The Activity of Prospering Commerce and Industry by Vietnamese Bourgeois in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

Since after the World War I (1914-18) until before the world economic crisis (1929-33), the Vietnamese bourgeois manifested many exciting activities of prospering commerce and industry along with the other movements and struggles. These influenced both the national consciousness and the deep ideology of the bourgeois class in Vietnam since after WWI. The second large-scale colonial exploitation by the French government in the period 1919-29 presented both opportunities and challenges to the Vietnamese bourgeois. In order to maximize its favorable condition and to minimize its disadvantage, the Vietnamese bourgeois class had no other way but raising the movement of prospering commerce and industry. The failure of this movement reveals the fact that the Vietnamese bourgeois could never become the leading class of the national liberation movement in Vietnam.