1

Colonial Paternalism, Vietnamese Maternalism, and Political Children in Colonial

Vietnam1

Christina Firpo, PhD

In the 1930s, the privations of the Great Depression shed light on the French

colonial government’s inability to provide the welfare services its troubled colonial

subjects in Indochina. Picking up where the state was inept, anti-colonial and nationalist

groups stepped in to provide poverty relief. Embarrassed, the colonial state enacted

social-welfare programs to reassert the paternalist role of the state and prevent anti-

colonial rebellions.

Among the various welfare programs enacted by the colonial state during the

Great Depression were those that targeted relief for women and children. Typical of high-

modernist state practices, the state drew from the research of pediatric scientists and

opened maternities and childcare institutions throughout Indochina. The programs turned

a spotlight on the importance of childcare, children, and motherhood. This article

suggests that it was within the context of Vietnamese nationalism and anticolonial

activity that Vietnamese feminists appropriated the rhetoric and practices of the

paternalistic colonial childcare programs to assert women’s unique role as mothers of the

nation, forming a maternalist strain among Vietnamese feminists.

In this article, I draw from the rich research on colonial Vietnamese feminisms,

including research by Bùi Trân Phượng, Đăng Thị Vân Chi, Thiện Mộc Lan , Hue Tam

2

Ho Tai, David Marr, and Shawn McHale.2 I hope to expand on these works by

investigating the relationship between nation, state, and family as understood within the

Vietnamese feminist framework. Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias have shown,

women play an essential role in the nation and the state. As biological reproducers,

women guarantee strength in population size. These births, if mothers engaged in

endogamous sex, provide ethnically “pure” members of the nation, thus forming ethnic

boundaries between nations.3 In colonial Vietnam, feminists made the case for political

significance in the national revolution by emphasizing their role as the biological and

cultural reproducers of the nation, while ironically borrowing the language and practices

of paternast colonial programs for poverty relief.

The Great Depression and Anticolonialism

The international economic crisis of the 1930s shed light the failings of the

paternalist colonial state. The economic boom that Indochina experienced in the 1920s

had gone bust by the end of the decade. On the eve of the International Economic Crisis

of 1929, the economy of Indochina had reached its highest growth point yet in the major

economic sectors of rice cultivation, rubber production, and mineral mining.4 Yet

problems were already looming. Although big business and the general economy

boomed, only some benefited from the economic advances. Moreover, even before the

economic crisis had become widespread in Indochina, the country already suffered from

non-Depression related problems. In 1929, floods and typhoons in Tonkin and

Cochinchina destroyed crops and caused numerous deaths. Authorities failed to provide

3

adequate relief for the affected people, and the economic problems association with the

Great Depression only exacerbated the situation.

The international economic crisis, which stemmed from the 1929 American stock

market crash and subsequent bank failures, crippled France and its colonies. The crisis

hit Indochina in two waves. The first wave dealt a blow to the rice, rubber, and mining

industries. By 1931, when the second wave of the Depression hit, a large number of

landowners defaulted on loans and many companies went bankrupt. In 1931, up to one

third of the population was unemployed; meanwhile, the cost of living skyrocketed.5

Residents of Saigon, Indochina’s economic capital, felt the crisis through 1934 and the

city’s poor suffered through the end of the decade.6 The crisis exacerbated social

tensions stemming from unfair labor practices and contributed to the growth of

anticolonial movements.

