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From Indochina to Vietnam: Revolution and War in a Global Perspective
Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation
In this important new study, Charles Keith explores the complex position of the Catholic Church in modern Vietnamese history. By demonstrating how French colonial rule allowed for the transformation of Catholic missions in Vietnam into broad and powerful economic and institutional structures, Keith discovers the ways race defined ecclesiastical and cultural prestige and control of resources and institutional authority. This, along with colonial rule itself, created a culture of religious life in which relationships between Vietnamese Catholics and European missionaries were less equal and more fractious than ever before. However, the colonial era also brought unprecedented ties between Vietnam and the transnational institutions and culture of global Catholicism, as Vatican reforms to create an independent national Church helped Vietnamese Catholics to reimagine and redefine their relationships to both missionary Catholicism and to colonial rule itself. Much like the myriad revolutionary ideologies and struggles in the name of the Vietnamese nation, this revolution in Vietnamese Catholic life was ultimately ambiguous, even it established the foundations for an independent national Church, but it also polarized the place of the new Church in post-colonial Vietnamese politics and society and produced deep divisions between Vietnamese Catholics themselves.
- GenresReligion
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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About the author
Charles Keith
15 books4 followersCharles Keith is an historian of modern Vietnam and Associate Professor of Southeast Asian History at Michigan State University. He is the author of Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation (University of California Press, 2012). Catholic Vietnam has received the 2015 Harry J. Benda Book Prize (Association for Asian Studies), the 2013 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize (French Colonial Historical Society), and the 2013 John Gilmary Shea Book Prize (American Catholic Historical Association)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 3, 2022
Today I can positively say Charles Keith's is the second most engaging book I have read this year. But today is January 3, 2022, and I have read only two books this year. By the end of 2022, I seriously doubt it will still rank among my favorite reads of the year.
Not that there is anything wrong with it. It is a study the reader will find to be impressively informative and detailed – provided he is interested in learning about all aspects of the colonial history of Vietnam's Catholicism and its transition from a foreign-imposed religion to a national one. And provided he is okay with these being organized in a dry, unengaging narrative. I was not.
I believe that non-fiction writers are not exempt from one of the main duties of fiction writers: to impress on the reader that he should care about the subject they have introduced and explain to him why he should care. Of course, in some cases, I do know why without being told. I know I cannot understand modern Vietnamese history without books about the rise of nationalism and Communism in the 1920s; without tracing the origins of US-Vietnamese relations; without biographies of Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem. However, I cannot think of a reason why being familiar with the history of the Catholic Church in Vietnam is so indispensable for anyone but scholars of Vietnamese Catholicism, and Keith fails to offer me any valid reasons to think otherwise. That is why I cannot say his book was an engaging read for me. I waded through a substantial part of his it only because I hoped to find something useful – compelling was out of the question.
I am happy to say that by the end of the book I have found it, one whole chapter dedicated to Catholic instruction – a subject important for my research because it linked Catholic practices to Vietnamese anti-radicalism and especially anti-Communism.
Because Catholic missionaries had tried to immerse themselves in Vietnamese society even before Indochina became a French colony, the Catholic Church had its own approach to moral questions in twentieth-century Vietnam. Interestingly, the Church had gradually come to link its own theology with Confucian morality. Many Catholic moral lessons for Vietnamese coincided with those of Confucianism. Catholic writers had also become quite adept at using Vietnamese folk proverbs, traditional literary forms, and epigrams from the Chinese classics. One Catholic text was entirely devoted to the Confucian theme, "First study ritual, then study literature," concentrating particularly on proper traditional speaking etiquette. There were entire sections on speaking to one's superiors and inferiors. Essentially, Vietnamese Catholicism had come to resemble Confucianism in many ways. That seemingly insignificant fact is important to know, for it helps us paint a more precise portrait of 1920-1930 Vietnamese society.
