France Reviews Its Revolutionary Origins: Social Politics and Historical Opinion in the Third Republic. Paul Farmer

1945 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-64
Author(s):  
James L. Godfrey
Keyword(s):  
Third Republic ◽  
Social Politics ◽  
The Third

The Return of N’Guyen Van Binh

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Geoff Read
Keyword(s):  
Third Republic ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Political Prisoner ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
Indentured Servitude ◽  
The Third ◽  
Original Sentence ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
One Year

This article explores the case of N’Guyen Van Binh, a South Vietnamese political prisoner exiled for his alleged role in “Poukhombo’s Rebellion” in Cambodia in 1866. Although Van Binh’s original sentence of exile was reduced to one year in prison he was nonetheless deported and disappeared into the maw of the colonial systems of indentured servitude and forced labor; he likely did not survive the experience. He was thus the victim of injustice and his case reveals the at best haphazard workings of the French colonial bureaucracy during the period of transition from the Second Empire to the Third Republic. While the documentary record is entirely from the perspective of the colonizers, reading between the lines we can also learn something about Van Binh himself including his fierce will to resist his colonial oppressors.

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