For a people deeply rooted in tales of resilience against powerful adversaries, France’s swift occupation of Vietnam dealt a significant psychological blow. Initial resistance efforts aimed to restore the monarchy, like the “Save the King” (Can Vuong) movement in the 1890s. However, any monarch displaying patriotism was quickly suppressed by the French authorities. Until the mid-1920s, Vietnam’s fragmented resistance movements were managed easily by the Sûreté, France’s powerful secret police. Most early nationalist goals focused on political reform rather than social or economic changes, which limited their appeal to the majority of Vietnamese. Over time, however, nationalists recognized the need for a more radical approach, and influential leaders like Phan Boi Chau began calling for the violent overthrow of colonial rule.

In 1925, across the border in southern China, the Revolutionary Youth League was established as Vietnam’s first Marxist-Leninist organization. Its founder was none other than Ho Chi Minh. Born in 1890 to a patriotic low-ranking official, Ho showed resistance to French rule early in life. He left Vietnam in 1911 and spent years traveling the world: working on docks in Brooklyn, as a pastry chef in London, and eventually finding himself in Paris after World War I under the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”). In France, he became active among exiled dissidents seeking an end to colonialism. At the time, Communists were among the few political groups actively supporting anticolonial movements. Ho became a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920, and by 1923, he was in Moscow, training as a Communist agent. A year later, he was in southern China, where he founded the Revolutionary Youth League, which attracted a fervent group of young Vietnamese.

Although other renowned revolutionaries joined Ho’s cause, it was largely his unwavering commitment, intense focus, and natural charisma that unified the nationalist movement and led Vietnam toward independence. Ho’s leadership faced its first major challenge in 1929 when the League split into three competing Communist factions. However, in Hong Kong a year later, he persuaded the rival groups to merge into the Indochinese Communist Party, whose primary aim was an independent Vietnam ruled by workers, peasants, and soldiers. In preparation for revolution, party operatives organized cells among rural communities and urban laborers. The timing was advantageous: unemployment and poverty increased during the Great Depression, and France became less committed to supporting its colonies. In response, French authorities placed a death sentence on Ho’s head; he was arrested in the British Colony of Hong Kong. With the aid of his counsel, who spread rumors of his death by tuberculosis, Ho eventually secured his release.

Throughout the 1930s, Vietnam saw widespread labor strikes and uprisings, most notably the Nghe Tinh rebellion in the summer of 1930. French aircraft bombed a crowd of 20,000 protesters near Vinh. In the following days, villagers took control of much of the surrounding countryside, with some even establishing revolutionary councils to redistribute land from wealthy landlords to the peasantry. While the uprising underscored the strength of socialist organization, it had a harsh outcome in the short term: thousands of peasants were killed or imprisoned, many leaders were executed, and the Communist Party suffered severe setbacks. The ringleaders were sent to the infamous Poulo Condore penal colony, which became known as the “University of the Revolution” for its role in nurturing revolutionary thought. By the late 1930s, it’s estimated that the French had imprisoned around ten thousand activists.