The “White Man’s Burden”

The Ideological Roots of Vietnam’s Colonial Struggle

White Man's Burden by Kiplinger

The concept of the "White Man's Burden" played a formative ideological role in shaping colonial attitudes and governance in Vietnam, particularly under French rule. Although the phrase itself emerged from Anglo-American imperial discourse, most famously articulated by Rudyard Kipling in his 1899 poem, which urged the United States to civilize the Philippines, its core tenets of racial superiority, cultural paternalism, and the supposed moral duty to uplift “lesser” peoples were broadly embraced across European empires.1 France adopted a distinct but parallel ideology known as the mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission), which became the official rationale for its colonization of Indochina beginning in the mid-nineteenth century.2

French colonial administrators claimed they brought civilization, Christianity, law, science, and progress to what they depicted as a stagnant and primitive society. These claims drew on Enlightenment-era universalism but were distorted by racial hierarchies and colonial economic interests. The logic closely mirrored Kipling’s framing of colonization as a noble, self-sacrificing endeavor—one in which the colonizer suffered for the supposed benefit of the colonized.3 In practice, however, this ideology masked a system of domination, profit extraction, and racial subjugation.

In Indochina, France implemented a segregated colonial system that reinforced Vietnamese inferiority. Indigenous people were mainly excluded from meaningful education, political representation, and economic opportunity. Land confiscation enriched French settlers and local collaborators. The rural Vietnamese population suffered from high taxation, forced labor, and poverty. French administrators sometimes discussed gradual reform or assimilation. Still, the colonial state was fundamentally designed to exploit, not emancipate. The promise of a civilizing mission dignified the empire more than it humanized its victims.

Vietnamese Resistance and the Disillusionment with Western Liberalism

By the early twentieth century, Vietnamese reformers and intellectuals began to challenge the legitimacy of French colonialism, drawing inspiration from various ideological sources, including Chinese nationalism, Japanese modernization, and Western liberal thought. Some, such as Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh, advocated for reformist paths that sought greater autonomy through education, cultural revival, and political negotiation. These early efforts reflected an ambivalent engagement with Western ideals—both admiration for constitutionalism and modern science, and revulsion at colonial hypocrisy.

After World War I, many Vietnamese nationalists pinned their hopes on U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s principle of national self-determination, outlined in his Fourteen Points. Among them was Nguyen Ai Quoc—later known as Ho Chi Minh—who traveled to France and submitted a petition to the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference. Titled “The Claims of the Annamite People,” the document called for basic civil liberties and political reform in French Indochina. 5 Wilson and the other Western delegates ignored the petition. This rejection had profound consequences: it convinced Ho and others that liberalism would not voluntarily dismantle the empire. Disillusioned, Ho began to study Marxism-Leninism, which offered a more radical framework for anti-colonial liberation.6

Marxism as an Ideological Counterpoint to Colonialism

Marxism the foundation of Communism

Marxist ideology directly opposed the core principles of colonial paternalism. While colonialists justified their control as a burdensome act of benevolence—claiming to uplift the “uncivilized”—Marxists rejected this moral narrative outright. Marxism characterized colonialism not as a gift, but as an exploitative relationship serving metropolitan capitalist interests. The colonized, whom colonialists depicted as childlike or backward, were seen instead as members of oppressed classes, capable of revolutionary action. This sharply contrasted with the view of empire as a civilizing project; for Marxists, imperialism was the most violent expression of capitalist exploitation, aimed at extracting labor and resources, not providing guidance or uplift.

This worldview took root in Vietnam during the 1920s and 1930s, as French repression intensified and moderate reformers found little space to maneuver. In 1927, the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNQDD) was formed under the influence of the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen. Their vision blended nationalism with anti-colonialism, but their 1930 Yen Bai mutiny was swiftly crushed by the French, leading to mass executions and the party’s decline.8

In contrast, Ho Chi Minh—then working as a Comintern agent—helped found the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in 1930. The ICP avoided confrontation in its early years. It focused instead on building clandestine networks among workers and rural communities. The ICP framed colonial oppression as part of a global capitalist system. This linked Vietnam’s struggle to broader anti-imperialist movements in Asia and beyond. French authorities responded with surveillance, arrests, and censorship. Still, the ICP’s ideology and organizational discipline gave it staying power.