The third decade of the 20th century was characterized by the rapid emergence of anti-colonialist movements in Vietnam. It was a tumultuous time when the young generation began shunning traditions and embraced radicalism. It was the era of Ho Chi Minh's rise. The whole country seemed to be swept by nationalist fervor. Yet, it was not until 1945 that the Viet Minh seized power in Hanoi – in the aftermath of the Japanese's March coup and subsequent downfall – and it was not until 1954 that Ho officially triumphed over Vietnam's former colonial masters.
The aforementioned leads to the conclusion that in the 1920s, the French still enjoyed support from certain segments of Vietnam's population. And by segments I mean a group more numerous and diverse than the colonial bureaucracy in Hanoi, Saigon, and Hue – the handful of officials who prospered under the French rule.
Here is where the Catholic Church of Vietnam comes in. The Vietnamese non-Catholics never forgave the Church for mobilizing thousands of faithful to serve in colonial units and to provide badly needed supplies to the French invaders in the 19th century. While the Church had expanded since the pre-colonial and early colonial times, when its followers comprised about five percent of the population, it was still acutely aware of its minority status in the country, and treated any sign of social or political unrest as a direct threat to its existence.
As I mentioned earlier, the values of Vietnamese Catholics were nearly identical to the century-old Confucian norms upheld by the older generations. In other words, the Catholic Church upheld exactly those values the radical nationalist movements of the 1920s rebuffed – and most radical of them were Ho Chi Minh's Communists. Therefore, the anti-colonialist movements were viewed by the Church as that very threat to its existence, which put it in direct opposition to them. Therefore, the Vietnamese Catholics constituted the pro-French faction in the country, for anti-nationalist meant, basically, exactly that – pro-French. And when I came to think about it, this fact explained a lot to me. Most importantly, it explained the emergence of the fervent nationalist, and devote Catholic, Diem as a pro-Western leader. It also explained the persecution of Catholics by the Hanoi regime.
Before I read David G. Marr's VIETNAM: State, War, and Revolution, the brutal treatment of Catholics by Ho Chi Minh's government had not struck me as peculiar. North Vietnam was, after all, a Communist state, and thus presumably atheist. However, Marr emphasizes a curious fact: Buddhist monks and nuns were not persecuted by Hanoi. On the contrary, they were favored. Therefore, for the Viet Minh, it was not about the eradication of religion; it was about the eradication of Catholicism. And I believe that a major reason for Ho's wish to get rid of the Catholics was their link to everything traditional, Confucian, and pro-French.
All in all, if not engaging, Charles Keith's study proved to be useful. It gave me plenty of food for thought, albeit in one chapter only, and helped me reach some conclusions that will contribute to my understanding of the subject of my research. I can hardly recommend CATHOLIC VIETNAM as a five star read, but if one knows well what one is looking for and searches for it, instead of reading the whole work from cover to cover, one will find helpful information in this informative book.
Not that there is anything wrong with it. It is a study the reader will find to be impressively informative and detailed – provided he is interested in learning about all aspects of the colonial history of Vietnam's Catholicism and its transition from a foreign-imposed religion to a national one. And provided he is okay with these being organized in a dry, unengaging narrative. I was not.
I believe that non-fiction writers are not exempt from one of the main duties of fiction writers: to impress on the reader that he should care about the subject they have introduced and explain to him why he should care. Of course, in some cases, I do know why without being told. I know I cannot understand modern Vietnamese history without books about the rise of nationalism and Communism in the 1920s; without tracing the origins of US-Vietnamese relations; without biographies of Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem. However, I cannot think of a reason why being familiar with the history of the Catholic Church in Vietnam is so indispensable for anyone but scholars of Vietnamese Catholicism, and Keith fails to offer me any valid reasons to think otherwise. That is why I cannot say his book was an engaging read for me. I waded through a substantial part of his it only because I hoped to find something useful – compelling was out of the question.
I am happy to say that by the end of the book I have found it, one whole chapter dedicated to Catholic instruction – a subject important for my research because it linked Catholic practices to Vietnamese anti-radicalism and especially anti-Communism.
