MASTER OF INDOCHINA AFTER GOD: DECOUX’S OWN BRAND OF AUTHORITARIANISM TO MAINTAIN FRENCH SOVEREIGNTY IN INDOCHINA BENJAMIN NATHANIEL FREUD (M.A.), University of Denver, Josef Korbel School of International Studies (M.B.A.), Thunderbird School of Global Management (B.A.), International Affairs, Lewis & Clark College A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2013 i ii TABLE OF CONTENTS SUMMARY v Chapter I: Introduction and Overview 1 Overview and Existing Literature 2 Background and Project Construct 19 Chapter II: Neither National nor Revolution 27 From Debacle to Rebirth 32 The National Revolution 36 Factionalism and the Myth of the National Revolution 47 Conclusion 55 Chapter III: Decoux and the Legacy of Action française 60 Nationalism, Action Française, and the roots of the National Revolution 63 The French Navy: Conformity in Thought and Action 73 Decoux: Spokesman for the Conservative Cause 80 Admiral Decoux, Product of his Environment 85 Chapter IV: Propaganda 89 The Service de l’Information, de la Propagande, et de la Presse (IPP) 97 A United French Bloc as a Show of Strength: The Use of the Légion 123 Cult of Personality, Cultural Parallels, and Festivals 134 Conclusion 158 Chapter V: Continuing to Create a Federal Consciousness 165 Developing the Indochinese Federation 167 Rebuilding the Elite 188 Ensuring the Loyalty of the Administrators 200 The Federal Council 215 Youth and Sports 221 Conclusion 231 Chapter VI: The Economic Front 238 iii The Japanese Economic Agreements and the Impact of Economic Isolation 242 Developing a Substitution Economy 251 Artisanat 258 Les Grands travaux 271 Corporatism 280 Conclusion 291 Chapter VII: Conclusion 298 Bibliography 308 Archival Sources 308 Printed Sources: Newspapers, Reviews, and Serials 308 Printed Sources: Primary and Secondary Books, Memoirs, and Articles 309 iv SUMMARY This dissertation examines how Governor General Jean Decoux mixed ideology and pragmatism to design policies elevating the colonial oeuvre in Indochina to fulfill his only mission: ensure French sovereignty in the region in the post-World War II era. This study begins by establishing that Vichy France had neither the will nor the capacity to export Pétainism abroad. It examines Pétain’s regime in the metropole and exposes the vacuity of the National Revolution as a coherent force. It looks at the opposing forces within the metropolitan government and the constraints imposed by the occupying German authorities to determine that there was no one version of the National Revolution, much less one that could be exported twelve thousand kilometers away to a Southeast Asian colony that had drastically different socioeconomic characteristics. The dissertation then explains that the Decoux regime is best understood in light of the ideological influence of ultraconservative Charles Maurras on the officers of the French Navy, including Decoux, whose writings and actions reflected the views of Action française. This study shows how Decoux used Vichy’s National Revolution as a vehicle to design policy geared toward winning the hearts and minds of the peoples of Indochina and overcoming the colony’s slide into autarky, objectives that were essential for the survival of French authority in the colony. Chapter 4 examines how Decoux perfected the administration’s propaganda machine—which utilized coercion, censorship, rituals, and festivals—to draw parallels between French and Indochinese cultures to glorify the colonial oeuvre in the region. Chapter 5 looks at the regime’s v administrative reforms, orchestration of sporting events, and use of the Légion française des combattants as desperate endeavors to create the illusion of a nascent federalist spirit guided by a united French community. Chapter 6 focuses on Decoux’s reorganization of the economy, designed to prove that the colonial authorities could still provide for the Indochinese peoples in spite of the region’s increasingly autarkical situation. Throughout this dissertation, I stress Decoux’s relative autonomy from the Pétainist agenda that existed (in rhetoric if not in practice) in the metropole, maintaining that his primordial objective was the salvation of any pretense of colonial legitimacy in the region, in spite of what would turn out to be an impossible situation for the French. vi French Indochina1 1 . http://www.casahistoria.net/images/indochina_conquest_map.gif vii France During the Second World War2 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:France_map_Lambert-93_with_regions_and_departments-occupation.svg viii Chapter I: Introduction and Overview How did the unique strategic and political situation in French Indochina allow Governor General Jean Decoux to implement his own brand of