With the economic crisis the anticolonial movement grew more radical. The

February 1929 murder of Alfred Bazin, Director of the General Office of Indochinese

Manpower, was one manifestation of the growing discontent with the colony’s labor

practices. Responsible for recruiting laborers for public works projects and plantations,

Bazin was infamous throughout the Vietnamese community for breaking contracts,

kidnapping, and drugging potential workers. The “spilling of [Bazin’s] white blood”

deeply upset many French colons.7 French authorities arrested many members of the

Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng (VNQDĐ), a radical anticolonial party established in

December 1927, implicating the group for conspiracy. The following year, on 9-10

4

February 1930, the VNQDĐ organized insurrections among Vietnamese troops at the

Yên Bái garrison and the Hưng Hoá garrison, as well as in uprisings around the Red

River Delta in Lâm Thao and Phú Thọ. French authorities captured and executed many

VNQDĐ members, including leader Nguyễn Thái Học. In retaliation for Bazin’s

assassination and the Yên Bái uprising, colonial police cracked down on dissent and all

but eliminated the VNQDĐ. Surviving members of the party escaped to China to work

with the Kuomintang and Phan Bội Châu’s supporters.

The extreme poverty caused by pre-Depression environmental disasters, the

international economic crisis, and harsh labor conditions contributed to general social

unrest and much of the revolutionary activity of the 1930s. Within this context,

communists—who had been organizing since 1929—founded the Indochinese

Communist Party (ICP) on February 3, 1930. The ICP drew its ranks from many former

members of the VNQDĐ. From the 1930s on, the ICP recruited peasants and farmers in

areas of the countryside ravaged by the Great Depression through social welfare

programs and worker rebellions.8 The party created mutual aid associations to ease the

effects of the Depression on impoverished farmers. Meanwhile, the ICP clandestinely

organized workers on agribusiness plantations. In the early 1930s, the ICP continued to

work in poor areas to aid farmers and lead rebellions. The rise of the ICP, along with the

frequency of strikes throughout Cambodia, Laos, and the Vietnamese areas of Indochina,

exposed weaknesses in colonial authority.

5

From the start, the Indochinese Communist Party included women’s issues in its

agenda. The Party used women—mothers in particular—as powerful symbols of the

oppressed worker and colonized nation. The Party counted women among its members

and sought to improve the conditions of working mothers. Among other things, the ICP

demanded maternity leave, infant care at the workplace, maternal rights in case of

divorce, and the prohibition of polygamy and forced marriages. The Party, however,

limited its calls for women’s liberation only to those issues that pertained to class

equality. It neglected important issues, such as male privilege and female victimization in

the home, which occurred among all classes, the working class included.9

Shortly after the ICP was founded in 1930, its members established the

Vietnamese Women’s Union, a branch of the Communist Party devoted to women’s

issues. The women’s union of the ICP claimed responsibility for organizing the 1930

strikes by seamstresses and textile factory workers, which, according Nguyễn Khánh

Toàn, begot important rebellions, including the Yên Bái uprising of 1930 and the Nghệ

Tĩnh strikes of 1930-1931.10

The official histories of women’s unions indicate that

Communist organizations provided a much-needed measure of economic and social relief

for Vietnamese women during the Great Depression. Women’s groups in the countryside

established friendship societies (Hội Ái Hữu), which taught women to read Quốc Ngữ,

lent books, and circulated urban newspapers throughout local villages.11

Childcare

institutions served as a conduit for many mothers—and their children—to learn about and

join the Communist movement.12

6

The Colonial State, Welfare, and New Childcare Institutions

Given that the Communist Party had established its own form of social welfare

that competed with government-run programs, the colonial state risked losing its claims

to legitimacy and paternalistic rule if it appeared unable to care for its own subjects. As

the colonial economy plummeted into the Depression, French administrators took control

of most of the colony’s non-governmental social programs by organizing them under a

central office. Although the government had begun centralizing social services well

before the economic crisis, the Great Depression provided the impetus for a large-scale

government takeover of social programs.

Although the colonial state had initiated the process of centralizing social welfare

programs before the Great Depression, it was the economic crisis that necessitated full

state control. In the late 1920s, the colonial government enacted multiple laws that

brought private welfare organizations, under state control. Before the Great Depression,

a decree of February 1, 1927 had established the Hanoi Bureau of Charities, which

regulated such organizations.13

In 1929, Governor General Pasquier founded the Social

Assistance Service, which oversaw both private and public social welfare programs

throughout Indochina.14

During the Depression, the Social Assistance Service functioned

as a liaison between public and private institutions for social relief work.15

Poverty relief

work remained in the hands of private charity institutions and, initially, the government

regulated and financed these organizations. The colonial government’s influence over

private institutions, however, grew incrementally. Under a February 21, 1933 decree, the

7

colonial government centralized and increased its regulatory powers over the colony’s

private welfare organizations.16

The organizations nonetheless continued to maintain a

degree of autonomy. On July 1, 1935, the government of Cochinchina reformed the

social service sector and centralized control of the colony’s charitable organizations.

Under these reforms, the government funded provincial and regional associations and

centralized administrative matters.17

The colonial government’s initiative to centralize charity organizations affected

both French and indigenous welfare organizations. In the early 1930s, as the economic

impact of the Great Depression became widespread, private French and indigenous

charity organizations sprang up all over Indochina. Among other things, these private

charities, which were ostensibly apolitical, helped the poor, orphans, and lepers; buried

the dead; aided young girls and prevented them from turning to prostitution; offered

medical care for prostitutes; and aided the homeless and unemployed. Groups like the Tế

Sinh Society aided sick, elderly, plantation workers, and abandoned children. The Bảo

anh hội cared for impoverished and orphaned children. The colonial government went to

great lengths to monitor charity organizations, demanding member lists and information

from each one on a regular basis.

The French colonial government also took a greater role in children’s lives for

political purposes by establishing new types of colonial childcare institutions for

indigenous children. In the early 1930s, childcare institutions, including nurseries

(crèches), day care centers, and orphanages, opened in many parts of Indochina,

8

particularly famine areas, plantations, and mines. In praising the new child welfare

institutions, child welfare advocate S.E. Hoang Trong Phu Tong Do of Hà-Ðông

remarked in 1933: “little by little Ho Sinh—daycare [and maternity] centers—are

entering the customs of the villagers.”18

The colonial government aimed to open a

childcare facility (nhà nuôi trẻ) in every neighborhood of Saigon to help working as well

as unemployed parents.19

Institutionalized childcare became normalized in the Depression era. From July

1932 to 1933, the Society of Aid and Assistance, a state-run welfare organization, opened

satellites in ten provinces of Annam.20

By 1934, Cochinchina had 20 provincial

hospitals, 42 traveling maternity clinics, 29 isolated maternities, and 110 posts supporting

mobile midwives, along with orphanages or childcare facilities in every province.21

The

new institutions provided impoverished children with care and enabled impoverished

women to find employment farther from the home. Yet the new program also changed

the dynamic of working families as it moved childcare from the home into institutions.

Vietnamese language women’s newspapers published extensively—and mostly

favorably—on the subject of the colony’s new childcare institutions.22

Vietnamese

women’s newspapers communicated to readers that the institutions had been developed

to solve women’s problems, including finding employment outside the home and dealing

with illegitimate children.23

Some journalists, however, had reservations about the lack

of maternal influence in institutional care. For one thing, the institutions, according to

the journalists, made it easy for mothers to abandon unwanted children24

or at least

9

neglect them. Domestic laborers had to travel far to drop off their children at the crèches

and often finished work after the crèches had closed.25

The newspapers ultimately

argued that it was preferable to keep the family unit intact if possible and many articles

argued that a woman’s primary obligation was to her home and family.26

Politicizing the Mothers and Children

Adding to the problems that beset the colonial government during the Great

Depression, some Vietnamese feminists joined the Communist Party and others promoted

nationalist, anticolonial values. Both communists and nationalist feminists continued the

maternalist trend that had characterized the World War I era. By the 1930s, both mothers

and children became important political beings.

