Chapter 1: Religion and Politics in Colonial Vietnam

UNEDITED DRAFT, NOT YET FULLY FOOTNOTED Anti-clerical radical-socialists and freemasons always held a monopoly of posts in the French Ministry of the Colonies. Governors and officials were anti-Catholic and anti-clerical. Ngô Đình Nhu, Political Adviser to President Ngô Đình Diệm Historic events tend to be rooted in a distant past. The 1963 revolt by Buddhists …

Introduction

A CONTESTED CLAIM Sectarian upheaval marked 1963 as a milestone in the civil war between North and South Vietnam. Early May that year, while the war was in full swing, the South’s Catholic President Ngô Đình Diệm provoked a rampant uprising among Buddhist fellow citizens against the regime he led. They claimed that religious discrimination …