World War II and the Collapse of Colonial Authority

The outbreak of World War II shifted the global balance of power and weakened colonial empires. In 1940, Nazi Germany defeated France. This led to the establishment of the Vichy regime. That same year, Imperial Japan occupied Vietnam but allowed French colonial officials to retain nominal authority. The arrangement was opportunistic. Japan preferred to govern through existing structures while securing access to Indochina’s strategic and material resources.

Under this dual occupation, Vietnamese people suffered increased repression, food shortages, and forced labor. Japanese demands worsened French exploitation. In 1945, a devastating famine struck northern Vietnam and killed up to two million people. Both colonial powers were complicit in the crisis. This further discredited the idea that European rule brought stability or progress.

In February 1941, Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam after decades abroad and founded the Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam). A communist-led nationalist coalition, the Viet Minh, gained support among peasants and intellectuals in the northern highlands. It established guerrilla bases, distributed anti-Japanese propaganda, and began organizing village councils. By the war’s final years, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had made contact with the Viet Minh. It provided limited assistance to resist Japan, driven by shared strategic interests rather than ideological alignment.12

In March 1945, Japan ousted the remaining French authorities and installed Emperor Bao Dai as head of a nominally independent Vietnamese government. Most Vietnamese saw this as a superficial change. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, the Viet Minh moved quickly. They launched the August Revolution, seizing power in Hanoi, Hue, and Saigon before Allied troops could return to the area.13

A Brief Hope and a Return to Struggle

On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh stood in Ba Dinh Square and proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). His Declaration drew rhetorical power from both the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.14 In invoking these documents, Ho exposed the hypocrisy of Western nations that preached liberty while practicing empire. The DRV’s proclamation marked a moment of revolutionary euphoria, but one that was quickly challenged by the realities of postwar geopolitics.

Potsdam Conference

As agreed at the Potsdam Conference, Chinese Nationalist forces entered northern Vietnam to disarm Japanese troops. British troops took control of the south. The British, despite claims of neutrality, allowed French troops to return and reestablish colonial administration in Saigon. Skirmishes escalated into violent confrontations. French authorities refused to recognize the DRV and sought to reclaim full sovereignty over Indochina. Negotiations between Ho and French envoys collapsed in 1946.

The ensuing First Indochina War pitted the Viet Minh against French colonial forces and their Vietnamese allies. It was a protracted and brutal conflict that merged guerrilla warfare with conventional battles. The war culminated in the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, where Vietnamese forces decisively defeated the French. The Geneva Accords, later that year, divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel, setting the stage for the United States to assume the mantle of anti-communist containment.

Conclusion

The ideological legacy of the “White Man’s Burden”—though originally articulated in British and American contexts—profoundly shaped France’s colonial project in Vietnam. Through its mission civilisatrice, France cloaked exploitation in the language of enlightenment and progress. Yet this ideology met growing resistance from a Vietnamese population that drew on diverse intellectual traditions—liberal, nationalist, and Marxist—to articulate a vision of independence.

The collision between colonial paternalism and Marxist anti-imperialism defined the course of Vietnam’s twentieth-century struggle. While France insisted on its civilizing role, Vietnamese revolutionaries exposed the material realities of racism, violence, and domination. From Versailles in 1919 to Ba Dinh Square in 1945, the Vietnamese rejection of colonial ideology culminated in a national revolution that sparked a global chain of events. In the ashes of empire, new ideologies emerged—not burdens, but claims to justice, dignity, and self-rule.

Footnotes

1. Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” History Matters, accessed May 15, 2025, https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/.

2. “France’s Mission Civilisatrice on the Periphery of Europe,” JHI Blog, accessed May 15, 2025, https://www.jhiblog.org/2023/10/09/frances-mission-civilisatrice-on-the-periphery-of-europe/.

3. Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden.”

4. Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012), 45–49.

5. Nguyen Ai Quoc, “List of Claims of the Annamese People,” Marxist Internet Archive, accessed May 15, 2025, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ho-chi-minh/works/1919/0001.htm.

6. David G. Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 23–26.

7. Ibid., 60–62.

8. Logevall, Embers of War, 55–56.

9. Marr, Vietnam 1945, 78–81.

10. Ibid., 102–107.

11. Ibid., 119–122.

12. Logevall, Embers of War, 98–100.

13. Marr, Vietnam 1945, 148–152.

14. “Vietnamese Declaration of Independence,” Marxist Internet Archive, accessed May 15, 2025, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ho-chi-minh/works/1945/declaration-independence.htm.

15. Logevall, Embers of War, 132–138.