Ho chi Minh and Vietnamese Independence
Rodriguez Perez, Marliz
Chamberlain College of Nursing
HIST 410: Contemporary History
June 2016
Ho Chi Minh and Vietnamese Independence
Ho Chi Minh opens his speech with a direct quotation from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. In his cognizance, the issue of Vietnamese independence is as vibrant as the Colonial cause for freedom from the British. His main concern is why those has it not been questioned that Vietnam has not been afforded the same individual rights as the quotations he utilized from both the French and American Declarations of Independence.
Service
One of the services that Ho Chi Minh feels that Vietnam rendered during the conflict was the mere fact that they provided assistance to the French. As World War II advanced, conflicts between Japan and the French spilled over into Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh addresses this by stating that as both nations battled for territorial supremacy, the Vietnamese Republic paid the price. He contends that despite the fact that there was an increase in the "sufferings and miseries" of the Vietnamese people, they still assisted the French: “Notwithstanding all this, our fellow-citizens have always manifested toward the French a tolerant and humane attitude. Even after the Japanese putsch of March 1945, the Vietminh League helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property (Minh, 1945).”
Principles
Equality and self- determination were the principles that Ho Chi Minh acknowledged in making the case for Vietnamese freedom. He emphasizes that if principles resembling self-determination justified American entry into World War II, then they can be applied to the case of Vietnamese freedom. Ho Chi Minh debates that if the Allies stood up to Fascism in the name of a nation's right to embrace self-determination, thereby the independence of Vietnam should be guaranteed. In referencing...