Educational Cadres: How Efforts to Reform Rural Schools and Traditional "Chinese Character" Education in Vietnam Shaped Mobilization and Decolonial Thought, 1887-1945

How were indigenous schools and the persistent usage of “Chinese characters” in Vietnam, formerly part of Colonial Indochina, viewed by French authorities, urban elites, and the rural population from 1887 to 1945? While prior literature focuses on urban and cosmopolitan elites and their training in franco-indigenous schools or in schools overseas, such as in China, Japan, Russia, or France, this presentation focuses on rural indigenous education to understand how different forms of schooling and grassroots education shaped livelihoods and discontent among the agrarian majority. Tensions around schooling reveal how French policies towards indigenous education were emergent and uncertain, as teachings in “Chinese characters” originating from a traditional Confucian administrative system continued to contend with the romanized Vietnamese script quốc ngữ and French even during the late colonial period. Findings suggest that village schools, rather than being mere vectors of colonial propaganda and urban-elite mobilization, played critical roles in fostering self-determination and mediating between tradition and modernity. Rural actors experimented with novel forms of educational practice. The study of indigenous schooling thus reveals how French campaigns to further economic aims among the rural majority through schooling shaped relationships between the peasantry and gentry and their organizing efforts across villages and urban areas. This study employs archival data from National Archives I and IV in Hanoi and Dalat, respectively, to examine rural education’s entanglements with village politics and its implications for rural rebellion and decolonial trajectories.