BC, Qin Shihuang conquered Yunnan and unified China. Yunnan has since become a province of China. They were the ancestors of rice eating peoples, with their culture of cultivating rice spread throughout the entire region. The native name of the Mekong River peoples' home in Yunnan is Xishuangbanna which literally means "twelve thousand rice fields", it is the home of the minority. Xishuangbanna sits at a lower altitude than most of the Yunnan mountainous ranges.
Yunnan migration theory
The theory of Proto Malay originating from Yunnan is supported by R.H Geldern, J.H.C Kern, J.R Foster, J.R Logen, Slametmuljana and Asmah Haji Omar. The Proto Malay who first arrived possessed agricultural skills while the second wave Deutero Malay who joined in around 1500 BC and dwelled along the coastlines have advanced fishery skills. During the migration, both groups intermarried with peoples of the southern islands, such as those from , and also with aboriginal peoples of Australoid, Negrito and Melanesoid origin.
Other evidences that support this theory include:
Stone tools found at Malay archipelago are analogous to Central Asian tools.
Similarity of Malay customs and Assam customs.
Malay language & Cambodian language are kindred languages because the ancestral home of Cambodians originated from the source of Mekong River.
The Migration of Kambujas
Numerous scholars including J. Fergusson , G. Coedes , D. G. E. Hall , Dr B. R. Chatterjee , Dr Buddha Prakash and many others etc accept the ancient historical, political and cultural connections between the Ancient Kambojas of the north-west and the Kambujas of the Indochina archipelago .
Related articles:
Migration of Kambojas
Kambojas and Cambodia
Kamboja colonists of Sri Lanka
Etymology of Kamboja
A section of the Kambysene hordes settled on north-west of India later came to be known as Kambojas and their province as Kamboja in ancient Indian traditions . A section of these Scythianised Kambojas is believed to have reached Tibetan plateau where they mixed with the locals; as a result some Tibetans are still called Kambojas . Through Tibet, they went further to Mekong valley where they were called Kambujas , now represented by the s, still a tall, fair, dolichocephelic people with non-mongoloid eyes, of the Mon-Khmers .
Kedah and Melaka
According to , was founded by Maharaja Derbar Raja of , Persia around 630 CE, and also alledged that the bloodline of Kedah royalties coming from Alexander The Great. The other Malay literature, Sejarah Melayu too alledged that they were the descendants of Alexander The Great.
Deutero Malays
Combination of the colonial Kambujas of Hindu-Buddhism faith, the Indo-Persian royalties and traders as well as traders from southern China and elsewhere along the , these peoples together with the aborigine Negrito Orang Asli and native seafarers and Proto Malays intermarried each others and thus a new group of peoples was formed and became to be known as the Deutero Malays, today they are commonly known as the Malays.
Mekong Delta
According to Khmer history, the earliest known civilisation was the 1st century Indianised- culture of Funan, in the Mekong Delta. The Khmer empire of Angkor was the last before the kingdom fled to various places seeking refuge. Palembang and later Malacca were among the places. Archeological evidences found that inhabitants of early Cambodia were peoples of Neolithic culture. They possessed good technical skills while the more advanced groups, who lived near the coast and in the lower delta of Mekong, cultivated irrigated rice. It is believed that they were the ancestors of the people living in insular Southeast Asia and islands of Pacific Ocean. They were also knowledgeable in iron and bronze works as well as possessing good navigational skills.
Oldest Malay text
The Kedukan Bukit Inscription of 682 CE found at Palembang and the modern Yunnan Dai minority's traditional writings were of the same language family of Pallava, also known as . Dai ethnic of Yunnan is one of the aboriginal inhabitants of modern Yunnan province of China. is taken from Jinghong city of Yunnan, a modern doorframe with Dai minority texts & Chinese, at right is the ancient Kedukan Bukit inscription.
Cham-Malay relation
The similarity of the Cambodian Cham language and the Malay language can be found in names of places such as Kampong Cham, Kambujadesa, Kampong Chhnang, etc and Sejarah Melayu clearly mentioned a Cham community in Parameswara's Malacca around 1400s. Cham is related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar and the Philippines. In mid 1400s, when Cham was heavily defeated by the Vietnamese, some 120,000 were killed and in the 1600s the Champa king converted to Islam. In 1700s the last Champa Muslim king P? Chien gathered his people and migrated south to Cambodia while those along the coastline migrated to the nearest peninsula state Terengganu, approximately 500km or less by boat, and Kelantan. Malaysian constitution recognises the Cham rights to Malaysian citizenship and their status. Now that the history is interlinked, there is a possibility that Parameswara's family were Cham refugees who fled to Palembang before he fled to Tumasik and finally to Malacca. Interestingly, one of the last Kings of Angkor of the Khmer Empire had the name Paramesvarapada.
Panthay Rebellion
The Panthay Rebellion was a separatist movement of the Hui people and s, against the imperial Qing Dynasty in southwestern Yunnan Province, China, as part of a wave of Hui-led multi-ethnic unrest.
The name ''Panthay'' is a word, which is said to be identical with the word ''Pang hse''. It was the name by which the Burmese called the Chinese Muslims who came with caravans to Burma from the Chinese province of Yunnan. The name was not used or known in Yunnan itself.
Between 1648 and 1878, more than twelve million and Uyghur Muslims were killed in ten unsuccessful uprisings against the Qing Dynasty. The discrimination with which the were treated by the imperial administration was the cause of their rebellions. The Panthay Rebellion originated in a conflict between and Muslim tin miners in 1853, which degenerated into rebellion. In the following year, a of Muslims was organized by the Qing officials responsible for suppressing the revolt. One of the leaders of the insurrection was Ma Dexin. Anxious to increase his own influence, Ma Dexin finally agreed to submit to the Qing in 1861. He was succeeded by a man called Du Wenxiu , an ethnic born in Yongcheng.
Starting in 1855 the Muslim majority of Yunnan rebelled against the oppressive policies of Qing Dynasty officials. In part, they were disgruntled by being excluded from the official class. The mandarins secretly urged mobs to attack the rich Yunnanese Muslims, which provoked anti-Muslim riots, and started a religious conflict which led to the destruction of mosques. The religious hatred of the Huis was thus aroused. The widespread Muslim desire for revenge for insults to their religion led to a universal and well-planned rising.
The rebellion started as a local uprising. It was sparked by the laborers at the silver mines of Li'nanxian village in Yunnan who rose up against the Chinese. The Chinese Governor of Yunnan sent an urgent appeal to the central government in Beijing. The rebels were under the leadership of Du Wenxiu . They turned their fury on the local mandarins and ended up challenging the central government in Beijing.
The Imperial Government was handicapped by a profusion of problems in various parts of the sprawling empire, the Taiping rebellion being one of them. It was a time when China was still suffering from the shocks caused by the first series of unequal treaties, such as the Treaty of Nanking. These circumstances favored the ascendancy of the Muslims in Yunnan.
The rebellion successfully captured the city of , which became the base for the rebels' operations, and they declared themselves a separate political entity from China. The rebels identified their nation as Pingnan Guo ; their leader Sulayman ibn `Abd ar-Rahman, known as Du Wenxiu ) was styled ''Qa?id Jami al-Muslimin'' , but is usually referred to in foreign sources as Sultan) and ruled 1856 - 26 December 1872.
Governorships of the sultanate were also created in a few important cities, such as Momein , which were a few stages from the Burmese border town of Bhamo. The sultanate reached the high watermark of their power and glory in 1860.
The eight years from 1860 to 1868 were the heyday of the Sultanate. The Yunnanese Muslim rebels had either taken or destroyed forty towns and one hundred villages. During this period the Sultan Sulayman, on his way to Mecca as a pilgrim, visited Rangoon, presumably via the Kengtung route, and from there to Calcutta where he had a chance to see the power of the British.