Some establishments within mainstream women’s media also embraced

anticolonialism. For example, the most popular mainstream woman’s magazine, Phụ Nữ

Tân Văn, published between 1929-1934, embraced nationalism and anti-colonialism. The

rapid growth in quốc ngữ literacy rates that occurred in the 1920s provided the conditions

for these ideas to spread.27

That Phụ Nữ Tân Văn had become, by the 1930s, “the most

important vehicle of non-communist progressive ideas in the South” shows the extent to

which gender issues entered into the Vietnamese mainstream.28

Although the majority of Phụ Nữ Tân Văn readers were bourgeois, many articles

spoke to economically privileged and disadvantaged readers alike.29

The magazine

promoted a new kind of woman, one who participated in political and scientific

10

conversations, and promoted girls’ education and encouraged gender equity. The

magazine’s articles sometimes spoke in code, using the rhetoric of women’s liberation to

address to broader issues of anti-colonialism.30

The Vietnamese anticolonial movement

published articles in Phụ Nữ Tân Văn as a means of skirting French colonial censors, who

apparently never suspected that Vietnamese women would write about politics.

Phụ Nữ Tân Văn promoted a maternalist form of feminism, in which women

asserted their unique role as biological reproducers of society and child-care givers. Hints

at maternalism began in the 1920s when Phan Bội Châu urged women to think of

themselves as “mothers to the nation” and to raise their children to serve their country,

Vietnam and Đạm Phương, leader of the Nữ Công Hội, likewise urged women to think

of their position as that of a “mother of the nation” (me quốc dân).31

In the 1930s,

Vietnamese women, supported by the popular women’s newspaper Phụ Nữ Tân Văn.

created Hội Duc Anh, groups run by women that aided impoverished children and

provided childcare.32

Phụ Nữ Tân Văn’s also articles drew an analogy between the family

and the nation, portraying the family as the means by which to reproduce, and,

strengthen, the nation. The magazine urged mothers to raise their children to become

intellectuals who would lead what would eventually be an independent Vietnamese

nation, free of French imperialism.33

Phụ Nữ Tân Văn’s articles written for children taught young readers to respect and

nurture the nation in much the same way that they were expected to respect and nurture

their parents. One article declared: “We know how to love our family; [now] we must

11

know how to love our country.”34

Articles instructed children to “love your country as

you love your mother and father”35

and likened Vietnam’s colonial situation to that of a

mother in need. The articles used the term mẫu quốc, a Vietnamese version of the French

term Mère-Patrie, meaning motherland, to refer to Vietnam.36

Phụ Nữ Tân Văn’s

nationalist and anticolonial rhetoric alarmed colonial officials to the point that they shut

down the magazine for six months in 1930 and then again in 1934 for good.

Conclusion

The irony of this time period was that Vietnamese feminists drew from colonial

paternalist policies and rhetoric that were specifically designed to neutralize the threat

posed by communist poverty relief programs. Appropriating the rhetoric and policies of

the colonial childcare programs, Vietnamese maternalists called on women carved an

important role for women in the nationalist and anticolonial movements.

The maternalist trend among Vietnamese feminists of the Great Depression era

was by no means radical, it never challenged the colonial gender order, and it failed to

raise important questions about gender equality. Nonetheless, by claiming women’s role

in the Vietnamese nation, it was an important means to challenge the colonial patriarchy

and it is revealing for the role that these feminists envisioned for women in the colonial

state and nation.

12

Brocheux, Pierre. 1992. "Elite, Bourgeoisie, où la Difficulté d'être." In Saigon 1924-

1945: De la "Belle Colonie" à l'Eclosion Révolutionnaire ou la fin des Dieux

Blancs, edited by Philippe Franchini. Paris: Éditions Autrement.

———. 2000. "The State and the 1930s Depression in French Indochina." In Weathering

the Storm: The Economies of Southeast Asia in the 1930s Depression, edited by

Peter Boomgaard and Ian Brown. Leiden: KITLV Press.