authoritarianism in the colony during the Second World War in an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the European and Indochinese peoples? This dissertation seeks to answer this question by exploring how the French colonial administration sought to fulfill its mission of maintaining French sovereignty in the region by balancing its policy- making between the ideological prevalence of a Maurrassian worldview and the endogenous and exogenous factors that required a more pragmatic approach given Indochina’s unique geopolitical situation. Moving away from the idea that Hanoi indiscriminately followed a Pétainist agenda and that Vichy “actually cloned itself overseas,”1 this study will show that the Decoux regime acted with significant autonomy to face its challenges, though its politics had the same ultraconservative and anti-republican ideological roots as those that inspired the National Revolution in the metropole. The marked cultural, socio-political, and economic differences that characterized France (as the metropole) and the five pays that constituted the colony rendered it impossible to import a carbon copy of the Pétainist program in Indochina, particularly given the colonists’ precarious hold on the region.2 Moreover, Decoux’s proconsulship outlasted the Vichy government by more than six months 1. Eric Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-1944 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 2. 2. The term pays refers to the five regions of Indochina: Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Laos, and Cambodia. 1 and Pierre Laval’s return to power in April 1942 arguably ended the prominence of the National Revolution in France itself, providing Hanoi with the opportunity to implement policies aligned with Decoux’s own worldview. The first goal of this project is to examine how the Decoux administration used the National Revolution as a vehicle to promote its own agenda, inspired by Maurrassism, with policies aiming to justify the five pays’ relationships with France, through the nurturing of a federalist spirit and concrete administrative and economic changes designed to promote the idea of France as Indochina’s natural protector and intellectual guide, in spite of its status as a weakened global power. The third goal is to contribute to a literature that has received little attention from scholars, including French historians, thereby increasing awareness for the legacy of the regime and its effects on post-Second World War Indochina. Overview and Existing Literature Much of the scholarly consideration devoted to the Vichy government has either focused on state collaboration and the persecution of Jews in France or the role of the leaders and the mass following they fostered and lost. Other contemporary works have examined how the French extreme Right seized power and the social foundations it tried to lay through the National Revolution. Even more profuse are the efforts to build theoretical models and case studies accounting for the emergence of nationalism in Western and non-Western regions and the struggles for independence that sometimes ensued. Indochina, and Vietnam in particular, has generated a considerable amount of interest due to its 2 violent experience with decolonization and its role in Cold War containment history. Meanwhile the French empire during the Second World War has mostly been examined for its diplomatic or strategic value. With few exceptions, the contexts within which the imperial administration in Indochina implemented policies bore of anti-republican ideologies, the point where these bodies of literature intersect, have been overlooked. Traditionally, historians have designated this time in Indochinese history as the “Japanese period,” implicitly bypassing or downplaying the importance of the internal administrative and political machine that the occupying forces allowed the French to run. When not looking at Indochina as a mere piece in the United States’ quest for a decolonized post-war Asia (a vision that disappeared at Yalta in February 1945), scholars have most often focused on Franco-Japanese relations and the unfolding of events that took place ahead of the coup de force of 9 March 1945. Brocheux and Isoart present a well documented account of how the Japanese stationnement presented diplomatic and strategic dilemmas for France and opportunities seized by Vietnamese nationalists.3 In a book rich on archival research but often short on analysis, Jaques Valette shows the often conflicting opinions and directions of French decision- making vis-à-vis the Japanese and the mixed results that ensued.4 Meanwhile Philippe Grandjean puts Japan at the center of colonial decision-making, with international relations