The rebels besieged the city of Kunming repeatedly: in 1857, 1861, 1863, and 1868. Ma Rulong, a Hui rebel leader from southern Yunnan, besieged the city in 1862, but he defected to the central government's forces after being offered a military post. His decision to quit the siege was not accepted by his followers, who took the opportunity of his absence to kill the Governor-General and to wrest control of the city from the Qing in 1863, with the intention of handing the city over to Du Wenxiu. However, before Du's forces could arrive, Ma Rulong — with the assistance of a rising Qing military officier, Cen Yuying — raced back to Kunming and regained control of the provincial capital.
The Sultanate's power declined after 1868. The Chinese Imperial Government had succeeded in reinvigorating itself. By 1871, it was directing a campaign for the annihilation of the obdurate Hui Muslims of Yunnan. By degrees the Imperial Government had tightened the cordon around the Sultanate. The Sultanate proved unstable as soon as the Imperial Government made a regular and determined attack on it. Town after town fell under well-organized attacks made by the imperial troops. Dali itself was besieged by the imperial Chinese. Sultan Sulayman found himself caged in by the walls of his capital. He now desperately looked for outside help. He turned to the British for military assistance. He realized that only British military intervention could have saved his Sultanate.
The Sultan had reasons for his turning to the British for military aid. He had seen the British might in India on his pilgrimage to Mecca some years earlier, and was impressed by it. Britain was the only western power with whom the Sultanate was on friendly terms and had contacts with. The British authorities in India and British Burma had sent a mission led by Major Sladen to Momien from May to July 1868. The Sladen mission had stayed seven weeks at Momien. The main purpose of the mission was to revive the Ambassador Route between Bhamo and Yunnan and resuscitate border trade, which had almost ceased since 1855 mainly because of the Yunnan Muslims' rebellion.
Taking advantage of the friendly relations resulting from Sladen's visit, Sultan Sulayman now, in his fight for the survival of the Pingnan Guo Sultanate, turned to the the British Empire for formal recognition and for military assistance. In 1872 he sent his adopted son Prince Hassan, to England, with a personal letter to Queen Victoria, via Burma, requesting British military assistance. The Hassan Mission was accorded courtesy and hospitality in both British Burma and England. However, the British politely, but firmly, refused to intervene militarily in Yunnan against Peking. The mission was a failure. While Hassan and his party were abroad, Dali was captured by the Imperial troops in January 1873.
The Imperial Government had waged an all-out war against the Sultanate with the help of French artillery experts. Their modern equipment, trained personnel and numerical superiority were no match for the ill-equipped rebels with no allies. Thus, in less than two decades of its rise, the power of the Panthays in Yunnan fell. But the Chinese suffered the loss of more than 20,000 lives in various fights. Seeing no escape and no mercy from his relentless foe, Sultan Sulayman tried to take his own life before the fall of Dali. But, before the poison he drank took effect fully, he was beheaded by his enemies. The Sultan's head was preserved in honey and then dispatched to the Imperial Court in Peking as a trophy and a testimony to the decisive nature of the victory of the Imperial Chinese over the Muslims of Yunnan. His body is entombed in Xiadui.
The scattered remnants of the Pingnan Guo troops continue their resistance after the fall of Dali. But when Momien was next besieged and stormed by the imperial troops in May 1873, their resistance broke completely. Governor Ta-sa-kon was captured and executed by the order of the Imperial Government.
Though largely forgotten, the bloody rebellion caused the death of up to a million people in Yunnan. Many adherents to the Yunnanese Muslim cause were persecuted by the imperial mandarins. Wholesale massacres of Yunnanese Muslims followed. Many fled with their families across the Burmese border and took refuge in the Wa State where, about 1875, they set up the exclusively Hui town of Panglong.