"Bức tho của hội dục-anh gời cho quí bà, quí cô, phụ nữ Việt Nam." 1932. Phụ Nữ Tân

Văn, March 3.

Bùi, Trân Phượng. 2012. "Phụ nữ và giới trong truyền thống Việt Nam." Tuyển tập Giới

và Xã Hội no. 1:83-118.

"Con Chim Con, Con Cá Con." 1930. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 19 June.

" Con Phải Săn Sóc Cho Cha Mẹ." 1930. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 3 April.

"Công Đức Cha Mẹ." 1929. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 9 May 1929.

Đặng, Chi Thị Văn 1998. "Phan Bội Châu với vấn đề Phụ nữ đầu Thế kỉ XX " In Phan

Bội Châu: Con người và sự nghiệp, edited by Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội, 303-318.

Hà Nội

Đặng, Chi Thị Vân 2008. Vấn đề Phụ nữ Trên Báo Chí Tiếng Việt trước năm 1945. Hà

Nội: Nhà xuất bản khoa học xã hội.

du Basty, M. 1933. Société d'Aide et d'Assistance aux Oeuvres de Bienfaisance en

Annam. Paper read at Congrès International pour la Protection de l'Enfance.

13

"Dục anh hội." 1932. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, February 25.

" Dục anh hội!". 1932. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, February 25.

"Dục Anh Viện! Duc Anh Viện!". 1932. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 14 January.

Hoang, Trong Phu Tong Do SE. 1933. Les Oeuvres de Protection de la Maternité et de

l'Enfance de la Province de Hadong. Paper read at Congrès International pour la

Protection de l'Enfance.

"Hội dục anh bên khánh hội." 1932. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, April 7.

"Khuyên ấy vào Hội Dục Anh." 1932. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 3 March 1932.

"Làm sao giùp dục anh viện?". 1932. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, January 7.

Lịch sử phong trào phụ nữ Hà Bắc. 1990. Hà Bắc: Hội Liên hiệp phụ nữ Hà Bắc.

Lịch sử phong trào phụ nữ Nghệ An (1930-1975). 1996. Nghệ An: Hội Liên Hiệp Phụ Nữ

Nghệ An.

Lịch Sử Phong Trào Phụ Nữ Tỉnh Bắc Ninh (1930-2000). 2000. Bắc Ninh: Hội Liên Hiệp

Phụ Nữ Tỉnh Bắc Ninh.

Lịch Sử Phong Trào Phụ Nữ Tỉnh Vĩnh Phú (1930-1995) 1996. Vĩnh Phú: Hội Liên Hiệp

Phụ Nữ Tỉnh Vĩnh Phú.

Lịch Sử Truyền Thống Cách Mạng Phũ Nữ Hà Tây. 1997. Hà Tây: Hôi Liên Hiệp Phụ

Nữ Hà Tây.

Lịch Sử Truyền Thống Phụ Nữ Nam Hà (1930-1995). 1996. Nam Hà: Hội Liên Hiệp Phụ

Nữ Nam Hà.

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Marquis, Edouard. 1936. L’Oeuvre Humaine de la France en Cochinchine. Saigon:

Imprimerie du Theatre.

Marr, David G. 1981a. Vietnamese Tradition on Trial 1920-1945. Berkeley: University

of California Press.

———. 1981b. Vietnamese tradition on trial, 1920-1945. Berkeley: University of

California Press.

McHale, Shawn Frederick. 1995. "Printing and Power: Vietnamese Debates over

Women’s Place in Society, 1918-1934 , 173-194. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1995." In Essays into Vietnamese Pasts, edited by K.W Taylor and John K.

Whitmore.

Monnais-Rousselot, Laurence 1999. Médecine et Colonisation: L’Adventure

Indochinoise 1860-1939. Paris: CNRS Éditions.

Montagnon, Pierre. 2004. France-Indochine, Un Siècle de Vie Commune 1858-1954.

