Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies
3:2 (2005), 90-92
REVIEW
Christoph Giebel, Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton
Duc Thang and the Politics of History and Memory, Singapore and
Seattly, Singapore University Press, with University of Washington
Press, 256pp. ISBN 0-295-98429-5.
IN CONVENTIONAL VIETNAMESE historiography, the “telling” of Ton Duc Thang’s
life is defined by three significant achievements: (1). Ton’s (alleged) role in the 1919
Black Sea Mutiny of the French navy that helped end the Allied anti-Bolshevik
intervention in the Russian civil war following the October Revolution of 1917; (2).
His organization of a “secret labor union” in Saigon in the early 1920s, widely
considered Vietnam’s first labor union; and (3). This union’s leadership of a strike at
the Saigon naval shipyard in 1925, frequently viewed as the first political strike in
Vietnam (p.xix). In this book, historian Christoph Giebel examines these key
moments, as well as the discursive practices in which they became telling episodes in
Ton’s biography and essential aspects to the creation of the Vietnamese Communist
party’s identity or self-image. In achieving this task, Giebel organizes the book in
three sections, each of which focuses on one of these main events and the way they
have been recounted by traditional historians and Ton Duc Thang himself. This
approach lends itself well to Giebel’s central aim to provide not only a study of a
“Communist celebrity,” but also a historical analysis and historiography of the
narratives and discursive practices of the Vietnamese Revolution and the associated
historical vision still pursued today (p.xviii).
In Part 1: “Constructions,” Giebel examines Ton Duc Thang’s most renowned
biographical episode – his role in the 1919 Black Sea Mutiny, and how this story was
used by the communist party as well as other counter-interests over time. Around
the period of the 1945 August Revolution, what Giebel terms the “late colonial
moment,” the incident became an essential part of Ton’s self-image as a
revolutionary. Yet later, as chapters 2 and 3 illustrate, the story of Ton’s role in the
Black Sea during the revolutionary years (1945-75) and the post-independence period
(1975-) was appropriated by the newly formed Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s
communist government, and came to symbolize the revolutionary character of the
state. Giebel shows that although the story of Ton’s role in the Black Sea Mutiny has
become part of his credentials as a radical and organizer, careful examination of the
ships’ rosters and naval records reveal he was not on any of the ships on which the
most decisive revolts broke out (p.13), and also did not participate in any of the core
revolts on the Black Sea in 1919 (p.14). In light of this evidence, Giebel shows that
Ton’s actual involvement in the Mutiny is largely fictional. Interestingly, whilst other
evidence suggests Ton was involved in the mass protests in Toulon, France in the
aftermath of the Black Sea incidents (p.25), this participation has been transmuted in
official histories into participation in the actual Black Sea Mutiny.
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In the 1920s, Ton began to establish his credentials with youth and workers
by becoming a radical anti-colonialist organizer in France and Saigon (p.29-30).
However, in the 1930s, Ton was imprisoned by French authorities in Saigon. In both
of these periods, Ton’s story of participation in the Black Sea Mutiny ( and in
particular, the iconic image of Ton raising the Red Flag) became part of a larger
strategy to emphasize his credentials (p.31). His story evolved significantly from a
personal recounting to one used by the Vietnamese Communist party. As Giebel
shows,, this is the first instance of Vietnamese Communism imagining its ancestry
through the life of Ton Duc Thang. In chapter 3, the final part of this first section on
constructions, the author closely examines Ton’s personal recollections of the Black
Sea events, published in a 1957 article in which he reluctantly described his role in
the mutiny. This includes the recounting of the episode in which Ton raised the Red
Flag and, in so doing, createda “truly national symbol” (p.191). As Giebel argues, this
event established a link between Vietnamese communism and the Russian October
Revolution that earmarked proletarian internationalism as a staple of Vietnamese
communism (p. 191).
Part 2, “Contestations” considers how the 1925 strike at the Ba Son naval
shipyard in Saigon, another key event in Ton’s life, was claimed by the party and
later challenged by factions within the Revolution. Chapter 4 particularly examines
the site at Ba Son, a shipyard used during the late 1950s after the division of Vietnam
at the 1954 Geneva accords, when the southern regime in Saigon was set up and the
southern revolutionaries were forced into exile (p.xix). As Giebel illustrates,, Ton
found in the story of Ba Son “a new venue for his preferred intimate association with
the masses” and the strike itself provided exiled and disempowered southern
revolutionaries with their credentials and origins in the south (p.192). Chapter 5
examines the historiographical debates on the “secret labor union” that took place in
the 1970s and 1980s and post-unification period (1975), a period when the
Vietnamese revolution extended its control over the south and asserted a southern
revolutionary identity.
Finally, Part 3, “Commemorations” explores two distinctly different
approaches to the commemoration of Ton Duc Thang. Immediately after Ton’s death
in 1980, the party commissioned a biography of his life in order to establish an
official, national image of Ton and his revolutionary heroism. In contrast to this
official biography, southern commemorative efforts at Ton’s museum and shrine
became “vehicles for a nostalgic critique of the country’s political course” in the late
1980s - the “post-socialist moment” with the changing social(?), economic and
political environment in Vietnam (p.xx). Ultimately, the symbolic meaning of Ton
Duc Thang’s life has been lost over time, just as Ton himself seems to have been
largely forgotten in contemporary Vietnam (p.xx).
In addition to archival research in Vietnam and France, Giebel’s study draws
upon firsthand interviews with persons directly related to Ton Duc Thang (including
his son-in-law, daughter and friends) as well as evidence from archivists and
historians in Vietnam and France. The book is carefully researched and meticulously
crafted and thus provides a narrative of readable and engaging prose. Along with
other recent works, such as Pelley’s Postcolonial Vietnam (2002) and Zinoman’s The
Colonial Bastille (2004), Giebel’s Imagined Ancestries fills a gap in existing literature on
postcolonial Vietnam. Ultimately, the book’s appeal lies in its imaginative
Barnhill Bodemer/Review of Imagined Ancestories
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examination of two previously unrecognized issues in the history of the Vietnamese
Revolution: regionalism has been an influential factor in modern Vietnamese
historiography and hegemonic narratives can be reshaped to suit current needs.
Margaret BARNHILL BODEMER
University of Hawaii
Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism is available in Australia and New
Zealand through UNIREPS, the distribution arm of University of New South
Wales Press.
[email protected]
www.unireps.com.au
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