For a period of perhaps ten to fifteen years following the collapse of the Panthay Rebellion, the province's Hui minority was widely discriminated against by the victorious Qing, especially in the western frontier districts contiguous with Burma. During these years the refugee Hui settled across the frontier within Burma gradually established themselves in their traditional callings – as merchants, caravaneers, miners, restaurateurs and as smugglers and mercenaries and became known in Burma as the Panthay.
At least 15 years after the collapse of the Panthay Rebellion , the original Panthay settlements in Burma had grown to include numbers of Shan and other hill peoples.
The rebellion had a significant negative impact on the Burmese Konbaung Dynasty. After losing lower Burma to the British, Burma lost access to vast tracts of rice-growing land. Not wishing to upset China, the Burmese kingdom agreed to refuse trade with the Pingnan Guo rebels in accordance with China's demands. Without the ability to import rice from China, Burma was forced to import rice from the British. In addition, the Burmese economy had relied heavily on cotton exports to China, and suddenly lost access to the vast Chinese market. Many surviving Hui refugees escaped over the border to neighboring countries, Burma, Thailand and Laos, forming the basis of a minority Chinese Hui population in those nations.
The name ''Panthay'' is a word, which is said to be identical with the word ''Pang hse''. It was the name by which the Burmese called the Chinese Muslims who came with caravans to Burma from the Chinese province of Yunnan. The name was not used or known in Yunnan itself.
Causes
Between 1648 and 1878, more than twelve million and Uyghur Muslims were killed in ten unsuccessful uprisings against the Qing Dynasty. The discrimination with which the were treated by the imperial administration was the cause of their rebellions. The Panthay Rebellion originated in a conflict between and Muslim tin miners in 1853, which degenerated into rebellion. In the following year, a of Muslims was organized by the Qing officials responsible for suppressing the revolt. One of the leaders of the insurrection was Ma Dexin. Anxious to increase his own influence, Ma Dexin finally agreed to submit to the Qing in 1861. He was succeeded by a man called Du Wenxiu , an ethnic born in Yongcheng.
Starting in 1855 the Muslim majority of Yunnan rebelled against the oppressive policies of Qing Dynasty officials. In part, they were disgruntled by being excluded from the official class. The mandarins secretly urged mobs to attack the rich Yunnanese Muslims, which provoked anti-Muslim riots, and started a religious conflict which led to the destruction of mosques. The religious hatred of the Huis was thus aroused. The widespread Muslim desire for revenge for insults to their religion led to a universal and well-planned rising.
Course of the war
The rebellion started as a local uprising. It was sparked by the laborers at the silver mines of Li'nanxian village in Yunnan who rose up against the Chinese. The Chinese Governor of Yunnan sent an urgent appeal to the central government in Beijing. The rebels were under the leadership of Du Wenxiu . They turned their fury on the local mandarins and ended up challenging the central government in Beijing.
The Imperial Government was handicapped by a profusion of problems in various parts of the sprawling empire, the Taiping rebellion being one of them. It was a time when China was still suffering from the shocks caused by the first series of unequal treaties, such as the Treaty of Nanking. These circumstances favored the ascendancy of the Muslims in Yunnan.
The Pacified Southern Nation
The rebellion successfully captured the city of , which became the base for the rebels' operations, and they declared themselves a separate political entity from China. The rebels identified their nation as Pingnan Guo ; their leader Sulayman ibn `Abd ar-Rahman, known as Du Wenxiu ) was styled ''Qa?id Jami al-Muslimin'' , but is usually referred to in foreign sources as Sultan) and ruled 1856 - 26 December 1872.
Governorships of the sultanate were also created in a few important cities, such as Momein , which were a few stages from the Burmese border town of Bhamo. The sultanate reached the high watermark of their power and glory in 1860.
The eight years from 1860 to 1868 were the heyday of the Sultanate. The Yunnanese Muslim rebels had either taken or destroyed forty towns and one hundred villages. During this period the Sultan Sulayman, on his way to Mecca as a pilgrim, visited Rangoon, presumably via the Kengtung route, and from there to Calcutta where he had a chance to see the power of the British.