Paris: Pygmalion.

"Một Đứa Nhỏ Ba Tháng bị Cha Mẹ Bỏ ở Viện Dục Anh." 1933. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 11

May.

Nguyễn Khánh Toàn, Nguyễn Công Bình, Văn Tạo, Phạm Xuân Nam, and Bùi Đình

Thanh 2004. Lịch Sử Việt Nam tập II 1858-1945. Hà Nội: NXB Khoa Học Xã Hội.

"Nuôi Con Để Cắy về Sau." 1932. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 14 January.

Peycam, Philippe M.F. . 2012. The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon

1916-1930. NY: Columbia Univeristy Press.

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Phạm, Đình Tân. 1959. Chủ Nghĩa Đế Quốc Pháp và Tình Hình Công Nghiệp ở Việt-

Nam Dưới Thời Thuộc Pháp Hà Nội: NXB Bản Sự Thật.

Phụ Nữ Haỉ Phòng qua các Chặng Đường Cách Mạng 1926-1955. 1985. Haỉ Phòng:

NXB Haỉ Phòng.

Tai, Hue Tam Ho. 1992. Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Thiện, Mộc Lan. 2010. Phụ-Nữ Tân-Văn: Phấn Son Tô Điểm Sơn Hà. Ho Chi Minh City:

NXB Văn Hóa Sài Gòn Công Ty Sách Thời Đại.

"Tình Mẹ Con." 1930. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 13 February.

"Tình Mẹ Con Của Loại Vật." 1932. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 1 December.

Trần, Huy Liệu, Lương Bích Nguyễn, Tạo Văn, and Tân Hường. 1956. Cách Mạng Cận

Đại Việt-Nam. Vol. VI. Hà Nội: Ban Nghiên Cứu Văn Sử Địa xuất bản.

Truong, Chinh, and Nguyen Giap Vo. 1974. The Peasant Question (1937-1938).

Translated by Christine Pelzer White, Data Paper: Number 4. Ithaca: Cornell

University Press.

Vann, Michael G. 2006. "White Blood on Rue Hue: the Murder of "le négrier" Bazin."

Proceedings for the Western Society of French History no. 34:247-262.

"Yêu Nước thì Phải Học." 1929. Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 2 May.

Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Floya Anthias. 1989. "Introduction." In Woman, Nation, State,

edited by Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, 1-15. Basingstoke: Macmillan

Press.

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1 I would like to express gratitude for the fruitful conversations about this topic that I was fortunate have with the

students of the Fall 2012 Gender and Development course at Hoa Sen University, as well as professors Nguyễn Bảo

Thanh Nghi, Doãn Thị Ngọc, and Vũ Đức Vượng. Their comments were instrumental for helping me shape the

argument of this article. 2(Bùi 2012); (Đặng 1998); (Đặng 2008); (Thiện 2010); (Tai 1992); (Marr 1981a); (McHale 1995). 3 Yuval-Davis and Anthias also make the case that women are symbolic figures in national discourse, much like the

Statue of Liberty in the United States or Marianne in France. They are also the symbol of sacrifice for the nation as

participants of national struggle, as guerilla warriors or nurses to soldiers. (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989). 4 From 1913 to 1930, Indochina vied with Burma and Siam for the position of largest rice producer in the world.

(Montagnon 2004, 184); (Brocheux 2000, 251) 5 (Phạm 1959, 63-64) (Nguyễn Khánh Toàn 2004, 327) 6 (Brocheux 1992, 144) 7 (Vann 2006, 248) 8 For information on ICP initiatives in the countryside during the early 1930s strikes and Popular Front-era ICP

policies to recruit peasants and landlords see (Truong and Vo 1974). 9 (Tai 1992, 244) 10(Nguyễn Khánh Toàn 2004, 334-345) 11(Lịch Sử Truyền Thống Phụ Nữ Nam Hà (1930-1995) 1996, 29); (Lịch Sử Phong Trào Phụ Nữ Tỉnh Bắc Ninh

