Essay on "Ho Chi Minh"

Essay 3 pages (1033 words) Sources: 2

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Ho Chi Minh's life from his birth through the Second World War. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of Vietnam and a major force in the socialization of the country. Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 in Vietnam, and was President of North Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969.

Ho Chi Minh was the son of a scholar and grew up in a poor village. According to one biographer, his real name was "Nguyen Van Thanh, which means Nguyen, who will be victorious" (Green 1996). His parents were both involved in the Vietnamese revolution against the French, and his mother was jailed for stealing guns from the French forces in the country, so revolution was in his blood. He attended a French school near his home, but spoke out against the French to the other students, so they threw him out in 1910. After that, he went to China as a teacher, and witnessed the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in China, be became even more convinced that Vietnam should gain its freedom from the French. He traveled to Saigon to learn to cook, because he thought that as a cook he could find a job anywhere. At the age of 22, he got a job on board a French ship in the galley, and he spent several years sailing around the world, finally ending up in France. He did a lot of reading while on board the ship, and became even more interested in revolutionary activities.

After leaving the ship, he got a job in London at the Carlton Hotel, and immediately noticed the Asian workers at the hotel were being mistreated. He formed a union for the Asian employees to gain better treatment throughout the country. He then became an activist for Vietnamese freedom, and he came under the scrutiny of French spies, he literally became the voice for Indo-China and their rights. During this time, he lived in France and attended intellectual meetings. Author Karnow writes, "Like other nationalists of his generation who had lived in France or attended French schools in Vietnam, Nguyen Ai Quoc adsorbed the influence of the West but rejected its domination" (Karnow 1997, 109). He also became a socialist while he lived in France, which led him to develop communism in Indo-China when he returned home. He later said, "It was patriotism and not Communism that originally inspired me'" (Karnow 1997, 134). Later, he moved to Moscow and met several prominent Soviet leaders, including Stalin and Trotsky, who further influenced him.

In 1925, he became an interpreter and advisor to the Chinese Army, and he then began to plot forming a communist party in China that would fight for freedom for Vietnam. He also began to train some of his followers in guerilla warfare tactics, and they began to attack French forces in Vietnam in an attempt to stir up trouble. He left China after a betrayal by Chiang Kai-shek, and again went to Moscow to escape the betrayal and murder that followed. He used a variety of names to cover his identity,… READ MORE

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