The rebels besieged the city of Kunming repeatedly: in 1857, 1861, 1863, and 1868. Ma Rulong, a Hui rebel leader from southern Yunnan, besieged the city in 1862, but he defected to the central government's forces after being offered a military post. His decision to quit the siege was not accepted by his followers, who took the opportunity of his absence to kill the Governor-General and to wrest control of the city from the Qing in 1863, with the intention of handing the city over to Du Wenxiu. However, before Du's forces could arrive, Ma Rulong — with the assistance of a rising Qing military officier, Cen Yuying — raced back to Kunming and regained control of the provincial capital.
Decline
The Sultanate's power declined after 1868. The Chinese Imperial Government had succeeded in reinvigorating itself. By 1871, it was directing a campaign for the annihilation of the obdurate Hui Muslims of Yunnan. By degrees the Imperial Government had tightened the cordon around the Sultanate. The Sultanate proved unstable as soon as the Imperial Government made a regular and determined attack on it. Town after town fell under well-organized attacks made by the imperial troops. Dali itself was besieged by the imperial Chinese. Sultan Sulayman found himself caged in by the walls of his capital. He now desperately looked for outside help. He turned to the British for military assistance. He realized that only British military intervention could have saved his Sultanate.
The Sultan had reasons for his turning to the British for military aid. He had seen the British might in India on his pilgrimage to Mecca some years earlier, and was impressed by it. Britain was the only western power with whom the Sultanate was on friendly terms and had contacts with. The British authorities in India and British Burma had sent a mission led by Major Sladen to Momien from May to July 1868. The Sladen mission had stayed seven weeks at Momien. The main purpose of the mission was to revive the Ambassador Route between Bhamo and Yunnan and resuscitate border trade, which had almost ceased since 1855 mainly because of the Yunnan Muslims' rebellion.
Taking advantage of the friendly relations resulting from Sladen's visit, Sultan Sulayman now, in his fight for the survival of the Pingnan Guo Sultanate, turned to the the British Empire for formal recognition and for military assistance. In 1872 he sent his adopted son Prince Hassan, to England, with a personal letter to Queen Victoria, via Burma, requesting British military assistance. The Hassan Mission was accorded courtesy and hospitality in both British Burma and England. However, the British politely, but firmly, refused to intervene militarily in Yunnan against Peking. The mission was a failure. While Hassan and his party were abroad, Dali was captured by the Imperial troops in January 1873.
The Imperial Government had waged an all-out war against the Sultanate with the help of French artillery experts. Their modern equipment, trained personnel and numerical superiority were no match for the ill-equipped rebels with no allies. Thus, in less than two decades of its rise, the power of the Panthays in Yunnan fell. But the Chinese suffered the loss of more than 20,000 lives in various fights. Seeing no escape and no mercy from his relentless foe, Sultan Sulayman tried to take his own life before the fall of Dali. But, before the poison he drank took effect fully, he was beheaded by his enemies. The Sultan's head was preserved in honey and then dispatched to the Imperial Court in Peking as a trophy and a testimony to the decisive nature of the victory of the Imperial Chinese over the Muslims of Yunnan. His body is entombed in Xiadui.
The scattered remnants of the Pingnan Guo troops continue their resistance after the fall of Dali. But when Momien was next besieged and stormed by the imperial troops in May 1873, their resistance broke completely. Governor Ta-sa-kon was captured and executed by the order of the Imperial Government.
Aftermath
Atrocities
Though largely forgotten, the bloody rebellion caused the death of up to a million people in Yunnan. Many adherents to the Yunnanese Muslim cause were persecuted by the imperial mandarins. Wholesale massacres of Yunnanese Muslims followed. Many fled with their families across the Burmese border and took refuge in the Wa State where, about 1875, they set up the exclusively Hui town of Panglong.
For a period of perhaps ten to fifteen years following the collapse of the Panthay Rebellion, the province's Hui minority was widely discriminated against by the victorious Qing, especially in the western frontier districts contiguous with Burma. During these years the refugee Hui settled across the frontier within Burma gradually established themselves in their traditional callings – as merchants, caravaneers, miners, restaurateurs and as smugglers and mercenaries and became known in Burma as the Panthay.
At least 15 years after the collapse of the Panthay Rebellion , the original Panthay settlements in Burma had grown to include numbers of Shan and other hill peoples.
Impact on Burma
The rebellion had a significant negative impact on the Burmese Konbaung Dynasty. After losing lower Burma to the British, Burma lost access to vast tracts of rice-growing land. Not wishing to upset China, the Burmese kingdom agreed to refuse trade with the Pingnan Guo rebels in accordance with China's demands. Without the ability to import rice from China, Burma was forced to import rice from the British. In addition, the Burmese economy had relied heavily on cotton exports to China, and suddenly lost access to the vast Chinese market. Many surviving Hui refugees escaped over the border to neighboring countries, Burma, Thailand and Laos, forming the basis of a minority Chinese Hui population in those nations.
Panglong
Panglong, located in Shan State, Myanmar is a town founded by settlers in the trans-Salween Wa States, and was host to the Panglong Conference. The town is home to Panglong University. '''
In addition to the main settlement of Panglong, two other smaller Panthay villages, Panyao and Pachang, were established about 12 miles distant to the south and east respectively, 'which had about eighty houses'. The dominant group in the villages were the Panthay, chiefly Hui migrants from Dali, Baoshan, Shanning, Menghua and elsewhere in southern and western Yunnan. James George Scott comments that these Chinese Muslims were 'all merchants, mule-owners and men of substance'; indeed, considering this wealth Scott concluded that it was only the military prowess and superior armaments of the Panthay which kept their annual tribute to the ruler of Son Mu fixed at the low figure of 100 rupees per annum. The same source continues:
By the time Scott visited Panglong – at least 15 years after the collapse of the Yunnan Muslim Rebellion – the original Panthay settlements had grown to include numbers of Shan and other hill peoples. The Panthay were, generally speaking, affluent enough to employ these more recent settlers as mule-drivers and 'to do the drudgery generally'. In large measure this affluence must have been due the lifting of the Qing proscription on Hui settlement in Yunnan , as a result of which the Panglong "Panthays" were able to re-establish trading contacts with their fellows remaining settled within Yunnan. As a result of this development a number of the original refugees returned to China, merely maintaining agents at Panglong; certainly Scott noted that as many of the Panthay caravan traded into China as throughout the Shan States from Panglong.
In addition to the main settlement of Panglong, two other smaller Panthay villages, Panyao and Pachang, were established about 12 miles distant to the south and east respectively, 'which had about eighty houses'. The dominant group in the villages were the Panthay, chiefly Hui migrants from Dali, Baoshan, Shanning, Menghua and elsewhere in southern and western Yunnan. James George Scott comments that these Chinese Muslims were 'all merchants, mule-owners and men of substance'; indeed, considering this wealth Scott concluded that it was only the military prowess and superior armaments of the Panthay which kept their annual tribute to the ruler of Son Mu fixed at the low figure of 100 rupees per annum. The same source continues:
By the time Scott visited Panglong – at least 15 years after the collapse of the Yunnan Muslim Rebellion – the original Panthay settlements had grown to include numbers of Shan and other hill peoples. The Panthay were, generally speaking, affluent enough to employ these more recent settlers as mule-drivers and 'to do the drudgery generally'. In large measure this affluence must have been due the lifting of the Qing proscription on Hui settlement in Yunnan , as a result of which the Panglong "Panthays" were able to re-establish trading contacts with their fellows remaining settled within Yunnan. As a result of this development a number of the original refugees returned to China, merely maintaining agents at Panglong; certainly Scott noted that as many of the Panthay caravan traded into China as throughout the Shan States from Panglong.
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