(1930-2000) 2000, 46); (Lịch Sử Phong Trào Phụ Nữ Tỉnh Vĩnh Phú (1930-1995) 1996); (Lịch sử phong trào phụ

nữ Hà Bắc 1990, 40-43); (Phụ Nữ Haỉ Phòng qua các Chặng Đường Cách Mạng 1926-1955 1985) 12 (Lịch sử phong trào phụ nữ Nghệ An (1930-1975) 1996, 49); (Trần et al. 1956, 30); (Lịch Sử Truyền Thống Cách

Mạng Phũ Nữ Hà Tây 1997); (Lịch Sử Truyền Thống Phụ Nữ Nam Hà (1930-1995) 1996) 13 Decree of 1 February 1927. Viet Nam Nation Archives [hereafter VNNA], Center 1, Fonds Maire Hanoi 5857. 14 (Marquis 1936, 4-6) 15 (Monnais-Rousselot 1999, 196-197) 16 For reference to this law see Decree of 2 August 1939. VNNA 1, Fonds Governeur Général d’Indochine 72. 17 (Marquis 1936, 4-6) 18 Today, “hộ sinh” means midwife.; (Hoang 1933, 499) 19 ("Khuyên ấy vào Hội Dục Anh" 1932) 20 (du Basty 1933, 507) 21 “Comité national de l’enfance: Inspection général du service de la santé, protection de la maternité et de l’enfnace

dans les colonies Françaises,”1934. Centre des Archives d’Outre Mer [hereafter CAOM], Fonds AGEFOM 238-301. 22 ("Khuyên ấy vào Hội Dục Anh" 1932); ("Dục Anh Viện! Duc Anh Viện!" 1932) 23(Thiện 2010, 62-66); ("Khuyên ấy vào Hội Dục Anh" 1932) 24 ("Một Đứa Nhỏ Ba Tháng bị Cha Mẹ Bỏ ở Viện Dục Anh" 1933) 25 Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, 27 April 1933. 26(Marr 1981a, 225) 27 As Thiện Mộc Lan shows, Phụ Nữ Tân Văn covered a wide selection of anticolonial events. (Thiện 2010, 85-

126); On quốc ng ữ literacy rates see (Peycam 2012, 115). 28 (Tai 1992, 206) 29 Phụ Nữ Tân Văn was circulated primarily in Saigon and the Mekong Delta; however, it was also read in

Annam and Tonkin. The official history of the revolutionary women of Nghệ An recounts that women

would sit in groups and read Phụ Nữ Tân Văn to each other. Reading groups like those held in Nghệ An

would have provided illiterate listeners with access to the information in the newspaper. (Lịch sử phong

trào phụ nữ Nghệ An (1930-1975) 1996) 30 (McHale 1995, 171-175)

17

31 Đam Phương as quoted in (Marr 1981b, 210) 32("Dục anh hội" 1932); ("Hội dục anh bên khánh hội" 1932); ("Làm sao giùp dục anh viện?" 1932); ("

Dục anh hội!" 1932) ; ("Bức tho của hội dục-anh gời cho quí bà, quí cô, phụ nữ Việt Nam" 1932) 33 ("Nuôi Con Để Cắy về Sau" 1932) 34 ("Con Chim Con, Con Cá Con" 1930) 35 The article uses the term “yếu nước” which also means “to be patriotic.” ("Tình Mẹ Con" 1930); ("Tình Mẹ Con

Của Loại Vật" 1932); (" Con Phải Săn Sóc Cho Cha Mẹ" 1930); ("Công Đức Cha Mẹ" 1929) 36 ("Yêu Nước thì Phải Học" 1929) In 1929, the term mẫu quốc evoked a sense of love and patriotism; after 1945

that the term was used to refer mockingly to colonial France.