Because Catholic missionaries had tried to immerse themselves in Vietnamese society even before Indochina became a French colony, the Catholic Church had its own approach to moral questions in twentieth-century Vietnam. Interestingly, the Church had gradually come to link its own theology with Confucian morality. Many Catholic moral lessons for Vietnamese coincided with those of Confucianism. Catholic writers had also become quite adept at using Vietnamese folk proverbs, traditional literary forms, and epigrams from the Chinese classics. One Catholic text was entirely devoted to the Confucian theme, "First study ritual, then study literature," concentrating particularly on proper traditional speaking etiquette. There were entire sections on speaking to one's superiors and inferiors. Essentially, Vietnamese Catholicism had come to resemble Confucianism in many ways. That seemingly insignificant fact is important to know, for it helps us paint a more precise portrait of 1920-1930 Vietnamese society.
The third decade of the 20th century was characterized by the rapid emergence of anti-colonialist movements in Vietnam. It was a tumultuous time when the young generation began shunning traditions and embraced radicalism. It was the era of Ho Chi Minh's rise. The whole country seemed to be swept by nationalist fervor. Yet, it was not until 1945 that the Viet Minh seized power in Hanoi – in the aftermath of the Japanese's March coup and subsequent downfall – and it was not until 1954 that Ho officially triumphed over Vietnam's former colonial masters.
The aforementioned leads to the conclusion that in the 1920s, the French still enjoyed support from certain segments of Vietnam's population. And by segments I mean a group more numerous and diverse than the colonial bureaucracy in Hanoi, Saigon, and Hue – the handful of officials who prospered under the French rule.
Here is where the Catholic Church of Vietnam comes in. The Vietnamese non-Catholics never forgave the Church for mobilizing thousands of faithful to serve in colonial units and to provide badly needed supplies to the French invaders in the 19th century. While the Church had expanded since the pre-colonial and early colonial times, when its followers comprised about five percent of the population, it was still acutely aware of its minority status in the country, and treated any sign of social or political unrest as a direct threat to its existence.
As I mentioned earlier, the values of Vietnamese Catholics were nearly identical to the century-old Confucian norms upheld by the older generations. In other words, the Catholic Church upheld exactly those values the radical nationalist movements of the 1920s rebuffed – and most radical of them were Ho Chi Minh's Communists. Therefore, the anti-colonialist movements were viewed by the Church as that very threat to its existence, which put it in direct opposition to them. Therefore, the Vietnamese Catholics constituted the pro-French faction in the country, for anti-nationalist meant, basically, exactly that – pro-French. And when I came to think about it, this fact explained a lot to me. Most importantly, it explained the emergence of the fervent nationalist, and devote Catholic, Diem as a pro-Western leader. It also explained the persecution of Catholics by the Hanoi regime.
Before I read David G. Marr's VIETNAM: State, War, and Revolution, the brutal treatment of Catholics by Ho Chi Minh's government had not struck me as peculiar. North Vietnam was, after all, a Communist state, and thus presumably atheist. However, Marr emphasizes a curious fact: Buddhist monks and nuns were not persecuted by Hanoi. On the contrary, they were favored. Therefore, for the Viet Minh, it was not about the eradication of religion; it was about the eradication of Catholicism. And I believe that a major reason for Ho's wish to get rid of the Catholics was their link to everything traditional, Confucian, and pro-French.
All in all, if not engaging, Charles Keith's study proved to be useful. It gave me plenty of food for thought, albeit in one chapter only, and helped me reach some conclusions that will contribute to my understanding of the subject of my research. I can hardly recommend CATHOLIC VIETNAM as a five star read, but if one knows well what one is looking for and searches for it, instead of reading the whole work from cover to cover, one will find helpful information in this informative book.
April 19, 2015
I read this book two years ago and I am now reading again for my research. Still can't believe this is a first book that came from a dissertation. Simply among the best treatment of Catholicism and a leading religious/cultural study of colonial Vietnam written in the last 20 years. This book won a Harry J Benda and a nice prize from the French Colonial Historical Society. It's exciting that Charles Keith is also my adviser-to-be.
January 10, 2018
Very well written. Nice addition to recent works on the Catholic Church in Asia and to multiple national modernities narratives.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews