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CONTENTS
Vol. 5, No. 4: December 1973
Luzviminda Francisco - The First Vietnam: The
Philippine-American War of 1899
Ralph Thaxton - Modernization and Counter-Revolution in Thailand
John Comer - Correspondent and the People / Poetry
Mark J. Scher - US Policy in Korea 1945-48: A Neo-Colonial
Model Takes Shape
Connie Young Yu - Chinatown as Homebase / A Review
Richard Pfeiffer - Revolting: An essay on Maos Revolution by
Richard Solomon / A Review
Nguyen Khac Vien - Myths and Truths: F. Fitzgeralds Fire in the
Lake / A Review
BCAS/Critical AsianStudies
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CCAS Statement of Purpose
Critical Asian Studies continues to be inspired by the statement of purpose
formulated in 1969 by its parent organization, the Committee of Concerned
Asian Scholars (CCAS). CCAS ceased to exist as an organization in 1979,
but the BCAS board decided in 1993 that the CCAS Statement of Purpose
should be published in our journal at least once a year.
We first came together in opposition to the brutal aggression of
the United States in Vietnam and to the complicity or silence of
our profession with regard to that policy. Those in the field of
Asian studies bear responsibility for the consequences of their
research and the political posture of their profession. We are
concerned about the present unwillingness of specialists to speak
out against the implications of an Asian policy committed to en-
suring American domination of much of Asia. We reject the le-
gitimacy of this aim, and attempt to change this policy. We
recognize that the present structure of the profession has often
perverted scholarship and alienated many people in the field.
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars seeks to develop a
humane and knowledgeable understanding of Asian societies
and their efforts to maintain cultural integrity and to confront
such problems as poverty, oppression, and imperialism. We real-
ize that to be students of other peoples, we must first understand
our relations to them.
CCAS wishes to create alternatives to the prevailing trends in
scholarship on Asia, which too often spring from a parochial
cultural perspective and serve selfish interests and expansion-
ism. Our organization is designed to function as a catalyst, a
communications network for both Asian and Western scholars, a
provider of central resources for local chapters, and a commu-
nity for the development of anti-imperialist research.
Passed, 2830 March 1969
Boston, Massachusetts
CONTENTS Volume 5, Number 4, December 1973
Luzviminda Francisco 2 The First Vietnam: The Philippine
American War of 1899
Mark J. Scher 17 U.S. Policy in Korea 1945-1948: A
Neo-Colonial Policy Takes Shape
Ralph Thaxton 28 Modernization and Counterrevolution
in Thailand
John Comer 41 "Correspondent" & "The People'"
poetry
REVIEWS
Connie Young Yu 42 Chinatown as Home Base: Victor and
Brett Nee, Longtime Californ'
Richard M. Pfeffer 46 Revolting: An Essay on Mao's Revolution,
by Richard Solomon
Nguyen Khac Vien 56 Myths and Truths: Frances Fitzgerald's
Fire in the Lake
64 Index 1973, Volume 5, nos. 1-4
64 Contributors
Editors: Steve Andors , Nina Adams Managing Editor: Jon
Livingston Book Review Editors: Moss Roberts , Felicia
Oldfather Staff for this issue: Betsey Cobb' Helen Chauncey'
Rick Doner' Bill Joseph 'Steve Thomas.
Editorial Board: Frank Baldwin' Marianne Bastid , Herbert
Bix , Helen Chauncey , Noam Chomsky , John Dower ,
Kathleen Gough , Richard Kagan , Huynh Kim Khanh , Perry
Link , Jonathon Mirsky , Victor Nee' Felicia Oldfather' Gail
Omvedt , J ames Peck , Ric Pfeffer' Franz Schurmann , Mark
Selden' Hari Sharma' Yamashita Tatsuo.
General Correspondence: Bay Area Institute, 604 Mission Street, room 1001, San Francisco, California 94105 Manuscripts: Steve
Andors, P.O. Box 24, Minetto, N.Y. 13115, in three copies if possible Book Reviews: Moss Roberts, 100 Bleecker St., lS-A, New
York, N.Y. 10012 Typesetting: Archetype, Berkeley Printing: UP Press, Redwood City
BULLETIN OF CONCERNED ASIAN SCHOLARS, December, 1973, Volume 5, number 4. Published quarterly in spring, summer,
fall, and winter. $6.00; student rate $4.00; library rate $10.00; foreign rates: $7.00; student rate $4.00. Jon Livingston, Publisher,
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Copyright Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 1973.
BCAS. All rights reserved. For non-commercial use only. www.bcasnet.org
The First Vietna m:
The U.S.-Philippine War of 1899
by Luzviminda Francisco
*With apologies to Mexicans, American Indians and
other early victims of American imperialism.
Introduction
One of the most startling phenomena of recent
Philippine history has been the development of a popuiar
movement calling for the relinquishing of Philippine
sovereignty and for political re-union with the U.S. as the 51st
state. Although the "statehood movement" was understand
ably treated as something of a joke when it first surfaced
several years ago, its popular reception and rapid growth,
especially in the face of surging Ph lip pine nationalist and
anti-imperialist sentiments, demands that the movement and
the ideology which it represents be carefully analyzed.
It may well be that the statehood movement is a curio, a
quirk in the Philippine body politic, a nostalgic last
remembrance of colonialism, emerging now only to be
inevitably and inexorably swept away by the tide of history.
These are comforting thoughts, but there remain some nagging
doubts. Philippine nationalism has, historically, been poorly
defined. For a myriad of reasons, American colonialism as
perceived by Filipinos has been qualitatively different from,
say, Vietnamese perception of their relationship with the
French. One must reluctantly conclude that perhaps the most
serious cancer of twentieth-century Philippine society has been
the traumatIZIng effect of mystification and false
consciousness regarding the American colonial period. For the
Note: This essay is taken from a broadside, "The Philippines: End of an
Illusion," published by the Association for Radical East Asian Studies
in London, copyright 1973. Permission to reprint is gratefully
acknowledged.
student of Philippine history, such a state of affairs is not
merely discouraging or upsetting, it is tragic. This is true for
many reasons, but it is especially true for one reason in
particular. The degree to which Filipino false consciousness
exists is the measure of American success in obliterating from
popular consciousness knowledge of what American historians
have chosen to call (when they refer to it at all, which is
seldom) the "Philippine Insurrection." 1
One prize of victory is that the winners get to write the
history books. This was never so true as it has been about the
Philippine-American War, and this fact, more than any other,
has denied to Filipinos all but the merest scraps of distorted
information about one of the most heroic struggles ever waged
in modern times; a struggle waged against implacable odds and
at terrible cost. The Philippine-American War, by which name
it should properly be known, is one of those bits of
historiography which-like the American Indian Wars-seems
to have sunk beneath the surface of popular awareness.
2
Most
Americans have never heard of it, most Filipinos understand it
only through the prism of the victors' own account of how the
war was waged and won. And yet the Philippine-American War
was one of those illuminating moments of history which threw
a shaft of light on an era. As far as Filipinos are concerned, an
understanding of our liberation struggle at the turn of the
century is without question or doubt the prerequisite, the
starting point for a genuine understanding of modern
Philippine society.
It is ironic that it has taken half a century and the
remarkably similar situation in Indochina to re-focus attention
on the Philippine struggle for national liberation against the
forces of American imperial aggression. In all, save the
ultimate outcome, history has uncannily repeated itself in
Vietnam, a fact which should be driven home to American
apologists who hold that Vietnam is an "aberration" of U.S.
policy, unrepresentative of American foreign policy in general,
but simply a situation brought about by a series of mistakes
2
and miscalculations. Leaving aside the obvious fact that
"mistake" is equated with being beaten, and the curious
frequency with which imperialist "aberrations" seem to crop
up, it is important for Filipinos to recognize that we must
vindicate ourselves by comprehending our own history. With
such a view in mind and within the limits of this essay,
attention will be focused on the three aspects of the war which
are the most critical and yet, for reasons which are perhaps
obvious, have attracted the least amount of attention, let alone
analysis. Therefore, attention will not be focused so much on
the war against Spain, which preceded the Philippine-American
War, nor will it deal with the political infighting in the Malolos
Government or General Emilio Aguinaldo's surrenderist
prevarications. Attention will be focused on the nature of
America's policy of aggression, the depth of popular mass
resistance to the American forces and the duration of the
struggle in what became, ultimately, suicidal refusal to
capitulate to imperialism.
Spain never had an easy time in pacifying its Philippine
colony and in the course of over three centuries of colonial
rule, scarcely a year went by which did not witness rebellion in
one form or another somewhere in the archipelago. The
fragmented, insular nature of the country and the separate
regional, ethnic and language groupings made it difficult to
coordinate a nationwide anti-Spanish struggle, but at times
the Filipinos came close to achieving a broad united front
against the foreign foe. As early as 1587, for example, a secret
society was formed in Manila by Magat Salamat which spread
throughout Central Luzon to the Visayas and as far south as
Borneo. This early movement was not typical, however, and it
was to be more than 300 years before such unity of action was
again achieved. Subsequent rebellions were commonly local or
regional affairs, sparked by local conditions and grievances.
Sometimes they lasted for a surprisingly long period of time,
as in Bohol, where Spanish authority was denied for over
eighty years. The Islamic areas of Mindanao and Sulu were
never really conquered.
Spain was always able to exploit divisions in Philippine
society in such a way as to prevent a coordinated national
struggle and this situation was maintained until the last
decades of the nineteenth century. The rise of a native
moneyed class, consisting mainly of Chinese-native (or Indio)
mestizo elements, gave rise to a liberal reformist movement
anxious to win greater political and economic concessions
from Spain. The Propaganda Movement, as it came to be
called, was essentially an assimilationist effort. Its leaders
aimed, ultimately, at closer ties with Spain. (It was during this
time that the hispanized Chinese-mestizos began referring to
themselves as Filipinos, a term previously reserved for
Spaniards born in the colony.) But the Propagandists made
little headway against entrenched and often reactionary
Spanish authority.
The failure of the Propagandist efforts spurred the
formation in 1892 of the Katipunan, a secret society which,
after some initial indecision, began to recognize the futility of
the earlier reformist efforts. By 1895 independence became an
increasingly realistic prospect. Spain was having a difficult
time suppressing the Cubans, who were then in revolt, and her
ability to sustain a similar effort in the Philippines was an open
question. By 1896 Katipunan ranks hadswollen to 30,000 and
fighting between the Katipunan forces and the Spanish
commenced.
The founder of the Katipunan., Andres Bonifacio, lost
control over the organization in March 1897 when Emilio
Aguinaldo was elected as the head of a newly formed
Revolutionary Central Government. After Aguinaldo's victory
the revolutionary forces became increasingly prone to
vacillation and compromise as a number of frustrated elitist
reformers began to attach themselves to the organization.
In June a Provisional Republican Government was
established at Biak-Na-Bato, Bulacan, and this event initiated
several months of dilatory negotiation with the Spanish. The
older Katipuneros argued for the continuation of the military
struggle along guerrilla lines, but the reformist and
assimilationist elements began to see the possibility of finally
achieving their long-sought-after goals via negotiation. After
hesitancy and debate, a compromise treaty was negotiated in
November by a wealthy mestizo, Pedro Paterno. Under the
terms of the treaty, the Spanish governor general, Primo de
Rivera, promised to consider the reformist demands in
exchange for the surrender of the rebel army. Satisfied with
such weak promises and even more by the promised initial
payment of P400,000 to himself and his staff, Aguinaldo and
his men voluntarily exiled themselves to Hong Kong, but
Spanish refusal to promulgate reforms led to agitation for a
renewed military confrontation.
Fighting broke out again in February 1898 and by May,
when the American Commodore George Dewey steamed into
Manila Bay to attack the Spanish fleet, the Spanish Army (the
Guardia Civil) had been all but thoroughly beaten. The
Spanish, in fact, controlled only the area of the old walled city
of Manila. Aguinaldo had, meanwhile, been intermittently
negotiating with the Americans in Hong Kong and Singapore,
and he returned to the Philippines to resume command of the
Filipino forces with Dewey's sanction and with (verbal)
assurances that the Americans would aid the Filipinos in
securing their independence.
A three-way stalemate persisted until August, Dewey in
Manila Bay without forces to land, the Spanish holed up in the
walled city, and the Filipinos dug in along the perimeter of the
city. The Spanish decided they would rather surrender to the
Americans than to the Filipinos and in August 1898 a bizarre,
tragi-comic "battle" was quite literally staged between the
Spanish and the Americans, ostensibly to preserve Spanish
"honor"-although six died in the farce. The resulting
surrender terminated three centuries of Spanish colonialism
and the American forces, newly reinforced, took possession of
Manila.
By autumn 1898 it was clear that the Americans
intended to retain the Philippines as a Pacific colony.
American troop strength was increasing and Admiral Dewey
showed no sign of weighing anchor. Battle lines around Manila
continued to be drawn roughly as they had remained at the
end of the mock battle against the Spanish in the previous
August. The Americans held the city and had trenches along
its perimeter, facing Filipino trenches along a semi-circle of
several miles.
The Treaty of Paris, designed to end the war with Spain
and to cede the Phlippines to the U.S., was signed in December
and awaited confirmation in the U.S. Senate, which required a
two-thirds majority vote as necessitated by the Constitution.
When Congress reconvened in January 1899, the
pro-annexationist faction in the Senate held a clear majority,
but were one or two votes shy of the required two-thirds
3
majority they needed to ratify the treaty. Voting on the treaty
was scheduled for Monday, February 6, and during the week
preceding it seemed fairly clear to most observers that the
McKinley Administration was not likely to rally enough
support in the Senate to win ratification. By implication, this
put American retention of the Philippines in jeopardy.
3
In the Philippines, insults-and occasionally shots-were
being traded across the trenches by the two opposing armies
throughout the month of January. But war did not come until
the evening of February 4, 1899, when general fighting
erupted all along the line. The American command in Manila
claimed at the time that the Filipinos initiated the fighting,
but there seems little doubt that the Americans themselves
started the war and as much was later admitted by U.S.
commanders. That the outbreak of the war was carefully
orchestrated to influence the outcome of the treaty vote in the
Senate seems almost beyond question, and although initiating
a war to influence the passage of legislation seems a tactic
singularly lacking in subtlety, historically it seems to work and
in this instance it proved successful. The news of the
fighting-and the false information as to its instigation- was
wired to Washington and its dramatic effect persuaded the
Senate to ratify the treaty by a margin of one vote.
The First Battle
From the very beginning, superior American firepower
had a telling effect, and although the Filipino troops bravely
stood their ground, weaponry ensured the one-sidedness of the
conflict. Dewey steamed up the Pasig River and fired
SOO-pound shells into the Filipino trenches at close range with
pulverizing effectiveness. The first battle was so one-sided that
the American troops jokingly referred to it as a "quail shoot"
and dead Filipinos were piled so high that the Americans used
the bodies for breastworks. A British witness to the carnage
commented, "This is not war; it is simply massacre and
murderous butchery."
4
Although the Americans had been sending reinforce
ments to the Philippines throughout the fall of 1898 (there
were 21,000 U.S. troops in the Islands by the start of the war)
they were still outnumbered by the Filipinos. But the Filipino
troops were at a dreadful disadvantage owing to their lack of
rifles. Only one man in three had a gun; others fought with
bolos and spears or simply waited to snatch up a rifle from a
fallen comrade. Although s ~ m e of their weapons were fairly
new Remingtons and Mausers captured from the Spanish or
smuggled in from abroad, many were rust-eaten museum
pieces, more dangerous to the user than to the intended target.
Thousands of Filipinos were killed in the first battle,
hundreds more died soon after from wounds.
s
Few prisoners
were taken by the Americans, and Red Cross personnel
reported an extremely high ratio of dead to wounded on the
battlefield, indicating"... the determination of our soldiers to
kill every native in sight ... ,',6
For the Filipino patriots, the opening battle in what
proved to be one of the longest and bloodiest wars in the sorry
history of imperial aggression produced two sharp lessons. It
was clear that the Filipinos could not hope to survive by
fighting on American terms of fixed position, set-piece battles
in the classical military tradition. The Philippine Army was
quickly forced to resort to mobile warfare where their superior
knowledge of the terrain and the universal support they
enjoyed among the people could be utilized to their advantage.
Although an overt policy of guerrilla war was not specifically
enunciated until the following November, guerrilla tactics were
employed out of necessity immediately after the initial rout at
Manila. The first battle also indicated to the Filipinos that
they were faced with a foe which gave no quarter and which
was prepared to disregard the fundamental rules of warfare.
The Americans were contemptuous of Filipinos generally and
they had little respect for the fighting ability of the Philippine
Army. They referred to the Filipinos as "niggers,"
"barbarians," and "savages," reflecting both the racist and
imperialist attitudes of American society at large.
The Americans were elated by their initial success and
their commander, the rather wooden and unimaginative Gen.
Elwell Otis, confidently predicted that the war would be
ended in a matter of weeks. Otis had convinced himself that
the opposition to U.S. rule came only from t h ~ Tagalog
"tribe," which (it was claimed) was only one of eighty or so
"tribes" in the Philippines. This theme, which was trotted out
by domestic U.S. annexationists at every opportunity, gave the
impression that the war in the Philippines was but a slight
variation of the familiar Indian wars of the American West.
After the devastating first battle, the Filipino Army
retreated into Central Luzon, fighting rear-guard actions as it
went. Malolos, capital of the Philippine Republic, quickly fell
and within the conventional framework within which he was
operating, Otis equated this event with the fall of the
Philippine Government, which in turn would mean the
surrender of the Philippine Army. Or so he hoped. Confident
predictions of imminent victory were forthcoming again and it
was with some degree of dismay that the Americans began to
realize that Aguinaldo considered his "capital" to be wherever
he himself happened to be camped-which was always just out of
reach of the slow-moving American columns. It was with a
growing sense of uneasiness that the American command
began to realize that the further they were drawn into Central
Luzon and the more they had to disperse their forces, the
more difficult it became to defend themselves against
counter-attack, ambush, and harassment by the highly mobile
Philippine Army, which was itself free of the need for the
ponderous supply chain required by the Americans. The odds,
which were so disastrously against the Filipinos in early
February, began to even up.
There was another-and to the more perceptive
American commanders, rather more disturbing-character to
the fighting. It gradually dawned on the Americans that the
reason the Filipino troops could move around so easily
without concern for a supply base, and the reason information
and advice were so difficult to elicit from the native
population, were due to the fact that the Aguinaldo
government and the Philippine nationalist cause had the total
support of the Philippine masses. They slowly began to realize
that their major foe was not really the formally constituted, but
in many ways ineffectual, Philippine Army; rather, it was the
Filipino people, who, having finally gotten rid of the Spanish,
were unrelentingly and implacably hostile to American
imperialist designs. The implications of this understanding
were fully realized only later and in the bloodiest manner
imaginable. But as early as April 1899, General Shafter gave
grisly portent to the future conduct of the war: "It may be
necessary to kill half the Filipinos in order that the remaining
half of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of
life than their present semi-barbarous state affords.'"
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The American command had presumably been taken in
8 .,
h
by its own press releases. Gen. Arthur MacArt ur, OtiS s
subordinate (and later replacement), commented, "... I
believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction. I
did not like to believe that the whole population of
Luzon-the native population, that is-was opposed to us
. ,,9 But this he was "reluctantly compelled" to believe
because the "unique system of warfare" employed by the
Filipino Army" ... depended upon almost complete unity of
action of the entire native population." 10
With the approach of summer and with victory still
beyond their grasp, the War Department began to suggest to
Otis that he might need more troops. Embarrassed by his
earlier confident predictions and even more so by his growing
inability to produce tangible results, he at first declined the
offer, but then he reversed himself and surprised the
Department by asking for 60,000 more troops. Otis was
limited by his textbook approach to war and failed to realize
that American "victories" in which the Filipinos were
"scattered" or "routed" were next to meaningless. Otis was, in
keeping with the time-honored phrase, winning the battles but
losing the war. Few of the battles were actually more than
skirmishes and hit-and-run affairs, but on June 10, 1899, in
Laguna, Filipino Generals Ricarte and Noriel with 3,000 men
caught an American division of 4,000 in a cross-fire ambush
and cut it to pieces. Battles of this size became increasingly
rare, however.
By October all the American reinforcements had arrived
and it was decided that the best way to terminate the war was
to capture Aguinaldo and his staff. An ambitious
three-pronged encirclement campaign, encompassing the whole
of Central Luzon, was decided upon. One column went north
from Manila along the rail line, another went by sea to the
Lingayen Gulf port of Dagupan, and a third went north from
Manila along the eastern rim of the Central Luzon plain in a
giant pincer movement. Tlie idea was to prevent Aguinaldo's
escape into the mountains of northern Luzon.
Aguinaldo did manage to escape, however, and from his
mountain headquarters he issued orders to formally adopt the
guerrilla policy. While there was ambivalence about this move
from some of the more orthodox members of Aguinaldo's
staff, the directive in actuality simply reflected the de facto
situation and the hopelessness of engaging in frontal and
positional warfare against the vastly strengthened U.S. forces.
Political circumstances also dictated a policy of protracted
warfare. The Filipinos began to realize that although outright
military victory was unlikely at best, simply by keeping their
forces intact they preserved the possibility of an ultimate
political victory.
The Filipinos had some knowledge of the divisions being
created in American society by the MCKinley Administration's
imperialist policy. The Anti-Imperialist League was strongly
condemning the war and the opposition Democrats were
taking a position against the retention of the Philippines. It
appeared likely, even a year before the event, that the
November 1900 presidential election would be fought on the
issue of McKinley's colonial policy. This held out some hope
at least for a political settlement of the war favorable to the
Philippines.
The war took on a somewhat new character after the
completion of the Central Luzon campaign. From November
1899, the U.S. considered the entire Philippines to be
occupied territory-as indeed it was-and the American
command set about establishing garrisons throughout Luzon
and the rest of the country. Filipino guerrillas were no longer
treated as soldiers of an opposing army but were considered to
be bandits and common criminals (ladrones). When captured
they were treated as such. With the break-up of the Philippine
Army, Otis once again felt he had victory within his grasp .
Even MacArthur, usually more realistic about such matters,
announced, "The so-called Filipino Republic is destroyed." 11
But two developments forced them to once again regret their
sanguine reports to the War Department. First, the fighting
simply continued. Chasing Aguinaldo into the mountains had
made no difference, breaking up the Filipino Army made no
difference, and garrisoning the archipelago simply invited
guerrilla attacks on isolated outposts. Secondly, as the
Americans spread their forces and their garrisons to other areas
of Luzon and to other islands, they found they were
confronted with exactly the same kind of public hostility and
guerrilla opposition which characterized the situation in
Central Luzon. The notion that opposition to the U.S. was
confined to. the Tagalogs was simply wrong. The Americans
were at war with seven million Filipino people and wherever
they went in the Islands they took the war with them-a
disconcerting state of affairs and one to which Otis could
never reconcile himself.
Settling in for a Long War
The war, far from being over, had entered a new and far
more difficult phase for the Americans. The enemy was now
no longer simply the Philippine Army, the remnants of which
had been scattered over the whole of Luzon in any case. Now
the Americans found themselves harassed and attacked
throughout the Islands by poorly trained and poorly organized
but fanatically determined peasant irregulars. MacArthur
observed: " ... all regular and systematic tactical operations
ceased; but as hostile contact was established throughout the
entire zone of activity an infinite number of minor affairs
resulted, some of which reached the dignity of combats." 12
A major problem for the Americans resulted from their
inability to penetrate the guerrilla infrastructure. They soon
began to realize, to their dismay, that a whole underground
network of dual government loyal to the guerrillas existed,
even in areas considered thoroughly "pacified." When a town
was occupied the stars and stripes flew, and gratifying
expressions of loyalty and support for the American cause
were publicly proclaimed by town officials. But reliable
information about the guerrillas was almost never
forthcoming, supplies and equipment were forever
disappearing, and occasionally an American soldier would
stray too far from camp and be found the next day hacked to
pieces by bolo. Albert Robinson, one of a handful of
American newsmen covering the war (and the most ingenious
when it came to circumventing Otis's strict censorship), wrote
that unqualified U.S. control in the Islands extended "about as
far as a Krag-Jorgensen could throw a bullet." 13
By early 1900 U.S. outposts were being established
everywhere.
14
As a rule the Filipinos allowed the Americans to
capture and occupy any town they wished without opposition.
Otis was so deceived by this that he once again declared flatly
that the war was over, hoping perhaps that repetition of the
statement would make it so. But the garrison network
5
seriously thinned the U.S. troop strength and the Americans
were continually being counterattacked and ambushed. It was
becoming clear that the entire Islands would have to be
"pacified." Moreover, guerrilla activity was both increasing
and becoming increasingly effective. Being incessantly
ambushed, boloed and betrayed was nerve-wracking and the
Americans began to exercise their mounting frustration on the
population at large. All the "niggers" were enemies, whether
or not they bore arms. Patrols sent to fight the guerrillas
usually had difficulty locating the enemy and often simply
resorted to burning barrios in their path. Village officials were
often forced at bayonet point to lead American patrols, and
non-combatants began to be held responsible for the actions of
the guerrillas. Any form of resistance to American objectives
subjected the perpetrator to a charge of treason.
Press censorship was so effective that few Americans
actually knew the difficulties being experienced in the
Philippines-or, in fact, that there were 70,000 U.S. troops in
the Islands. In early 1900 the first whiff of scandal reached
American shores when it was disclosed that the American
forces had been issued expanding "dum-dum" bullets, in
contravention of the 1899 Hague Convention concerning
humane warfare (which the U.S. had conveniently neglected to
ratify). Reports of the burning of villages, the killing of
non-combatants and the application of the "water cure" to
elicit information began to filter back to the U.S. Often this
information was contained in letters written by U.S. soldiers
to their families which found their way into local newspapers.
A typical example: "On Thursday, March 29th [19001 ...
eighteen of my company killed seventy-five nigger bolomen
and ten of the nigger gunners .... When we find one who is
not dead, we have bayonets ..." 15
Such atrocities were systematically denied by the War
Department. When the evidence was irrefutable, they were
minimized and countered with examples of Filipino
"barbarity." A standard response was that "harsh" methods
had to be employed against "savages." As the war progressed
and as American atrocities became routinized, so did
platitudinous defenses of American action. MacArthur called it
"the most legitimate and humane war ever conducted on the
face of the earth." Senator Foraker, a staunch defender of
annexation, announced solemnly (and with a touch of
unintended irony), "Our army has shown in this work a
surprising degree of humanity."
General Shafter, who, it will be recalled, was not averse to
killing half of the Filipino people in the name of this mission
civilisatrice, was becoming preoccupied with the idea and had
worked out a new reason to wipe out half .of the Island
population. "My plan," he disclosed in January 1900, "would
be to disarm the natives of the Philippine Islands, even if we
have to kill half of them to do it." 16
Lack of firearms indeed continued to be perhaps the
single most pressing problem for the Filipinos. By mid-1900
they had at most 20,000 rifles, meaning that only one partisan
in four was actually armed. The American naval blockade
made it all but impossible to o,btain arms and supplies from
abroad and although efforts were made to manufacture
gunpowder locally, cartridge shells had to be used over and
over to the point of uselessness. The Filipinos had to adapt to
their limitations as best they could. They stood up to the
heavily armed Americans with spears, darts, the ubiquitous
bolo, and even stones, prompting General Lawton to remark,
" ... they are the bravest men I have ever seen." 17
The Filipinos used conditions to their advantage; they
laid booby traps, they attacked at night and during driving
tropical rainstorms, and they ambushed the Americans by
getting as close as possible by stealth and employing their
bolos at close q\larters, thus neutralizing the disparity in
firepower. The American troops, who depended so heavily on
their weapons, were frightened by the ferocity of such attacks,
especially as the Filipinos often made up in numbers what
they lacked in firepower. But such tactics were difficult to
maintain as the Filipinos almost invariably took heavy losses
even in victory. In bolo fights the American dead were
inevitably mutilated in the course of the fighting, a situation
which the War Department was quick to capitalize on as
evidence of the "savagery" of the Filipino guerrillas, thus
justifying, to themselves at least, all manner of retaliatory
slaughter.
Otis was clearly unsuited for his job. His frequent
pronouncements of victory and his incompetent handling of
the war were proving to be an embarrassment to the McKinley
Administration, which was nervously anticipating the
forthcoming presidential election. Accordingly, Otis resigned
"for pressing personal reasons" and was replaced by General
MacArthur. MacArthur had had experience in the American
Indian wars and he, more than anyone on Otis's staff,
understood the wide-ranging implications of the problems then
confronting the American expeditionary force in the
Philippines. A convinced imperialist, he was also a realist. He
openly admitted that the Filipinos hated the Americans and he
did not flinch from estimating that it would take "ten years of
bayonet treatment" to subdue the Filipino peopie-a prescient
observation, as it turned out.
Heavy fighting coincided with the change in command
and it was remarked that when he left, Otis " ... had the
situation so little in hand that to go six miles out of Manila
without a company furnished plenty of wholesome
excitement," 18 With one eye on the upcoming November
election, McKinley also sent a federal judge, William Howard
Taft, to Manila with instructions to establish a "civilian"
government in the Islands no later than September 1, 1900.
The move was purely a public relations venture designed to
trick the American voters into thinking all was progressing
smoothly in the Philippines. Taft was densely ignorant about
the Philippines/
9
but he knew enough about class society to
detect a certain amount of pliability in the upper-class
elements in the country. This group, composed largely of
mestizo landlords and export agriculture interests, had been
largely ignored by the U.S. military command, but Taft set out
to woo them, appealing to their economic interests by offering
protected markets for their agricultural products in the U.S.
The effort bore fruit insofar as Taft was able-on cue-to
establish his Civil Government on September 1. Laced as it
was with quislings and traitors-Buencamino, Legarda,
Luzuriaga and, inevitably, Pedro Paterno notable among
them-the Taft regime was a useful propaganda weapon and it
provided the Americans with another excuse to prosecute the
war. Having created puppets, the continuation of the war and
the retention of the Philippines were necessary to protect
those who "loyally sided with the Americans" against poten
tial and future revenge at the hands of the guerrillas. With, one
presumes, appropriate sarcasm, one American Congressman
commented, " ... and so it appears that in order to keep them
6
from shooting each other down we have got to go in and shoot
them down first." 20
With the nomination of William Jennings Bryan as the
Democratic presidential candidate, the question of American
colonialism and continued military intervention appeared
likely to become a major issue in the 1900 campaign. The
Filipinos hoped to topple the "imperialist party" of McKinley
by launching an offensive just before the election, and
September and October saw some of the sharpest fighting of
the war. In spite of these efforts the question of the
Philippines never became the issue it might have been. Aided
by heavy press censorship and the inability to obtain
independent information on the Philippine situation,
McKinley predictably pointed to the Taft Government as
proof that all was going well in the Islands. Bryan, moreover,
was a rank political opportunist. By his own admission he had
supported ratification of the Paris treaty simply in order to
provide himself with what he thought would be a good issue
with which to attack the Republicans. When he began to see
that his anti-colonial-position was hurting his campaign rather
than helping, he backpedaled furiously and quickly
compromised himself, arguing now for a vaguely
defined American "protectorate" for the Philippines. In any
event, both McKinley and Bryan perceived that the electorate
was bored by the Philippine issue and by the end of the
campaign it had been quietly dropped by both candidates.
Predictably perhaps, McKinley was an easy victor. The
result was a crushing blow for the Filipino guerrilla leaders
who had counted heavily-too heavily-on a Bryan victory.
Indeed, the guerrilla leadership began to falter badly after
November and the surrender of several commanders (with men
and guns) was a sharp blow to the Filipino cause. The theory
of protracted war was, of course, only imperfectly understood,
and with U.S. strength at its peak of 75,000 men the struggle
began to take on suicidal overtones.
21
The class divisions
within the Filipino forces began now to emerge. The officers,
like Aguinaldo himself, were usually fairly well educated and
came largely from middle-class backgrounds; the ranks were
invariably filled by men of peasant origins. The American
command played upon these class divisions and treated
surrendering commanders with the respect due to fellow
"officers and gentlemen," sometimes dangling choice civil
service positions as inducement for officers to defect.
Despite MacArthur's claim, American conduct of the
war heretofore had not been the "most humane" in human
history, as attested by the countless and documented examples
of callous and brutal conduct which were already being
recorded. But in the autumn of 1900 there was a perceptible
alteration in American tactics. Tired of being chronically
harassed and boloed by the Filipinos and finding it difficult to
pin the guerrillas down in the kind of conventional firefight
they so urgently desired, the Americans began to resort to
revanchist attitudes and policies. If the American command
had ever believed they enjoyed any popular support in the
Philippines (apart from the handful of wealthy puppets serving
in the Taft regime), a year and a half of war certainly dispelled
any continued illusions on the matter. If the people supported
the guerrillas then the people must also be classified as the
enemy. The grim implications of such an evaluation were
beginning to emerge, although the fiction that widespread
public support for the U.S. existed in the Islands was
maintained for domestic U.S. consumption. Terrorism, it was
explained, was the only reason Filipinos gave any support at
all to their guerrilla brethren, the only reason people did not
welcome the foreign occupying force with open arms.
"Without this system of terrorism," Taft allowed, "the
guerrilla campaign would have ended very quickly. ,,22
MacArthur was not deluded by such fantasties:
the success of this unique system of war depends upon
almost complete unity of action of the entire native
population. That such unity is a fact is too obvious to
admit of discussion; ... fear as the only motive is hardly
sufficient to account for the united and apparently
spontaneous action of several millions of people. One
traitor in each town would effectively destroy such a
complex organization. 23
"Pacification" Begins in Earnest
In December 1900, with the election safely out of the
way, martial law was declared and the pretense of civil
government was scrapped. American operations were extended
to southern Luzon and to the Visayan islands of Leyte, Samar,
Panay, Negros and Cebu. As far as the American command was
concerned there were no longer any neutrals. Everyone was
now considered an active guerrilla or a guerrilla supporter.
Thus in the Visayas campaign the Navy felt free to shell the
coastal villages with its gunboats prior to invasion. In January
and February 1901, the entire popUlation of Marinduque
Island (pop. 51,000) was ordered into five concentration
camps set up by the Americans. All those who did not comply
with the order"... would be considered as acting in sympathy
with the insurgent forces and treated accordingly." 24 This was
to be the first of many instances of the application of the
reconcentrado policy in the Philippines. Ironically, it was the
abhorrence of just this sort of policy-when it was practiced
by the Spanish General "Butcher" Weyler in Cuba-which so
exercised American public opinion against Spain prior to the
outbreak of the Spanish-American War.25
In April 1901 major operations began in northern
Luzon. The frequent examples of terror tactics
which had heretofore occurred were, arguably, the acts of
individual units in at least technical violation of overall U.S.
policy. With the advent of the northern Luzon campaign such
pretensions and qualifications could no longer be maintained.
If the people sympathized with and supported the guerrillas,
and if, indeed, this was a "people's war," then the only
solution was war against the people. The Amecican Governor
of Abra Province described the "depopulation campaign" in
the following terms: "Whole villages had been burned,
storehouses and crops had been destroyed and the entire
province was as devoid of food products as was the valley of
Shenandoah after Sheridan's raid during the Civil War." 26 An
American congressman who visited the Philippines, and who
preferred to remain anonymous, spoke frankly about the
results of the campaign: "You never hear of any disturbances
in Northern Luzon," he reported, "because there isn't
anybody there to rebel. . . . The good Lord in heaven only
knows the number of Filipinos that were put under ground.
Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records; they
simply swept the country and wherever and whenever they
could get hold of a Filipino they killed him.,,27
7
The observation that no records were kept of operations
of this kind later became a point of contention as'news of the
atrocities began to leak out. A case in point was the murder of
approximately 1,000 Filipino prisoners of war in Sorsogon.
Eyewitnesses (U.S. soldiers) testified that the prisoners were
forced to dig their own graves in groups of twenty and that
each then received one bullet in the temple. When confronted
with this evidence the War Department dismissed it out of
hand: "No report has been received at the War Department in
respect of or referring to the alleged incident." 28 This became
standard government response to such charges, even when the
orders themselves necessarily implied butchery, as when Gen.
"Howlin' Jake" Smith ordered his men to kill "everything over
ten" in the notorious Samar campaign. (In that particular
instance the War Department rather feebly declared that their
records "did not indicate" that the order-which was
admitted-was ever carried out, eyewitness testimony of
American soldiers engaged in the campaign notwithstanding.)
Also in April 1901, Aguinaldo was finally captured. The
Americans had been so unsuccessful at trying to catch him
that for a long period they simply gave up the effort. But an
intercepted message resulted in a daring raid led by Brig. Gen.
Frederick Funston
29
and Aguinaldo's capture. The Americans
were delighted with the news, which made banner headlines in
the U.S. Taft felt the war was as good as over, especially after
he persuaded Aguinaldo to sign an oath of allegiance and a
proclamation calling upon his erstwhile comrades to give up
the struggle. Aguinaldo did inore damage to his place in the
history books than he did to the Filipino cause, however, and
the Americans were dismayed to discover that his capture and
surrender appeal made no perceptible difference in the
fighting, which continued unabated. This was too much for
MacArthur, who resigned and was replaced by Maj. Gen. Adna
Chaffee.
By mid-summer 1901, the focus of the war started to
shift south of Manila. Some of the guerrilla leaders of
Northern and Central Luzon who were close to Aguinaldo
began to surrender. Others held out, however, and Gen. Miguel
Malvar, operating in Batangas, was proving to be every bit as
difficult for the Americans as Aguinaldo had been.
In August, General Smith invaded Panay Island and
repeated the scorched-earth tactics employed in Abra. "The
18th regulars marched from Iloilo in the south to Capiz [now
Roxas] ... in the north under orders to burn every town from
which they were attacked. The result was they left a strip of
land 60 miles wide from one end of the island to the other,
over which the traditional crow could not have flown without
provision." 30
On the eve of the Samar campaign, the war was clearly
degenerating into mass slaughter. It was hardly precise to call
it "war" any longer. The Americans were simply chasing
ragged, poorly armed bands of guerrillas and, failing to catch
them, were inflicting the severest punishment on those they
could catch-the people of the villages and barrios of the
theater of operation. U.S. commanders were becoming
increasingly outspoken about the true nature of their policy.
Chaffee wrote in September, " ... we are dealing with a class
of people whose character is deceitful, who are absolutely
hostile to the white race and who regard life as of little value
and, finally, who will not submit to our control until
absolutely defeated and whipped into such condition." 31 The
American command even developed a new term for the kind
of warfare they were engaged in, calling it "protective
retribution." Semantic nonsense, perhaps, but its meaning was
not lost on the intended victims. .
In late September, in the town of Balangiga, Samar,
American troops had for some time been abusing the
townspeople by packing them into open wooden pens at night
where they were forced to sleep standing in the rain. Several
score of guerrilla Gen. Vicente Lukban's bolomen infiltrated
the town and on the morning of September 28, while the
Americans were eating their breakfast, Lukban's men suddenly
fell upon them. Heads dropped into breakfast dishes.
Fifty-four Americans were boloed to death, and few of the
eighteen survivors escaped serious injury,32
The Balangiga massacre initiated a reign of terror the
likes of which had not yet been seen in this war. General
Smith, fresh from his "victories" in northern Luzon and
Panay, was chosen to lead the American mission of revenge.
Smith's orders to his men embarking upon the Samar
campaign could not have been more explicit: "Kill and burn,
kill and burn, the more you kill and the more you burn the
more you please me." It was, said Smith, "no time to take
prisoners." War was to be waged "in the sharpest and most
decisive manner possible." When asked to define the age limit
for killing, Smith gave his infamous reply: "Everything over
ten." Smith ordered Samar to be turned into a "howling
wilderness' so that "even the birds could not live there." It was
boasted that"... what fire and water [i.e., water torture] ...
had done in Panay, water and fire would do in Samar." 33 The
now-familiar pattern of operations began once again. All
inhabitants of the island (pop. 266,000) were ordered to
present themselves to detention camps in several of the larger
coastal towns. Those who did not (or those who did not make
it their business to learn of the existence of the order), and
were found outside the detention camp perimeter, would be
shot "and no questions asked." Few reporters covered the
carnage; one who did noted:"During my stay in Samar the
only prisoners that were made ... were taken by Waller's
command;34 and I heard this act criticized by the highest
officers as a mistake .... The truth is, the struggle in Samar is
one of extermination.,,35
When Smith's barbaric and outrageous orders gained him
public notoriety, the War Department attempted to portray
his Samar campaign as an aberration of standard practices.
Samar was a deviation from a war which (according to one
typically gushing statement from the Secretary of War) " ...
has been conducted by the Army with scrupulous regard for
the rules of civilized warfare with careful and genuine
consideration for the prisoner and non-combatant, with
self-restraint and with humanity never surpassed if ever
equalled in any conflict, worthy o n l ~ of praise, and reflecting
'credit upon the American people." In actuality the Samar
campaign was simply a stronger dose of the same kind of
extermination policy previously conducted in northern Luzon
and in Panay. Nor did the Samar campaign mark the end of
this kind of practice, despite the heavy criticism it provoked.
If anything, the Batangas campaign which followed Samar by a
few months was even more "pinching"-to use the
then-current euphemism for such pogroms. Indeed, General
Smith could legitimately defend himself the way Waller had
done. He was, in fact, simply following orders. His superior
and the overall U.S. commander in the Philippines, General
Chaffee, was as explicit as Smith, although he expressed
8
I
t
himself somewhat less flamboyantly when he wrote on the eve
of the Samar campaign:
.. : it is necessary that we be stern and inflexible; and both
officers and men must be cordially supported in this duty
in this regard. There is one thing necessary; and that is the
wholesome fear by these people of the Army, and that
every hostile motion of any inhabitants toward the troops
will be quickly and severely punished. . .. It is to our
interest to disarm these people and to keep them disarmed,
and any means to that end is advisable. 37 [emphasis added]
Even if the American commanders issued inhuman and
draconian orders, the War Department argued that of course
the men would not actually obey them. In Senate hearings, the
obsequious Beveridge was at pains to make this point:
Sen. Beveridge: The general conduct of our soldiers and
officers there, irrespective of orders from headquarters,
was in the direction of kindness, mercy and humanity,
was it? [emphasis added]
Gen. MacArthur: Absolutely, Sir. 38
But in spite of MacArthur's implicit faith in the
propensity of his men to disobey orders (one imagines it
would have been interesting to hear from Major Waller on this
score), information about the true nature of the conduct of
the war came, as usual, from the soldiers themselves.
39
One
letter, which was later republished in the New York World,
gives an indication of what the Filipinos were up against. It
bears reproduction in its entirety:
It was on the 27th of December, the anniversary of my
birth, and I shall never forget the scenes I witnessed that
day. As we approached the town the word passed along the
line that there would be no prisoners taken. It meant we
were to shoot every living thing in sight-man woman or
child.
The first shot was fired by the then 1st Sergeant of
our company. His target was a mere boy, who was coming
down the mountain path into town astride of a carabao.
The boy was not struck by the bullet, but that was not the
Sergeant's fault. The little Filipino boy slid from the back
of his carabao and fled in terror up the mountain side. Half
a dozen shots were fired after him.
The shooting now had attracted the villagers, who
came out of their homes in alarm, wondering what it all
meant. They offered no offense, did not display a weapon,
made no hostile movement whatsoever, but they were
ruthlessly shot down in cold blood, men, women and
children. The poor natives huddled together or fled in
terror. Many were pursued and killed on the spot. Two old
men, bearing a white flag and clasping hands like two
brothers, approached the lines. Their hair was white. Tbey
fairly tottered, they were so feeble under the weight of
years. To my horror and that of the other men in the
command, the order was given to fire and the two old men
were shot down in their tracks. We entered the village. A
man who had been on a sickbed appeared at the doorway
of his home. He received a bullet in the abdomen and fell
dead in the doorway. Dum dum bullets were used in the
massacre, but we were not told the name of the bullets. We
didn't have to be told. We knew what they were. In
another part of the village a mother with a babe at her
breast and two young children at her side pleaded for
mercy. She feared to leave her home which had just been
fired-accidentally, I believe. She faced the flames with her
I
children, and not a hand was raised to save her or the little
I
I
ones. They perished miserably. It was sure death if she left
the house-it was sure death if she remained. She feared the
American soldiers, however, worse than the devouring
I
flames. 40
In the face of mounting and irrefutable evidence of the
true conduct of the war, the War Department resorted to
by-now-standard procedure-deny, minimiZe, obliterate
charges and criticism with a blizzard of rhetorical overkill.
Secretary Root: "... the warfare has been conducted with
marked humanity and magnanimity on the part of the U.S."41
Major General Wheaton: "Unexampled patience was exercised
throughout the department in the treatment of these savages
[sic] .,,42 General Hughes: "The policy as practiced in the
Philippines has no element of cruelty in it.,,43 Governor Taft:
" ... it is my deliberate judgment that there never was a war
conducted, whether against inferior races or not, in which
there were more compassion and more restraint and more
generosity ..." 44 Furthermore, were it not for the bleeding
hearts and hand-wringers back home who, by criticizing the
army, were encouraging the enemy to resist, "the insurrection
would have been suppressed finally in January 1900,"
according to General Funston.
45
The Batangas Campaign
As Smith ravaged Samar, General Malvar and his men
carried on the guerrilla struggle in Batangas, Tayabas, Laguna
and Cavite. With General Smith already occupied, command of
the Batangas campaign was given to Maj. Gen. J. Franklin Bell.
By word and by deed, Bell made it clear that he was not going
to be put in the shade by his brother officer when it came to
slaughtering Filipinos. Even before he took command, Bell
made his feelings known in unmistakable terms. "All
consideration and regard for the inhabitants of this place cease
from the day I become commander," he said. "I have the force
and authority to do whatever seems to me good and especially
to humiliate all those in this Province who have any
pride....,,46
Beginning in early December 1901 and continuing for
the rest of the month, Bell issued a frightening series of orders.
On December 8 he began setting up his concentration camps.
The people of Batangas had two weeks in which to move into
the garrisons. Everything lying outside the perimeter of the
camps was subject to confiscation or destruction. Anyone
found there would automatically be considered an
"insurgent." Neutrality was not to be entertained. Everyone
"should either be an active friend or classified as an enemy."
How did one become an "active friend"? "The only acceptable
and convincing evidence of the real sentiments of either
individuals or town councils should be such acts publicly
performed as must inevitably commit them irrevocably to the
side of the Americans by arousing the animosity and
opposition of the insurgent element." How did one arouse the
animosity and opposition of the "insurgent element"? By
guiding troops to the camps of the enemy, by publicly
identifying "insurgents," by accompanying troops in
operations against the guerrillas, by denouncing the "enemy"
publicly, and by identifying secret guerrilla supporters.
Suspicion of aiding the guerrillas in any way was sufficient
9
cause for arrest without charge and incarceration for an
indefinite period of time. "It is not necessary to wait for
sufficient evidence to lead to a conviction by a court. ,,47
Bell's subordinates were given the widest latitude:
"Commanding officers are urged to use their discretion freely
in adopting any or all measures of warfare...." The people of
Batangas were to be made to "want peace and want it badly."
On December 13, Bell announced that the killing of American
troops would be paid back in kind. Whenever such an event
occurred, Bell proposed to select a prisoner "by lot from
among the officers or prominent citizens" and have him
executed. On December IS, Bell announced that "acts of
hostility or sabotage" would result in the "starving of unarmed
hostile belligerents.,,48 The warning to Malvar was clear: he
either had to give up the struggle or the "detainees" would
face mass starvation. To show that he meant it, on December
20 Bell ordered all rice and other food lying outside the camps
to be confiscated or destroyed. Wells were poisoned and all
farm animals were slaughtered.
49
January I, it was announced, was the deadline for
rendering "valuable service" to the Americans, and "those who
have not fully complied with their duty" by that date were
subject to prison. On the 24th, Bell admitted that the only
course open to the Americans was"... to adopt apolicy that
will create in the minds of all the people a burning desire for
the war to cease-a desire or longing so intense, so personal ...
and so real that it will impel them to devote themselves in
earnest to bringing about a real state of peace, that will impel
them to join hands with the Americans..." 50 "These people
need a thrashing," Bell announced on the day after Christmas.
" ... I have become convinced that within two months at the
outside there will be no more insurrection in this brigade, and
nothing for conspirators to negotiate about." Since " ...
practically the entire population has been hostile to us at heart
... it is necessary to make the state of war as insupportable as
possible, and there is no more efficacious way of
accomplishing this than by keeping the minds of the people in
such a state of anxiety and apprehension that living under such
conditions will soon become unbearable." Batangas, Bell
concluded, will "be thoroughly s e a r ~ h e d and devastated."51
Beginning January I, 1901, as promised, Batangas was
indeed thoroughly searched and devastated, as were the
neighboring provinces. Bell assembled 2,500 men in columns
of 50 and the hunt for Malvar was on. Expecting to destroy
everything, Bell was at least as ruthless as Smith had been in
the preceding extermination campaigns. The details of the
concentration camp policy were, by now, depressingly
familiar. Filipinos were rounded up and herded into detention
camps where overcrowded conditions and lack of proper food
and clothing resulted in the predictable spread of infectious
diseases. Malaria, beriberi and dengue fever took their toll. One
correspondent described the prisoners as" a
miserable-looking lot of little brown rats ... utterly
spiritless." 52
In the "zone of death" outside the camp "dead line,"
"all rendered themselves liable," according to Bell.
53
All
property was destroyed, all houses put to the torch and the
country was made a "desert waste ... of death and
desolation." 54 According to statistics compiled by U.S.
Government officials, by the time Bell was finished at least
100,000 people had been killed or had died in Batangas alone
as a direct result of the scorched-earth policies, and the
enormous dent in the population of the province (which was
reduced by a third) is reflected in the census figures.
55
American policy was so brutal that even some of the U.S.
government personnel became apprehensive. The American
civil governor of Tayabas noted in his official report that
killing, burning, torture and other harsh treatment was
. . . sowing the seeds for a perpetual revolution. If these
things need be done, they had best be done by native
troops so that the people of the u.S. will not be credited
therewith. S6
With Malvar's surrender in April 1902, the Americans at
long last felt the war was finally over, and Taft dutifully
intoned this fact once again. The Washington Post editorialized
in response:
We have learned to repose the utmost confidence in Judge
Taft's opinions and predictions relative to affairs in the
Philippines. Ever since he solemnly announced the fourth
and final termination of hostilities two years ago, we have
refused to accept any view of the situation in our new
islands which did not have his sanction and endorsement.
The fact that it has been brought to an end on six different
occasions since the Governor's original proclamation serves
only to confirm our estimation of his wisdom. A bad thing
cannot be killed too often. 57
The surrender of Malvar completed the capture or
surrender of what the Americans considered to be the
"respectable military element." The only people left in the
hills, it was thought, were ignorant ladrones (bandits), but
they were, it was said, a traditional feature of rural life in the
Philippines and were not to be taken seriously as a threat to
American hegemony. Just to make sure, President Roosevelt
proclaimed the war to be over on July 4,1902. Bands played,
soldiers marched in parade, speeches were read, and just the
tiniest flaw marred an otherwise grand occasion. The fighting
did not stop. The war would not admit to so tidy a solution.
Declaring it over did not make it so. A sullen, hostile people,
the victims of three and a half years of the most savage
aggression, simply refused to give up.
Malvar may have surrendered, but many of his men had
not, and fighting in Batangas continued. Elsewhere, new
leaders such as Sakay, Ricarte, Ola and Bulan emerged to carry
on the struggle in places previously considered pacified.
Others, such as Felipe Salvador and "Papa" Isio, both of
whom had been fighting the Spanish for many years prior to
1898, simply kept on fighting. Not all of them were principled
men; many were without ideology and fought simply out of
fanatical hatred of the occupying power; some interjected a
confusing welter of reactionary religious dogma to their often
ill-defined and unsophisticated response to (ill-defined and
unsophisticated) colonialism. Moreover, there were depressing
tendencies toward blind revanchism, dead-end milennarism,
and the development of personality cults
S8
which paralleled
similar "primitive rebellions" S9 in other areas of the world at
the time. Having noted this, the point cannot be
overemphasized that these movements represented the
collective will of the vast majority of the Filipino people
who-however imperfectly they understood the phenomenon
10
simply refused to submit to imperial aggression.
The "Post-War" War
"Post-war" fighting flared up in Albay in October 1902,
when approximately 1,500 guerrillas led by Simeon Ola
refused to surrender. This was politically embarrassing to the
Americans, and to Roosevelt and Taft in particular. This war
was supposed to be over! Although there were still upwards of
20,000 U.S. troops garrisoned on the Islands, it was thought
the better part of wisdom to deploy Filipino puppet troops
(led by American officers) against the Albay guerrillas. In
November, the Brigandage Act was passed, authorizing the
death penalty for membership in a guerrilla organization. The
new law simply gave legal sanction to what had become
common practice and it had little appreciable effect on the
situation in Albay, which continued to deteriorate for the
Americans. In March 1903, the situation had reached a point
where reconcentrado tactics had to be once again
employed-this time on a wider scale than anything heretofore
attempted. Three hundred thousand Filipinos were herded
into concentration camps at gunpoint. Ola finally surrendered
in October 1903, but this event did not end the fighting there
by any means.
60
Fighting also continued in Cavite, where a new
Katipunan was formed by a former Aguinaldo aide, Gen.
Luciano San Miguel; in Nueva Ecija and Tarlac, led by Felipe
Salvador; in Rizal and Bulacan, led by Montalon, Felizardo
and others; in Tayabas, led by Saria and Roldon-the list
indeed could go on and on. In the year after the war had been
declared officially at an end, 357 separate engagements with
the guerrillas were recorded by the U.S. military command.
The inability to stamp out the fighting induced the
Americans to adopt more sophisticated techniques, some of
which have become familiar features of more recent
counterinsurgency efforts. The 1903 census of the Philippines
was a determined effort to enumerate not only people, but to
also record the presence of cattle, hogs, chickens and so forth
in hopes of tracing guerrilla sources of supply and to
intimidate people into denying provisions to the guerrillas for
fear of being discovered. Such techniques proved to be of
limited value and, at times, counterproductive. Attempts to
conduct such a survey in Misamis Province sparked off an
uprising there.
61
In the following year an identification card
system was inaugurated and a "registration tax" was imposed
on all male residents of the Philippines between 18 and 60
years of age. These Cedulas Personates, as they were called,
" ... also serve the purpose of a domestic passport ..." (their
obvious intended purpose), according to the Secretary of
Finance and Justice.
62
The Americans were hoping that by imposing such
restrictions they would hamper efforts at unifying the various
resistance organizations. The activity of Artemio Ricarte, a
case in point, illustrates the kind of organizational work the
Americans feared. Ricarte, formerly a member of Aguinaldo's
staff, was captured early in the war and, because he refused to
take an oath of allegiance to the U.S., was deported to Guam.
Upon being returned to Manila, he once again refused to take
an oath and was sent to Hong Kong and exile, where he began
to correspond and coordinate with other guerrilla leaders in
the Philippines. He secretly returned to Manila in December
1903 and embarked upon a clandestine tour of northern and
Central Luzon, where he engaged in organizing, unifying and
recruiting activities. For months he eluded capture, much to
the consternation of the Americans.
In July 1904, fighting broke out in Samar, where Bulan
and Juliano Caducoy led several hundred men. Coastal villages
were attacked and Philippine Constabulary (puppet) troops
and pro-U.S. municipal officials were killed. One
U.S.-appointed teniente (mayor) had a kerosene-soaked U.S.
flag tied around his head and ignited, which Caducoy said was
"a lesson to those serving that flag.,,63 By August, the
governor of Samar was frantically demanding more. troops
from Manila because guerrillas "are boldly roaming the
country." 64 "Thousands joined in the movement," according
to the local commander, Gen. William H. Carter, and the
guerrillas took control of large areas of coastal territory in
northeastern Samar. Constabulary patrols, led by American
officers and sent out to engage the guerrillas, came in for some
hard fighting. At Oras, Bulan's men, armed only with bolos,
engaged the Constabulary troops in hand-to-hand combat and
secured 65 guns. At Dolores, 38 Constabulary troops fell,
prompting the American commander to plead for the
reintroduction of American troops. The problem, he said, was
". . not solely one of killing and capturing the leaders or great
numbers of their followers, for there are others ready to rise in
their places.,,65 By April 1905, U.S. reinforcements had to be
sent to Samar and fighting there continued for two more
years.
Elsewhere, in late 1904 and early 1905, guerrilla activity
reached a "post-war" peak, with fighting erupting in Rizal,
where Felizardo successfully attacked a number of
Constabulary garrisons, and in Taal, where Montalon and De
Vega marched up the main street of town and people "openly
fraternized with the bandits." In Malabon, which "was a
hotbed of disloyal citizens and sympathizers with the outlaw
element," Montalon and others disguised in Constabulary
uniforms seized the garrison and very nearly kidnaped the
provincial governor.
In January 1905 the Writ of Habeas Corpus was
suspended and a state of insurrection was declared. "It is
hoped the result will be the effectual cleaning out of these
bands and that the people will be so inconvenienced that
instead of sympathising with and aiding the outlaw bands an
effort will be made to aid the authorities ,"66 reported the
district commander. Familiar tactics these, but by March
conditions had deteriorated so badly in Batangas and Cavite
and in some parts of Laguna and Rizal that reconcentrado had
to be employed there for five months-three years after
Malvar's surrender and General Bell's boast that within two
months of January 1902 there would be no more insurrection
in Batangas.
In Pangasinan, where Sakay was active, the American
military commander wrote plaintively, "This Province seems
to be the rendezvous of disturbers ... and we scarcely get one
broken up until another is started. We have had ... various
classes of Katipunan organizations, seditions and efforts at
organization for insurrection .. and the province in
consequence has furnished its quota to swell the population of
Bilibid [prison] ...,,67 In Albay, "conditions were in a rather
disturbed state." Agustin Saria had taken up where Ola left off
and it was noted that his"... principal aim was to levy tribute
on the people and to maintain an independent insurgent
government." 68 In Ambos, Camarines, " ... practically open
11
insurrection existed due to the influence of Jose Roldon....
He reorganized his forces in the most impoverished sections of
Ambos, Camarines, and had remarkable success in securing
municipal officials and prominent individuals to assist him." 69
Roldon and Saria were killed in September and October 1905
respectively, but others picked up the cudgels. In Tayabas it
was reported that "the inhabitants of certain localities are
exceedingly inflammable and easily influenced by the
oratorical flights and acrobatic gyrations of demagogic outlaws
or fanatical propagandists." 70 Whatever the cause, the
"demagogic outlaws" were becoming increasingly effective.
One American officer described the nature of the attack
employed against constabulary compounds:
The attempts are always preceded by a thorough spying out
of the surroundings, strength and habits of the intended
victims, a careful weighing of chances and a deliberate
planning. Consequently, an enterprise once undertaken
seldom fails. Frequently they try to minimize the risk of
jumping a police station or looting a municpal treasury by
establishing relations with and winning confederates on the
inside. 71
The guerrillas were also learning how to utilize their
solidarity with the people to advantage and they began to shun
the uniforms they previously wore in order to facilitate
intermingling with the general population. Funds were often
extorted from wealthy landowners (who hoped thereby to
purchase immunity from more permanent depradations) and
used to purchase food and provisions from peasants. An
underground communication system was established in the
various areas of guerrilla operation, but interregional
communication and coordination was all but totally lacking
and this proved to be a fatal handicap when, as occurred in
1904-06, the resistance was progressing well in other respects.
In Central Luzon, Sakay continued to elude the
Constabulary. In June 1905 the American commanding officer
wrote that previous indications were " ... that we were making
material progress against them [Sakay and his men) ... but
that like 'Brer Rabbit' they were not exterminated but were
simply lying low ..." 72 Almost all of the guerrilla leaders
active in 1905 had, of course, been deeply involved in the
1899-1902 struggle. As fighting flared up the class
contradictions in the old Philippine Army leadership began to
emerge once again. The members of Aguinaldo's staff and the
various commanders of the earlier period who had surrendered
or been captured had, for the most part, been well treated by
the Americans and were content to make their peace with
American colonial rule. (Aguinaldo himself settled down on
500 hectares of land near Imus, Cavite, and reaped the benefits
of one or two profitable arrangements with the Colonial
Government.
73
Many of the 1899-1902 leaders disparaged the
later efforts and echoed the American position that such
guerrilla bands were simply ladrones, and that there was no
real political significance attached to the various movements.
This was sad commentary on the ideological pliability of the
early leaders, and such statements had a measurable
propaganda effect. But the damaging influence of such men
was offset somewhat because almost all of the new guerrilla
leadership had emerged at one point or another from the
ranks. Moreover, with men like Ricarte, Montalon, Felizardo,
and especially Sakay still alive, a direct link was maintained
with the highest leadership circles of the 1899-1902 period.
The Americans understood this, of course, and the hunt for
Sakay in particular became an obsession with them. Sakay was
considered by many to be Aguinaldo's heir and was referred to
by the forces in his command and by the people in the
districts in which he operated as the President of the Republic.
Filipino morale received a tremendous (albeit
unwarranted) boost with the Japanese success in the
Russo-Japanese War.
74
News of the war-and cheap color
prints of little brown men slaying big white men-filtered into
the most remote and backward corners of the Philippines and
generated tremendous interest "even among the ignorant taos
... who otherwise are uniformly impervious to the progress of
the outside world ... " 7S
Things were not going too well for the Americans in
spite of uniformly glowing reports of success heaped upon
success (such propaganda as was being churned out had long
~ i n c e bcome an endemic feature of America's Philippine
adventure and was, unfortunately, usually accepted at face
value in the U.S.-and by later historians). Occasionally,
information would filter through the official veil and chip
away, if only ever so slightly, at the orthodox, roseate view.
An Englishwoman wrote from Iloilo in 1905:
The Americans give out and write in their papers that the
Philippine Islands are completely pacified and that the
Filipinos love Americans and their rule. This, doubtless
with good motives, is complete and utter humbug, for the
country is honeycombed with insurrection and plots, the
fighting has never ceased, and the natives loathe the
Americans and their theories, saying so openly in their
native press and showing their dislike in every possible
fashion. Their one idea is to be rid of the U.S.A . ... 76
By 1906 the ultimate futility of engaging in continued
resistance without regional coordination, without agreed-upon
aims, without more than the most rudimentary ideological
overview, and without any hope-or thought-of international
support for their movement took its predictable toll. By
mid-year, Sakay, Montalon and De Vega had surrendered and
this ended whatever flickering hopes might have remained for
the re-establishment of the Philippine Republic.
Yet, incredibly, the war was stilI not over, nor would it
be for several years to come, and fighting continued in a
number of areas. In Mindanao, Moslem resistance to American
efforts at subjugation continued unabated and led to the
adoption of the standard extermination policies. Moslem
resistance differed from that which typified other areas in that
it was largely unconnected with questions of Philippine
independence or anti-colonialism, but was rather predicated an
the desire to maintain Islamic communal laws and customs
free from interference from the "conquered North." (It should
be noted that the Spanish never actually subjugated the
Moslem areas.) Guerrilla tactics adopted in other areas were
not typical in the Moslen regions, where the practice was for
whole communities to band together and retreat to a fortified
position (usually a hilltop) in the face of an attack. For
American troops grown callous by years of fighting against
non-combatants, attacking such communities necessitated no
departure from previously established norms. The resultant
slaughter from such wanton tactics, however, was fearful. In
March 1906, American troops killed over 600 men, women
and children in an assault on the Mount Dajo community.
Photographs of the neaped bodies of women and children
12
created a sensation in the U.S., but this did not reflect itself in
any alteration of American policy. Sporadic fighting continued
to flare up in Mindanao as late as 1916, and martial law was
not lifted until December 1906. Even then, the preparedness
of the Moslem community to lay down their arms was due
simply to the recognition that superior force of arms had been
brought to bear against them, nothing more.
Negros was another area where fighting continued
beyond 1906, led by the intrepid "Papa" Isio. Isio's movement
was unique in its longevity; by the time of the arrival of the
Americans, Isio had been in the hills for nearly twenty years
against the Spanish. In 1880, the 39-year-old farm laborer Isio
(then Dionisio Magbueles) quarreled with a Spaniard, wounded
him, and fled to the mountains of Negros, where he joined
with and eventually became the leader of a rebel group known
variously as Babaylanes ("priests") and Pulahanes ("red
trousers"). Negros, especially the fertile northwest crescent of
the island, presented unusual economic conditions inasmuch as
the sugar plantations there represe,nted the most commercially
advanced agricultural area to be found in the Philippines.
Because of this, class contradictions reached their most
advanced level and chronic labor unrest characterized
conditions in the Negros canefields in the late 19th century.
Disaffected sacadas (canefield workers) provided a
steady stream of men to Isio's mountain band prior to 1898.
The founding of the Malolos Republic and the arrival of
the Americans further sharpened the divisions between the
plantation and mill owners and the sacadas. Dewey's arrival in
Manila Bay and the resultant crisis led to the withdrawal of
Spanish forces from Negros and in the power vacuum Isio and
his men declared allegiance to the Republic and marched into
the capital of Bacolod. Isio's army by this time numbered
between five and six thousand and he enjoyed almost total
support among the sacadas and peasant farmers. Landlords and
mill owners on Negros, who had previously co-existed
peacefully and profitably with the Spanish authorities (and
with whom they identified socially) viewed developments with
consternation. Their major fear was that the Malolos
Government would sanction and solidify the Isio regime.
To checkmate Isio, the Negros hacenderos tried to
prevent him from getting arms and from establishing direct
contact with Malolos. In the autumn of 1898 some of the
planters sent a delegation to the captain of a U.S. man-of-war
then at anchor in Iloilo harbor to ask him for U.S. protection
and armed intervention against Isio. The Americans refused
the request because at this point they were not yet at war with
the Filipinos. They did not want to trigger the fighting before
the arrival of needed reinforcements and the signing of the
Paris Treaty. The hacenderos then established an
"independent" Republic of Negros, adopting an
American-style Constitution which defined the new power
configurations. For several months until the outbreak of
fighting on February 4, 1899, two regimes vied in Negros, the
Republican (Malolos) Government, supported by Isio and his
men, and the "independent" Republic of Negros, which
existed mostly on paper and in the minds of a few hundred
wealthy plantation owners.
On February 22, 1899, a delegation of hacenderos went
to Manila and again asked for U.S. intervention, reminding the
Americans pointedly that "their action would cause much
hatred among the insurgents." 77 Now that the
Philippine-American War had started, the Americans were
more than eager to accomodate the hacenderos, and Col. (later
Gen.) Smith initiated his career in the Philippines by going to
Negros with a battalion of the First California Volunteers. He
also tried to organize native troops but abandoned the practice
when the men signed up and promptly went over to Isio with
their new weapons. For several months after Smith's arrival,
class war reigned in Negros. Sacadas flocked to the hills and
joined in attacks on plantations. By September 1899, over 100
plantations lay in ruins, expensive sugar-milling machinery had
been wrecked, farm animals were lost, and sugar production
(the second most valuable Philippine export product at the
time) had come to an almost complete standstill. 78
Such was Isio's background, and for seven more years
the mountainous interior of Negros remained a "liberated
zone" despite repeated forays by American and Constabulary
troops. By 1905 Isio had become a folk hero, a symbol of
continued resistance when all realistic hope of overthrowing
the hacendero oligopoly had long since vanished. In January
1905, when it was reported (incorrectly) that Isio had been
killed, thousands wore black armbands in mourning. In June
of that year, after Isio and his men had taken possession of the
town of Isabela, the American commander ruefully
hinted at the depth of the popular support Isio s t i l ~ enjoyed
when he reported, "It remains to be seen whether or not the
people of Isabela will come forward and identify the raiders or
aid in their capture. If they do, it will be unprecedented." 79 It
was not until August 6, 1907, that "Papa" Isio, age 67, finally
came down from the mountains.
The major guerrilla organization still active after Isio's
surrender was the Santa Iglesia led by Felipe Salvador (alias
Apong Ipe), one of the most colorful and charismatic leaders
in a movement which produced an abundance of such men.
Allegedly the son of a friar, Salvador, like Isio, had been active
against the Spanish long before Malolos and Manila Bay. The
Santa Iglesia, a "fanatical and oath-bound society" (according
to the Americans) was founded in 1893 in Pampanga. In 1898
it joined forces with the revolutionary movement and Salvador
and his men attacked Spanish garrisons at Dagupan and
Lingayen in Pangasinan. Salvador was made a colonel by
Aguinaldo, but he never became a part of the Malolos inner
circle and his organization always maintained a separate
identity, never fully incorporated into the Philippine Army. In
1902 Salvador refused to surrender when many of Aguinaldo's
generals were heeding the call of the latter to lay down their
arms. Salvador was captured soon after but escaped from jail
and resumed his guerrilla activities in Pampanga, Nueva Ecija
and Bulacan. It is perhaps the best testimony to Salvador's skill
as a leader and organizer that his movement came into full
flower only after other organizations and guerrilla movements
had been beaten into submission and surrender in the
post-1905 period.
By 1906 Salvador had begun to roam throughout
Central Luzon. He negotiated alliances with other guerrilla
organizations and staged spectacular raids, the most notable
being the one on the Constabulary barracks at Malolos, the
political implications of which escaped no one. The support
and respect he and his men commanded from the people of
Central Luzon was legendary. Reported one American with
finality, "inhabitants ... do not volunteer information of
[his] '" presence to the authorities." 80 In spite of
concentrated efforts to portray members of the Santa Iglesia
as "some of the most wicked and desperate men ever at large
in the Philippine Islands," Colonel Bandholtz, charged with his
capture, admitted, "He treats the barrio people well and it is
said he does not rob them of provisions, but prays with the
people and asks them for contributions, which they usually
give."Sl
The Americans took pains to portray Salvador as simply
a religious sectarian, a polygamist, a wild man. Such an
interpretation, of course, was aimed at belittling and
dismissing Salvador's political seriousness of purpose which
was obviously striking a responsive chord among the peasants
of Central Luzon. Salvador's avowed aim was the overthrow of
the American Colonial Government. This was the cornerstone
of the Santa Iglesia movement. Also of interest was the
socially progressive nature of the movement, which indicated a
political shift from the vaguely defined post-colonial vision of
the Katipuneros. Salvador repeatedly raised the land question
and promised his supporters that land redistribution, the
breaking up of haciendas, and the abolition of tenancy would
swiftly follow his assumption of state power.
One aspect of the post-1896 period which has been
largely overlooked was the class nature of the Philippine
Revolution. That the war represented Filipino resistance to
Spanish colonialism and American aggression is obvious. That
the period represented class struggle on several levels is not as
clearly understood today, probably because it was most
imperfectly understood' at the time. Except for the tiny
collaborationist elite, whose economic, ethnic and class origins
put them in a category quite far removed from the mass of
Indio peasants, few understood clearly their economic and
class interests and how they were being manipulated by the
Americans as part of the imperial design. Within the
anti-imperialist camp, class antagonisms were muted, both
because they were not understood and because of the need to
present a united nationalist front. But the latent class
contradictions were always present, and they began to surface
in the second and third year of the war against the Americans
with the defection of a number of army officers. These men
came largely from middle-class backgrounds and, with a few
notable exceptions, were prone to elitist thinking and
surrenderist attitudes. The speed and apparent ease of
conscience with which many such men were able to take up
posts within the American colonial bureaucracy was to a large
degree attributable to their class solidarity which, on the
evidence, was stronger than their racial and ethnic ties to the
Indio peasants.
So it was that the fight was left to be fought by the poor
and uneducated, bandits and outlaws, religious screwballs and
wild men-or so we are told. And yet, significantly, when the
officers and gentlemen had made their peace with imperialism,
the only people left defending the honor of Philippine
nationalism were now also fighting for primitive social justice
as well. The class struggle began to emerge as co-equal to the
national struggle-long after any immediate hope of winning
either had passed.
In 1909, a decade after the first battle on the outskirts
of Manila, Felipe Salvador was still fighting. "His influence
over the lower class has defied the efforts of the Government
to capture him ... " He was not to be captured until the
following year, snuffing out the last flickering flame of a
fourteen-year struggle against colonial aggression. Salvador,
who had been in the hills for seventeen of his forty-one years,
was tried for banditry, convicted, and executed in 1912.
The Cost of the War
How many Filipinos died resisting American aggression?
It is doubtful if historians will ever agree on a figure that is
anything more than a guess. The figure of 250,000 crops up in
various works; one suspects it is chosen and repeated in
ignorance and in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary.
Records of the killing were not kept and the Americans were
anxious to suppress true awareness of the extent of the
slaughter in any case, in order to avoid fueling domestic
anti-imper!alist protest. How many died of disease and the
effects of concentration camp life is even more difficult to
assess. General Bell, who, one imagines, might be in as good a
position to judge such matters as anyone, estimated in a New
York Times interview that over 600,000 people in Luzon
alone had been killed or had died of disease as a l'esult of the
war. The estimate, given in May 1901, means that Bell did not
include the effects of the Panay campaign, the Samar
campaign, or his own bloodthirsty Batangas campaign (where
at least 100,000 died), all of which occurred after his 1901
interview. Nor could it include the "post-war" period, which
saw the confinement of 300,000 people in Albay, wanton
slaughter in Mindanao, and astonishing death rates in Bilibid
Prison, to name but three instances where killing continued.
A million deaths? One does not happily contemplate
such carnage of innocent people who fought with
extraordinary bravery in a cause which was just but is now all
but forgotten. Such an estimate, however, might conceivably
err on the side of understatement. To again quote the
anonymous U.S. Congressman, "They never rebel in Luzon
anymore because there isn't anybody left to rebel."
Notes
1. The choice of terms for the Philippine-American War and the
corresponding reference to the Filipinos as "insurgents" was not
haphazard or accidental, as it gave semantic reinforcement to the.
American position that the (Malolos) Philippine Government was
illegitimate and that those who took up arms against the Americans
were engaged in rebellion against (legitimate) American authority. It is,
perhaps, overstating the obvious to make the point that quite a
different interpretation is not only possible but, in my view, more
accurate, historically speaking. The Malolos Government was, for at
least a year after its inception, the only legitimate government in the
Philippines insofar as Malolos alone exercised unchallenged legal
authority throughout the Islands. That Malolos was not recognized by
the U.S. did not, legally speaking, alter this fact. Nor did it make the
subsequent war against the U.S. an "insurrection." At no time were
Filipinos themselves in revolt against their own government. A more
accurate interpretation-and, I believe, the only correct one-is based
on the understanding that the Philippine-American War was, both
legally and objectively, Filipino resistance to American military
aggression against the sovereign Philippine state. The fact that the
Americans eventually won the war does not, in my view, alter this basic
fact. Accordingly, the terms "insurrection" and "insurgent" will not be
employed in this essay except when used in quotation.
2. Literature on the war is woefully skimpy and no adequate
political analysis now exists. Little Brown Brother by Leon Wolff
(Manila: Erehwon, 1968) is an excellently written popular
introduction. Domestic U.S. reaction to the war has received far more
attention than the war itself, especially in recent years. Daniel
Schirmer's Republic or Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1971)
is the best recent acco!':Jt of the anti-imperialist, or, more accurately,
the anti-colonialist r'lOvement in the U.S.
3. At least insofar as the Treay of Paris was concerned. Jlad the
treaty not been approved, theoretically the Islands would have been
retained by Spain, although as a practical matter the Spanish were
14
hardly in a position to reassert themselves in the Islands. It seems
improbable also that the McKinley Administration would have
withdrawn U.S. troops simply on the basis of the treaty vote, had it
gone against them.
4. Wolff, Little Brown Brother, p. 226.
5. Forty-five hundred dead bodies were counted by the
Americans. Witnesses estimated the total number of dead to be
8-10,000. H. Van The Truth About the Philippines from Official
Records and Authentic Sources (Chicago: Liberty League, 1900), p.
333.
6. Van Meter, 332.
7. Van Meter, 368.
8. Father of Douglas, World War II commander in the Pacific.
9. Van Meter, 366.
10. Eyot, Canning, ed., The Story of the Lopez Family (Boston:
J. H. West Co., 1904), 23.
11. MacArthur later admitted, "The Filipino idea behind the
dissolution of their field army was not at the time of occurrence well
understood in the American camp. As a consequence, misleading
conclusions were reached to the effect that the insurrection itself had
been destroyed and that it only remained to sweep up the fag ends of
the rebel army." Renato Constantino, Dissent and Counter
Consciousness (Quezon City: Malaya Books, 1970), 80, quoting War
Department Annual Reports, 1901, vol. I, part 4,88.
12. Senate Document no. 331, vol. 2; 57:1 (1902), 1926-27.
13. Wolff, 294. Robinson, who reported for the New York
Evening Post, was by far the most courageous American newsman in
the Philippines. His outspoken reporting won him hasty re-assignment
to Africa.
14. Senate Doc. no. 331, vol. 2, 57:1, pp. 1927-28. Report of
General MacArthur. There were 53 garrisons in November 1899, over
400 by the following August.
15. Fairfield, Maine Journal, excerpted from a letter from Sgt.
Howard McFarlane, 43rd Infantry. Quoted in Wolff, 305. The soldiers
who wrote such letters were invariably contacted by military
authorities and forced to write retractions, which were then hastily
published to refute the original information. Reading the retractions
tends to confirm in one's mind the verity of the original statement.
Refusal to write a retraction was not kindly looked upon by the
military and the kinds of pressure tactics employed by the War
Department became something of a scandal after being disclosed in
Senate hearings in 1902. Senator McLaurin called it a "remarkable
coincidence" that in every case where the soldier was still in the army,
'retractions were forthcoming. But when the soldier had already been
discharged and was no longer subject to military discipline, " ... there
was not an instance found where there was any modification,
qualification or retraction of what had been said ... " Congressional
Record, 57:1, May 15,1902, 5480.
16. Quoted in the Boston Transcript, January 12, 1900, cited by
Wolff,299.
17. Wolff, 290.
18. Boston Herald, August 25, 1902. Quoted in Moorfield
Storey and Julian Codman, Marked Severities in Philippine Warfare:
Sec. Root's Record (Boston: George H. Ellis Co., 1902), 115.
19. As was McKinley, who confessed he could not find the
Philippines on the map the first time he looked for them. In light of
later disclosures, this remark smacks of coyness, but it is true
nevertheless that the Americans had the most limited understanding of
Philippine society.
20. Statement by Rep. Vandiver, Congressional Record, 57:1,
May IS, 1902,5505.
21. At their peak, Spanish forces in the Philippines never
numbered more than a few thousand.
22. Taft testimony, Senate Doc. no. 331, part 1,69.
23. MaCArthur testimony, Senate Doc. no. 331, part 1,135.
24. Senate Doc. no. 331, part 3, 2443.
25. In his first annual message to Congress, McKinley expressed
his (evidently feigned) outrage at the concentration camp policy being
employed in Cuba. This "cruel policy," he said, "was not civilized
warfare; it was extermination." Quoted in Storey and Codman, 94.
26. Report of the Provincial Governor of Abra, Senate Doc. no.
331, part 1,430.
27. Wolff, 352.
28. Charles E. Magoon, Acting Chief of Division, Senate Doc. no.
331, part 3, 2263.
\
29. Later charged with (and' eventually acquitted 00 torturing
134 Filipino P.O.W.s to death.
30. Boston Herald , August 25, 1901 (quoting a letter from an
American officer). Quoted in Storey and Codman, 116.
31. Chaffee to General Hughes, Manila, September 30, 1901,
Senate Doc. no. 331, part 2, 1592.
32. Testimony of William J. Gibbs, a survivor of the massacre.
Senate Doc. no. 331, part 3, 2284 et seq.
33. Storey and Codman, 116. Congt'essional Record, 57:1, May
15,1902, 5525.
34. Major Waller was later court martialed for his actions in
Samar, one suspects in retaliation for his refusal to engage in the
extermination practices of his fellow officers. During the course of his
trial he revealed the nature of Smith's orders and the public disclosure
created a sensation in the U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
(McKinley's successor upon the latter's assassination in 1901), in order
to neutralize outraged public opinion, had Smith himself brOUght up on
charges. The charges did not stem from any overt act of the Samar
campaign (it is recalled that the War Department had "no record" that
the orders were actually carried out) but rather because the orders
themselves were "unprofessional." Smith was convicted, "admonished"
by the tribunal, and sentenced to "early retirement." Smith became
something of a cause celebre in jingoist circles, causing Roosevelt to
regret his actions: "The court martial of General Smith cost me
votes-votes'" (Schirmer, 239 n).
35. Stephen Bonsal, Boston Transcript, quoted in Storey and
Codman, 38.
36. Secretary of War Elihu Root, Senate Doc. no. 205, 57:1,
part I, pp. 2,3.
37. Chaffee to Gen. Hughes, September 30, 1901, quoted in
Storey and Codman, 28.
38. Senate Doc. no. 422,57:1,5.
39. It should be remarked that not all of the V.S. soldiers reveled
in the bloodlust of their commanders. Many were repulsed by what
they had witnessed and experienced in the Philippines and were anxious
to expose American policy upon their return to the U.S. Others took to
drink or went mad. Alcoholism and insanity followed venereal disease
as the major cause for the reduction in available V.S. manpower in the
Philippines. Desertion was difficult due to geographical factors, but
incidences of officers being shot in the back "by snipers" were not
unheard of, and a handful of Americans actually joined with and fought
with the guerrillas (see Ellwood Bergerey, Why Soldiers Desert from the
U.S. Army (Philadelphia: William Fell & Co., 1903), 132.
40. Cpl. Richard O'Brien, New York World, reprinted in the
Congressional Record, 57:1, May 15, 1902, 5500.
41. Root to Lodge, Army and Navy Journal, AprilS, 1902.
Reprinted in Storey and Codman, 88.
42. Senate Doc. no. 205,57:1, part I, p. 50.
43. Senate Doc. no. 422, 57:1, p. 19.
44. Senate Doc. no. 422,57:1, p. 4.
45. Address before the Marquette Club, Chicago, March II,
1902. Quoted in Frederick Chamberlin, The Blow from Behind
(Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1903), 109.
46. Eyot, 146-47.
47. Congressional Record, 57:1, May 16, 1902, 5552 et seq.
48. Congressional Record, 57:1, May 16, 1902, 5552.
49. James H. Blount, American Occupation of the Philippines
(Manila: Malaya Books, 1968), 388.
50. Storey and Codman, 71-72.
51. Storey and Codman, 73. Senate Doc. no. 331, part 2, pp.
1628,1690-1.
52. Storey and Codman, 91.
53. Senate Doc. no. 331, 57:1, part 2, p. 1632.
54. Storey and Codman, 92-93.
55. Philippine Census, 1903 (Washington, D.C.: V.S.
Government Printing Office, 1905), vol. 2, p. 20. Comparing the 1903
figures with the Spanish figures of 1887, Batangas lost 54,000 people in
absolute terms, making no allowance for intervening population rise.
Estimating on the basis of an annual population increase of 1.5 percent,
it is certain that Batangas was depopulated by 100,000 or more.
56. Report of Major Gardiner, Governor of Tayabas,
Congressional Record, 57: I, May 1S, 1902, 5500. By native troops
Gardiner was referring to the Macabebes, a tiny, pro-U.S. ethnic
sub-group which had played a praetorian role during the Spanish regime
and for this reason was well hated by the majority of Filipinos.
l
15
57. Congressional Record, 57: 1, May 16, 1902, 5542.
58. A current diversion in some areas of the Filipino left of late
has been to try to decide which guerrilla leaders were principled
revolutionaries and which were opportunist manipulators. Few-if
any-of these men can withstand such a rigorous and, ultimately, unfair
historical test, precisely because all of them lacked one or more of the
foHowing: (a) a revolutionary ideology; (b) a theory of imperialism;
(c) anything other than a primitive understanding of the class nature of
the struggle in which they were engaged; (d) an understanding of
protracted warfare and guerrilla strategy. There was no real experience
(except their own) upon which they could draw, nor was there a
historical example known to them of the successful prosecution of such
a struggle. They fought by their wits and their instincts alone, which led
in turn to terrible reversals and, ultimately, .defeat in an uneven, suicidal
struggle doomed from the start. So all of them to one degree or another
fail the exacting test of their modern critics. Simeon Ola surrendered,
betrayed his men, and turned state's witness against them. Macario
Sakay was tricked into surrendering for principled (but tactically
faulty) reasons and was betrayed and executed by the Americans, who
had previously promised amnesty. Artemio Ricarte survives better than
most, and for years after 1910 he waged an almost singlehanded
struggle from abroad. But, sadly, in old age he could not see that
Japanese and American imperialism were cut from the same cloth.
"Papa" Isio finally surrendered, one suspects, because at the age of
sixty-seven and after more than twenty-five years in the mountains the
rigors of guerrilla life"simply got to be too much. And so it went. To
hold such men against a standard which has only slowly evolved in the
course of the 20th century seems to miss the point. Given the historical
context within which the struggle was enjoined, how can it reasonably
be expected that it could have evolved differently? The real heroes were
not so much the leaders, who served their people with a greater or lesser
degree of fidelity and ability, but the people themselves. A simple
point, perhaps, but one which I believe bears making.
59. The struggle in the Philippines never degenerated into social
banditry in the strict sense of the term, although in its later stages
several of the guerrilla organizations developed into "Robin
Hood"-type bands. The fascinating history of such movements as they
have occurred historically and in various parts of the world has been
largely ignored by orthodox historians, partly, no doubt, because of the
inherent difficulties in researching such phenomena. The opportunities
for such work in the Philippines are immense. The reader is directed to
the pioneering work of E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (New York:
Praeger, 1959) and Bandits (New York, 1971).
60. Report of the Governor of Albay, in Sixth Annual Report of
the Philippine Commission (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1905), part 1, Appendix H, 144. Blount, 49.
61. Fourth Annual Report of the Philippine Commission (1903),
part 1, p. 30.
62. Report of the Secretary of Finance and Justice, Sixth
Annual Report of the Philippine Commission (1905), part 4, p. 177.
63. Blount, 453.
64. Cable, Governor Feito to Carpenter, August 9,1904. Quoted
in Blount, 461.
65. Report of Col. Wallace C. Taylor, Sixth Annual Report of
the Philippine Commission Appendix A, 54.
67. Scott, 55. Conditions in Bilibid were scandalously bad, and
in 1903 it became a point of controversy because American prisoners
were being kept there as well as Filipinos. American investigators
reported, "Considering the appalling mortality in Bilibid and the charac
ter of the diseases with which the prisoners are afflicted, there is no
question but that the latter are suffering greatly from the effects of
crowd poisoning." In reporting on conditions in late 1904, Secretary of
Commerce and Police William Cameron Forbes issued a statement
which can only be described as incredible: "In Bilibid Prison discipline
has been uniformly good and conditions on the whole satisfactory. On
the 7th day of Dec. 1904 a small outbreak occurred among the
detention prisoners, in which 200 endeavored to gain their liberty. The
prompt use of a gatling gun in the tower and the riot guns with which
the guards on the walls were armed ended the trouble in eight minutes.
There were 19 killed and 40 wounded, but the work in the shops and
other industrial departments of the prison was not interrupted, and in
30 minutes' time there was no evidence except in the hospital that
there had been any trouble." The "uniformly good" conditions Forbes
spoke of included a death rate of 438 per 1000 by 1905. To be
sentenced there was tantamount to a death sentence.
68. Report of H. H. Bandholtz, Commander, Second District
Philippine Constabulary, Sixth Annual Report of the Philippine
Commission, part 3, Appendix A, 69.
69. Ibid., 69.
70. Ibid., 78.
71. Report of D. J. Baker, Provincial District Commander, ibid.,
part 3, Appendix A, 130.
72. Report of W. S. Scott, 53.
73. Seventh Annual Report of the Philippine Commission
(1906), part 1, pp. 3031. I am not aware of any of the prominent
leaders of 1899-1902 going back into the field after a spell of civilian
life under American rule, although there may have been isolated cases
where this did occur.
74. Euphoria at the outcome of that war was not, of course,
confined to Japan and the Philippines. News of the Japanese victory
electrified the masses of people in Southeast Asia generally, e.g.,
Indochina, where guerrilla war was being waged against the French.
75. Report of Maj. Samuel D. Crawford, Commanding Officer,
Fourth District, Philippine Constabulary, Sixth Annual Report of the
Philippine Commission, part 3, Appendix A, 101-2.
76. Blount, 505, quoting Mrs. Campbell Dauncy, An
Englishwoman in the Philippines, 88.
77. Which of course it did. Testimony of Frank J. Bourns, First
(Schurmann) Report of the Philippine Commission, part 2, p. 356.
78. Ibid., 355-56, 414-16. Eighth Annual Report of the
Philippine Commssion, part 2, p. 311. The story of the short-lived
Negros Republic and, more importantly, the development of the social
forces which led to its founding have not, to my knowledge, been
adequately treated by Filipino historians, which points up the sorely
felt need for regional histories of the Philippines.
79. Report of Colonel Taylor, Sixth Annual Report of the
Philippine Commission, part 3, Appendix A, 88.
80. Seventh Annual Report of the Philippine Commission
(1906), part 1, p. 142.
81. Report of Colonel Bandholtz, First District, Philippine
Constabulary, ibid., part 2, p. 239.
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16
U.S. Policy in Korea 1946-1948:
A Neo-colonial Model Takes Shape
by Mark J. Scher
I. "To Form a Bulwark Against Communism"
With the Japanese surrender on August 14, 1945, new
hopes arose for Korean independence after years of colonial
rule. In accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, Soviet
troops had already begun to move into Manchuria and
northern Korea on August 8 to disarm Japanese troops there. 1
One month later, on September 8, American occupation forces
landed in southern Korea.
2
The basis for America's Korea policy had been
determined long before japan's defeat. On December 1, 1943,
a joint declaration made by the United States, Great Britain,
and China at the November Cairo Conference was publicly
issued. It called for an independent and free Korea "in due
course,,,3 and later in December, Roosevelt at the Teheran
Conference urged a forty-year trusteeship for Korea, which he
likened to the more than forty-year period of U.S.
colonization in the Philippines.
4
The Soviet Union opposed
such a long trusteeship, but two years later at the Moscow
Foreign Ministers Conference in December 1945, it agreed to a
period of less than five years.
s
By that time, the United States
was urging a ten-year trusteeship, but the Soviets urged "the
earliest possible liquidation of the disastrous results of the
protracted Japanese domination of Korea" and the formation
of a "provisional Korean democratic government."
6
The clash between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. over the
future of Korea flowed directly from the U.S. desire to gain
Soviet help in the war against Japan.
7
Both at Yalta, and then
later at Potsdam, the United States secured a definite Soviet
commitment to enter the Far Eastern war by August 8. Before
the A-bomb became a workable certainty, General Marshall
voiced the opinion at Potsdam that the Russians would indeed
be expected to fight alone in Korea.
8
It was at Potsdam that the disposition of Korea was to
be decided. The Soviets had raised the subject several times in
a pre-conference exchange of notes concerning the trusteeship
of territories detached from enemy states.
9
At the conference
the question was raised by Stalin and Molotov:
Molotov said that he had learned from the foreign
press that Italy had lost its colonies once and for all. The
question was "who had received them and where had this
matter been decided. "
Churchill replied by referring to the heavy losses
which the British had suffered, and the victories which the
British army achieved by conquering alone all of the
colonies of Italy except Tunis. 10
Stalin questioned whether the trusteeship of Korea was to be
decided the same way. Truman and Churchill said nothing.
Unlike Yalta, Truman had come to Potsdam with extensive
background and position papers on Korea and the trusteeship
question. II Why, then, the silence? Churchill had revealed the
answer to Stimson that morning:
{Churchill] told me that he had noticed at the Three
yesterday that Truman was evidently much fortified by
something that had happened and that he stood up to the
Russians in a most emphatic and decisive manner...
"{Truman] told the Russians just where they got off and
on and generally bossed the whole meeting. " Churchill said
he now understood how this repping up had taken place
and that he felt the same way. 1
Confiding in Churchill, Truman had related that he had
received word of the successful testing of the atomic bomb in
New Mexico. He then informed Ambassador Harriman that if
the Japanese surrendered prior to the Soviet occupation,
American forces would land in Korea.
13
This eventuality,
however, was not presented to Stalin. Truman immediately
ordered a crash program, cost and precautions
notwithstanding, to assemble and drop the remaining A-bombs
on Japan-before August 8, in an attempt to check Soviet
participation.
14
This helps explain the American haste to
atomize the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who were the
first victims of the "Cold" War rather than the last of the
Second World War.
On August 10 Soviet troops began large-scale
amphibious operations along the northern coast of Korea and
reached as far south as Wonsan by August 16. At this juncture
Truman cabled the Soviets requesting for the first time a
division of Korea at the 38th Parallel.
ls
Truman and Dean
Rusk later revealed that, contrary to wide belief, the division
of Korea at the 38th Parallel was never discussed at any of the
wartime conferences but came from a suggestion of the U.S.
War Department when Secretary of State Byrnes suggested to
Truman that American forces be sent into Korea "as far north
as practicable." 16 The Soviet Union did not object even
though the closest American troops to Korea were in Okinawa,
600 miles away, and did not arrive in Korea until September 8.
If Stalin accepted this division in the spirit of cooperation,
later events were to show that he was mistaken.
II. Transition: From Colony to Neo-Colony
On August 8 General Abe, Japanese Governor-General of
Korea, sent an emissary to the home of the rightist leader Song
Jin Woo, requesting him to become civil administrator for
Korea. The emissary spoke politely:
The war is practically over, Mr. Song. .. You must
accept the post of administrator . ... There will be bloody
riots. Once that happens, there is no telling what will occur
politically. Left-wingers might come into control.
Bolshevism will take over. 18
On this subject, the former Japanese Governor-General and the
new American occupation authorities were to see eye-to-eye.
Immediately after Japan's surrender in August, the
Japanese Governor-General released all political prisoners in
exchange for the safety of Japanese nationals. 19 This
precipitated a great outpouring of political activity as
long-suppressed nationalist and communist groups moved
above ground. As the left took charge in the countryside, a
broad united national front of nationalists and communists
was formed to build native Korean political and economic
institutions. This front took form in the People's Committees.
When the U.S. Army XXIV Corps occupation forces
arrived on September 8 under the leadership of General
Hodge, it was not, as most writers contend, the Japanese
Governor-General's nor the Koreans' first postwar contact
with the Americans. Four days after Japan's surrender an
O.S.5. team of twelve Americans and five Koreans was flown
into Korea. Among them was Lee Bum Suk,2o the future
premier under Syngman Rhee. Furthermore, an advance party
of the XXIV Corps arrived by plane in Seoul on about the first
of September. As one high-ranking American Military
Government official recalled, the Americans lost little time in
settling in:
No sooner had the group arrived than it took over a
suite of rooms in the Chosen Hotel in Seoul-the largest and
plushest hotel in Korea-and threw a big party for ranking
Japanese military and government officials. Koreans who
approached the Americans to discuss their plight were
summarily shown the door with a minimum of courtesy.
The affair turned into a glorious drunken brawl with the
Japanese, which lasted for several days. 21
Japanese forces preserved the southern zone intact for the
arriving Americans, and as the Soviets moved towards the 38th
Parallel, they sabotaged mines and factories in the north
before retreating to the American zone to accept surrender.
22
The Japanese commander in Seoul radioed to General Hodge,
who had not yet arrived:
Communists and independence agitators are plotting to
take advantage of this situation to disturb tbe peace and
order.
Hodge cabled back instructions for the Japanese to keep their
troops armed; the Japanese commander then replied that he
was "extremely grateful to have received your understanding
reply."
A few days before they landed, American airplanes
leafleted south Korea with directives charging the people to be
obedient to "orders passed to you through the current Korean
government," and adding the warning: "Do not participate in
demonstrations against the Japanese or in welcome to
American armed forces. Go about your normal pursuits."
When Koreans marched to the waterfront to greet the landing
Americans, Japanese police opened fire on the crowd, killing
two and wounding ten. They had acted with the authority of
the U.S. command?3
Upon his arrival Hodge immediately ordered the
Japanese to gather and guard all weapons, telling General
Sugai: "What I want is to get them where Koreans won't get
hold of them, and so they don't get spread all over the
country." 24 In those first days after liberation, the Japanese
were still broadcasting Domei news agency reports over the
radio, remaining in control of the newspapers as well. Japanese
policemen could be seen guarding Japanese property and
marching in groups through the streets wearing armbands
marked "USMG"-United States Military Government. Trucks
carrying armed Japanese soldiers could be seen in the streets
bearing the sign: "Japanese Army Detachment: Understood by
the U.S. Army." Under U.S. Army direction, the Allied flags
put up by Koreans were torn down by Japanese soldiers.
Korean flags which sprouted everywhere for the first time
since the annexation were seized.
2s
III. The Provisional Government, The People's
Committees: "The Yellow Hope,"
"The Red Peril"
Inheriting the mantle of Japanese colonialism, General
Hodge moved into the green-roofed mansion of the Japanese
Governor-General.
26
He immediately drew together an
"Advisory Council," similar to the "Central Advisory Council"
during Japanese rule, composed of well-known Korean
collaborators. Yu Uk Kyum, who had made recruiting
speeches for the Japanese during the war urging young
Koreans "to die for the fatherland," was to head the
Department of Education.
27
Douku Sun, who was made head
of the Korean Electric Company, had been president of the
Women's Kindergarten and Normal School during the Japanese
. occupation, when he regularly reported anti-Japanese teachers
to the secret police?8 When the Military Government finally
ordered a "strict" purge of collaborators who were working in
the government, it was only able to discover one official
against whom they could make this charge.
29
Hodge discovered on his arrival that the country was
being effectively run by the People's Committees, which were
carrying out all the functions of government as well as
operating former Japanese enterprises on a cooperative basis
for the benefit of the employees.
3o
Rather than use the
People's Committees, which were the indigenous Korean
political, economic, and administrative organs, Hodge instead
sought the immediate resurrection of the Japanese
administrative structure. This involved the use of the police for
18
about a month because the Japanese Government-General had
ceased functioning. In the northern zone, in contrast, the
Soviet occupation forces cooperated with the popular
movement, leaving civil administration to the People's
Committees.
31
Concrete detail concerning the way in which the
American Military Government (USAMGIK) acted to
circumvent and ultimately destroy the People's Committees is
provided by Richard Robinson, the chief of the Public
Opinion Section of the Department of Information of the
USAMGIK and later a historian attached to Intelligence
headquarters (G2) of the XXIV Corps:
It was safe to say that for the most part the local
People's Committees in these early days were of the
genuine grassroots democratic variety and represented a
spontaneous urge of the people to govern themselves . ...
They resented orders from the Military Government to turn
the administration of local government over to American
Army officers and their appointed Korean counterparts,
many of whom were considered to be Japanese
collaborators. It seemed like a reversion to what had gone
before. Bloodshed ensued in many communities as local
People's Committees defied the Military Government and
refused to abandon government offices. Koreans and
Americans met in pitched battles, and not a few Koreans
met violent death in the struggle.
For instance, there was the case of Namwon, a small
community in North Cholla Province. The Japanese had
turned over considerable property to the local People's
Committee just prior to the arrival of the Americans. The
Military Government demanded the property, but the
People's Committee refused to renounce title. Whereupon,
five leaders of the Committee were arrested by the local
Korean police. Shortly thereafter, the police chief was
captured and beaten by Committee members and the police
station attacked by a large crowd of irate citizens. The
station was guarded by American troops. When the Koreans
refused to disband, the Americans advanced with fixed
bayonets. Two Koreans were killed and several injured. This
incident was typical of many such cases. 32
The American Forces in Korea (USAFIK) were under
the over-all command of General MacArthur, Su preme
Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in Tokyo. As
commander-in-chief of Allied Forces in the Pacific MacArthur
had issued Proclamation No.2 to the People of Korea, which
threatened a penalty of death to Koreans who violated
USAFIK directions.
33
Other directives from MacArthur's
headquarters followed: No. 55 (February 23, 1946) required
three or more persons who might associate for political
purposes, including public discussion, to register with the
Military Government. No. 19 required all newspapers and
other publications to be licensed and copies sent to the
Military Government.
34
Ordinance No. 72 gave blanket
authority to the Military Government for the arrest of anyone
who "publishes, imports, circulates printed, typed, or written
material which is detrimental or disrespectful to the occupying
forces" or for "attendance at any public gathering, parade, or
demonstration for which no permit has been granted." 3S
The American Military Government also attempted to
atomize the political united front which was the essence of the
widespread support for the People's Committees. They
requested and received the registration of over 425 parties,
groups, committees, and clubs which were then to act on a
consultative basis with the Military Government. Many groups
had less than a handful of members and were rightist in
philosophy?6
As Robinson has perceptively pointed out, the American
action rivaled the much-hated "thought control" laws of the
Japanese, although the Military Government asserted it
"merely wanted the information to better understand Korean
politics." However, he pointed out, "the pile of paper which
accumulated defeated all presumed purposes since there were
not enough translators and analysts to extract anything of
value"-except for one purpose: "to drive into the open the
activities of the Communist Party, both financially and
otherwise." 37
As one observer noted, it was "no secret that the
Military Government favored the right and was anxious for the
parties of the right to acquire strong popular support." 38 Thus
it promoted exile groups without any popular support such as
the rightist Korean Provisional Government led by Kim Koo.
Breaking his pledge to return only as a private citizen, Kim
modestly announced, "When I return, the government of
Korea returns." A "Provisional Government" complete with
cabinet was proclaimed with support from the American
command. Its headquarters were established at the Dawk Soo
Palace, ringed by armed Korean guards despite the general
confiscation of weapons by the American command. The day
after Kim's arrival, he was introduced to the local press in the
Throne Room of the capital by the Military Governor
himself.
39
Americans then went on to print a lengthy address
and a portrait of Kim in the December 8 edition of the
Chukan Digest, the official publication of the Military
Government. Although Kim made references to "my cabinet
members,,,40 the Military Government, contradictorily, as a
further measure to discredit the leftist Korean People's
Republic, banned the use of the word "republic," saying that
the Military Government was the sole
Of all the political exiles, the most notorious was
Syngman Rhee, who was eventually to become president for a
dozen years. Rhee, a diplomatic butterfly of aristocratic
lineage, had spent forty years in exile, placing his hopes on the
expectation that U.S. imperialism's inevitable interests in the
Far East would carry him back to Korea. His day finally
arrived. On October 16,1945, he arrived in Seoul on General
MacArthur's personal airplane. His quick passage from
Washington had been arranged by Colonel Millard Preston
Goodfellow.
42
At MacArthur's "suggestion" Hodge had reserved a
three-room suite at the Chosen Hotel for Rhee, and on
October 20 presented "private citizen" Rhee at a welcoming
rally as a returned national hero. At the rally Rhee proceeded
in his address to attack the Soviet occupation of the northern
zone.
43
This was no surprise since Rhee had proven himself
over the years to be a vehement anti-communist. On December
7, 1942, the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, he marked the
occasion by sending Secretary of State Cordell Hull a letter
warning that unless Rhee's "Provisional Republic of Korea"
was accorded diplomatic recognition, the result would
inevitably be "the creation of a communist state" in Korea by
the Russians.
44
During the war Rhee's sponsor, Colonel Goodfellow, was
not only an associate of the future president, but a deputy
director of the O.S.S. Rhee had assisted Goodfellow in the
recruitment of Koreans for covert operations in Korea.
45
Their
association did not end when Rhee left for Korea, however,
since Goodfellow arrived shortly afterward at Hodge's request
as a political adviser. His first task was to set up the Korean
Advisory Council around Rhee.
46
As the anointed one, Rhee
was given special status and privilege. He was given a
fifteen-minute weekly radio program to air his personal views
(even these were censored by the Americans after the spring of
1946), while two rightist and two moderate political parties
were given only fifteen minutes monthly for radio broadcasts,
which were censored by the Military Government from the
beginning.47 On December 26, 1945, Rhee was allowed to
broadcast a vehement attack against the Soviet Union for the
trusteeship agreement just concluded at the Moscow
Conference, in spite of the fact that the trusteeship concept
had originated in Washington.
48
Indeed, Rhee's "nationalism"
seemed to be his one source of rapport with the Korean
people.
The American plans to use the exile Korean Provisional
Government of Kim Koo and Syngman Rhee are documented
from a variety of government sources. These plans advocated
the development of a "nuclear organization ... which would
in the initial stage be formed around Syngman Rhee, Kim
Koo, and Kim Kiusic.,,49 For this purpose, Secretary of State
Byrnes on October. 16 instructed Ambassador Hurley in China
to allow Kim Koo and Kim Kiusic to return to Korea.
50
MacArthur revealed further plans:
I plan to utilize the services of Dr. Rhee and Kim Koo
to help screen additional Koreans to be brought to Korea,
to get support fully behind the economic rehabilitation
plans of the current Military Government and to establish a
representative and expanded coalition advisory council to
aid in renovating Government machinery and placing
suitable and representative Koreans in responsible
Government positions both as working members and as
titular heads below the top of the Central Government.
This line of action can be expanded at any stage to
include Korean territory not now under United States
occupation provided it is released. 51
In a November 13 report it was found that General Hodge had
been "seeing quite a bit of Dr. Rhee and had found him
helpful," and "was using him then in negotiations with the
communist leaders.,,52 The State Department Political Advisor
in Korea later that month reported that General Hodge had
directed Kim Koo to form a council to study and prepare the
form of government for Korea and to organize a Government
Commission, with the Military Government providing
facilities, advice, and working funds. At the end of his report,
the advisor noted that on November 13 Military Government
Ordinance No. 28 had "created the office of Director of
National Defense and Bureau of Armed Forces therein which
has as its aim organizing, training, and equipping armed
Korean military and naval forces." 53
Because of these American attempts to create what can
only be interpreted as an artificially viable Korean government
in the southern zone, the Moscow Foreign Ministers
Conference of December 1945 had decided, under American
pressure, on a ten-year trusteeship for Korea, and not
independence. Indeed, General Hodge in an address to the
Koreans tried to lay the blame for this unpopular decision
upon the Soviets, although this was completely contrary to the
facts. The Soviets, annoyed with Hodge's allegations, decided
to lay bare the truth: that it was the Americans who needed
and wanted the trusteeship; and that, furthermore, the
American draft at the conference did not even provide for a
national Korean government during the trusteeship period. 54
The Military Government censored this TASS report, claiming
that no Koreans had requested that it be publicized. However,
the chief of the Public Opinion Section, Department of
Information of the USMG, recalls:
The Americans had claimed repeatedly that there was no
such thing as censorship of legitimate news in South Korea.
General Lerch, the Military Governor, stated that no
request to broadcast the TASS release had been received
and, therefore, it could not have been censored. However,
to my personal knowledge, such a request had been made,
and Military Government authorities had ordered that the
TASS statement be killed. 55[ h dd d)
emp aSls a e
Robinson reports that public opinion polls taken by the
Military Government at that time indicated that with the
subsequent exposure of the truth, American prestige in Korea
sank to a new low. To the Russians it made clear that the
Americans were out to increase their own prestige and
influence in Korea at the expense of the Soviet Union, even if
that meant torpedoing the just-concluded Moscow
Agreement.
56
General Hodge, caught in his unwitting lie, radioed the
State Department in Washington about the proposed ten-year
trusteeship, asking just what its policy on Korea was. This
prompted Secretary of State Byrnes to inquire of Secretary of
War Patterson and Secretary of the Navy Forrestal,57 in a letter
dated April 1, 1946, about Hodge's basic ignorance of
Washington's pOSitIOn. This was particularly hard to
understand since in December a draft trusteeship agreement,
drawn up in the State Department, had been sent to Hodge,
and on October 13, 1945, the State-War-Navy Coordinating
Committee (SWNCC) had sent Hodge a lengthy document
entitled Basic Initial Directive for the Administration of Civil
Affairs in Those Areas of Korea Occupied by U.S. Forces,
which also dealt with the trusteeship question. 58 In fact,
Hodge had not received any of these directives.
At this point State Department documents a half-year
old and even older began to arrive in Seoul from MacArthur's
headquarters in Tokyo where they had been withheld.
59
By
that time it was already too late .to follow all the State
Department recommendations, such as to include moderates in
the government coalition, but Hodge's advisors tried to dress
..
up their rightist coalition with a few for appearance's sake.
MacArthur seemed to have effectively manipulated Hodge into
taking a more actively anti-Soviet policy than seems to have
been contemplated by the civilian establishment.
IV. The Failure of the Joint Commission
In the early months of 1946 the American-Soviet Joint
Commission first met to implement the provisions for
reunification and the formation of a provisional government as
stipulated in the Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference
Agreement. On the first day, March 20, the American side
headed by General Arnold attempted to turn the Commission
into a propaganda show by demanding the issuance of daily
20
communiques and the freedom to issue unilateral statements.
The Russians insisted that communiques be issued after
something had been decided, but finally agreed that at least
one communique would be issued each week.
6O
Little progress
was made. The United States insisted that the rightist groups
which vehemently opposed the provisions of the trusteeship
agreement should participate in the consultations of the Joint
Commission and in the provisional government. The Soviets
saw the inclusion of the anti-trusteeship parties as undermining
the whole trusteeship concept delineated in the Moscow
Agreement, but were willing to allow the participation of
Korean groups who previously opposed trusteeship (mostly
leftist nationalists probably) but were willing to change and
sign a declaration of support for the Moscow Agreement.
General Hodge, realizing the strength of Soviet influence on
portions of the Korean left, then declared that anti-trusteeship
groups who signed such a declaration (his concern was with
the right-wing groups) were not required to abide by it since
that would limit their free speech. The Soviets refused to
follow such logic.
61
The American-appointed Chief Justice of
the Korean Supreme Court publicly declared that those who
supported the trusteeship should either die or be sent to
Russia. One official later wrote about this and said:
Of course the real explanation of the American stand
lay in the fact that the primary mission of the occupation
of South Korea was not so much to establish a Korean
democracy as to establish a bulwark against the expanding
influence of Soviet ideology. General Hodge privately
admitted as much on several occasions. The trusteeship
issue was raised to embarrass the Soviet Command so as to
put it in the unpopUlar position of insisting upon
trusteeship. 63
It could be added that it was also raised" to embarrass the
Korean left as a simple tool of Soviet policy. Indeed, the
trusteeship issue did play such a role among left-wing parties,
groups, and individuals.
V. An Attempt to Change Horses
Having reached an impasse with the Soviets on the Joint
Commission, the United States sought to strengthen its hand
against the Soviets by threatening to create a separate and
viable "independent" South Korean interim government. As
outspoken rightists, Rhee and Kim Koo could not be
portrayed as centrists in a viable coalition, so the U.S. Military
Government turned to Kim Kiusic and persuaded him to fill
this role. General Hodge naturally met opposition from Rhee,
who previously had been put in a preeminent place in Korean
politics, and important leaders of the non-communist left,
such as Lyuh Woon Hyung, shied away from this artificially
created "coalition.,,64 This left Hodge's political adviser,
Lieutenant Leonard Bertsch, the task of working with the
membership lists of various defunct and embittered
Communist Party factions, many of whose members, anxious
for Korean independence, had become ideological
anti-communists and renegades who could serve to help split
the left wing of Korean politics.
65
Berts.ch, for example,
attempted to buy off a former officer in the Korean
Federation of Labor, an organization which had been driven
underground by political suppression,66 but whose officials
were now offered the "carrot" of cooperation with U.S. goals.
Finally, in the fall of 1946, the U.S. succeeded in
establishing an Interim Legislative Assembly having 90
members. Half of these were simply appointees of the
USMGIK; the other half were to be elected according to one
of two proposed electoral systems.
67
The first plan, which
proposed universal suffrage, was rejected. Instead, each
hamlet, village, and district would "elect" two representatives.
In fact, the election rules were identical to those followed
under Japanese occupation; only taxpayers and landlords
voted, and in some areas village headmen simply appointed
representatives.
68
These representatives would then elect other
representatives at the myun level, and the process would be
repeated for the gun level; finally, the gun electors selected the
provincial assemblymen who elected representatives to the
Interim Assembly. The purpose of this complex filtration
system of elections was simply to prevent the left from
electing its candidates to the Assembly, a probability widely
accepted if the universal suffrage proposal were implemented
fairly.69
The actual implementation of even these election rules,
however, left a lot to be desired in terms of fairness. Indicative
of the general political situation in Korea below the 38th
Parallel was the report of the journalist Mark Gayn, made on a
trip to Pusan in October 1946. Upon his arrival he was
informed by Lieutenant Colonel H. O. Benton, Deputy
Military Governor, that there were 1,300 political prisoners in
the province.
7o
Observing the effect of this upon the election,
C. V. Bergstrom, Chief of Home Affairs, commented:
"Strategically, this is the proper time for the rightists to hold
the elections. All the leftists are either in jailor in the hills." 71
In the rural districts, Gayn had a first-hand opportunity
to observe one county's election for delegates to the Pusan
Provincial Assembly. In the county Gayn visited, the two most
important organizations had been the Farmers Union, to
which nearly all of the 20,000 sharecroppers of the county
belonged, and the Youth Alliance. However, it was not yet
safe enough to hold elections until these two organizations had
been suppressed and 400 imprisoned. The seventeen
candidates were as follows: six "farmers"; five village
headmen; two landlords; a sake brewer; a fire department
chief; a monk; and an organizer for Hanguk Minchudang
(Korean Democratic Party). On closer inspection, the
"farmers" turned out to be landlords. One, whose father
owned 36 acres, was the president of the Farm Credit
Association, the president of the Deep Sea Fishers Association,
and the president of the Association to Suppress Disturbances.
The election procedure was orderly since the fifty headmen
cast all the ballots on behalf of the entire population. 72 As one
American who was active in the grassroots organizing of the
election commented, upon his arrival he "organized a posse
and raided some houses, raided the headquarters of the
Farmers Union, and helped to get the Hanguk Party going.,,73
VI. The Political Role of Korean
Comprador Capitalism
A cornerstone of American policy in postwar Korea was
to foster the growth and consolidation of a native group whose
interests would coincide with America's. Given the general
nature of U.S. global interests, the development of a class of
compradors in Korea, based on the few Korean "nationalist"
capitalists, was a logical step. Syngman Rhee's connection with
this group is disclosed in the following account of a private
meeting, held on December 16, 1945, ostensibly to discuss the
food crisis.
My interpreter turned and whispered to me in awed tones,
Tbese are the millionaires of Korea. ' It soon developed that
the group was in the throes of organizing itself as the
Economic Contributors Association, the self-avowed
objectives of which were: (J) to prove to the public that
the wealthy men of Korea were patriotic, and (2) to solicit
funds for the Korean Provisional Government. The aim was
to be 200,000,000 yen (at least two million dollars as
measured by comparative purchasing power). Dr. Rhee was
named as the agent for the Provisional Government in the
deal. Promissory notes for large sums were made out on the
spot by a number of those present. When I reported the
matter to American authorities, I was told to forget about
it. Somehow, however, news of the transaction leaked out
to the local press, and Dr. Rhee was charged with having
accepted a large sum of money from the wealthy of Korea,
most of whom had amassed their fortunes under the
Japanese by exploiting their fellow countrymen.
Whereupon, Dr. Rhee publicly denied having anything to
do with such a project. Army intelligence reports as well as
my own eyes would have it differently. 74
In trying to foster the development of a reliable
middle-class ally in the Korean context, the USMGIK began
instituting a "free-trade" policy with disastrous economic
consequences. Under the Japanese, there had been a rigid
system of crop control and collection. The U.S. policy simply
ended these controls, thus encouraging businessmen and
landlords to speculate in the grain and other commodity
markets. The principal hoarders were the "respectable" and
powerful businessmen that the U.S. authorities were
and relying on for advice. Thus, the Military Government dId
nothing to stop them or t
h
e specu atIOn.
I
7S
In addition, smuggling began to make its appearance,
aggravated by the potential pay-offs given the shortages that
hoarding and speculation had created. Rice was smuggled to
Japan to be traded there for luxury items were
smuggled back into Korea and sold for enormous profIts. It IS
estimated that nearly one-quarter of the 1945 rice harvest was
smuggled out of Korea.
76
Within weeks the entire 1945 crop
was off the domestic market. Even though the crop was larger
than the previous year by 60%, and even though the usual 50%
was not legally shipped to Japan as in the past, nor was any of
it to head north of the 38th Parallel, prices soared and people
went hungry. The Korean press beseeched the Military
Government to take action against the profiteers. General
Arnold's answer to the press was that: "In a democracy the
free play of supply and demand must be allowed to operate
unhampered; any control imposed on that free play would
. f ,,77
operate against the democratIc system 0 government.
The situation was even worse in the countryside where
80% of Korea's population lived as peasants. In 1945 over
two-thirds of the cultivated land was owned by 3% of the
population. Rents to landlords amounted to from
40% to 80% of the crop in addition to the taxes which the
tenants were required to pay. 78 Gayn reports in a visit to
Yenho in Kosan county near Taegu that half the yield of the
crops were being collected for the landlords by the Military
Government, even though the maximum rental was supposed
to be only one-third of the crop. During the Japanese
occupation the Rural Credit Association had charged 24%
interest per year on loans, but under the Military Government
the landlords were able to get 60%.79 In a previous inquiry
Gayn had made about land reform, he was told by an
American official: "That's not important. Remember that the
. h h' d "ao
present system IS t e system t ey re use to.
By far the largest landlord in Korea was the
Japanese-owned Oriental Development Company. It owned
64% of Korea's dry lands and 80% of its rice lands, as well as
350,000 acres of forests. In addition, it controlled shipbuilding
yards, the textile industry, the iron mines, the shoe factory,
and the alcohol refinery. The $700 million enterprise was
renamed The New Korea Company, its assets officially being
held by the Military Government. However, the Korean
collaborators who had worked for the Japanese now ran it for
their own benefit under American supervision.
81
In the effort to strengthen and secure victory for the
Korean right, labor unions became a major focus of attention.
The Dai Han Labor Union was set up by Syngman Rhee's
supporters to compete with the Chawn Pyang Labor Union,
which had to be crushed by the police because of its political
strength.
82
Dr. Arthur C. Bunce, economic advisor to General
Hodge and a member of the Joint Soviet-American
Commission, described the situation as follows:
Police activity with regard to disputes between the two
parties' labor unions hass taken the form of assistance to
the Dai Han right-wing labor organization in a policy of
hands off where they have been concerned. On the other
hand, the Chawn Pyawng had been subject to strict police
surveillance exercised towards them and certain punitive
measures such as the arrest of members for distributing
handbills and roundups following strike activity. 83
Typical of the right-wing labor activities were the actions
of the pro-Rhee organizers in the important industrial areas of
Samchok. On July 24, 1946, Robinson interviewed the man
responsible for organizing labor in the area for Rhee's National
Society for the Rapid Realization of Korean Independence:
By his own admission he had been a large factory owner
under the Japanese and head of the Financial Association in
the area, the organization through which the Japanese kept
the farming population under control. According to his
own statement made to me on that date, labor unions
should not be encouraged and certainly not for economic
purposes; they should be mere political adjuncts. He
frankly admitted that he did not believe in collective
bargaining.
When I made inquiry about what happened to the
left-wing unions in the district which I knew had been very
strong only a few months previous, he replied that the
left-wing labor leaders had been imprisoned for dabbling in
politics and operating a school for the workers. 84
VII. Police State Policy: Undermining the
People's Committees
Based on its success on a national level during the
previous year, in November 1946 the USMGIK formed
provincial Advisory Councils and encouraged the rapid
22
I
formation of new parties and associations to be represented on
the new body.85 Taking South Cholla as a typical case, the
composition of its Advisory Council was hardly representative.
It included a minister, a lawyer, a banker, a district magistrate,
a journalist, a professional P?litician, businessmen.
No farm leaders were among Its members.
In the spring of 1946 a new American Military Governor
of the province of South Cholla was appointed. The new man
was a strong anti-communist who openly sided with the local
right-wing goon squads by imprisoning or fining leftist groups
and individuals while chiding. and warning the rightists.
87
As
Meade points out, "the right flourished best when it had a
well-armed police force behind it.,,88 One American advisor
was told that "while the State Department expected the
Military Government to continue operating behind a facade of
political neutrality, the Americans were expected to make
'h" ,,89
every e
ff
ort to secure a fig Ust VIctOry.
The police were naturally an important weapon of the
Military Government against the left. In 1945 during Japanese
rule there had been 23,000 police in Korea; 9,000, or nearly
40%, were Koreans. Of these, 85% were retained by the
Military Government, including most of those from the north
who had fled south and who had records of brutality in
arresting and torturing their fellow countrymen. The 14,000
repatriated Japanese police were replaced by an additional
15,000 Koreans, bringing the total in South Korea to more
than that of all of Korea under the Japanese. The Military
Government, in addition, provided more advisors for the
police than for any other aspect of the government.
90
As
William Maglin, the American chief of the occupation's Police
Department stated:
Many people question tbe wisdom of keeping men trained
by tbe Japanese. But many men are born policemen. We
felt tbat tbey did a good job for tbe Japanese, and tbey
would do a good job for us.
91
Of the 140 police officers of the rank of captain, 110 had
served under the Japanese. In Seoul every one of the ten
precinct chiefs was Japanese-trained, as were eight of the ten
provincial chiefs in the American zone.
92
The National
Director of the police organization, Dr. Cough Byung Ok, and
Chang Taik Sang, Chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police, were
active members of the right-wing Hanguk Democratic Party;
both had prospered during the Japanese occupation. One of
the top American supervisers commented that there was
enough evidence in his files to hang them both several times
over, but they were not to be removed on the direct order of
General Hodge.
93
Beginning on January 18-19, 1946, the police made
widespread attacks against the left. Hundreds were arrested,
and the police were later commended by the Military
Government for their initiative.
94
Left-wing leaders were
imprisoned on charges of being involved in the "illegal"
transaction of enemy property. In September, Hodge ordered
three left-wing newspapers closed, and many prominent
Communist leaders including the Party Chief were arrested.
9s
Even the rightist nationalist leader, Kim Kiusic, was moved to
protest to the Military Government, urging an invalidation of
the election because of police harassment of the left.
96
But the persecution continued. On September 14, 1946,
the South Korean Railroad Workers Association presented a
list of demands to the Department of Transportation of the
Military Government for the restoration of a rice ration,
restoration of monthly salary instead of the newly instituted
per diem wage, restoration of the daily lunch, and the
restoration of jobs, all of which the workers had had under
Japanese rule. When the railway workers finally struck on
September 28, General Hodge decried the act, although the
workers' demands had been totally ignored, and he then
declared it illegal.
97
Meanwhile, from Pusan to Seoul the
railway men walked off their jobs. In Seoul more than 2,000
workers were arrested; many other unions went on strike in
sympathy,98 bringing the total number of strikers to 300,000.
In Taegu, on October 3, the police shot and killed a railroad
striker. The next morning, as the worker's body was carried
through the streets, the police tried to halt the procession by
force of arms. Fifty-four police were killed as the population
rose in rebellion which spread from Taegu around the country.
Martial law was declared in two provinces and 8,000 persons
were arrested.
99

Although General Hodge charged that North Korean
agitators had engineered the whole rebellion, not one of the
thousands arrested was not a bona fide resident of South
Korea!OO A virtual state of terror existed in southern Korea.
Mark Gayn relates how on his arrival in Korea in the fall of
1946 he observed a flight of fighter planes staging mock
dive-attacks on villages. The Army lieutenant accompanying
him explained that it was an example of "psychological
warfare-to show these gooks we won't stand for any
monkey-business."
VIII. The Korea Lobby: McCarthy, the Cold War,
and Rhee's Return
By the fall of 1946 it became apparent to Rhee and his
group that rhetoric about Korean unity to the contrary, his
best hope for reaching power would be through the creation of
a separate south Korean state. One source cites American
intelligence sources as having information to the effect that
Rhee was even thinking of instigating a border conflict
between the United States and Soviet occupation forces to
ensure against a possible U.S.-Soviet agreement on
reunification.
102
Ominous references were made by Rhee's
Washington representative about an impending civil war
"endangering United States soldiers in a cross-fire." 103
Concerned that the impending second Joint Soviet-American
Commission meeting might achieve the unlikely possibility of
an understanding on reunification, Rhee decided to return to
Washington. He felt this was a particularly propitious time to
go because of the Republican victory in the 1946 Congressional
elections. He commented several times that "his friends" were
in power again and that he would have no trouble getting his
ideas across to the right people. 104
In order to finance Rhee's non-political diplomatic
mission, banks and business houses ordered their employees to
contribute specified sums from their salaries. The Home
Affairs Minister of the Provisional Government, Shin Ik Hi,
toured the country, giving the impression that the collection
was a semi-official one. By the end of the year, the immediate
goal of the equivalent of $300,000 had been surpassed. lOS
The only way of transferring this money out of Korea
would have been by exchanging Korean currency for dollars
through the Army Finance Office; any other method was
23
specifically prohibited. Since Rhee's funds would then be
limited and Rhee himself held accountable for the money, his
missionary friends rescued him from this financial dilemma.
Several mission-supported institutions pooled their dollar
credits in the United States and "donated" to Rhee's accounts
a large sum of money. Rhee, in turn, "contributed" large sums
of Korean currency to the institutions concerned in Korea.
The whole transaction was illegal from start to finish. When
this transaction was brought to the attention of General
Hodge, he failed to see anything which would warrant
prosecution. As one of his legal experts commented, "A G.!.
would break rocks a helluva long time for the same
offense." 106
On the morning of December 2, 1946, Rhee left Korea
aboard a special United States Army plane provided for him
by orders of General MacArthur's headquarters. On his way to
the United States, Rhee stopped off in Tokyo for a private
meeting with MacArthur, staying at the Imperial Hotel,
reserved then for high-level Allied personnel. 107 In Washington
Rhee's advance work had been done by Louise Vim (Soon
Kyo Han) who had set up a permanent lobbying office. Vim
had left Korea on this mission several months earlier, magically
financed through the help of missionary friends. lOS Rhee then
met with his advisors and friends. Among them were John W.
Staggers, a Washington attorney, and Jay Jerome Williams, a
public relations man, both of whom were linked with a
company designed to develop Korean trade possibilities.
Others were Robert T. Oliver of Syracuse University and
Preston Goodfellow, owner of the Brooklyn Eagle and former
political advisor to General Hodge in Korea. Both Goodfellow
and Oliver had been mentioned by Rhee in a speech given in
the spring of 1946 as parties interested in the establishment of
a Korean-American Trading Company, a company designed to
"monopolize Korean foreign trade." Others, according to U.S.
military intelligence reports, were key figures in the
109
h
McCormick and Hearst newspaper cams.
With powerful friends in the American mass media, Rhee
began putting out statements attacking "obscure elements" in
the State Department who, he claimed, were "blocking the
fulfillment of the American pledge to bring independence to
Korea." He charged (perhaps not without some truth) that
State Department policy was contrary to the goals of General
MacArthur, and, for good measure, he charged General Hodge
. h b . f . 110
Wit emg so t on commumsm.
Given the atmosphere of burgeoning Cold War attitudes,
fanned to high temperature by the nascent McCarthyism of
the period, Rhee's strategy quickly silenced the opposition to
him in the American government. In mid-March, a press leak
claimed that an American-financed economic rehabilitation
program was being planned for south Korea with the sum of
$600 million.111 The Associated Press commented that it was
"a sweeping victory for Dr. Rhee who for the past few months
has been urging changes along the lines outlined." 112 After
four months in Washington, it was time for Rhee to return
triumphantly to Seoul.
On his way back, Rhee stopped in Tokyo for
consultations with MacArthur, and from there flew on to
Shanghai to meet with Chiang Kai-shek. He finally returned to
Seoul aboard Chiang's private plane
l13
and announced that he
had a "personal understanding with Assistant Secretary of
State [for Occupied Countries] Hilldring that steps would be
taken to establish an independent government m south
Korea." 114
IX. The Last Round
When the J oint Commission met for the second time in
May 1947, the Americans submitted application for 425
organizations which were to be consulted in the American
zone about the matter of reunification. The strongest left-wing
organizations were omitted from the list, and Soviet suspicions
were only further enhanced by the claim that 52 million
people, or the total adult population of Korea, belonged to an
115 h . h
average of five groups each. T e Amencans, owever,
wished to present a picture of a South Korea opposed to the
trusteeship provisions of the Moscow Agreement and strongly
in favor of a separate South Korean state under a rightist
regime.
The United States, however, did pay lip service to the
idea of a united Korea under trusteeship, the essence of the
Moscow Agreement. As a condition for the resumption of
talks, the U.S. had agreed that parties and groups which
worked against the trusteeship would be barred from
participation in a Korean provisional government. No sooner
had the first session opened than the State Department's
advisor to the American delegation, James K. Penfield, told a
meeting of Rhee's Democratic Council that they could
denounce t!1e trusteeship when the Korean provisional
government was set up, and that they would be able to avoid a
trusteeship.116 The Commission was back to where it was the
previous May. A continuous barrage of anti-trusteeship activity
emanated from Rhee's "National Unification Headquarters," a
super pool of twenty-six rightist parties
1l7
When Syngman Rhee returned from consultations in
Washington, he assumed active control of the right. With new
outbreaks of rightist activity, including physical assaults upon
the Soviet delegates to the J oint Commission meeting in Seoul
on July 26, and unable to reach any agreement as the level of
suppression of the left increased, the Soviet delegation left in
August.
IIS
Rhee had reasoned correctly that the United States,
in view of its declaration of war on communism, would not set
up a provisional government without including the rightists,
whom he was now in a position to deny to them. The United
States needed Rhee whether it liked him or not.
119
In 1947 blanket instructions to arrest all leftists were
secretly issued, and the police force was increased to 25,000.
Although there were only 7,000 political prisoners admittedly
held by the Military Government,120 most of the leftists were
arrested on a variety of other charges, such as the illegal
distribution of formerly Japanese-owned land to the peasants.
By mid-1947 there were almost 22,000 people in jail, nearly
twice as many as under the Japanese.
121
Most of the cases that
went to trial were tried in the military provost courts of the
Military Government.
The procedure and substance of these trials is worth
noting in some detail. In U.S. Army provost courts, the judge
is also counselor for the defense and prosecuting attorney.
Moreover, the question of separate defense counsel was a moot
one since as one officer explained, "you can't assign one to
, , 122
each defendant. There are too many of them." As Meade
observed:
The provost courts were principally a method of removing
24
opponents of the military government from circulatioll.
Numerous cases were tried; there were no acquittals. There
were virtually no restrictions on a provost court, except for
the maximum sentence. No records were kept except bare
facts, such as names, offenses, and punishments. Officers
appointed as judges rarely had any training or background
in law, and seemed to feel that the natives were not entitled
to receive American justice. Frequently the court acted as
prosecutor as well, and made up its own rules of procedure
to meet individual cases. Important cases were decided in
advance of the trial by the tactical commander. When
Chiandei leaders Kim Suk and Ri To Ku were brought
before a provost court, the judge gave them the sentence
which the tactical commander had ordered him to
pronounce. Kim's trial was one of the greatest travesties of
vaunted Anglo-Saxon justice that the writer has ever
witnessed. The prosecution presented charges that rested
mainly on hearsay and unsupported evidence; the case was
so weak that it would have been laughed out of any court
in the United States. However, when Kim's counsel moved
for the customary period in which to prepare a defense to
the charges, the judge curtly denied the motion, and
pronounced sentence. In other words, the accused was not
permitted to defend himself. Such proceedings mystified
and dismayed the Koreans, since they were hardly
distinguishable from the most arbitrary of Japanese
procedures. 123
Kim Won Bong, a non-communist labor leader, alleged to
have led an "illegal" strike:
Written speeches were introduced as evidence which
presumably he had delivered to a left-wing rally some weeks
before and in which a strike was urged. Fortunately for
Kim, he was able to produce witnesses to testify that he
had made no such statements.... He was nevertheless
brought to trial. Three "witnesses" were shanghaied off the
street. The first witness was called. "Do you recognize this
man?" the judge asked. "No, I do not," answered the
erstwhile witness. A police sergeant's fist shot out and
knocked the man to his knees. Next witness! The process
was repeated . .. Third witness! This poor unfortunate had
seen the fate of his two companions, and decided to escape
a similar ordeal. Falteringly, he recognized the suspect. A
conviction quickly followed. The judge was an American
officer. 124
Roger Baldwin wrote this description in August, 1947:
We hold in prison thousands of men convicted by American
provost courts-which are no courts at all, in a legal
sense-for "offenses against the occupation." Some such
offenses: "Attending, organizing, or acting as an officer at
an unauthorized meeting; uttering speech, or words, or
singing a song hostile to the United States, the armed
forces, or the Military Government; sending a
communication detrimental or disrespectful to the United
States, or failing to report its receipt; sending an
uncensored message, or a letter outside the mails.
These are provost-court offenses... Penalty for
committing them may be five years in jail. Most of the
prisoners so held are, ostensibly, leftists. Are they
"disrespectful of the United States" when they strike or
hold unauthorized meetings? The Seoul press reports that
70 percent of tbe provost-court prisoners are involved in
strike cases. ! 2S
A few examples of these sentences meted out to leftists are:
April 5th, 1947, two men received two years eacb for
"disturbing the general peace." On tbe same date, two
others received sentences of two and one years for
fomenting an "illegal" strike. On November 16th, 1946,
two men received six months at hard labor for attending an
"unauthorized speech "; tbree others received similar
sentencing for possession of "illegal handbills." On
,Yovember 7th, 1946, 23 strikers were given sentences
ranging from two months to four years each. November
7tb, 1946, two years hard labor for "organizing a strike
against the Military Government. " Another 90 days for an
"unauthorized meeting"; another 90 days for
"demonstrating against the Military Government." On
October 4th, 1946, one year of hard labor for writing
against the Military Government. 126
As for the rightists, there is the example of the gangster Kim
Tu-han, a right-wing terrorist, who had mutilated and tortured
to death two leftist Youth Association members. In penalty he
received a fine of the equivalent of $200.
127
The use of torture was an accepted police tactic under
the U.S. Military Government authorities. Robinson was
nearly court-martialed by General Lerch for having stopped
the water torture of a suspected pickpocket by Korean police.
He relates one particular incident at the time of the Taegu
rebellion in October 1946.
It was suspected that one of the leaders was hiding in a
particular part of Taegu. Unable to uneartb him, the police
seized his aged mother. They announced that she would be
held and tortured every day until her son gave himself up.
Either he chose not to do so or was not alive, for he failed
to sbow up. A few days later the beaten and bloated body
of the mother was delivered to her home for burial. 128
Colonel William Maglin, American Director of the National
Police, and Colonel A. S. Champeny, Deputy Military
Governor, justified torture treatment as the only thing a
Korean understood.
129
In many areas, the police held the power to withhold
permits for public demonstrations and the distribution of
papers and pamphlets. Needless to say, few if any permits were
issued to leftist groups: when there was a ldtist meeting, the
police sided with rightist goon squads in attacking them and
then arresting their victims.
13O
In addition to their political
authority, the police wielded powerful economic authority as
the chief administrators of the nationwide grain collection
system, determining the quotas to be allocated to each farmer.
Accompanying these enormous powers was
extortion. While a policeman's official salary was only $3.00 a
month, "voluntary contributions" usually amounted to from
fifty to eighty times that amount.
131
In the homes of the
policemen killed in the Taegu Rebellion there was found on
the average 142 gallons of rice, an amount impossible to have
acquired legally. At the very top, Dr. Cough, the National
Director of Police, according to U.S. intelligence reports,
amassed twenty million yen in his bank account (the
equivalent of about u.s. $200,000).132
In October 1946 General Hodge had advocated building
25
up a "rightist Youth Army to augment and assist occupation
forces and the police and constabulary" to harass and
intimidate the left.
133
The Military Government organized
ganster-like rightist youth bands, such as the Korean National
Youth Association of Lee Bum Suk. It secretly provided them
with five million dollars and American Army equipment. A
training center at Suwom was established under the leadership
of Dr. An Ho-sang, an open admirer of Hitler's Youth Corps.
Indeed, the methods and the history of the Hitler Jugend was
part of the curriculum. 134 Colonel Ernest Voss of the Internal
Security Department of the Military Government was the
group's advisor.
13S
By July 1947 some 70,000 youths had
received training.
136
In April 1948 the Military Government authorized the
south Korean police to deputize "local patriotic Koreans,"
called the "Community Protective Association," to help "the
police to keep order." 137 8,479 people were arrested in
connection with the February 7, 1948 strike. 138 On March 12
General Hodge ordered all radio receiving sets to be licensed
and issued laws requiring that a gathering of more than three
persons have a police permit. All utterances critical of the
Military Government, whether spoken or written, were
forbidden.
139
The United States proceeded with its plan to hold a
separate election in the southern zone. Although other
political leaders opposed the plan, the exception was Syngman
Rhee who would rather have been head of a separate regime
than see a united Korea. On "election" day, May 9, 1948,
thirty United Nations Commission staff members were
assigned to observe an area of forty thousand square miles,
where seven million eligible voters resided. To make sure
everyone voted, the Military Government assigned the
Community Protective Association the task of insuring a
turnout. 140
One of the final acts of the Military Government in
August 1948 before turning over care of the south Korean
police to Syngman Rhee was to order the complete
registration of all persons with families in the north, placing
penalties of up to ten years for failure to comply.141
The formal transfer of power from the American
Military Government to the Rhee regime did not really change
the American rule in Korea. According to one American
official assigned to Korea:
Military governors in the provinces were to be called civil
affairs officers. The directors of the various national and
provincial departments were called advisors. But the name
doesn't make the article. In name, a Korean was, for
instance, director of education in Kangwon Province, with
an American as advisor. Actually, in nine cases out of ten,
the advisors ran the show, even to tacking their signatures
onto every important document. 142
Moreover, Rhee's government continued and intensified
the policy of repression, as the following U.N. Commission
statistics reveal. In the first eight months of its existence,
Rhee's government made 89,710 arrests (from September 4,
1948, to April 30, 1949):
Of those arrested, 28,404 persons were released, 21,606
were turned over to the prosecutor s office for further
proceedings, 29,284 were transferred to a "security office, "
6,985 were transferred to the military police, and 1,187
cases were pending. 143
Thus the American policy in Korea eerily foreshadows
the "vietnamization" strategy of the 1970s. Confronted by a
strong popular movement which opposed both a subservient
role and the rightist groups which had collaborated with an
imperial power, the United States at first tried to use the
machinery of Japanese rule for its purpose of establishing a
Korea open to American hegemony. Failing in this, it quickly
turned to the task of creating an amenable government in
Korea and a class, backed by an appropriate police apparatus,
which would support such a government. In Korea we have the
crude beginnings of an imperial strategy which later became a
global system of domination.
NOTES
1. Carl Berger, The Korea Knot, rev. ed. (Philadelphia, 1964),44.
2. Berger, 50.
3. United States Department of State, The Conferences at Cairo
and Teheran 1943, 449.
4. United States Department of State, The Conferences at
Malta and Yalta 1945, 770. It is ironic that Roosevelt should parallel
the fate of Korea with that of the Philippines, for it was his cousin
Theodore Roosevelt who in the secret Taft-Katsura agreement (1905)
gave the Japanese a free hand in their colonization of Korea in
exchange for assurances to the United States of their non-interest in the
Philippines.
5. Ibid., and TASS statement of January 25, 1946, cited in
Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1946,618.
6. The Conferences at Malta and Yalta 1945, 770.
7. Soon-sung Cho, Korea in World Politics 1940-50 (1967),24.
8. United States Department of State, The Conference of Berlin
(Potsdam) 1945, 351-2.
9. Ibid., 632.
10. Ibid., 253.
11. Ibid., 631.
12. Ibid., 225.
13. Harry S. Truman, Year of Decision (1955),434.
14. D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and its Origins, Vol. I, 1917-50
(Garden City, N.Y., 1960) cites Philip Morrison, The Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, February 1949,40.
15. United States Senate, The United States and the Korean
Problem (1953), 2-3.
16. Harry S. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 444-5; see also
Dean Rusk's account in Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1945, 1039.
18. Yim, Louise, My Forty Year Fight for Korea (New York,
1951),227.
19. E. Grant Meade, American Military Government in Korea
(1951),55.
20. Mark Gayn, Japan Diary (New York, 1948),436.
21. Richard D. Robinson, unpublished manuscript. Robinson
was Chief of the Public Opinion Section of the Dept. of Information of
the Military Government and later was Historian attached to G2,
Intelligence Headquarters of the XXIV Corps until his departure from
Korea in 1947.
22. Max Beloff, Soviet Policy in the Far East, 1944-51 (London,
1952), 158.
23. Harold R. Issacs, No Peace for Asia (New York, 1947),94.
24. Kang Han Mu, The United States Military Government in
Korea, doctoral dissertation, Univ. of Cincinnati, 1970,46.
25. Issacs, 94. What was happening in Korea was by no means
unusual. In Indonesia Australian and British forces had landed to allow
time for Dutch forces to be brought in to crush the new Republic; in
China Chiang Kai-shek was directing Japanese troops against the "red
bandits"; British units directed Japanese forces in Indochina until
French forces arrived to fight the Vietminh's new republic. Japanese
troops were strutting around Saigon wearing the armbands of the
British Expeditionary Forces. The Western imperialists used the
Japanese forces to suppress popular resistance movements until the day
they would be able to reclaim their empires from Sumatra to Seoul.
26
26. Richard E. Lauterbach, Danger From the East (New York,
1947),200.
27. Lauterbach, 203.
28. Yim, 240.
29. Gayn, 353.
30. Meade, 34. See also Robinson, 50-52.
31. George M. McCune, Korea Today (Cambridge, 1950),45.
32. Robinson, 53.
33. Cho. 64.
34. A. Wigfall Green, The Epic of Korea (Washington, D.C.,
1950),73.
36. McCune, Korea Today, 65.
37. Robinson, 88.
38. Bertram D. Sarafan, "Military Government: Korea," Far
Eastern Survey, November 20, 1946, 350.
39. Robinson, 60.
40. McCune, Korea Today, fn. 49.
41. Ibid., 49-50.
42. Gregory Henderson, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex
(Cambridge, 1968),128.
43. Edgar S. Kennedy, Mission to Korea (London, 1952), 16.
44. Robert T. Oliver, Syngman Rhee: The Man Behind the Myth
(New York, 1954), 188: see also Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1943,
1094.
45. Oliver, 185.
46. Green, 74.
47. Meade, 262, cites Kaufman, "Korea One Year Later," Voice
of Korea, October 10, 1946.
48. Kang, 78.
49. United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the
U.S. 1945, 1091-2.
50. Ibid., 1093.
51. Ibid., 1112.
52. Ibid., 1123.
53. Ibid., 1130-33.
I
54. Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1946, TASS statement cited,
618.
55. Robinson, 30.
56. Ibid., 31.
\
57. Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1946, 655.
59. Robinson interview.
60. Robinson, 89.
[
61. Lauterbach, 231-32.
63. Robinson, 99.
65. Gayn, 355.
\
66. Ibid., 356.
67. McCune, Korea Today, 75-76.
(
68. Meade, 187.
69. Ibid., 186.
70. Gayn, 394.
71. Ibid., 395. See also: Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1946,
762-3.
72. Gayn, 396-8.
1
73. Ibid., 401.
74. Robinson, 62.
1
76. Robinson, 77.
77. Ibid., 78.
79. Gayn, 414.
80. Ibid., 401.
82. Robinson, 126.
83. Cited in ibid.
84. Ibid., 126-7.
85. Meade, 158.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid., 165.
88. Ibid., 172.
89. Ibid., 165.
90. Henderson, 142-3.
91. Gayn, 391.
92. Ibid., 423.
93. Robinson, 144-5.
94. Green, 79.
95.Cho, 133.
96. Meade, 187.
97. Robinson,159.
98. Ibid., 161.
99. Ibid., 162.
100. Ibid., 163.
101. Gayn, 349.
102. Robinson, 185.
103. Ibid., 193.
104. Ibid., 185.
105. Ibid., 186.
106. Ibid., 187.
108. Yim, op. cit.
109. Robinson, 188-90. See also: Foreign Relations of the U.S.
1946, 775-9 .
110. Robinson, 197.
111. Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1947,609.
112. Cited in Robinson, 206.
113. Oliver, 236.
114. Ibid., 238. See also: Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1946,647
and 654 for Hilldring's denial and Rhee's rebuttal.
115. Cho, 146-7.
116. Robinson, 245-6.
117. Foreign Relations of the u.s. 1946, 654.
118. Robinson, 252.
119. Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1947,645.
120. Robinson, 147.
121. Ibid., 146.
122. Gayn, 413.
123. Meade, 134.
124. Robinson, 154.
125. Roger N. Baldwin, "Blunder in Korea," Nation, August 2,
1947,120.
126. Robinson, 157.
127. Ibid., 156-7.
128. Ibid., 155.
129. Ibid., 156.
130. Ibid., 148.
131. Ibid., 148-9.
132. Ibid., 151.
133. Foreign Relationsoftbe U.S. 1946, 751.
134. Robinson, 249.
135. Gayn, 436.
136. Robinson, 249.
137. Korean Independence, April 28, 1948.
138. Korean Independence, March 31, 1948.
139. Ibid.
140. Choy Bong-yaun, Korea, A History (Tokyo, 1971),243.
141. Korean Independence, June 9,1948.
142. John C. Caldwell, The Korea Story (1952),19.
143. John Kie-chiang Oh, Korea: Democracy on Trial (1968),28.
27
Modernization and Counter-revolution
in Thailand
by Ralph Thaxton
Copyright l. 97 3 by Random House, Inc. From Remaking Asia: Essays
on the American Uses of Power, edited by Mark Selden, to be published
by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., in January
1974. Used by permission of Pantheon Books.
I. THE UNITED STATES IN THAILAND
Thailand is now the linchpin in America's Asia. As
revolutionaries in Indochina continue to force a reduction of
u.s. ground troops in Asia and as Washington's commitment
to Taiwan weakens, Thailand assumes increasing strategic
importance for current American counterrevolutionary
operations in continental Asia. This development extends a
general trend which began in the early 195 Os.
With Vietminh and Pathet Lao successes in 1953-54
culminating in a revolutionary victory at Dien Bien Phu, John
Foster Dulles scanned Southeast Asia for a reliable ally.
Thailand seemed a logical choice. Thai elites were staunchly
anti-communist. Moreover, Washington placed its hope for
political stability in modernizing military regimes. The cutting
edge of geopolitics was the second crucial determinant.
Thailand provided an ideal location for holding the line against
a hypothetical Asian communist conspiracy. Northern
Thailand did not border China or Vietnam, but its proximity
to these revolutionary governments gave it a strategic position
for containment. At the same time, the scope of local-level
dissidence in rural Thai society was narrow and the form was
traditional: protests and occasional rebellions, but no
revolution. Here was an Asian Arcadia, a seemingly safe
location for the hub of counterinsurgency operations in
mainland Southeast Asia.
This was a quid pro quo relationship, at least as far as
Thai generals were concerned. American foreign policy, with
its offers of immediate economic assistance, played to the
patronage needs of key military cliques. Moreover,
Washington's plans for a counterinsurgency operation in north
and northeast Thailand blended nicely with the aspirations of
Bangkok and other Central Plains elites for a pan-Thai state.
American containment and Thai expansion were more than
compatible.
The basis for such a relationship had evolved during the
immediate aftermath of World War II. Dulles did not create it.
He did incorporate it within the larger framework of American
policy in Asia. As early as 1950 the Thai government had
become a U.S. military ally. On the eve of the Korean War,
Bangkok was receiving $10 million in military assistance from
Washington.
l
Following the Thai entrance into the Korean
conflict, an American Military Assistance Advisory Group
(MAAG-THAi) was sent to Thailand. Throughout the early
1950s Washington increased its military and economic
assistance to Bangkok in exchange for Thai participation in
SEATO. However, the Thai government was not bound firmly
to the u.S. counterrevolutionary posture in Asia until 1957.
In 1955 Chou En-lai appealed to the Thai and other
Southeast Asian delegations at the Bandung Conference for
mutually beneficial trade agreements and cultural exchanges.
He stressed the central theme of Chinese foreign policy under
Mao Tse-tung: the willingness to accept regimes of any
political configuration or coloration as long as these remain
independent of major foreign military presence. At this time
revolutionaries were winning on their own in Laos and
Vietnam. Norodom Sihanouk was saying no to Dulles and
SEATO. The U.S. response to Bandung was a series of
CIA-directed and/or supported coups against potentially
neutralist Southeast Asian governments. The move in Thailand
came in 1957. It was led by Field Marshall Sarit Thanarat.
Approximately a year later, the Thai government banned trade
with China.
This move was in line with past economic and cultural
policies which discriminated against Chinese businesses in
28
Bangkok. This was neither separate from nor incompatible
with the second, more critical factor: the trade ban initiated
by the pro-American Sarit regime undercut the economic base
of competing Thai-Chinese elites who stood to benefit from
trade with China.
Placed in the larger historical context of Thai conflicts
over economic strategies, the significance of the Sarit coup and
the trade ban can be traced to a third factor: economic
benefits for Thai elites from the United States and Japan or
jointly through international financial institutions such as the
World Bank. Bureaucratic capitalists, with Sarit leading the
way, won out over Chinese business-Thai army elites who had
a stake in a Thai-controlled political economy based on local
level enterprises and mutually advantageous forms of
cooperation and trade with China.
By the late 195Os a series of debts owed to
international financial institutions, primarily controlled by the
United States and JapaJ1, had lowered the capacity of the Thai
government to resist foreign economic penetration into
previously closed or protected sectors of the Thai economy.
This development, coupled with a marked decline in the
international market prices paid for her primary exports, tin,
rice and rubber, undercut Thailand's economic independence.
One year after the Sarit government banned trade with
China, the Board of Investment was organized to cooperate
with the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) in
laying the foundation for "an industrial estate to help ease
major problems faced by new investors." 2 The 1962 Industrial
Investment Act intensified Thailand's growing economic
dependency on the United States. According to a special
report by Checchi & Co., the private enterprise division of
AID, this act "gives investors more privileges and benefits than
ever before and alters legal procedures to make them more
convenient and less complicated." 3 By the late 1960s a
consistent trade deficit had involved the Thai government in a
sprawling network of international finance as an alternative to
bankruptcy. According to Peter Bell, a student of the Thai
political economy, this process had made Thailand increasingly
a satellite and "more subtly but no less unimportantly limited
the range of choice for domestic policy makers.,,4 U.S. loans
and foreign aid would not correct this imbalance. On the
contrary, they increased economic integration into a capitalist
world market in the long run and served the immediate
patronage needs and expansionist tendencies of the Thai
military.
Growing economic dependence on the United States
and pan-Thai aspirations were independent but comple
mentary reasons why Bangkok became involved in American
attempts to subvert neutralist governments in Laos and
Cambodia during the 1950s and 1960s. U.S.
counterinsurgency policies were superimposed on a continuing
history of Thai efforts to integrate the western provinces of
contemporary Laos and Cambodia into a greater Thai state.
Throughout the nineteenth century peasants in the
northeastern Thai provinces, hill tribesmen in northern
Thailand, and local people in Laos resisted Thai attempts to
forcefully bring them into a Thai state. It is no accident that in
the contemporary era revolutionaries in Laos and Vietnam
cooperate in a common struggle against Thai expansionist
policies in their Americanized, counterinsurgency form.
As early as 1961-62, Thai combat troops had crossed
the Mekong and penetrated deep into Laos to join U.S. and
Philippine forces in a SEATO maneuver against the Pathet
Lao. By 1964, U.S. Special Forces bases at Oudon and
Lopboury, Thailand, had become the headquarters for CIA
efforts to train a multi-ethnic 20,000-man mercenary army for
counterrevolutionary war in Laos. Following the U.S. intensive
saturation bombing of the Plain of Jars in July 1969, the core
of this mercenary army was shuttled from Oudon in Thailand
to the U.S. Air Force-CIA base at Long Cheng in Laos and
then parachuted over the Plain of Jars where it burned and
destroyed all forms of plant and animal life and terrorized
peasants.
5
By the end of May 1960 there were over 5,000 Thai
troops fighting in Laos.
Thailand is deeply involved in the Second Indochina
War. By 1970 over seventy-five percent of the airstrikes against
northern Vietnam were being flown out of U.S. air bases in
Thailand. By spring 1972 the strategic importance of Thailand
in the escalating U.S. air war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia
was common knowledge. The April 23, 1972 issue of the
Pacific Stars and Stripes reported that "B52 heavy bombers
make almost around the clock bombing missions in Indochina
from Utapao Airbase, about 90 miles south of Bangkok on the
Gulf of Siam." 6 In 1971 over 10,000 Thai troops, funded by
the United States, were operating in southern Vietnam.
However, it was joint Bangkok-Saigon intervention in Laos and
particularly Cambodian civil conflict which underscored the
Thai role in the widening second Indochina War.
Since the inception of SEATO the Thai government has
cooperated with Saigon in U.S. efforts to subvert Cambodian
neutrality. In 1956 Bangkok and Saigon imposed an economic
blockade against Cambodia. In the same year Thai forces
occupied parts of Cambodia's northern provinces and Dulles
threatened to cut off U.S. aid if Sihanouk tried to counter this
Thai thrust into Cambodia.
7
The clincher came on March 18,
1970, when Bangkok cooperated with Saigon in Bringing Lon
Nol to power in Phnom Penh. Several days after the March 18
coup, Son Ngoc Thanh, who had collaborated with the
Japanese in World War II, led Khmer Serei forces which had
operated in Thailand into Phnom Penh in support of Lon Nol.
8
Since 1965 the scope of JOint U.S.-Thai
counterinsurgency operations has extended beyond Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Laos into Thailand itself. During the past seven
years the United States has squandered $100 million a year on
counterinsurgency activities in Thailand.
9
From 1965 until
1968 approximately 10 to .20 percent of this sum was
allocated for Pentagon-sponsored research projects, carried out
by researchers in universities and private "think tanks." 10
Evidently this "scientific" approach to "village security"
failed. Since 1968 over $75 million, or about three quarters of
the counterinsurgency budget, has been allocated to the U.S.
Military Assistance Program (MAP) to provide the Thai
military with construction' equipment, helicopters, tanks,
machine guns, and grenade launchers.
11
The dialectic of counterrevolution and dominoes in
continental Southeast Asia is complete. America's strategy in
Indochina is increasingly dependent upon crushing a
rural-based national liberation movement in Thailand. Prior to
the implementation of counterinsurgency policies in rural
Thailand there were only pockets of resistance to an
expanding Thai state. Since 1965 there has been significant
revolutionary growth in the northern and northeastern
provinces. Hard-pressed hill farmers, exploited agricultural
laborers, ex-army officers, ineffectual assemblymen, and
29
discontented rural intellectuals make up the social basis of a
revolutionary political coalition known as the Thai Patriotic
Front (TPF).12
II. THE SCOPE AND STRUCTURE
OF THAI POLITICS
Since the "revolution" of 1932 only a small number of
military figures and their counterparts in the civilian
bureaucracy have actively participated in Thai politics. Prior to
the 1960s this political" order was linked to the Thai
countryside in the most tenuous way. Thai peasants, who
make up close to 85 percent of the total population, remained
politically acquiescent in their limited relationships with the
Thai bureaucracy. The low level of political instability in the
rural hinterland at that time could be traced more to the
absence of direct foreign penetration than to any occasional
side benefits of government policies. In contrast to most other
Southeast Asian peasant societies, much of rural Thailand had
not experienced the destabilizing, dehumanizing consequences
of colonially-induced commercialization. Accordingly,
traditional authority patterns upon which peasant subsistence
and security were dependent remained intact.
13
Within the narrow Thai ruling elite, cliques are the basic
units of political competition. Politically, cliques are created
and sustained through access to and use of state office. In
Thailand the source of patronage is the civilian bureaucracy or
the military. In contrast to China and Vietnam, where landed
wealth was sufficient to support private paramilitary
organizations, the key to mobilizing support in Thailand is
government employment. This provides clique leaders with the
opportunity to operate state enterprises in a way that expands
the scope of their clientele. Whereas much of this wheeling and
dealing is legal, cliques are sustained primarily through corrupt
politics. As James C. Scott explains,
The distribution of high posts, financial
opportunities, and government-controlled privileges
represents not only the major stakes of political
competition but provides the adhesive agent for each
competing clique. In this distributive process, political
necessity frequently clashes with formal laws and
regulations, and the inevitable result is corruption. 14
Thai political elites can use their positions to
accumulate wealth and enhance their status in either of two
ways. They may operate as "bureaucratic capitalists" by
entering both private and public enterprises directly. This
permits Thai politicians to "take direct advantage of legal
monopolies, state subsidies or quotas, and government
contracts to amass private fortunes." On the other hand,
high-ranking military figures and civilian bur!!aucrats may
operate as "bureaucratic extortionists" by intimidatinf'
pressuring, and exploiting the existing ~ l i e n commercial elite. 5
Direct government exploitation of public enterprise is
not a recent phenomenon in Thai politics. However, during the
post-World War II period government activities increased
considerably, to the point where the Bangkok bureaucracy has
monopolies in key enterprises. The growth of government
enterprise serves the Bangkok elites in two ways: it enables
them to mobilize nationalist, anti-Chinese sentiments among
both their urban clientele and Thai elites in the provincial
towns, and it provides them with the opportunity to use
government enterprises'for their own benefit. The emphasis in
these ventures is on the narrow, immediate political ends of
clique leaders, not on commercial profitability. 16
A brief analysis of the structure of Thai politics is
necessary for understanding the results of American-induced
modernization in rural Thailand. The general features of the
contemporary administrative structure emerged from over two
decades of Thai attempts to prevent the British and French
from carving up the Kingdom during the last years of the
nineteenth century. .'
The formal administrative hierarchy which developed
from the reforms of the 1890s was a regional system with the
center also appointing provincial and district officials. At the
lower levels there remained an informal structure of authority.
Each village continued to elect a headman. The various
headmen of a cluster of villages then proceeded to elect a
kaman who would articulate village interests to the state and
oversee village activities. The essential point is that these
reforms shifted the location of a semi-feudal style of politics
from independent landed wealth to the Thai bureaucracy.
Today kin muang or corruption at the expense of the
peasantry is institutionalized in the Thai bureaucracy. Peasants
look to the village headman and the local kaman to protect
them against the penetration of the Thai state. At the same
time, Thai district officials and provincial authorities pressure
local elites to cooperate in kin muang. Legally, the kaman and
headman cannot own property, assess taxes, or enforce official
rules and regulations independent of state control. In practice,
they do acquire property, cooperate in tax assessment, and use
legal regulations to either the benefit of the village or the state.
Thus they are pivotal elites. The consequences of foreign
intervention can enhance, erode, or even suddenly undercut
the authority of these village leaders.
Let's look at an example. Under the protection and
approval of the U.S. Operations Mission Thai officials began to
compel peasants to produce for international markets. The
governor of Udorn directed the provincial and district cliques
within his patronage network to pressure peasants to grow
sorghum and raise chickens and cattle. In many villages
communal farm lands, which enabled all peasants to scratch
out a subsistence during agricultural crises, were converted
into grasslands for cattle breeding. In general, such programs
benefitted only the few villagers who had the surplus cash to
purchase cattle. Most peasants bitterly resented village
headmen who assisted Thai authorities in these enterprises. In
villages where Thai officials imposed this design without
assuring basic rights to survival, peasants joined together in
various self-defensive actions against the state. Thus, the
attempt of a handful of Thai bureaucrats and their local clients
to modernize village economies by imposing the modes, values,
and choices of foreign market relationships threatened the
welfare of whole villages and provoked conflict between
ordinary peasants and traditional village leaders who
cooperated with the state. The Thai bureaucracy is a conduit
for foreign-induced modernization in all its forms-the green
revolution, economic aid, and military assistance. The impact
of each form on the peasantry is a critical determinant in
shaping the future of politics in Thailand.
1
III. WRECKING RURAL THAILAND
Chiengrai: The Green Revolution in Peasant Perspective
The green revolution is now in full swing in rural
Thailand. In the northern provinces commercialization and
mechanization of agriculture has not yet led to the kind of
naked exploitation which produces a desperate rural
lumpenproletariat. Nevertheless, the following microscopic
view of Ban Ping, a village in Chiengkham district in Chiengrai
province, will show .how the onset of tractor agriculture
increases social stratification. IS The interaction of these two
primary variables, commercialization and technology, tends to
magnify social class differences not only in Thailand but
everywhere that the green revolution has spread.
19
United
States foreign policy and the Thai bureaucracy are both
responsible for this polarization. Both governments permit
Shell Oil a free hand in the Thai economy; the policy of both
is to put the means of economic development in the hands of
local elites over whom the ordinary peasants have minimal

In this village the kaman, who is the wealthiest man in
the district, secured from district officials the sole franchise
for Shell Oil. He then joined the assistant district official and
his brother in dominating agriculture.
2O
Not only does their
ownership of three tractors permit them to determine when
fields are plowed, but they also can shut off any competition
by refusing to sell petroleum products. Thus Shell Oil makes
its way through a corrupt bureaucracy to fuel
foreign-produced tractors which accelerate the green
revolution at the expense of the majority of villagers. This
"revolution" threatens to tear apart the whole fabric of Thai
peasant society.
The appearance of tractors is part of the green
revolution which is sweeping rural Thailand. The peasants of
Ban Ping own none of the eleven tractors whi(h plow their
fields. Townsmen own them all. This puts most villagers at a
distinct disadvantage in the competition for scarce resources.
Most peasants no longer can determine when their fields will
be worked. Tractor owners do. Therefore, poorer peasants
must sell their services to wealthier villagers who already have
an edge in the competition for the market. In the Thai
political context tractor agriculture provides rich peasants and
outsiders an opportunity to squeeze the majority of villagers.
The peasants in this formerly self-sufficient, culturally
insulated village are losing their land to the "townsmen who
control the means of .development." 21 These outsiders can
manipulate laws concerning land development and restrictions
on land holdings. Prior to the commercialization and
mechanization of agriculture Thai peasants acquired land on a
de facto basis through occupation and cultivation. However, at
the close of the nineteenth century the Thai monarchy
initiated changes in the procedure for acquiring land and in
1954 Bangkok passed a law requiring three steps for "legal"
ownership-occupation, cultivation, and the acquiring of an
official land title certificate. These changes do not protect
peasant claims to land. Most villagers continue to think and act
as if de facto residency is sufficient for land rights. However,
according to Bangkok, many of them are working the land
"illegally." Thus better informed persons can use the law to
dispossess peasants of their land. This is precisely what is
happening in Ban Ping and other Thai villages.
The penetration of a world market economy tends to
wear away the practice of cooperative household farming. This
alters traditional patterns of labor to the disadvantage of most
peasants. Farming in village cooperation and mutual
reciprocity are giving way to individual household competition
and impersonal, contractual transactions.
As land and labor become market commodities and as
prices and profits become critical determinants in peasant
economic behavior, the very quality of social relations is
transformed. The penetration of commercial agriculture
weakens the network of traditional obligations to kin and
neighbors.22 Unable to count on relatives and neighbors for
assistance in hard times, peasants turn to traditional
authorities, such as village headmen, for assistance.
In Ban Ping peasants increasingly worry about the
lessened capability of the village headman to protect their
claims to land from outside interests, to bring together a
village work force for their mutual benefit, and to avoid
obligation and debts to townsmen which threaten their
community and security. The district officials who administer
national land title registration attempt to use the headman as
their reporting agent, especially for claims on the more
commercialized paddy fields. As officials and tractor owners
pressure him for more "accurate" reporting, the headman is
faced with two choices: he can continue to help fellow
villagers at the risk of increasing outside pressure on himself or
he can assist Bangkok at the risk of undercutting his
intra-village influence. How did Ban Ping's headman cope with
this dilemma?Immediately prior to the filing of land claims
the headman "disappeared for some ten days.,,23 In the
absence of the traditional protective buffer provided by village
authority figures Thai peasants are exposed to the "reporting"
activities of outsiders. In this context peasants are increasingly
skeptical of village leaders who cannot sustain the shocks of
modernization.
The intensity of discontent is in a large measure
dependent upon the capacity of local authorities to deal fairly
with villagers. Under the pressures of the green revolution the
headman in Ban Ping has begun to "borrow" both the temple
treasury and communal savings for a village school in order to
pay personal debts to outsiders.
24
Village institutions and
culture have begun to deteriorate.
Commercialization and technology, imposed on the
villages by a corrupt bureaucracy, undermine the moral basis
of a peasant society. The majority of peasants see the
accumulation of great wealth as a sign not of success but of
selfishness. In Ban Ping the economic pie is expanding but the
size of peasant slices is dwindling. The village headman has
assisted the outsiders who receive the lion's share of increasing
agricultural productivity. He pressures villagers to work
without pay on commercialized rice paddy fields owned by
townsmen with whom he has contractual relations. Yet the
headman is in debt.
25
Peasants neither respect him as a
successful entrepreneur nor look to him for protection and
security. Suspicion and non-cooperation have replaced trust
and cooperative economic activities. Modernization has begun
to erode the legitimacy of traditional political authority. In
Ban Ping this process has not caused protests, demonstrations,
or insurrections. It has, however, aliented those villagers whose
solvency and security are threatened by the transformation of
traditional agriculture.
26
The social and psychological crises attendant on the
31
green revolution in Ban Ping are not unique to this village. In
the context of Thai politics the commercialization of
agriculture is primarily a social catastrophe. It is not just
economic deprivation. The data on mechanization and
commercialization in Ban Ping provides only a snapshot of a
long-run process which wears away the very essence of
communal life. Traditional village social security mechanisms
eventually break down. It becomes impossible to even share
poverty. It is true that in Ban Ping the economic base has not
yet collapsed. There are still subsistence-level choices in
agriculture. Nevertheless the growing social stratification and
psychological discontent in this northern Thai village are the
critical indicators of increasing mass alienation from those who
have introduced and benefitted from foreign ways-the local
elites who are sustained by their ties to Thai district officials
and Shell Oil.
The United States Agency for
International Development in Sakon Nakhon
During the early 1960s the United States increased
economic and technical assistance to rural Thailand. Much of
this aid took the form of a rural development program
administered by AID. Throughout the decade there was a
marked trend away from programs designed to spur
development to activities which stressed security and
counterinsurgency. From 1960 to 1963 the emphasis was on a
Community Development (CD) program. When the Thai
bureaucracy proved ineffective in implementing this, AID
backed the creation of the Mobile Development Unit, an
organization which turned rural electric cooperatives into
private enterprise at the expense of whole villages. In 1964-65
USAID began shifting most of its funds to counterinsurgency
programs in the northern and northeastern provinces. In line
with this, an Accelerated Rural Development (ARD) program
was designed to "give the Thai army's cumbersome U.S.-style
armored and infantry units easy access to these areas in time
of insurgency." 27 By 1968 almost four out of every five
dollars were going to counterinsurgency activities.
On June 7, 1970, John A. Hannah, the director of the
USAID program, publicly admitted that AID was a front for
CIA operations in Southeast Asia.
28
Thailand was no
exception. A 1968 AID pamphlet, The US/AID Program in
Thailand, declared that "The U.S. AID program in Thailand is
concentrated upon a single objective: supporting the Royal
Thai Government in its efforts to contain, control, and
eliminate the Communist Insurgency in rural areas." 29 By
1968 AID had been replaced by the CIA which in turn gave
way to the U.S. Army. AID is often presented to the American
public as a program designed to democratize local level politics
in the Third World. Its publicly avowed political goals in
Thailand are:
1) To establish local self-determination through
developing leadership and organization
2) To encourage participation in village development
3) To resolve peasant problems
4) To utilize village resources
5) To change the image of the government in the eyes of
the peasantry.
Let's look at the empirical consequences of USAID
penetration of rural Thai politics.
Establishing Local Self-Determination Through Deve
loping Leadership and Organization. The operating assumption
of the AID rural development program is that local
self-determination can be achieved through foreign
intervention.
3o
There are glaring contradictions in this concept.
First, its ideological roots are in a colonial mentality that has
been under attack by nationalists throughout the twentieth
century. The contradiction in imposing self-government is
clear. Second, the very nature of elite-mass political linkages in
Thailand precludes a genuine mass participatory politics.
Corruption and intransigence in the bureaucracy is not unique
to Thailand. This has been the very hallmark of other
U.S.-supported regimes in Asia: the Nacionalista and Liberal
parties in the Philippines; the KMT in China; Diem and Thieu
in Vietnam; Lon Nol in Cambodia; and Rhee and Park in
Korea.
The third ideological dimension of USAID is laid bare in
the following passage:
... the establishment of the principle of self-determination
for every village community, as proposed here, is not based
on humanitarian or idealistic grounds; it is based on hard,
practical reasons related to the promotion of village
security. 31
The word security goes to the heart of the matter: it means
political stability, that is, insuring the perpetuation of Thai
elites and their American sponsors.
Political Participation in Village Development. AID
development schemes provide lower rural classes neither the
economic opportunities nor the practical cues and suggestions
necessary to enhance their livelihood. Instead, such programs
are administered in a fashion which restricts and restrains mass
political participation. The most striking example of how the
bureaucracy which administers CD discourages and blocks
peasant involvement in politics is contained in an
anthropologist's account of a CD meeting in Chiengkham
district, Chiengrai province, northern Thailand:
The meeting of November 20, 1960, was extremely
elaborate. Headmen had been told to arrive in uniform at
8:30 in the morning, so that they would have time to
rehearse their welcome to the provincial governor, who was
expected at 10:00. The district school teachers had made a
huge banner bearing the legend, ''Meeting for the Primary
Demonstration of Community Development. First time!
2503 B. E. Amphur Chiengkham." This was the first
indication that the headmen were given that the meeting
concerned Community Development. On the stage with the
district officer and other high officials were a microphone,
a phonograph, a Buddha-altar, and some placards in thai,
and some in English, illustrating poverty, ignorance,
malnutrition, and disease. . .. The governor never arrived,
The district officer read for over an hour from a
mimeographed address sent him by a superior official in
charge of community development . ... He spent little time
on the need to foster expressions of local opinion, but he
elaborated upon the elimination of gambling, repairing
roads, keeping villages orderly, and ... building toilets. He
announced which village had been chosen for development
and ordered its headman to make sure that these things
were done by the time that a community development
official arrived from the provincial capital next year. 32
32
1
!
J
!
I
As to discussing politics,
Each group was to select one of five major problems
for Community Development, discuss it and report back to
the entire meeting. For the most part, only the teachers
[who are employees of the Thai government and often the
I
clients of the district officials who administer CDJwere
active in these groups. The headmen and other villagers sat
,
t quietly and spoke only when put a direct question. When a
show of hands was called for, they looked to see how the
others were voting, . . . . [Thus,] the public reports given
by the teachers or spokesmen after the discussions were
recapitulations of the speeches made earlier by the district
officers and other officials. 33
I
Most peasants who attend this and similar meetings in Sakon
Nakhon experience Community Development as a symbolic
display of elite wealth, education, and status. Poor people are
put in their place. With only four years of education or less,

banners with foreign concepts written in Thai, not to mention
English, are difficult to read. To rehearse for a provincial
governor who does not show up is humiliating. To be
J
instructed to build toilets close to the roads near their villages
is frustrating. Although the peasants may not be aware of it,
the location of toilets enhances a district official's relationship
with s u ~ e r i o r patrons who happen to be passing through the
district. They use AID-sponsored toilets. The peasants do
not. Participation in this northern Thai village means building
toilets for corrupt elites and subsequently inhaling the stench
which permeates the previous purity of village air.
Five years after AID-sponsored programs such as
Community Development penetrated the northeastern
province of Sakon Nakhon, where peasants are desperate for
water, not even one village had a sufficient number of safe
artesian wells or an adequate irrigation system. In Yang Kham
the government simply dropped the materials for constructing
wells in the village. Consequently, "the wells were not built
properly-the brink was just a heap of stones and not
cemented.,,35 In 1966 there was an outbreak of diarrhea in
Yang Kham. Ground water had spilled back into the well. An
AID interviewer reports that "the well could have contributed
to the deaths of 35 children." 36
Resolving Peasants Problems: From Community
Development to Accelerated Rural Development. There are at
least four sources of credit at the village level: close kinsmen,

landlords, money lenders, and cooperative societies. An
f
integral part of the Community Development program is the
i
revitalization of old and initiation of new credit cooperatives
,
at the village level. A look at how these AID-backed Credit
Cooperatives operate in the cluster of villages which make up
the sub-district of Kusakam in Wamon-Niwat district, Sakon
Nakhon province, throws some light on who gets what, when,
and how from USAID in Thailand.
In Inplaeng village 40 out of 60 peasant households are
i
in debt. Approximately 60 percent of these families must look
to money lenders who live outside the village because they
cannot use the Credit Cooperatives. The interest rate is 60
percent a year. In sharp contrast, the fifteen families which
qualify to use the Credit Cooperative pay an annual interest
rate of 10 percent.
37
In Kok Klang and in Hadsaimoon about
i
two out of every three peasant households are excluded from
I
the Cooperatives.
38
Villagers do not approve of the political
I
constraints on their use of the Credit Cooperatives.
~
t
AID Interviewer: To become members of credit
cooperatives, it is necessary for people to have the Non
Son 3 [a legal certificate which permits acquisition of
land] first. IS that right?
Villager: Yes, what we need now is the Non Son 3.
Villager: We don't know what is the difficulty. We have just
been waiting for the Amphur action on our request.
AID Interviewer: What's the nature of your request?
Villager: the request was made to the effect that the
Amphur officials are required to come and see how they
can get people here to find a chance to clear the land for
their use and manage to grant them title to the land.
Village headman: You know, I dare say that nobody in the
Tambon (Kusakam) owns land in the sense that they
have title to the land. That's why we want the Amphur
to give us a Non Son 3.
AID Interviewer: .. , when was the request sent to the
Amphur officials to settle this matter?
Villager: Last August.
AID Interviewer: Last August! So about 5-6 months ago,
and so far nothing has been heard from the land officer.
Villager: No.
AID Interviewer: Is this problem applied just to this village
or other villages too?
Villager: It is applied to other villages toO.
39
It is possible to extract the central political effects of
AID-supported Credit Cooperatives from this account.
The most chronic debtors are excluded from this village
credit system. Membership is restricted to those who can show
proof of land ownership. Clearly, possession of this document
is dependent upon money and the whims of land officers.
Throughout the AID village surveys, peasants complain about
the corrupt pressures applied by the chow nai (officers who
behave as lords) in land registration.
40
In 1966, concomitant with ever-increasing U.S. military
activities, AID implemented a new program in the north and
northeast. This program is called Accelerated Rural
Development (ARD). About 90 percent of the ARD budget
has been funneled to highway building activities.
41
According
to a USOM cost-benefit analysis, road building is the key to
modernization and progress-it facilitates farming and
marketing, increases the value of peasant land, and benefits
distant, culturally insulated villages by integrating them into
the larger society.42 There is another reason:
counterinsurgency. ARD studies are punctuated with "law and
order" rationales for highway construction.
43
The economic impact of ARD on peasant farming and
marketing is subtle but profound. In contrast to modern roads,
the well-traveled peasant routes to rice fields and local market
places are no better off than they were prior to the appearance
of ARD in the days of collective village efforts in road building
and repair.44 In fact, time spent adhering to ARD work
schedules often precludes collective efforts to repair
constantly used roads. Thus, indirectly, ARD activities
contribute to the deterioration of oxcart trails and intra-village
footpaths which are very important in peasant lives.
How do newall-weather highways harm people who still
use these old trails to reach market towns? The building of
such roads provides townsmen the opportunity to gain even
greater economic leverage over less mobile villagers. They own
the tractors and trucks which roll faster on ARD roads. They
can secure franchises for agricultural chemicals, farm
implements, and foreign-supplied fuel. At the same time,
peasants who reside in villages which are by-passed by
superhighways are left in weaker competitive positions than
those who reside in villages situated near ARD roads.
Modernization can help rural people escape the bonds of
poverty. New highways can accelerate marketing processes and
integrate isolated villages into a larger, more beneficial political
economy. However, the political context is decisive in
determining who wins and loses in this process. The political
context of ARD works against a highway program which
would provide road workers with secure jobs, equalize village
wealth and income, and balance rural market economies. It
precludes an egalitarian and humane transformation of Thai
peasant society.
Changing the Image of the Government
in the Eyes of the Peasantry
Sakon Nakhon peasants are coming to distrust, resent
and even hate local political authorities who cannot protect
their economy and preserve their culture. In this sense there is
a crisis of political legitimacy in northeast Thailand. The AID
attempt to resolve this crisis by winning the hearts and minds
of rural people is the foundation of U.S. security-oriented
rural development.
45
AID assumes that the principal sources of instability in
rural Thai society lie in factors other than the policies of the
political order itself. From AID's perspective, various
manifestations of political disorder, e.g., grain riots, rent
strikes, tax rebellions, are caused primarily by "outside
agitators" and "rising aspirations." Accordingly, rural
development is geared to protect the Thai political order
against insurgent attacks and to enable it to cope with the
rising expectations and escalating demands of unreasonable
peasant masses.
In sharp contrast to this AID version of instability, the
data on modernization in the northeast suggests that
modernization in its foreign-induced, Central Thai form breeds
instability as it breaches the rights and corrodes the
experiences which gave security and meaning to peasant lives.
Finally, AID assumes that foreign aid can renovate and
stabilize a worn and rickety political order by incremental
tinkering. This assumption ignores that reforms are carried out
by the very order which thrives on an unequal exchange with
non-involved lower rural classes and does not consider that
where the state already has violated basic subsistence rights
even the smallest, incremental movements which further
reduce peasant benefits are likely to engender mass resistance.
The consequences of American attempts to renovate
illegitimate, counterrevolutionary orders in China, Vietnam
and Thailand by incremental and partial structural changes
illustrate this flaw in AID logic.
The credit cooperatives in southern Chma dunng the
1930s and northeast Thailand during the 1960s excluded
chronically indebted villagers and made it increasingly difficult
for them to gain a subsistence share of village resources in the
competition with rich and solvent peasants. Chinese poor and
middle peasants and Thai freeholders bitterly resented these
institutions. In the 1950s the Diem regime forced Vietnamese
tenants who had not paid rent during the previous decade of
Vietminh rule to pay a "reduced rate" of 25% on landlord
lands. This "reform" provoked a burst of peasant outrage. In
each of these cases American-backed regimes left the structural
basis of rural poverty and discontent intact. In no case have
incremental reforms fostered lasting loyalties to illegitimate
orders. In several cases peasants have revolted against the
structure of exclusion itself and attempted to create their own
political experience. In every case where this has happened the
foreign aid scale has tilted from subsistence to security
oriented development and the tempo of state coercion and
repression has increased. The politics of USAID in northeast
Thailand seems to fit into this general pattern.
The multiple political crisis in contemporary rural
Thailand is in part inevitable with national integration and
industrialization. However, the particular means of dealing
with this crisis in the northeast unnecessarily exacerbates
peasant problems.
The Politics of Force in Northern Thailand
In Chiengrai the commercialization and mechanization
of agriculture have combined to unravel the social fabric of
village life. However, at least as late as 1965, there were
strategies of subsistence open to the peasantry. People felt the
pinch but they could get by. In Sakon Nakhon, rural
development programs have been imposed by a political order
which threatens the welfare of whole villages. Taxes are
increasing. Incomes are declining. Lands are being lost. The
trend is from solvency to debt bondage. There have been
protests, demonstrations, and occasional clashes with Thai
officials.
In contrast, the situation in northern Thailand is
characterized by full-scale rural rebellion. Actually Meo
farmers always have offered armed resistance to pan-Thai
efforts to assimilate them. However, under the impact of
U.S.-Thai penetration traditional modes of conflict resolution
between the Meo and Thai political authorities are breaking
down, thus preculding less violent patterns of politics at the
local level. Rural people are pushed up against the wall of
subsistence. Rebellion is the only alternative to annihilation.
American counterinsurgency policies have encouraged a
heavy-handed bureaucracy to handle local problems through a
politics of force. The genesis of political violence is U.S.-Thai
penetration, leading to protests and skirmishes,
counterinsurgency violence, armed revolts. This sequence of
events is illustrated in several rebellions in the northern
provinces. Before turning to case studies, it is necessary to
briefly focus on the international forces behind the escalation
of local conflict.
The 1957 Sarit coup was a victory for the Thai military.
General Phao, the director of the police, lost. The Thai army
took command of internal security. Throughout the 1950s the
military checked efforts of Thai Border Patrol Police (BPP)
and Provincial Police (PP) to extend their authority deep into
northern provinces. Following the Nam Tha crisis of 1962,
however, the CIA pushed for the expansion of police activities
and the BPP increased its reporting of "communist terrorist"
actions in the north. Meo villages were mapped. Plans for
airfields were drawn up. Thai and U.S. intelligence agencies
began to offer medical and agricultural assistance, local
educational facilities, and paramilitary training to villagers.
The Thai army-police cleavage and the post-Cuban crisis
low-key posture of the Kennedy administration in Southeast
Asia temporarily constrained the immediate development of
full-blown counterinsurgency in Thailand in the 1962-65
34
i
t
period.
t
The 1965 u.s. military escalation in Vietnam changed
~
this situation. The Johnson administration gave the go-ahead
(
for the implementation of a multidimensional counter
1
insurgency program in Thailand. Between 1965 and 1968 the
number of personnel in the BPP increased 40 percent and the
PP increased 36 percent.
46
The Office of Public Safety (OPS)
of AID, which has trained military police in counterinsurgency
in the Philippines, Korea, Laos, and Vietnam, provided the
Thai BPP and PP with riot gear, machine guns, and helicopter
service.
47
The USIS trained Thai Police Civic Action Teams
and then sent them into villages as "teachers" in hamlet
development projects. The CIA stepped up its efforts to
recruit and train a Meo mercenary army in Thailand to
cooperate with CIA-supported Meo mercenaries in Laos.
By 1968 a loose network of counterinsurgency training
camps covered the northern provinces. This strategy backfired.
U.S.-Thai paramilitary operations heightened the passions of
Meo resistance to Thai injustices. In village after village
counterinsurgency provoked insurgency.
The Meo revolts are partly a conflict between lowlanders
and highlanders, partly a struggle between an expanding
modern territorial state and hill farmers, and partly a clash
between an expansive, profit-oriented economy and
slash-and-burn agriculturalists defending their traditional rights
to the forests. Most of the inhabitants of the northern
highlands are Meo tribesmen. Slash-and-burn or swidden
agriculture is their primary technique of survival.
During the past decade Bangkok has encouraged the
migration of lowland Thai into predominantly Meo areas.
These ethnic Thai farmers use modern agricultural implements
to convert vast areas of forests into vegetable farms at the
expense of the Meo.
Thai civilian and police administrators also complicate
the Meo struggle for survival by directly interfering in the
growing of opium, their main cash crop. Thai officials
constitute one of the main groups which benefit from the
international opium traffic in Southeast Asia. In the past the
Thai extorted the Chinese merchants who peddled the
commodity. More recently these officials have tried to increase
their gains by dealing directly with Meo opium growers. If the
Meo cannot meet their extortionist demands, Thai officials
restrict growing of this product without helping develop other
crops. This is a serious threat to people who depend on one
cash crop. However, it is Thai interference in slash-and-burn
agriculture which is at the heart of Meo grievances.
Modern Thai law does not consider non-Thai hill farmers
to be legal citizens. The Meo are denied the right to acquire
title to land. The government considers the upland forests to
be state preserves. These provisions make the Meo "illegal
squatters." The Thai Forest Service denies Meo access to new
lands. Thai officials invoke the state preserve rights to extort
Meo who seek access to de facto held lands. If the hill farmers
attempt to clear and burn the forests, they are arrested.
However, Thai district officials permit Thais who possess
"proper licenses" to cut down the teak forests.
48
Thai lumber
magnates ship this valuable teakwood to Taiwan through
Chinese merchants. Low-wage Taiwanese carpenters use it to
make furniture which is shipped primarily to the U.S. and
Japan.
The Meo experience Thai encroachment on forests,
interference in opium growing, and drastic changes in land
usage as a denial of their collective identity and their cultural
heritage, as well as economic deprivation. They cannot find
recourse through the state. The civil service in this
mountainous region is exclusively Thai. Thai district officials
degrade Meo language, dress, and hygenic practics. Under
Bangkok rule ethnicity and class combine to increase
economic hardships and preclude the peaceful and equitable
settling of Meo grievances.
In the past corrupt pressures and Thai cultural arrogance
provoked low levels of conflict between Meo farmers and
district officials. Meo were threatened and physically
harrassed. Thai officials were occasionally wounded by snipers.
This conflict is now taking on new and ominous dimensions.
Throughout the early 1960s several thousand Meo
tribesmen practiced slash-and-burn agriculture in the hills of
Lom Sak in the northern province of Phetchabun. By the
mid-1960s, they were experiencing an ecological crisis. Their
soil was nearly exhausted. Several village clusters,
approximately 3,000 IMeo, headed south into the uninhabited
upland forests southWest of Lom Sak.
Local Thai authorities tolerated this move for several
years. However, in August of 1967 the BPP ordered the Meo
to move back north. According to the Thai authorities, forest
preserves were being destroyed. The natural watershed would
be damaged. They maintained that this would create water
control problems in the Thai-dominated valleys. Also, with
increasing concern about rebellion in the north, the Meo move
was now interpreted by the USOM and the Thai BPP as a
potential insurgency threat: the villagers had in fact moved to
the southern side of the U.S.-financed road designed to expand
and facilitate Thai-U.S. military activities in Laos. The Meo
attempted to negotiate. They explained that slash-and-burn
techniques, if properly practiced, making sure that rotation
periods were long, would not harm the watershed. They told
the authorities their previous land would not sustain them.
People would starve. The BPP told the Meo to move or else.
Meo economic choices had been virtually eliminated. They
chose to resist.
AlmoSf half a year passed. Then, in mid-winter 1968, the
BPP forcefully removed the eight Meo villages by truck on
ARD roads. A spring harvest barely got them through until
November when the crops failed. The sites had been chosen by
the Thai BPP from the air. Moreover, the emergency relief
supplies, which the BPP had promised the Meo as a condition
of their move, did not make it through the corrupt Thai
bureaucracy. The BPP action had precipitated economic
disaster.
The Meo rebellion in Lam Sak took several forms, each
signaling a new stage in escalating political violence, each
dependent upon the actions of the BPP and eventually the
Thai Army. Al McCoy captures the essence of the progression:
In mid-November the Meo began to steal food from
urban storage areas, and when the BPP interfered, the Meo
responded predictably by attacking nearby camps at which
the BPP were training Meo for counterinsurgency work. All
the Meo in those camps deserted to the insurgents, and
soon the local BPP were outnumbered, surrounded, and
without water. The initial government response was to send
in some army troops from Phitsanulok, reinforcements for
the BPP and helicopters and fighters from the Police Mobile
Air Reserve. However, the Meo compensated for their
35
inferior weapons (mainly shotguns) by using the terrain to
their advantage and outmaneuvering the cumbersome
government troops. By December 7, a fifty-man police
squad sent in to reinforce the BPP was completely wiped
out, and combined ground and air attacks had failed to
break through the Meo siege of the major towns in the
.
regIon.
49
The BPP had created the conditions for a violent rural
uprising. The Meo at.acks on CIA-sponsored BPP camps
provided the spark which set it off. The Thai Third Army
rushed to Lorn Sak in early December. The Meo employed
hit-and-run tactics in a successful three-week defense. At this
point the government escalated the conflict. Three "refugee
camps" were set up. The Meo were ordered out of the forests
by leaflets which they couldn't read. Then the Royal Thai Air
Force proceeded to bomb and napalm Lorn Sak. Children,
women, men, animals, houses-nothing was spared. An
incident which, prior to U.S. penetration, most likely would
have been averted or resolved through minimal, low-level
conflict with Thai authorities, had escalated into a violent
pattern of politics between starving hill tribesmen and
intransigent Thai authorities.
Events in Lorn Sak foreshadowed the general sequence
of rebellion and reaction in the far northern provinces of Nan
and Chiengrai from 1968-1971. The genesis and results of
counterrevolutionary violence in Meo Maw, a Meo village
located in the Nan-Chiengrai foothills which skirt the Laos
border, fit into a wider pattern of events throughout these two
provinces. By looking at this case we can begin to grasp how
outside agitators, in this case U.S. and Thai authorities, create
the political conditions which force people to pick up
and join revolutionaries in a life-and-death struggle for theIr
livelihood, their families, and their humanity. 50
Like other hill farmers, the villagers of Meo Maw live in a
crisis environment. Population is increasing. Land is scarce.
But the political climate presents the greatest probl.em as
Bangkok increases its efforts to integrate the I.nto a
pan-Thai state. Recently a school has been estabhshe? I.n the
village. Since its teachers are all Thai, parents have dIffIculty
understanding what their children learn. There also IS a new
Hill Tribe Development and Welfare Center in the vicinity. The
arrogant provincial official who is the Center's director refers
to villagers as animals, as less than human. 51
The Thai government and foreigners began to regulate
Meo lives more forcefully. USIS trained and dispatched a
five-man Thai Police Civic Action Team to Meo Maw. These
Thai "teachers" were trained in weaponry. Then villagers
learned that the Thai government had initiated a
"resettlement" of Meo tribesmen' into the lowlands. There
were rumors that the Meo taken to these detention camps
were treated harshly, that housing was poor, and that success
in agriculture was very uncertain. In fact, the provincial
authorities were creating "refugee centers" in Nan and
Chiengrai. At least 4,000 Meo and Yao tribesmen in Nan alone
had been driven into these areas by saturation bombing of
disrupted farming schedules and left no time to clear land for
the spring planting. Whole families most likely would go
hungry. The political climate in Meo Maw was one of
unspoken tension. . . .
In mid-February 1968 the USIS Police CIVIC ActIOn
Team was shot-up by machine gun fire. Their clothes and
mattresses were blood soaked. Revolutionaries were in Meo
Maw!
Who were these persons? According to the U.S. and Thai
authorities, they were Meo who had been "lured" to Laos and
Vietnam for training in the strategy and tactics of guerrilla
subversion. From the villagers' viewpoint, however, Meo Maw
was being pulled apart by the presence of the foreign-trained
Police Civic Action Team. One outspoken villager had accused
the leader of the USIS-trained hamlet development team of
embezzling pay. The conflict escalated to the point where this
respected village leader threatened to kill the police honcho.
Apparently the message was USIS out of our village or else.
The police stayed. The villager left to contact the local Meo
resistance. At 2:00 a.m. on the 18th of February, he returned
with four insurgents and attacked the USIS-trained Thai
"teachers. "
The villagers understood the explosive situation which
was shaping up in Meo Maw. Refugees who had recently come
through the village had told them that any resistance would be
met with force. In fact, one group of tribesmen had told the
inhabitants of villages in the vicinity of Meo Maw that their
settlement had been burned by uniformed cavalrymen. In this
situation the whole village mobilized for action. People were
scared. Thai officials would be coming soon. One delegation to
the headman suggested that the village not go into hiding, but
move to a position nearby if the Thai government would
guarantee the headman that there would be no
Otherwise, their only choice would be to cooperate wIth the
revolutionaries. Another delegation pushed to leave the village
immediately. The headman vehemently opposed this.
According to him, any move to the forest would be
interpreted by the Royal Thai Air Force as a sign that the
village was assisting the insurgents. Nevertheless, the women in
the village had called their own meeting and proceeded to
evacuate immediately. Others moved to a location half way
between Meo Maw and the nearby village. By 7:00 a.m. on the
20th of February, only the headman and 20 other men
remained.
Throughout the next two days the headman employed
his radio transmitter in order to get an assurance from the
local Thai authorities that the village would not be bombed.
The district officer would not give it. Instead, he mobilized the
Provincial Police squad and proceeded to the village. The
village 'spokesmen wanted to explain their dilemma and to
negotiate. The Thai authorities wanted to drink. The
intoxicated police commander insulted the district officer and
sidearms were drawn. The anthropologist in residence and the
son of the village chief managed to disarm them. According to
the anthropologist's journal, three hours later the drunken
district officer arrived at his house and
stated that all . .. {villagers] are Communists; that they had
deceived me into trust. I asked him if there would be any
bombing. He smiled. I told him that if one bomb hit any
hamlet of the village I would report his actions of that
evening to high authorities. Advised him that he should use
radio to recommend against bombing.
District officer left house in a rage shouting that I had
joined the Communists. From outside he added that the
police would conduct me under arrest to the town at
sunrise. 52
The actions of the Thai officials had precipitated a village
rebellion.
36
At dawn the village chief, assisted by the anthropologist,
began to transmit frantic calls to American authorities in the
USOM to explain that the village was not communist. The
effort failed. CIA headquarters were closed on Sunday. At
midday three T-28 planes strafed and bombed the village. Meo
Maw was burned to the ground.
Almost a month after the burning of Meo Maw, the
anthropologist who had been in the village was hospitalized.
One night late he felt the presence of people in his room. Meo
Maw villagers and the headman informed him that the
strangers who had come to the village had established a
mountain camp. "If we stay in these hills, we will be able to
I

plant rice. Otherwise where will we get the rice?" 53 The Thai
army had burned all granaries in the entire village cluster,
including Meo Maw. The struggle for liberation in Nan and
! Chiengrai had been joined by local Meo. Indeed, as in Lom
!
.l Sak, there was no alternative if the Meo people were to
survive. The chow nai. and American-trained police had made
f
the choice this simple.
I
This study casts serious doubt on conventional
explanations of modernization and counterrevolution in
i
I
Thailand and other rural Asian societies. The green revolution
has siphoned off village capital, narrowed peasant economic
J choices and contributed to discontent. In the absence of
traditional elite performance of expected communal services,
peasants experience the commercialization of agriculture as a
social catastrophe. Where the state makes no allowance for
redistribution and relief in response to this crisis, or where

state reforms are carried out by a corrupt bureaucracy, social
immiseration can increase during a period of agricultural
/
,
development. In southern China during the 1930s, southern
Vietnam during the 1950s, and northern Thailand during the
1960s, humans, not production statistics, suffered.
In Sakon Nakhon modernization cum counterinsurgency
has increased suffering among villagers. Security-oriented
development adds to the arsenal of a political order which is
violating human rights to subsistence. In China and Vietnam
the state transgression of these rights created a situation
favorable to the revolutionary mobilization of discontent
among the middle and lower stratum of the peasantry. In
Thailand, which is comparatively less stratified, this
(
development has mobilized entire villages against the state. In
this context U.S. anti-communist aid is a self-fulfilling
prophecy since it has provoked the resistance which is the
prior justification for its existence.
The Meo rebellions in northern Thailand are explosions
against an economic order which threatens to shatter the
moral basis of communal life and a political order which
denies a separate and unique cultural identity. A modern Thai
police force has encroached on traditional subsistence rights,
endangered Meo survival and finally cooperated with the
U.S.-advised and equipped Royal Thai Army and Air Force in
crushing the miserable.
IV. IMPERIALISM IN FUTURE THAI POLITICS
Prior to the 1960s the scope of anti-government
rebellion in Thailand was rather narrow. Modernization and
counterinsurgency have changed this situation. The mass
discontent and violent outbursts depicted in this study typify
politics in hundreds of villages in the north and northeast.
Since the U.S. military buildup in 1966 there has been
considerable revolutionary growth. Several provinces have
experienced continuous revolts. In self-defense the Meo are
training for guerrilla war against Thai armies and police.
Northern border areas which could be governed by small,
lightly armed Thai police patrols in 1968 could not be held by
heavily armed Thai Army battalions in 1971. Insurgents have
established several base areas with simple and self-sufficient
economies. Despite these signs of growth, local and
international politics restrain the development of a full-scale
national liberation movement in Thailand.
The Meo revolts in the northern highlands, where the
intensity of resistance is greatest, are separatist. One of the
keys to Vietminh success was their alliance with Tho mountain
dwellers, an ethnic minority which was revolting against the
discriminatory policies of foreigners and their native minions.
Although similar support exists in northern Thailand, the TPF
has not yet entered into a viable coalition with the Meo. The
Meo revolts remain regional in scope and secessionist in goals.
The peasant movements in the northeast are localized
insurgencies. Although these rebellions have an anti-foreign
ring, they are not necessarily fueled by nationalism. Peasants
are slow to respond to the nationalist appeals of the TPF.
Their protests are against the shattering of a world view
conditioned by limited parameters of wealth and relatively
local and narrow life experiences. The absence of regular
revolutionary armies places the responsibility of protecting
economic gains on village militia and roving guerrillas. This
enables modern counterrevolutionary armies to squelch local
resistance and makes peasants fear the consequences of
actively supporting the insurgents. Thus, unless the Indochina
War spills over into Thailand in a way that violently splits the
homogeneous Thai elite and drives whole army divisions to
fight with the TPF, a full-scale peasant revolution in northeast
Thailand seems unlikely in the immediate future.
The post-World War II American dominance of Thai
politics is underscored by the recent withdrawal of U.S.
combat troops from Vietnam. Units such as the Marine Air
Wing simply have been shifted to Thailand in support of an
intensive build-up of U.S. air power. Thus Thai revolutionaries
must defeat a far more formidable foe than the Thai Army.
Since the TPF has neither the organizational strength nor the
rich experience in people's war which has made for NLF
success, this seems an unlikely prospect in the near future.
Imperialism in future Thai politics could take any of
several forms. The most likely configuration is Thai generals
permitting the U.S. to use Thailand for a wider Southeast
Asian air war in exchange for U.S. military assistance in
suppressing internal revolts. However, U.S. domestic pressures
for an end to American troop participation in protracted,
non-winable wars necessitates U.S. reliance on pative
non-white counterinsurgency forces. In the immediate future
U.S. air power may be used to support Thai armies staffed
with Japanese advisers. This transformation would be in line
with Japan's increasing edge over the U.S. in trade and
investment in Thailand. There is a third possibility: a drastic
reversal of U.S. policies toward Southeast Asia coupled with a
continued Japanese economic thrust may bri'ng Japanese
special forces as well as advisers to Thailand, practicing a
science they almost in an earlier drive for Southeast
Asian markets. None of these scenarios portends a rapid and
humane alternative to modernization and counterrevolution in
rural Thailand.
37
Acknowledgments: I wish to express deep gratitude to Edward
FrIedman, James C. Scott, and Mark Selden for their helpful criticisms
of an earlier version of this paper.
NOTES
1. Jonathan Mirsky and Stephen E. Stonefield, "The United
States in Laos, 1945-1962," in Edward Friedman and Mark Selden
eds., America's Asia: Dissenting Essays on Asian-American Relation;
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1971), 263.
. 2. A Program to Strengthen the Board of Investment of
Thailand, prepared by Checchi and Company, sponsored by the Private
Enterprise Division Agency for International Development, United
States Operations Mission, Bangkok (Washington, D.C., February
1965),5,7,11.
3. Ibid., 7.
4. Peter F. Bell, "Thailand: The Political Economy of
Under-Development," Discussion Paper No. 19, University of British
Columbia, Department of Economics, April 1969.
5. Burchett, Second Indochina War, Cambodia and Laos (New
York: International Publishers, 1970), 161, 174-5. Cf. Fred P.
Branfman, Voices From the Plain of Jars, Life Under an Air War (New
York: Harper and Row, 1972).
6. "Report Buildup in Thailand," Pacific Stars and Stripes,
April 23, 1972,6.
7. Burchett, 8,40-1,43.
8. Burchett, 44.
9. Michael T. Klare, War Without End: American Planning for
the Next Vietnams (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 185.
10. This estimate has been culled from Klare, 73-4, 81, 90-1,
142,154-5,179-82, esp. p.180. Cf. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign
Relations, United States Security Agreements and Commitments
Abroad, Hearings, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1971),629-30,632-36.
11. Klare, 185.
12. Adam Schesch, "The Second Indochina War,"
mimeographed (Madison, Wisconsin, 1970),37.
13. James C. Scott, "Non-Electoral Patterns II: Thailand,"
unpublished paper, Madison, 1970. This section relies heavily on Scott's
analytical framework and interpretation of the Thai political process.
14. Scott, 10.
15. Scott, 23.
16. Scott, 26.
17. Robert Shaplen, Time Out of Hand: Revolution and
Reaction in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1969),
289-90.
18. Michael Moerman, Agricultural Change and Peasant Choice
in a Thai Village (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1968). The following discussion of events in Ban Ping is my
interpretation based on Moerman's data.
19. Compare the analyses of the green revolution in India and
the Philippines in the essays by Thomas Weisskopf and William
Pomeroy in this volume.
20. Moerman, 70-71.
21. Moerman, 108.
22. Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New
York: Harper and Row, 1969),279.
23. Moerman, 110.
24. Moerman, 139-40.
25. Ibid.
26. Moerman concludes that peasant world views and economic
behavior facilitate a smooth integration into an expanding Thai state
and spreading international capitalist markets. The emphasis is on
values which "predispose Ban Ping farmers toward the changes
stimulated by the nation and the market," that is, continuity and
compatibility. (192-93) Thus Moerman argues that peasants experience
the transformation of traditional modes of agriculture as a "change in
degree, not in' kind." (193) However, if the data on the impact of
commercialization and technology on peasant attitudes toward
authority and economic behavior is placed in the context of Thai
politics, then another interpretation is more plausible: peasants seem to
be experiencing alienation from themselves, other villagers, and
powerful outsiders.
27. Al McCoy, "Subcontracting Counterinsurgency," Bulletin of
Concerned Asian Scholars, Special Issue: Vietnam Center at SIU
(1970),58.
28. Interview on the Metromedia Radio News Show "profile."
29. Quoted in Klare, 77.
30. Toshio Yatsushiro, Village Organization and Leadership in
Northeast Thailand, Research Division USOM/Thaiiand (Bangkok
Thailand, May 1966), 121-26. '
32. Michael Moerman, "Western Culture and the Thai Way of
Life," in Robert O. Tilman, ed., Man, State and Society in
Contemporary Southeast Asia (New York: Praeger Publishers,
1969),153.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 1SO.
35. Sawai Pradit, "An Intensive Resident Study of Yang Kham
Village," in Toshio Yatsushiro, ed., Village Attitudes and Conditions in
Relation to Rural Security in Northeast Thailand, Research Division
USOM/Thaiiand (Bangkok, Thailand, May 1967). 14.
36. Ibid., 7, 14.
37. Bantorn Ondam, "An Intensive Resident Study of Implaeng
Village," in Yatsushiro, ed. Village Attitudes and Conditions.
38. Suthep Soonhornpeusch, "An Intensive Study of Kok Klang
Village"; Bamrung Traimontri, "An Intensive Resident Study of
Hadsaimoon Village," in Yatsushiro, ed. Village Attitudes and
Conditions.
39. Ibid., 8, 10-11, 21.
40. For examples see summaries on politics in Hadsaimoon, 41;
Don Du, 20, 22; Kok Klang, 19. Yatsushlro, Village Attitudes and
Conditions.
41. Evaluation Report: Joint Thai-USOM Evaluation of the
Accelerated Rural Development Project, (Bangkok, Thai-American
~ u d i o Visual Service, June 1966), 176. Cited in Edward Leigh Block,
Accelerated Rural Development: A Counter-Insurgency Program in
Northeast Thailand," unpublished M.A. thesis, Northern Illinois
University, Department of Political Science, 1968, 57.
42. United States Agency for International Development, A
Cost-Benefit Study of Roads in North and Northeast Thailand
Research Division USOM/Thaiiand (Bangkok, Thailand, August 31:
1966),4, cited in Block, "Accelerated Rural Development," 59.
43. Accelerated Rural Development Engineering and
Construction Report for November 1967, Rural Engineering Division
Office of Field Operations USOM/Thaiiand (Bangkok, Thailand, 1967).
44. For an account of eighteen villages participating together in
road construction and repair before USAID penetration see the
intensive interviews with residents of a ~ Implaeng, Tampon Kusukam,
Amphur Wanonniwart, Sakon Nakhorn province, January 12, 1967.
Yatsushiro, Village Attitudes and Conditions, 1-31, esp. 2-14.
45. I am indebted to James C. Scott's perceptive and persuasive
empirical studies of the process whereby traditional elites achieve and
lose political legitimacy in rural Southeast Asia_ Also see Eqbal
Ahmad's brilliant essay on American misconceptions of the nature of
authority, rebellion and legitimacy in rural Asian societies.
"Revolutionary War and Counterinsurgency," in Norman Miller and
Roderick Aya, eds., National Liberation: Revolution in the Third World
(New York: The Free Press,1971).
46. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Operations
and Government Information Subcommittee, Hearings on Thailand and
the Philippines (Washington, D.C., June 16, 1969), 102-04. Cited in
McCoy, "Subcontracting Counterinsurgency."
47. Klare, 182, 194-95.
48. Peter Smith, "Unrest in Northern Thailand: Year of the
Guerrilla," Pacific News Service, 1972.
49. This description of the sequence of political violence in Lorn
Sak is taken directly from Al McCoy's account of the consequences of
counterinsurgency programs at the local level. I have added a few
analytical comments in an effort to place it in the larger framework of
this section. See McCoy, "Subcontracting Counterinsurgency," 66.
50. The description and analysis of the origins of political
violence in Meo Maw is pieced together from several sources. John R.
Thompson, "Meo Maw: The Burning Mountain," Far Eastern Economic
Review.(Aprii 25, 1968),218-20; John R. Thompson, "Kang Haw: The
Mountams Are Steppes," Far Eastern Economic Review (March 7,
1968), .420-21; Douglas Miles, "Australian Anthropology in Sarkhan,"
unpubhshed paper, 1971. I rely heavily on Miles' journal here, esp.
33-46. However, my interpretation of the data differs from Miles' in
important respects.
51. Thompson, "Meo Maw: The Burning Mountain," 220.
52. Miles, "Australian Anthropology in Sarkhan," 42.
53. Miles, 45.
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J. Esherick, "Harvard on China: The Apologetics of Imperialism"
H. Bix, "Report from Japan 1972-11"
T. Huu, Ho Chi Minh, N. Ngan, T. Khanh, & L. Lien, Vietnamese
Poetry
U. Mahajani, Comment on E. Ahmad on South Asia
Vol. 5, No.1, July 1973
G. Omvedt, "Gandhi and the Pacification of the Indian National
Revolution"
C. Riskin, "Maoism & Motivation: Work Incentives in China"
E. Ahmad, "South Asia in Crisis" & India's Counterinsurgency War
Against the Nagas and Mizos
G. Kolko, D. Rosenberg, et aI., "The Philippines Under Martial
Law"
REVIEWS
R. Kagan & N. Diamond, Solomon's Mao's Revolution and the
Chinese Political Culture
M. Roberts, Scott's The War Conspiracy
CCAS and E. Vogel, Funding of China Studies, cont.
Vol. 5, No.2, September 1973
G. Porter, "The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam's Land Refonn
Reconsidered"
H. Schonberger, "Zaibatsu Dissolution and the American Restoration
of Japan"
J. Fairbank, J. Esherick, & M. Young, "Imperialism in China-An
Exchange"
B. Kerkvliet, "The Philippines: Agrarian Conditions in Luzon Prior to
Martial Law"
Communist Party of the Philippines, "Tasks of the Party in the New
Situation"/document
A. Kuo, "New Letters from Hiroshima"/poem
REVIEWS
P. Scott, "Opium and Empire: McCoy on Heroin in Southeast Asia"
M. Klare, "Restructuring the Empire: The Nixon Doctrine after
Vietnam"-Brodine and Selden, eds., The Kissinger-Nixon
Doctrine
Vol. 5, No.3, November 1973
F. Baldwin, "The Jason Project: Academic Freedom and Moral Respon
sibility"
H. Bix, "Regional Integration: Japan and South Korea in America's
Asian Policy"
J. Comer, "The Assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem" and "The Front"/
poetry
REVIEW ESSA Y
J. Halliday, "What Happened in Korea? Rethinking Korean History
1945-1953"
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. Selden, "Imperialism and Asia: A Brief Introduction to the
Literature"
40
CORRESPONDENT
I was the photographer. People were huddled
To the outskirts of the village, later to be shot.
It was two years before I could speak.
Where they moulder in ditches, other people regard
As the scene of atrocity: it has given them that,
The sense that it could happen, knowing it did.
I will not make any dignity of them to succour myself.
I move up close to steal the acclaimed shots,
Then lift out quickly in a dragonfly.
THE PEOPLE
I
Our day of victory we garlanded ourselves with aubergines
I
and green peppers. Men and women trotted down
from all sides of the scooped basin on the backs of pigs,
wearing roosters in their hats, the children
strumming their gourd waterbottles with courgettes.
I
Our grandpas sat around huddled over a goat-skin
!
marked out with squares, demonstrating the strategy
l
contained in queerly-shaped stones. Some shouts
I
erupted from the tangle behind the wrestling booth,
I
a fresh child lay there suckled in bamboo under a
dispute of fathers. Then Hanghe pedalled up on a bicycle,
litchis bulging the panniers, a mortar
~
strapped across her back. What, had she come straight out
~
of that shit picking fruit for her aunties and uncles?
And Giong behind her, rooting shells out of his pockets
as he lopped down some maize, a field
(
from the impounded batteries? So we broke open
the sweetflesh from its prickly casing, and unbraided
marigolden cobs- the presenting stems that are thrown
iii
deliberately from hand to hand through the air.
~
We who had risen on buffaloes to see this day, these
1
bellied infants crouching among marbles, because we
l
were cut away from our mothers in the birth place with sickles.
r
,
A
{
by John Comer
41
Chinatown as Home Base
by Connie Young Yu
Longtime Californ ': A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown,
by Victor G. and Brett de Bary Nee. ~ ! e w York: Pantheon Books, 1973.
pp. xxvii. 411, charts. map. SlO.
During the recent U.S.-China friendship celebrations in
San Francisco there was a struggle between the pro-China
groups in Chinatown and the Chinese Six Companies over the
use of Portsmouth Square, a key locale in Longtime Californ '.
The old establishment of Chinatown succeeded in preventing a
celebration in the historic park on the twenty-fourth
anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China,
and on the eve of October First the Square was encircled with
strings of Kuomintang flags while on the same day a pro-China
rally was held at St. Mary's Square several blocks away.
Despite the recent developments in U.S.-China relations, the
friction of past years between two political Chinatown
factions continues as before.
To outsiders Chinatown has been a paradox, and all
answers to inquiries contradictory. In the media spotlight in
recent years, San Francisco's Chinatown-the oldest and
largest in the nation-has been the subject of sensational
exposes, such as Tom Wolfe's "New Yellow Peril" article in
Esquire and numerous stories of the behind-the-gilded-facade
lies-a-ghetto genre. With the rise of ethnic student
organizations and protest movements of Third World people,
Asian student conferences and teach-ins have echoed the
age-old problems of Chinatown: substandard housing, poor
health care, unemployment and the "benign neglect" of local
and federal officials. The pressures on the overcrowded quarter
in the heart of San Francisco continue to be exacerbated by
the continuing influx of new immigrants from Hong Kong
with language difficulties and desperate needs for housing and
employment. Gang shootings have made sensational headline
news and have evoked the century-old debate on the
desirability of Chinese immigration. New groups formed by
young, socially-conscious people strive to better the conditions
of the community. Yet it seems that the more Chinatown
changes, the more it stays the same.
The problems evident in Chinatown San Francisco and
in Chinese communities across the country are deeply rooted
in the history of the Chinese in America. That history must be
analyzed and related to contemporary Chinatown in order to
understand why Chinatowns still exist.
Victor and Brett de Bary Nee, editors of the
Asian-American Special Issue, Bulletin of Concerned Asian
Scholars, Fall 1972, have just published the most
comprehensive work available on the Chinese in America,
Longtime Californ ': A Documentary Study of An American
Chinatown. In the summer of 1970 the Nees arrived from
Cambridge, Massachusetts, to do research on the history of the
Chinese in California and to interview a cross-section of the
residents of the Chinese community. Striving to be objective
42
and to let the Chinese people of all factions, classes and groups
speak for themselves and their heritage, the authors present
Chinatown in a perspective never seen before.
The Nees discover for themselves: "Chinatown ... not a
microcosm of Chinese society on American soil, but a unique
American community with a history and language, and
institutions of its own, the reality of which reflects life in the
growing inner-city ghettos of large American cities."
Chinatown began before California became a state. The
plaque in Portsmouth Square reads: "On this spot the
American flag was first raised in San Francisco by Commander
John B. Montgomery of the U.S.S. Portsmouth, July 9, 1846"
and the Chinese pitched their tents in the area a couple of
years after that historic flag-raising. In this ethnic community
lives not one class of people but several, and the oppressed live
side by side with those who oppress them. Chinatown is
intensely polarized: opposing political groups, rival gangs,
competing associations. Many struggles, one front. And this is
the way it has been since the beginning of Chinese immigration
to California.
Before the arrival of Longtime Californ', books on
Asian-American history were limited to a small number of
serious works on the Chinese. There have been useful academic
works such as Alexander Saxton's The Indispensable Enemy,
documenting the history of labor and the anti-Chinese
movement in the 19th century, and also Stanford Lyman's
sociological essays, The Asian in the West. Chinese in
California: A Syllabus, published by the Chinese Historical
Society and edited by Thomas Chinn, Philip Choy and H.
Mark Lai, has been a valuable handbook.
The earliest and a primary source on the Chinese in
California is Mary Coolidge's Chinese Immigration, published
in 1909 and recently reprinted by Paragon. The author gives
her contemporary accounts of suffering experienced by
Chinese trapped by immigration laws and discriminatory
legislation. Writing in a period of intense villification of the
Chinese, Coolidge tried to present the Chinese people in the
I most acceptable terms to the American public, that many
t
!
Chinese were Christians, educated, and could be assimilated.
j
Charles Caldwell Dobie in 1936 wrote the first general
history of San Francisco Chinatown; it was typical of many
I
patronizing books which recalled old Chinatown with fondness
and nostalgia. San Francisco Chinatown, written with literary
flare and local color, professed to be destroying the old
unsavory myths of sinister Chinatown perpetuated by other
books, but at the same time it created new ones. To Dobie the
Chinese was a sojourner:
I
i
j. The Americans were intent on building a new empire-the
Chinese were intent on nourishing an old empire with
sustenance from a virgin country. It was China that
sheltered their hearthstones; it was China that would finally
r receive their bones. A people with faces turned ever toward
the land of their origin do not take root.
Gunther Barth's Bitter Strength expounds the same
/ theory in an academic cloak. In their footnotes on the
l
I
bachelor society, the Nees call Bitter Strength "the most
sophisticated apology for the anti-Chinese movement of the
nineteenth century." For more critical comment on this book,
see Shawn Wong's review in the Asian-American Special Issue
of the Bulletin.
Betty Lee Sung in 1967 published Mountain of Gold,
determined to once and for all tell the truth about the Chinese
in America. This is the most widely read book on the subject
and is a sketchy, loosely strung together narrative on the
Chinese-American success story, how the Chinese rose from
coolie status to established professional people Americans can
be proud of. For Sung, who began gathering material for her
work while writing a program on the Chinese for Voice of
America, the all-important goal for Chinese is total
assimilation and acceptance into American society.
Beginning with interviews of the old-timers milling in
Portsmouth Square, Longtime Californ' shows that the
Chinese community is neither "little China" as it has been
called, nor an ingredient in the "melting pot." The voices of
the old men tell why Chinatown became "home base" and the
"safest place" in a time of racial violence and repressive
legislation against the Chinese in America. Members of the
family society, well-educated and comfortable, describe
subtler forms of racism that have kept them within the
confines of Chinatown. New immigrants speak painfully of
long hours in sweat shops, of disillusionment for themselves,
and hope for their children. There is a candid interview with a
former president of the Six Companies, and a fascinating
dramatic life story of an eighty-four-year-old woman who was
one of those legendary slave girls rescued by Donaldina
Cameron. An organizer of the Chinatown Anti-communist
League reminisces proudly about how his organization beat up
some celebrants of Communist victory in 1949 at the Chinese
American Citizens' Hall; his interview is followed by his
opponent giving his first-hand account of the violent
disruption at the mass meeting. Young social workers explain
why they are returning to Chinatown to offer their help. Every
component of Chinese community life is included in this
documentary study, without favoritism towards any particular
group.
The book is divided into five parts: The Bachelor
Society, the Family Society, the Refugees, the Emergence of a
43
New Working Class, and Radicals and the New Vision. A
comprehensive commentary and historical background precede
each group of interviews, giving the reader sufficient
information to put in perspective the segments of
Chinese-American life expressed by the personal narratives.
The section on the Bachelor Society is the finest even
written on the old "pioneers." There is a concise, gripping
summary of the early history of the Chinese in California;
included are excerpts from the 1876 Congressional hearings on
Chinese immigration. The Nees' book may contain the last
published interviews of the old-timers. "We learn that they are
the last survivors of the bachelor societies which characterized
American Chinatowns for nearly one hundred years." The
"Longtime Californ" Chinese tell about being stoned by
whites whenever they left the boundaries of Chinatown, of
being kept out of public schools, of isolation and deprivation.
Several par!iculariy inspired passages are memories of the most
important event in the lives of many Chinese in America, the
beginning of the 1911 revolution in China and the presence of
Sun Yat-sen in America to gain support from overseas Chinese.
John Jeong, eighty-four, a retired dry goods clerk, remembers
the momentous moment when the revolutionary leader
entered his brother's store. "Yes, I admired Dr. Sun even
before I met him. There were so many people in Chinatown
who agreed with him! At that time, you see, we Chinese
seemed to be without a country."
Prevented from bringing their families to America
because of the immigration restrictions, forbidden to marry
outside their race by law (which was ruled unconstitutional in
1948), and restrained by their own economic condition, these
Chinese men were accused of being unassimilable and
"unwilling to settle" like other immigrants. Despite the fact
that they spoke Cantonese better than English, the Nees found
that:
For the men who spent their working years here, memories
of the village have been overpowered by a longer, deeper
experience of California. The stories of their own working
lives, the lives of their families before them, richly mirror
the history of California, the men's roots are deep in
California.
For some of the old men in Portsmouth Square there is
at last a sense of vindication and fulfillment in the world-wide
recognition of the achievements of the People's Republic of
China and the new U.S.-China relations. Says another
eighty-four-year-old, a Tong officer:
You know, when I first came over here as a teenager to
work on the levees, we were stoned when we got off the
ship. We weren't allowed to leave Angel's Island because
they said our feces had worms in them. They fed us like
pigs because they thought we were filthy. Finally a group
of old men came and led us into Chinatown. But on the
way, people shouted, "Chink! Chink! Chink!" and threw
stones at us again. After I went to Merced, working as a
cook and waiter, I made five dollars a week minus
seventy-five cents for every dish I broke. I had no money to
go to school. No wonder I can't speak English! But as a
Chinese, I know what China was like before and now.
Before we used to lower our eyes before the white man.
Now we can look straight at them without being afraid.
Giving equal time to another segment of Chinese society
in America, the N ees interview the former "stranded students,"
upper-class people who came to study from China and found
they could not return after the revolution in 1949. Said one,
"I had no great awareness of the revolution building up in
China when I was there. I didn't think the peasants were
resentful. "
Prior to H. Mark Lai's article in the Asian-American
Special Issue of the Bulletin, the history of the left in
Chinatown had never been documented. H. Mark Lai is one of
the people to whom the book is dedicated, and the Nees relied
on much of his information in describing the organizations of
the left in Chinatown and how their members were persecuted,
hunted down and dispersed. The workings of the Kuomintang
in America, past and present, are also revealed.
Many of the secondo, third- and fourth-generation
California Chinese ventured out of Chinatown, slowly
integrating all-white areas in the city. One woman recalls her
childhood in the Mission district as a member of the sole
Chinese family in the neighborhood, living above an Irish
tavern.
We'd hear this crashing, singing, people being thrown
around down there, they would have brawls and they
would pee on our doorstep. Every other day we would go
down there with a bucket to wash it of! But at the same
time my parents kept reminding us that "the whites out
there, " the same people who would vomit and pee on our
doorstep, were the people who had the power to take our
homes away from us. We had to do a little placating of
them. Every Easter, every Christmas, every American
holiday I would be sent on a little tour of all the local
businesses. I would go to the bakery across the street, the
barbershop down the street, the realty company and the
bar. I would deliver a little cake to each one. We wanted to
be known as that nice Chinese family upstairs or down the
street, you know, whom you wouldn't ever want to hurt in
any way. My family was very aware that they were
embattled Chinese in a white district, that they had spent
many years finding that place to live, and that at any
moment they could be asked to leave. And somehow a
quality I sensed out of all this, about being Chinese, was a
vulnerability . ... No matter what they did you had to be
stronger than they, you had to outlast them.
The new immigrants from Hong Kong, arriving by the
hundreds, are as locked in ChinatowIl._ as the bachelors of the
19th century. Unable to speak English, they cannot get jobs
outside Chinatown and so they join the masses of exploited
workers in sweatshops and kitchens. This emergence of a new
working class has caused a greater tension in Chinatown than
has ever existed before. The Nees see a hopeful sign in the
immigration of the educated and professionals. "They have
brought both a new self-confidence and new perspective to the
American Chinese situation as they have joined in the vigorous
struggle of younger American-born Chinese for full equality
and participation in American society."
The poorer immigrants speak of the difficulties of raising
a family in cramped quarters in Chinatown. "In such a
crowded place, they have to use the same table for dinner and
then they have to do their homework here, too. So they fight
sometimes. There's so little space. To tell you the truth, I
don't like to get home from work early. I feel sick when I get
back," says a janitor who works from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. and
44
worries about losing his job. A mother of ten living in the Ping
Yuen Housing Project for low-income families is concerned
about the rising costs of food, and reading her interview now,
one wonders how she is managing to feed her family. ("A
pound of beef is now over a dollar. If I buy one pound of beef,
it lasts exactly one mea1.")
The rising problems of these new immigrants have
inspired social workers and students to innovate new
programs, such as the Newcomers' Service. This movement is
reminiscent of Chinese-American idealists of the 1930s who
began to call attention to the substandard conditions of
Chinatown and to initiate social programs for the community.
In the final section of the book, "Radicals and the New
Vision," college students and intellectuals return to
Chinatown, to work, to agitate and to write about it. The only
non-Chinese appears in the book, Frank Nishimoto, who
joined the Asian-American movement and helped to organize
the Chinatown Cooperative Garment Factory. One Berkeley
student who worked in the International Hotel Collective, a
symbolic struggle for the entire Asian-American movement,
expresses what it means to him: "In the end, what the struggle
means to me personally is that it's a way of fighting for
ourselves.... It means I don't want to be separated from
something that is really part of my people and my past." Many
of the radicals, who can recite the Pacific Rim Strategy and are
members of the Marxist-Leninist group of Kearny Street, see
their role as that of educating the community to recognize
that its problems are the direct consequence of monopoly
capitalism and to challenge the system. For the author Frank
Chin, who views Chinatown as "your spiritual home, whether
you know it or not," his struggle has nothing to do with
radical politics, but is to "legitimize the Chinese-American
sensibility, to create a new language that is ChineseAmerican."
Since this book was completed over a year ago, there
have been a few noticeable changes in the Chinese community
in San Francisco. The anti-poverty programs, which were weak
as the Nees indicated, are waging a continual battle for
surviva1. Some independent community organizations have lost
momentum and support. The strength of the New Left in
Chinatown, as everywhere else in the country since the
cease-fire in Indochina, has waned. However, Chinese writers,
media people and intellectuals have gained a wider audience
and appreciation. Asian-American conferences and teach-ins
continue to be held. Howard University Press will soon publish
the Anthology of Asian American Writing (its introduction
appeared in the Asian-American Special Issue of the Bulletin)
and Longtime Californ' is selling well on Kearny Street and
everywhere else.
The Nees have studied and researched brilliantly the
history and social and political life of the Chinese community.
What they are not familiar with are the particulars of San
Francisco Chinatown. Names of people and places are
misspelled. The gang name "Wah Ching" is translated as
"immigrant youth" instead of Chinese Youth. The great
restaurateur Johnny Kan, whom the Nees interviewed and who
died at sixty-six in early 1973, is listed as fiftyseven years old.
Chingwah Lee, a famous Chinatown personality, actor (he
played Ching in The Good Earth), writer, collector and pusher
of Grant Avenue tourist trade, is given one brief line of
introduction preceding his interview: "Art collector with a
museum in Old Chinatown Lane." The "Establishment"
section is weak, with only two moderately interesting
interviews. There are scores of more prominent establishment
members, anyone of whom would have added depth to the
section.
In such an outstanding publishing event it is especially
disturbing to find so many typographical errors and
misspellings throughout the book. Careless errors such as this
one are distracting: "The old men keep these rare pictures of
themselves as youths. 'Yeah, that's me. 1951. I was sixteen
years old when I came in!' " But these are mistakes which can
be corrected in subsequent printings, which shall no doubt
occur.
The lasting impression lies in the depth and candor of
the interviews of Longtime Californ '. Though the authors were
initially unfamiliar with San Francisco Chinatown, they had an
advantage over California Chinese writers. They were not
influenced by preconceptions or by special interest groups, nor
were their own biases known to the community. The Nees
evoked the trust of people from all different walks of
Chinatown, who expressed a desire to see a clear analysis of
what their community really is.
As a result, they captured memories and reflections
which stand out as extraordinary, unforgettable passages. The
book conveys what it is like to live in Chinatown. Having once
been a resident there myself, I can concur that the atmosphere
is as heavy as described. Life, despite seasonal festivities, was
never gay for very long. We lived closed-in with the
work-weary, the old and the helpless. Even as children, part of
our lives was always weighed down by other people's past:
memories of the village, worries over relatives in China we
never saw, stories of hard times, journeys of grandfathers, Sun
Yat-sen fund-raisers, work camps, fearful whisperings of
deportations, suicides. The experience has been inescapable for
the Chinese, inexplicable to outsiders. Longtime Californ' has
brought out the whole story for everyone to read. At last, we
won't have to bear it alone anymore.
45
Revolting: An Essay on I!Mao's Revolution,'
by Richard Solomon
by Richard M. Pfeffer
With the recent spate of scathingly negative, scholarly
review articles on Richard Solomon's Mao's Revolution and
the Chinese Political Culture, I I fear we are on the verge of
throwing out a baby with its bath. In this case, ironically, we
are incited to murder by the baby's father, who seems to think
that his psychocultural bath is the baby. If one may be so
arrogant as to disagree with an author regarding the identity of
his offspring, I would suggest the baby and the bath are
distinguishable, the one healthy and bouncing, if all wet, and
the other ready to be disposed of.
Mao's Revolution
2
is essentially three related books in
one. The first, comprising Part I and Part II, which are
respectively entitled "The Traditional Chinese Socialization
Process" and "Adult Perceptions of Social Relations:
'Confusion' (Luan) and the Need for Strong Authority," sets
out the author's psychocultural analysis of China's traditional
political culture. The second book, Part III, entitled "The
Maoist Political Revolution," presents the author's analysis of
Mao's pre-1949 insights, methods and goals for mobilizing
peasant emotions and transforming traditional attitudes and
institutions. The third book, Part IV, "The Maoist Political
Reconstruction," analyzes the background and development
of the great post-Liberation events in which Mao's
methodologies and goals were dominant: the One-Hundred
Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
3
There is no longer much disagreement about the overall
quality of parts I and II. Probably the kindest remark about
them in recent reviews by various experts on China's
traditional culture is that "Solomon's understanding of
traditional Chinese political attitudes is inadequate.,,4 In
another review, Solomon is accused of "misuse of data," "a
parade of erratic information all marching to [his]
1. F. W. Mote, "China's Past in the Study of China Today ...,"
Journal of Asian Studies (November 1972), 107-120; Thomas A.
Metzger, "On Chinese Political Culture," Ibid., 101-105; Benjamin I.
Schwartz, "On Filial Piety and Revolution: China," Journal of
Interdisciplinary History (Winter 1973), 569-580; and Richard C.
Kagan and Norma Diamond, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Pye,
preconceived notions rather than according to what his sources
have meant to the Chinese who drew upon them," and of
being "clever ... but ... so thin, so tenuous, so inadequately
informed ... that the ingenuity becomes counter-productive.
I t not only fails to convince; it discredits...." He is further
charged with having paid only "lip service to [his asserted] ...
ideal of understanding Chinese culture on its own terms," and
with forcing interpretations even upon the material he himself
presents.
s
Elsewhere, Solomon is accused of "failing to
distinguish that which may be universally human ... from that
which is peculiarly Chinese" and of dichotomizing traditional
Chinese and Western culture, each to "fundamental
homogeneity and simjlicity," to a "key," a "unified reality
... a single formula."
If this acerbic criticism is justified, and in the main it is,
then why should one read the book? To answer that question,
we must be clear at the outset precisely what these reviewers
are criticizing. First, almost without exception, they deal
exclusively with parts I and II, what I called book one. They
do not even address themselves to the rest of Mao's
Revolution, fully two-thirds of the volume.' Second, the
reviewers primarily reject the validity and applicability of
Solomon's psychocultural categories and the particular
content Solomon attributes to China's traditional political
Solomon and the 'Spirit of Chinese Politics'," Bulletin of Concerned
Asian Scholars (July 1973), 62-68. Since the Kagan-Diamond review
article appeared in a recent issue of the Bulletin, I do not refer to it
specifically in the body of this essay. To the extent possible, I have
attempted to minimize overlapping. I agree with most of Kagan's and
Diamond's points, but disagree with a few, such as their implicit
dismissal of the relevance of authority relations to peasant behavior (see
footnote 30, below). I also strongly disagree with their evaluation of
the bulk of Solomon's book as a "somewhat narrow thinktank piece."
2. I am reviewing the paperback edition, published in 1972, a
year after the hardcover edition.
3. Solomon's discussion of the Cultural Revolution (CR) itself
is quite limited, in fact, as I point out below.
4. Metzger, 101.
5. Mote, 108,110, 112, and 114.
6. Schwartz, 573 and 579-580.
7. The exception is Benjamin Schwartz, who deyotes four
insigh tful pages to commenting on the rest of Solomon'5 book.
46
culture. They do not reject the irrefutable, if exceedingly
difficult to operationalize, underlying propositions that:
1) societies do have different political cultures; 2) the political
socialization of individuals in each society is somehow related
to the quality of the society's political culture; and 3) a
revolution is "built solidly out of, or at least in close relation
to, the political consciousness fostered by traditional
society." 8
Solomon's book is concerned with these issues. Despite
its serious flaws in both conception and methodology, it
includes some of the most creative and illuminating chapters
on Maoist revolution produced to date by a Western academic.
To salvage. what is valuable in the book, however, one is
forced, paradoxically, to reject most of Solomon's particular
psychocultural arguments and to reject his central thesis: that
the uniqueness of China's traditional political culture provides
the explanation for China's revolution in the twentieth
century .9
Parts I and II
Mao's Revolution focuses on two of the central
problems of the Chinese Revolution. First, "the interplay
between the traditional political culture and Mao Tse-tung's
efforts to institutionalize a new style of politics." And second,
"the innovative aspects of Mao's efforts to promote directed
social change in a peasant society, and to prevent the
reemergence of traditional social values and political
practice." 10
The core assumption of Solomon's book involves the
almost explicit rejection of Marx's dialectic in favor of
Freud's:
It is our basic assumption that China's difficulties in
responding to the changing world of the past century have
been largely cultural and psychological in quality rather
than institutional or economic . ... II
IT] his study stresses as the "dialectic" in China's
national development not the conflict of classes but the
tension between established patterns of culture and
personality and the new values and behavioral norms which
Mao Tse-tung sees as the basis for the r(!Construction of the
world's largest political and economic community. 12
Within .this exclusively psychocultural framework, Solomon
develops his main argument:
Whereas the Confucian political tradition inculcated fear of
authority and popular passivity before a literate elite, Mao
Tse-tung has sought to "liberate" the masses from their
r
anxiety in the face of authority and to bring them into
1
1
:
active political participation. While the traditional culture
stressed avoidance of social conflict and suppression of
hostility and aggression, Mao has seen conflict as the basic
8. Mote, 117.
9. Solomon's book must be read selectively or it will mislead,
but it must also be read with informed imagination. For the uninitiated,
reading it will be like skating on thin ice. For those of us who have
some background and. have been mulling over the problems Solomon
discusses, the book is rich in insights that we can utilize.
10. Solomon, 8.
11. Ibid., 1.
12. Ibid., 6.
process of social change, and hostility as the motivating
force by which politically passive peasants will struggle to
build themselves a new world. 13
In stressing the dialectic between "established patterns
of culture and personality," on the one hand, and Mao's
revolutionary "values and behavioral norms," on the other,
rather than class conflict, Solomon is perhaps right to reject a
"vulgar" and mechanical application of Marxian analysis to
China. But his position on the development dialectic leads him
all too easily and one-sidedly to argue in a series of irritating,
at times even laughable, cliches and half-truths about Chinese
traditional culture-that China's political culture has been
unique. 14 As he paints himself into a corner, Chinese political
culture is reduced to psychocul tural categories. Finally, all
caution is thrown aside: China's is an "oral" political culture;
Mao is an "anal" leader.
ls
Solomon's psychocultural "peculiarization" of China is a
product neither of ignorance nor of chance. He was trained in
the M.l.T. school of comparative politics, which by means of
such categories as "traditional," "transitional," and "modern"
societies has had much to say about trans-societal
commonalities. 16 Yet Solomon chooses to ignore this body of
scholarship, though on several occasions he explicitly
recognizes, in passing, that certain of the points he repeatedly
characterizes as distinctively Chinese may well be "universal
aspect [sl of peasant life." 17 His argument about Chinese
distinctiveness, moreover, is, as Solomon is aware, nearly
devoid of the systematic comparative analysis required to
support such an assertion. 18
But then, why does he argue so strongly and, if I am
correct, so unnecessarily and counter-productively the
uniqueness of the core elements of Chinese political culture?
13. Ibid., 5-<i. Solomon does not discuss traditional peasant
rebellions in any depth. He seems to assume they represent the pure
expression of uncontrolled aggression toward superiors, which for
Solomon is the other side of the coin of the institutionalized total
repression of such emotions during times of law and order in traditional
China. Solomon believes that Chinese, with no institutions for
expressing limited aggression and hostility against superiors, faced an
all-or-nothing choice, either undisciplined rebellion or total submission.
Quite aside from the inhumanity of the picture Solomon presents, there
is reason to doubt his argument that Confucian culture lacked
legitimated channels for expressing such aggression; see Metzger,
102-104. As to peasant rebellions, Solomon's understanding also seems
to be incorrect. Peasant rebellions that "succeeded" certainly involved
more than simply oUtbursts of uncontrolled aggression, even if they did
not result in fundamental changes in traditional authority pattems.
14. While in the abstract Solomon seems prudent about such a
vision <e.g., 21-23), in the concrete his analysis time and again endorses
the vision of a unique China, despite passing references to
commonalities with unspecified other peasant societies (e.g., 22 and
514, fns, 5 and 6).
15. Ibid., 521. The reader, confronted with such epithets, has a
choice. He/she can either reject them and the particular line of
argument that produces them, or reject the entire book because of
these intellectual affronts.
16. See, e.g., Lucian W. Pye, Politics, Personality and Nation
Building (New Haven, 1962); and Daniel Lerner, The Passing of
Traditional Society (Glencoe, 1958). These categories, which unhappily
have dominated comparative analysis, seem, like Solomon's
psychocultural categories, to imply that AnglO-American society and
Americans represent the culmination of personal and societal
development. Consequently, they have served to justify imperialism as,
on balance, healthy for the "underdeveloped" recipient.
17. Solomon, 514, fn. 5.
18. Ibid., 513, fn. 4.
47
Certainly Solomon realized he would be vulnerable on this
point, for which many reviewers subsequently have in fact
lambasted him.
19
Then, why? Solomon, I believe, was caught
in a dilemma by the combination of his insights and his
ideology.
On the one hand, Solomon recognizes the genius of
Mao's methods for mobilizing the energy of the masses, and
unlike most of his Western colleagues he sees that Mao's genius
IS not reducible to organizational technique but rests
fundamentally on Mao's understanding of the relationships in
which the Chinese peasant was embedded. Becau'se of
Solomon's appreciation of Mao much of the book, despite
recurrent psychocultural name-calling, is a special kind of
paean to him. But Mao believes that the cause and essence of
revolution is class struggle, while Solomon, on the other hand,
tends to explain away class struggle as psychocultural
phenomena. Standard descriptions of revolution may speak of
mass fury aroused by gross injustice. Solomon usually speaks
of the release of repressed feelings of hatred and aggression. In
Solomon's hands class conflict as a causal factor becomes
psychocultural conflict, which Mao, by contrast, sees as only
one component of class conflict. Revolution in Solomon's
book becomes the product of psychocultural conflict, which
in turn is left dangling, largely unexplained in terms of ruling
classes and the institutions created and maintained to serve
them.
2o
Given Solomon's real, if intensely ambivalent,
appreciation of Mao, the argument that Chinese political
culture is unique is demanded by the author's ideology.21 The
more unique, even bizarre, Chinese culture is made to appear,
the less appropriate for adaptation by other societies is that
Maoist model, which, Solomon so incisively argues, was
developed in reaction to China's political culture. Had
Solomon conceived Chinese political culture, whatever its
elements of distinctiveness, primarily as similar to other
complex peasant cultures, then the Maoist model for
revolution would appear more broadly applicable. If, with
regard to his key variables of authority patterns and attitudes
toward social conflict and power, Solomon had recognized
substantial similarities even to industrializing, or holy of
holies, "modern" societies, there would be no end to the
implications of Maoism for directing radical social change. For
Solomon, "peculiarizing" China was required in order to
"peculiarize" Mao. There was no other way for a scholar of his
understanding to evade more general issues of revolution.
19. Schwartz, 573, Kagan and Diamond, 67.
20. In the first hundred pages of the book, for example, there is
perhaps one page of socio-economic analysis of Chinese society.
21. Since in the U.S. it is considered unprofessional and
polemical in reviewing a book to discuss its author's ideology-unless,
of course, the author happens to be well on "the left" or "the right,"
none of the reviews of Solomon's book outside this journal have sought
the explanation for his seemingly inexplicable peculiarizations in his
ideology. They have instead simply left unexplained the matter of how
so intelligent a scholar could have made such specious arguments.
If one wishes to achieve a clearer picture of the influence of
ideology on Solomon's psychocultural analysis of China, one need only
return to his mentor's "job" on China; Lucian Pye, The Spirit of
Chinese Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). Although I believe that
lumping Solomon's work with Pye's crude book is a disservice to
Solomon, it is important to understand that Solomon's incomparably
greater sophistication and knowledge concerning China serve in part to
disguise a similar ideological framework.
Two related questions naturally arise from this analysis.
What might Solomon have done had he not been restricted by
his ideology? Could a reformed parts I and II support the
remainder of Mao's Revolution? The short answer, I
think-and this may reflect my ideolQgy22-is that Solomon
should have treated China's traditional political culture both as
a functional part of Chinese class structure and, in its vital
aspects, as much less unique. China's shared characteristics
should have been presented along with her distinctive ones.
Then the issue of the relative significance of China's distinctive
political culture as a factor in explaining the Chinese
Revolution would have been more sharply posed. Then
Chinese political culture could be seen as exemplifying in
many ways the political culture of peasant societies and
"Mao's revolution" viewed as one kind of representative
reaction to that type of society.
But Solomon, in his ideological zeal to present China as
critically different, does not accord equal time to
commonality. As a result, he repeatedly makes arguments
about Chinese political culture as though its distinctiveness
were both self-evident and manifestly causally significant.
Writing, for instance, as if peasant jacqueries were somehow
distinctively Chinese and therefore to be explained in terms of
China's peculiar political culture, Solomon argues of the
Mandate of Heaven that:
the doctrine reflects the influence ofa culturally normative
orientation toward authority: a willingness .of the people to
be orderly and politically passive under the control of those
with power, provided that their material well-being and
security were not endangered; but their tendency [by
contrast] to withdraw into a potentially explosive hostility
when they thought their dependency had been
unreciprocated or abused. 23
This ultimately is a psychopathological explanation for
Chinese peasant rebellion and revolution. It suggests a causal
relationship embedded in Chinese political culture between the
people's orderliness, political passivity, and dependence on
authority, on the one hand, and their explosive hostiliry when
their expectations concerning reciprocity were violated, on the
other.
Solomon's explanation presumably is meant to add
something new to the commonplace idea that popular
expectations about the performance of minimum obligations
by rulers are causal factors in rebellions. But what precisely
does his analysis add? And how would he explain French and
German peasant rebellions? By analyzing the political culture
of France and Germany? But, then, may not the concept of
"political culture" so mechanically employed simply be a
self-serving euphemism for some other causal phenomena?
In reading parts I and II, the suspicion that it is just that
is repeatedly confirmed. Solomon transmutes generally
accepted sociological insights into elaborate psychocultural
explanations which purport to increase our depth of
22. In referring to "his ideology" and "my ideology," I do not
mean to imply that the choice between chocolate and vanilla ice cream
is merely a matter of personal taste. We can reason and argue about
ideologies and can try to practice them. We can all agree, based in part
on such reasoning, that fascism is bad, even if we cannot agree that
Maoism is "good." With ice cream flavors, one can only like them or
not.
23. Solomon, 137.
48
I
understanding as they denigrate the humanity of the people destruction of landlord-scholars as a class, has not been a
under investigation. In Solomon's hands, for example, peasant one-shot affair. Second, we' must recognize that even if
anger at excessive exploitation becomes tainted: traditional authority by now has been eradicated, other kinds
j
where there was a sense of exploitation or resentment, the
conviction of having been cheated or misused could
transform anxious dependents into hate-filled rebels.
I
[emphasis added] 24
j
If this is how SolohlOn perceives a peasant in rebellion, what
can we say for his psychocultural analysis? How, we might ask,
I
I
should a healthy, fun-loving, "normal" peasant feel about his
oppressors? Loving?
As one considers these issues, one's suspicions and
animus grow. One wonders what Solomon's provocative ideas
concerning repressed aggression, dependency, fear of chaos
(who looks forward to civil war?), tendencies toward
uncontrolled violence, and orality in Chinese political culture
amount to, besides a mockery and diversion. Indeed, as the
reviewer said, Solomon's psychocultural analysis does not only
"fail to convince" but also comes to "discredit" the entire
i
book.
One should, however, resist the temptation to dismiss
I
1 this entire book, for at a very elemental level something rings
quite true in Solomon's appreciation of Maoism. One cannot
simply dismiss Solomon's concern with traditional culture and
I
authority patterns in China and their relationship to Maoist
style, for example, without at the same time denying much in
twentieth century- Chinese history and in Mao as well. It was
Mao, after ali, not Solomon, who organized and named
1 history'S greatest rectification campaign a "cultural"
I
revolution. And, though the CR was not exclusively aimed at
I
preventing the resurgence of traditional values, attitudes and
patterns of conduct, as Solomon erroneously maintains, that
aim was at least an important part of it.
Moreover, it was Mao, not Solomon, who thirty-five
years before Mao's Revolution was published wrote about
avoidance of conflict in China:
To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship
when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from
principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a
fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one,
an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the
matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to
keep on good terms . ... This is one type of liberalism. 2S
Solomon is justified, if not wholly original, in directing
I
our attention to the quality of authority in traditional China
and to its significance for the revolution. To appreciate this
focus, however, we need not believe that the essential qualities
r
Solomon describes are peculiarly Chinese. Nor need we be
satisfied with Solomon's almost exclusively psychocultural
causal explanations.
r
All we must recognize is, first, that traditional authority
patterns have been among the primary targets of China's
continuing revolution, along with its more corporeal targets.
The destruction of traditional authority, along with the
(
1
{
24. Ibid., 150.
i
I
25. Mao Tse-tung, "Combat Liberalism," Selected Works
(Peking, 1965), II, 31.
26. William Hinton, Fansben (New York, 1966).
,
,
of authority, which may of necessity have been built up as
part of the revolutionary process, must be confronted as well
when they become impediments to achieving the long-term
goals of Maoist revolution. Thus the CR aimed not only at
preventing a resurgence of traditional authority, but also at
assaulting and reforming other kinds of authority: the
bourgeois authority of the expert; the bureaucratic authority
of the Leninist party.
Awareness of the significance of authority patterns in
revolution is not entirely new to us, though we may not have
conceived of the issues in this way before. Many of us when
we read Fanshen
26
understood, if only inchoately, that the
central issue in revolution is not merely one of power. We saw
then that even when peasants had the power to overthrow
their ruling classes they often held themselves back from the
act, because they did not feel they had the right. And we saw
further that errant cadres might subsequently insinuate
themselves into authority positions, achieving a leverage well
beyond their very limited power. We realized then that the
mass mobilization involved in land reform was not merely to
destroy the power of the landlords as a class, or to redistribute
their wealth, or to gain support for the Chinese Communist
party. Mass mobilization also was employed to attack
traditional authority in China. As the first peasant in the
village struck a landlord and others followed, a great crack
developed in the traditional authority structure. But it was
only a crack.
Other steps preceded and followed those revolutionary
acts in the late-'40s land reform. China has witnessed a
lO,OOO-1i march, still in progress, toward new patterns of
authority. The strength of Mao's Revolution lies in its being
the most systematic macro-level analysis of this aspect of the
Chinese Revolution. Parts I and II of the book can be taken as
directing our attention to the centrality of the authority issue.
Part III:
Once we have stripped Chinese political culture of the extreme
peculiarity Solomon attributes to it in parts I and II, we can
read his incisive analysis of Mao's mode of revolution-making
as a case study of certain core elements of revolution. Part III
then becomes an examination of one stage in the continuing
revolutionary process of destroying old authority patterns and
creating new ones.
Solomon makes two basic arguments in this part. First,
that Mao as an individual personality was particularly well
equipped, based upon his childhood and youthful
development, to confront China's failing traditional authority.
Second, that Mao as leader of the CCP has tried to develop and
institutionalize within the revolutionary movement a style of
leadership and "followership" that would confront and correct
deviations from correct revolutionary lines, deviations which
are themselves rooted in China's traditional political culture.
The bridge between Mao as personality and Mao as leader,
Solomon indicates in Eriksonian fashion, lies in Mao's
ability to generalize personal difficulties in terms of social
ills, {in his] ... ability to relate injustice suffered by others
to his own experience . ... {which] seems to account for
49
his effectiveness as a revolutionary leader. 27
With revolutionary empathy and Marxist analysis, Mao sought
popular support in the struggle to build a new China, "a new.
social order to be realized by a fundamental revolution against
the authority system of the 0Id.,,28
Solomon's argument about Mao's personality is
conventional but on the whole intelligent. Mao's frustrations,
resentments, activism, daring and rebelliousness in his personal
life are analyzed as reactions to his socialization:
even for a man who in time had the audacity to challenge a
social order weighted with 'five thousand years of history,"
attacking authority directly was an extremely difficult
thing to do: It invoked those aspects of
personality-anxiety in the face of authority, and fears of
isolation and conflict-which gave the Confucian social
pattern its durability. 29
As Solomon fuses his discussion of Mao's personality
with more general issues of authority, he begins to make his
real contributions. Although his arguments are flawed in
several respects,3 the defects appear in the course of an
extremely rewarding analysis of the Maoist mode of
revolution, an analysis that stimulates the reader's active
agreement and dissent on every page.
Mao's style of leadership, Solomon argues, "grew in
response to the political attitudes of those the Party ...
sought to lead," 31 and" [t] he calculus of [Mao's] ... political
action [drew] ... its 10fic from the authority relations of the
traditional society ...." 2 The energy for the revolution came
from the accumulated anger of oppressed peasants at injustices
they suffered. Mao saw the "linkage ... between the relational
quality of ... social authority '" and the hostility which
[would] drive the revolution." Mao's
own life had sensitized him to the humiliation and sense of
injustice that could come with dependence on those in
power, and this sensitivity shaped his perceptions of social
action. The notion of "mutually related and mutually
antagonistic" was raised to the level of a philosophy of
politics and social change in his theory of "contradictions"
...: the belief that "there is internal contradiction in every
thing ... "; that "contradictoriness within a thing is the
fundamental cause of its development ... "; and that
27. Solomon, 177 and 164.
28. Ibid., 206.
29. Ibid., 179.
30. First, Solomon continues to discuss the authority issue as if
its configuration were peculiar to China. Second, he almost
indiscriminately interchanges the concepts of "power" and
"authority," as if the two, though obviously related, were not
analytically different (compare pp. 182, 183,184,191,202, and 220).
This confusion is damaging to his case, for it is one thing to argue that
Chinese peasants were passive before landlord authority because of how
they were socialized. In such an argument the function of the
traditional political culture is clear. But it is quite another to argue that
Chinese peasants were "passive" before landlord power. In the latter
case, as Kagan and Diamond have noted, it is difficult to see how
political culture is relevant. Realism, not political culture, is the
explanation for such "passivity." And third, although Solomon
carefully considers how Mao has directed the destruction of old
authority patterns, he gives insufficient attention to the nature of the
"new" authority relations Mao is striving to create.
31. Solomon, 164.
32. Ibid., 166.
hatred, "antagonism" IS the motive force behind
political action. 33
Existing authority and power relationships, in other
words, provide the source for revolutionary fury. Without such
relationships there is no potential for fury. We do not get very
angry at people who have no immediate relation to our lives.
And anger, if mobilized,34 disciplined,35 and unified,36 is
indeed-along with raised consciousness and hope, of which
Solomon says all too little-the primary fuel for the
revolutionary motor.
Given his psychocultural biases, it is perhaps inevitable
that Solomon would tend too much toward viewing the
Chinese Revolution as a great, manipulated "acting out" of
traditionally repressed feelings of hostility toward those with
power and authority. Nevertheless, there is no denying the
point that the revolution was liberating in the psychological, as
well as the sociological, sense.
For the revolution to have been successful, however, it
had to go beyond mere "acting out" in "outbursts" of
violence: "Mass hostility had to be organized and subject to
political direction." "[A] n effective strategy of
leadership"-including "the evolution of organizational forms
and a Party 'line' appropriate to historical circumstances which
could be used to coalesce and direct mass energies for political
ends"-had to be developed. In the process, "the Party ... had
to wage a continuing struggle with tendencies to 'deviate' from
a proper leadership line in order to remain the vanguard of the
revolution." 37 Those leadership deviations, Solomon
one-sidedly argues, had their source exclusively in the
traditional political culture. Mao combatted them with
ideological struggle and criticism/self-criticism, which were
institutionalized within the party to continally correct
deviations and to transmit the party's experiences. The
principal deviations noted are the leadership's tendency to
"cut itself off from the masses;" and, on the one hand, the
leadership's passivity and avoidance of conflict; and, on the
other, its "left opportunism."
Solomon ties the tendency to cut itself off
from the masses to the traditional gap in China between elites
and masses. To correct this deviation, Mao among other things
developed the "mass line," which aimed at "insuring contact
between Party cadres and the people" and at transforming
"traditional attitudes about the relation of superior to
subordinate." 38
To combat the related traditional tendencies toward
passivity and avoidance of conflict, Mao sought to encourage
physical discipline, which "strengthens the will" and can "give
rise to a feeling of personal value." 39 In opposition- to passivi ty
Mao posed aCtiViSm, learning through doing (rather than
learning before doing), and his own willingness to dare
authority. To support the self-assertiveness required to oppose
the status quo, Mao offered ideology as "an alternative source
33. Ibid., 167.
34. Ibid., Chapter XII: "Ideology and Organization, I: The
Power to Mobilize."
35_ Ibid., Chapter XIII: "Ideology and Organization, II: The
Power to Discipline."
36. Ibid., Chapter XIV: "Ideology and Organization, III: The
Power to Oppose."
37. Ibid., 171.
38. Ibid., 174-75.
39. Ibid., 178.
50
I of authority" and the "organized group" to help overcome
! "fears of acting in isolation." 40 In his strategy of guerrilla
warfare Mao opposed passivity and fear of conflict with a
focus on gaining the initiative by countering the enemy's
strategic superiority with local superiority and local initiative.
The final deviation of "left opportunism" Solomon
defines as the tendency "to promote conflict without caution"
and attributes to the alleged traditional Chinese "inability to
express aggression with control." To combat this tendency,
rectification campaigns within the party taught "discipline in
the use of violence.,,41
Problems caused by the continuing influence of
traditional attitudes toward authority and conflict were not,
of course, confined to the internal workings of the
party-vanguard. These same influences affected the masses as
well, and the party's relations with the masses. The party's
tasks in leading the masses were essentially three-fold: to
mobilize, to discipline, and to unify. To achieve these tasks the
party employed ideology and organization.
Ideology was used, in Solomon's terms, to transform
anxiety into anger. Mao understood that
Ideology had the power to fuse passion and political
purpose. A revolutionary slogan could give a voice to those
who by tradition had shown submissive obedience. 42
To maintain the momentum built up by mobilizing
anger, the problem was "to transform sporadic outbursts of
violence into sustained political involvement.,,43 One of the
main "answers" to that problem was the "speak bitterness"
meetings held in villages throughout the liberated zones, which
combined ideological study and organized class struggle.
This combination {made] people politically
"conscious" in the sense of bringing together the
perception of mistreatment and injustice with the repressed
emotion. The separation of thought and feeling which
Confucian culture had made the basis of "cultivated"
behavior was brought to an end.
44
Quoting liberally (no pun originally intended) from
Fanshen, Solomon makes clear how difficult it was for
peasants to overcome their fears before traditional power and
authority. In this tortuous process Mao developed a new
framework for mass participation and a new work-style for
cadres in their authority relations with the masses. In this
"new style of authority" arbitrariness was reduced, popular
commitment was enhanced, initiative was diffused, and
grievances were liberated. The Chinese people entered the
long-term process of transforming their relations with one
another.
Thus the gargantuan effort to mobilize the emotions of
f
the Chinese masses was complemented, as it had to be if it
were to succeed, by the parallel effort to discipline the
righteous fury liberated. Anger was tied consciously to tasks,
goals and values. Ideology and organization were used to
I
r
discipline, as well as to mobilize. Political commissars, for
example, who were "a cadre of specialists in indoctrination,"
were systematically positioned throughout Red Army units to
provide and "sustain the discipline and political orientation
lacking in the enlisted ranks." And
i the controlled conflict of "rectification "-in which Party
! members underwent group and self-criticism on the basis of
ideological norms and operational performance-provided a
way of institutionalizing tbe discipline necessary to
I
h 4S
promote revo utlOnary c ange.
In its movement the party continually navigated between the
Scylla of insufficient mobilization and the Charybdis of
uncontrolled mobilization.
Mao's strategy for victory was designed to show how
those who temporarily were weak could defend themselves
against those who were more powerful and in the process
transform themselves into their opposites. This strategy
prescribed disintegration and isolation for the enemy and
unity for the party and people. As to the enemy, Mao
manipulated the traditional legacy of internal cleavages to
divide and disorganize its already fragmented forces. Seeking
out contradictions within the enemy forces, Mao exploited
divisions within the opposition elites and between those elites
and their mass following to fragment elites and isolate them
from their popular support. While straining to divide and
isolate the enemy, Mao's strategy sought to build a coalition of
progressive forces with the CCP at its core:
The dynamic aspect of Mao's approach to building a unity
of revolutionary forces derives from his belief that people
are sustained in their political involvement through the
tension of conflict with their oppressors: "Struggle is the
means to unity and unity is the aim of struggle. If unity is
sought through struggle, it will live; if unity is sought
through yielding, it will perish." The tactical problem
confronting the leadership in implementing this conception
is first to identify the proper enemy and then to invoke his
"contradiction" with uncommitted social groups in order
to mobilize and build a base ofpopular support. 46
The creative edge of leadership is the ability to perceive the
social issues which can be used to mobilize different social
groups and separate them from tbe Party's enemies In
creating the broadest base of popular support. 47
These are some of Solomon's essential arguments in Part
III. Throughout these chapters Solomon attempts to show that
Maoist methods are simply ingenious reactions to the peculiar
Chinese context .in which the Chinese Communists found
themselves. While this argument obviously is true in one sense,
it remains unconvincing in precisely the senses in which
Solomon means it. In the final analysis Solomon fails to
persuade us that these methods are peculiarly Chinese answers
to peculiarly Chinese problems-though they, like the Chinese
Revolution itself, were more or less unprecedented.
Take three of Solomon's basic psychocultural arguments
about "Mao's Revolution." First, that anger could be
40. Ibid., 179.
41. Ibid, 184.
42. Ibid., 195. With regard to Solomon on peasant rebellions, see
fn 13 above.
43. Idem.
44. Ibid., 196.
45. Ibid., 214.
46. Ibid., 239.
47. Ibid., 240. Notwithstanding Solomon's overwhelming
emphasis on conflict, Maoism, as a revolutionary fonn of coalition
politics, does not simply stress conflict. It also encourages alliances, if
not harmony.
51
mobilized as the motor force for revolution in China because
China's traditional political culture had prevented the institu
tionalized expression of any anger toward authority figures by
"dependents," thereby creating the potential for the
purposeful, disciplined liberation of that repressed fury.
Second, that because traditional political culture emphasized
the avoidance of conflict, conflict in China tended either to be
repressed or to lead to chaos, and that this tendency was
reflected in the party's repeated swings between avoidance of
struggle and "left opportunism." Third, that the Maoist
political and military tactic of isolating the enemy was potent
because it struck a psychocultural need for dependency shared
by all Chinese.
The best that can be said for these arguments is that
they are provocative but unconvincing. The effects Solomon
seeks to explain in terms of psychocpltural causation can be
better explained in other terms and, in any case, are not
distinctively Chinese. Which great revolution, for example, was
not driven primarily by the fury of the exploited? The French
Revolution? The Russian? Were the French and Russian
cultures disguised Confucian cultures? Similarly, are the swings
between adventurism and capitulationism in any sense peculiar
to China? Have not all revolutionary movements swung
between these two poles? If so, is that not first because every
revolution is repeatedly confronted by the twin dangers of
insufficient mobilization of emotions and inadequate control
of released emotions? And second because, in coping with
these dangers, the delicate balance demanded between mob!li
zation and discipline can only be learned through practice
and, in any event, changes over time? Finally, is the
subordinate's dependency upon the superior in an authority
relationship peculiar to China? Quite to the contrary, I had
thought that all authority relations by definition involve this
dependency and deference. Solomon's extreme "peculiari
zation" of the Chinese form of dependence seeks to
"peculiarize" Mao's political-military strategy for victory. But
it does not succeed, as this commonsensical Maoist quote upon
which Solomon relies shows:
Our experience teaches us that the main blow of the
revolution should be directed at the chief enemy . .. to
isolate him, whereas with the middle forces, a policy of
both uniting with them and struggling against them should
be adopted, so that they are at least neutralized. 48
The very effort to peculiarize Chinese political culture and
Maoism again discredits itself and suggests that the problems
and responses are not peculiar but archetypal.
Whatever differences may exist between various political
cultures with respect to authority patterns, no established
social order has ever made its citizens "independent" of
authority or provided its subjects with the kind of authority
relationships that are necessary for revolution. If they had,
these social systems would not have persisted. Each successful
revolution must establish its own authority patterns, whatever
its base socrety, and each should repeatedly find its own way
of dealing with conflict and anger. Mao's continued
confrontation with passivity and avoidance of conflict is
attributable in part to the persistence of traditional political
culture in China. But, more generally, it is also part of the
effort to continue a revolution. The intense activism and class
struggle required for this task are no more (and perhaps no
less) automatically produced by Chinese institutions than by
those of any other society.
Part IV
The energy for continuing revolution in post-1949
China, Solomon argues, derives as before from Mao's periodic
mobilization of mass dissatisfaction and anger with authority
holders, now communists.
49
This dissatisfaction and anger, we
know, in turn are products of phenomena many of which are
not peculiar to China-in general, the continuing gap between
reality and ideals (Maoist), and more specifically, China's
enduring poverty, the inevitable mistaken decisions of China's
leadership cadre, the strains and costs of industrializing, and
the unequal bearing of these burdens by various groups and
classes. By requiring decision-makers to confront the
constituencies they are supposed to serve, Mao seeks to rectify
particular mistakes and, within the limits of China's vanguard
system, to make leaders more responsive and accountable,
while making subordinates in authority relations-"the
masses"-more active and politically conscious.
so
In provoking
latent class conflict through mass mobilizations, Mao
recurrently seeks to regenerate China's commitment to Maoist
egalitarian, participatory and collectivist ideals. By guiding
these mobilizations he strives to head off the future
development of rigidified class polarization through
manipulating the expression of present class and
conflict to reduce gaps and inequalities between classes.
Mao's basic problem, on which Solomon focuses in this
part, is central and sustaining for revolutionary politics: how
to harness conflict in the service of revolutionary change. In
China's case this problem is made difficult, because at the time
of Liberation, the nation was extremely poor. Capitalism had
not developed sufficiently to provide through its exploitative
and manipulative institutions the material abundance and
political consciousness which, had a communist-led revolution
then occurred, might have substantially eased the transition to
socialism. This harsh reality provides the context for Mao's
development strategy, which has to be understood as an
attempt to cope with it. Chinese socialism has been forced by
circumstance to perform vital functions that Marx expected to
be performed by capitalism, which once having fulfilled its
historical role could then be blamed and overthrown for its
horrors. Mao's development strategy is partly aimed at
minimizing the exploitative aspects of these functions.
Solomon, needless to say, does not conceive of Maoism
in quite these terms. He does not agree that Mao's use of class
and other conflict is based upon the underlying reality of class
struggle. In his view, Maoist challenges to authority are
understood largely in isolation from class analysis, in terms of
Mao's determination to transform traditional authority
relations. Nevertheless, despite his framework, Solomon has
many genuine insigh ts into Maoist politics.
Part IV of Mao's Revolution is divided into four chapters
that in a variety of ways deal with the relationship of political
struggle to social change. In these stimulating 250 pages
Solomon focuses on events in the decade from mid-1955
48. Quoted in Ibid., 240.
49. Ibid., 364-365.
50. For a discussion of the issues of vanguard accountability and
responsiveness and their relationship to Maoism, see my and
Masses," in Michel Oksenberg, ed., China's Developmental Experience
(New York, 1973), 157-174.
52
through 1964. The later 1965-66 buildup to the Cultural
Revolution (CR) and the CR during 1966-67 are examined at
the very end of Part IV, the CR itself in less than thirty-five
pages. Solomon chooses to concentrate on the 1955-64 decade
because it was "a period of experimentation and debate among
Party leaders over the most appropriate way to transform
Chinese society." 51 He ignores the years between 1949 and
mid-1955, justifying th is on grounds that this was a period of
consolidation, only the close of which demanded that party
leaders turn their full attention to the critical issues of China's
future development. The equally short shrift given the years
after 1967 is intellectually less justifiable, however, and is
unfortunate even from Solomon's own perspective, for he is
aware that the "new forms of mass political participation"
embodying Mao's "own strategy of social change" that
emerged from the CR might prove to be very significant. 52
In Part IV Solomon is at his best, and that is very good
indeed. He continues to develop his thesis that the quality of
authority relations is a vital concern of Maoism and that
antagonisms generated from such relations provide much of
the fuel for Maoist revolution. Mao's goals, strategies, and
tactics for social change, it becomes clear, are intimately
related to matters of authority. The end sought-a
non-authoritarian, communist society-requires that the
primary means utilized-struggle-recurrently confront
authority holders to rectify them and, in the process, to
gradually change the quality of the authority relationship
itself. If the revolution is to be directed by a vanguard, but the
revolutionary ideal is to eliminate the need for and existence
of that vanguard, we can infer that the means to such an end
must simultaneously work to prevent authority holders from
becoming an entrenched ruling class, while building up the
capacities of the people for conscious self-government. S3
Although, again, Solomon does not conceive of the
authority issue in exactly these terms, he illuminates much of
the ongoing Maoist process of confronting authority. His
sporadic efforts to make his preceding psychocultural analysis
seem necessary and significant in understanding post-1949
Maoism generally fail. The bulk of that analysis, as other
reviewers have noted, seems increasingly superfluous and
irrelevant the more one reads. Even while Solomon writes to
emphasize the significance of the persistence of China's
distinctive traditional political culture, much of his own
discussion of authority patterns and of Maoist assaults upon
them suggests this emphasis is too restrictive.
Mao, Solomon argues,
has remained determined to prevent what he sees as the
"restoration" of China's traditional political culture in
either elite abuses of authority, a new class polarization in
the villages, or an increasing disparity between urban and
rura/life.
54
No doubt, Mao does oppose such developments, but why
characterize them as a "restoration of China's traditional
culture?" Does Mao really see these phenomena so narrowly?
If so, why does he speak in terms of the "restoration of
capitalism" and the threat of the "capitalist road?" Are these
mere Maoist synonyms for Solomon's "traditional political
culture?" And even if this were the case, why should Solomon
accept such characterizations? What is distinctively traditional
or Chinese about "elite abuses of authority," "class
polarization" and "increasing disparity between urban and
rural life?" Capitalist modernization, for example, has been a
primary cause of such increasing disparities: These phenomena
Solomon characterizes as traditionally Chinese have in fact
appeared in nearly all societies in all stages of development.
Consequently, Solomon's analysis of Chinese authority
problems and of Maoist reactions to them have a universal
relevance that the reverence and antipathy around the world
for Mao and Maoism might suggest. All peoples need leaders
willing to attack those who seek to maintain or recreate their
society's ideology as a "language of control which would
heighten the distinction between an order-issuing elite and a
mass that only dumbly obeys..." ss People in
technologically advanced societies no less than tho.se in
technologically backward societies can appreciate Mao's
efforts to create new authority relations:
Mao's resolution of [the] "contradiction" between his own
[high] evaluation ofself-reliance and the legacy of a culture
which stressed dependence on authority has been to stress
the autonomy of the group-to have the individual find
self-realization in a mutually supporting community of
equals, rather than through submissive reliance on
hierarchical authority. . .. [Mao's] personal sensitivity to'
the oppressiveness of authority has led him to seek ways of
shifting power away from ... dominant individual[s] to
the group. 56
[And] group processes [in turn have] ... provided a way
of generating the authority which traditionally had stood
above those in subordination. The search for individual
models of revolutionary behavior in group activities . .. [,
for example,] in Mao's view, enables the people to produce
leaders from their own midst. 57
Ideological unity . .. serves as the basis of group solidarity
51. Solomon, 249-250.
52. Ibid., 250. Near the end of the book Solomon summarily
dismisses these new forms of mass participation. Despite his
understanding of the immensity of the undertaking of transforming
authority relations, he expectably derides the Maoists in the CR as "less
than successful in their efforts to balance off ... destruction ... with
the construction of new forms of political organization consonant with
Maoist goals." (503).
53. Ideally, political authority figures are so socialized and
rectified that they decreasingly regard their office as private property
and increasingly wish to surrender their positions as "the masses"
become increasingly conscious and able to dispense with their vanguard
services.
54. Solomon, 267.
55. Ibid., 174. Solomon's appreciation of Mao as one who
"[t) hroughout his career ... has reserved his most bitter, scatological
irony for those who threaten to transform the ideology of China's
future greatness into [such) a new language of control" is in marked
contrast to Ezra Vogel's understanding of Chinese Communism as
control-oriented; see my review of Vogel's Canton Under Communism
(Cambridge, Mass, 1969): "Revolution and Rule: Where Do We Go
From Here?", Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (April-July 1970),
88-95. Interestingly enough, Vogel in his review of Solomon's book,
China Quarterly (jan/March 1972), 157-160, does not seem to
appreciate the significance of the authority issue for Solomon's
argument about post-liberation China. Vogel characterizes this
argument as "zeroing in on high-level power politics, with a
who-<lid-what-to-whom analysis in terms familiar to any China
watcher."
56. Solomon, 254.
57. Ibid., 257.
53
and provides the people with standards of behavior by
which they can criticize those leaders who "deviate" in
their use of authority. 58
The effort to develop these new forms of authority and
the struggle with such leaders as Liu Shao-ch'i, P'eng Chen and
Teng Hsiao-p'ing that Mao provoked in the process is one of
the foci of Solomon's impressive, complex chapters on the
Hundred Flowers Movement, the Great Leap Forward and the
1960s. Time and again one finds that in the great debates
within the Politbureau and Central Committee concerning the
appropriate strategy for developing Chinese society the
quality of the relationship between leaders and led is a central
issue. According to Solomon's skillful reading back in time the
revelations of the CR, Mao and Liu repeatedly were in conflict
regarding issues of party authority, expert authority and mass
participation. 59
Mao, for example, in the Hundred Flowers Movement
sought not to liberalize Chinese society but, on the contrary,
to set intellectuals and Party cadres against each other in a
critical debate which would expose and "rectify" improper
behavior and attitudes held by each group. 60
His primary aim in the Hundred Flowers was to correct "Party
misuse of power," to expose those with real power and
authority to serious criticism from outside the party.61 "Active
[mass] political participation and controlled criticism of
abuses of authority," Mao believes, is the most effective way
both to rectify leaders' deviations and to mobilize popular
energy and support.
62
Mao's opposition, by contrast, resisted
the public expression of criticism of authority. They favored
the alternative of internal party rectification and resisted
"open door rectification," which promised in their eyes to
violate party authority.
From the dramatic events of May through early June
1957, during which the party was openly and severely
criticized by intellectuals, Mao skillfully maneuvered to
maximize his gains and minimize his losses. The abrupt end of
the open door rectification soon led to an anti-rightist
rectification within the party. And the discrediting of
intellectuals led to the adoption of Mao's strategy for national
development. Thus,
the two-year debate {within the Party] over {how to
implement] "blooming and contending" prepared the way
for the policies of the Great Leap Forward by breaking the
Party's "alliance" with the intellectuals and the
development strategy which that "alliance" implied. 63
Throughout the debate, issues of authority and national
development were intimately intertwined.
Again in 1963-64, as Mao took the offensive against the
N.E.P. of the 1960s, his conflict with party "organization
men" involved the political economy of authority relations:
Mao's strategy for coping with what he described as a
fundamental threat to the socialist economy in the rural
58. Ibid., 258.
59. Ibid., 492.
60. Ibid., 272.
61. Ibid., 287-288 and 311-312.
62. Ibid., 282 and fn. 51, p. 288.
areas was to resharpen class lines and set poor and
lower-middle peasants against the rich and the erring cadres,
in renewed class struggle.... As in the case of Party
resistance to criticism from the intellectuals in 1957 , , ,
cadres were to sh ow themselves highly resistant to this
effort at rectification "from below." Some complained, "if
the masses criticize the cadres, the cadres will not be able to
lead them at all, It's all right for the higher levels to criticize
cadres but if the masses do it, things will become chaotic"
. .. {T] he Party's effort {in opposition to Mao was] to
control the development of the {Socialist Education]
movement "from above," and to direct the brunt of mass
criticism against non-Party class enemies. [emphasis
added] 64
Mao's response in January 1965 to oppoSition tactics
was to issue a new directive on rural rectification called the
"Twenty-three Articles," which superseded all previous
documents and
sharply redefined the objectives of the Socialist Education
Movement as an effort to confront the fundamental
"contradiction between socialism and capitalism" in
China's countryside, The "spearpoint" of the rectification
was now directed at those people in authority within the
Party wh 0 take the capitalist road. [emphasis added] 6S
The opposition to Mao, however, "continued to block a real
'mobilization' of mass resentments against the Party
organization." 66
But Mao, too, persisted in his efforts to mobilize the
masses against those (other than himself) in authority. Testing
party leaders one after another and finding them lacking, Mao
in mid-1966 on the brink of the CR is reported to have finally
warned Central Committee leaders:
When you are told to set a fire to burn yourselves, will you
do it? After all, you yourselves will be burned . ... It won't
do just to sit in an office and listen to reports. We should
rely on and have faith in the masses and make trouble to
the end. Be prepared for the revolution to come down on
your own heads. Leaders of the Party and the government
and responsible comrades of the Party must all be prepared.
{emphasis added] 67
The thread tying Maoist efforts in the 1960s to those in
the 195 Os is firmly grasped by Solomon:
By mobilizing popular resentment against Party cadres, as
was first done in the 1957 "Hundred Flowers" period of
mass criticism, later in the post-1962 "four Clean-ups"
Campaign, and most fully in the Cultural Revolution, Mao
has sought to subject to public criticism those Party
members who manifest in their leadership style the 'four
olds" of the traditional political culture. Such criticism was
intended to reshape the attitudes of the critics as much as
those criticized, by giving them a participant role in the
political process, and by propagating new social norms and
63. Ibid., 327.
64. Ibid.. 433.
65. Ibid., 435.
66. Ibid., 436.
67. Quoted at Ibid., 4874J!8.
54
standards of behavior. 68
Each Maoist wave has produced reorganization, for Mao,
though antagonistic to established authority, is no anarchist.
How far forward the reorganization produced by the CR can
carry China toward communist authority relations remains to
be seen. Maoists know that no organization and reorganization
can carry China very far. Revolutionary politics will not be
produced by organizations but by the expression of class
struggle in the interaction between leaders and masses in
pursuit of Marxist goals.
Conclusion:
Reading Richard Solomon's flawed but very imposing
book calls to mind certain obvious, fundamental
contradictions that Maoist and other Marxist revolutionary
movements must resolve if they are to achieve their long-term
goals.
First, there is the contradiction between the need for
and reality of vanguard leadership, on the one hand, and the
ideal of vesting power and authority in "the people," on the
other. If the relationship between leaders and led is to be
properly transformed over time, each party to the relationship
must, in some sense, be kept from becoming what it
predominantly is and instead be made increasingly to become
its opposite. Thus, the vanguard must be prevented from
becoming a full-blown ruling class and must eventually be
transformed into a segment of the common people. And the
people must be kept from becoming simply ruled subjects and
eventually be transformed into their own governors. This, of
course, is what Chinese institutions like the mass line, the
hsia-fang, and the May 7th Cadre Schools seek to accomplish.
But it is difficult to judge the extent to which these
institutions have succeeded and will continue to succeed in
sustaining a positive, transformative interaction between
leaders and led. Can a vanguard, however much it may wish to,
"lead" its masses to gradually eliminate their reliance upon the
vanguard for leadership?69 More concretely, has Mao by his
authoritative effort in the CR to provoke "an incredible
'revolution from above and below' ,,70 really moved the masses
closer to being able to stand up against "manipulative
authority,,?71 We may believe and hope that he has. But we
cannot be sure.
Second, there is the contradiction between the
achievement of the revolution's intermediate goals and the
persistent need for continuing the revolution to achieve final
goals. Intermediate achievements serve to reduce the mass
anger at injustice so necessary to fuel the continuing
revolution. How can the party continue to mobilize mass
energies to promote radical change
when the Party has eliminated many of the worst abuses of
authority and the sources of social fnjustice which
68. Ibid., 524. Solomon, of course, in this quote maintains that
the CR was directed exclusively against traditional culture. The "four
olds," one of the targets of the CR, are "old customs, habits, culture,
and social thought."
69. While this may be a logical contradiction, logical
contradictions may be beside the point. The contradiction may indeed
be resolvable dialectically in practice.
70. Solomon, 495.
71. Ibid., 512. Solomon touches on this contradiction on pp.
1
258,457,458,476,490, and 517, among others.
I
1
genuinely fueled the mass mobilizations of the
revolutionary years . .. ?72
Can intense socialization in revolutionary values maintain a
sufficiently acute consciousness of the gap between ideals and
reality to generate continuing popular pressure for
revolutionary change? Will class conflict in the future be
sufficient to provide the potential for ongoing revolution in
China even if an increased material abundance continues to be
distributed reasonably fairly among the Chinese people? In
short, do not the very achievements of the revolution make its
continuance improbable?
And even if these two contradictions are handled
reasonably well, there is finally the related contradiction
between revolutionary politics and routinization. The social
pressures toward routinization seem so great, if not inevitably
dominant, that one wonders whether they can be overcome
again and again.
To date, Mao has played a critical role in periodically
challenging routinization. However much one may explain
historical developments in terms of grand social forces, it is
hard to imagine the occurrence of the Cultural Revolution in
the absence of Mao's personal role. Revolutions may be
historically inevitable, but to date they are decidedly rarer
than the maintenance of the status quo.
But if Mao has been vitally necessary to China's
continuing revolution, what will happen when he dies? Can
China produce another great revolutionary leader from what
seem to be decidedly less revolutionary conditions? Can China
produce another creative "conflict manager," to use one of
Solomon's phrases, capable of mobilizing and unifying the
revolutionary coalitions demanded for revolutionary change?
If any country today can maintain the momentum of
revolt,73 China seems "most likely to succeed." China offers at
least the possibility of an alternative way. But given the
problems, one should not be naively optimistic about the
future of the Chinese Revolution.
I am very grateful to Steve Andors, Felicia Oldfather, Jim Peck and
Moss Roberts for their efforts to improve this article, not all of which
bore fruit.
72. Ibid., SIS. Under current conditions it is harder, for
example, to define and locate "the enemy" than it was several decades
ago, when landlords were landlords. In the CR, by contrast, it
frequently was a subtle task to determine who were "those people in
authority ... who take the capitalist road." And it probably also was
more difficult to mobilize the same degree of mass hostility against
them that the Chinese Communists had been able to mobilize against
landlords.
72. Revolting against authority, I have tried to suggest, is the
best way to transform authority relations, though transformation is not
assured by revolt. Lenin came to understand this when" [0) n his death
bed he was haunted by the old Populist fear that the revolution he had
made might have accomplished little more than providing new forms
for old methods of autocratic rule; a 'bourgeois, tsarist mechanism'
with 'only a Soviet veneer' was Lenin's bitter comment on the
Bolshevik regime;" Maurice Meisner, "Leninism and Maoism; "
China Quarterly (January/March 1971), 30.
55
Myths and Realities
by Nguyen Khac Vien
From Viet Nam Courier no. 16, new series (September 1973), pp. 11-14,27-30.
Fire in the Lake: The Americans and the Vietnamese in
Vietnam, by Frances Fitzgerald. Boston: Atlantic-Little,
Brown, 1972 (hard cover); New York: Vintage, 1973 (paper),
$2.25. pp. xii, 661, maps.
l. War and Peace in Viet Nam
Frances Fitzgerald has seen a lot and read a lot, and
Fire in the Lake has the double merit of being at the same
time a vivid report and a well-documented historical study. It
is certainly one of the most interesting books ever written on
Viet Nam.
The author is conversant with South Vietnamese
realities, at least those of the Saigon regime and those of
Washington's policy. In a lucid and crisp style, supported by
solid documents, she destroys one by one all the myths of
American official propaganda:
In trying to persuade the American public to support the
war in Vietnam, they fA merican government officials]
invested twenty-five years of political rhetoric in the
establishment of certain propositions about the nature of
the area /Southeast Asia] ... Vietnam was thought to be
composed of two countries: a) North Vietnam, which was
Communist and therefore intent upon invading the Sout/;;
and b) South Vietnam, which was "a member of the Free
World family striving to preserve its independence from
Communism." (p. 33)'
Editor's Note:
Dr. Nguyen Khac Vien, a writer, scholar, and medical doctor, is
responsible for North Vietnamese foreign language publications. He is
an editor and contributor to Viet Nam Courier, a monthly information
bulletin published in Hanoi, and is editor of Vietnamese Studies, a
periodical on contemporary problems in Indochina and U.S.
S6
A short recalling of history, covering past centuries as
well as the evolution of the national struggle against the
French, easily demolishes the oft-repeated theme of the "two
Vietnams" of Americarr propaganda.
Concerning the South Viet Nam National Front for
Liberation, Frances Fitzgerald directly counters the lies of
American officials and such "specialists" as Douglas Pike who
"tend merely to support the claims of State Department
propagandists that the NLF used foreign methods of
organization in order to coerce a passive and generally
apolitical peasantry." (p. 177) Her rejoinder:
imperialism (both are published in French, English, and other
languages). From a scholar-gentry family, Dr. Vien was born in North
Vietnam in 1913 and left for France in 1937 to start medical studies.
While he was in France, the Second World War had a deep impact on
him and he decided to work among the Vietnamese community in
France for Vietnamese independence, and was one of the leaders of the
Union of Vietnamese in France. His political activities and his long stay
in France gave him the opportunity to become acquainted with the
university and intellectual milieu in France, as well as with French
workers, and his numerous articles and essays on Vietnam, appearing in
journals such as La Pensee, La Nouvelle Critique, La Nouvelle
Democratie, and Jeune Afrique, have made him a well-known
commentator on Indochina to Westerners.
Among Dr. Vien's publications are Kim Van Kieu, a translation
from Vietnamese into French of Vietnam's greatest work of poetry;
Experiences Vietnamiennes (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1971), a
collection of some of his articles, selections from which are being
prepared for publication in English by the Indochina Resource Center;
contributions to Le Tresor de ['Homme, a collection of children's
stories; and Le Vietnam, soon to be published in France by Editions
Sociales, not to mention writings in Vietnamese. Dr. Vien has most
recently been dealing with the problems of U.S. ne'o-colonialism in
Indochina and has been concerned about the devastating impact the
war has had on South Vietnamese society. This review of Frances
Fitzgerald's book is one of the first American studies on Vietnam and
the origins of the war that Dr. Vien has reviewed.
In many regions, "the Viet Cong" were simply the villagers
themselves; to "eliminate the Viet Cong" meant to
eliminate the villages, if not the villagers themselves, an
entire social structure and a way of life. (p. 374)
She also denounces the barbarity of the "pacification"
strategy, already applied by Westmoreland but intensified to
its last limits by Nixon, a strategy which simply consists in
removing from the countryside all those people who could not
be put under military occupation. (p. 376)
Frances Fitzgerald has seen through the nature of the
Saigon regime, which is presented by official propagandists as
the "legitimate, national government of South Viet Nam"
facing the foreign-guided "Communists." The Nguyen Van
Thieu regime is thus described:
Created, financed and defended by Americans, the Saigon
regime was less a government than an act of the American
will-an artificial military bureaucracy.... American
supported governments corresponded to no internal
political forces. (p. 317)
She devotes a whole chapter to ridiculing the
Saigon-style elections, in fact mounted by the Americans to
serve their own internal propaganda (p. 323), and describes
corruption as the raison d'etre of the Nguyen Van Thieu
regime (p. 351). She has no illusions about those marionettes,
those "bad puppets," from Ngo Dinh Diem to Nguyen Van
Thieu. She knows that Nguyen Van Thieu, like almost all the
generals who now command the Saigon army, had served the
French and has been engaged in illicit traffic through the
agency of his wife. With those ignorant mercenaries at the
head of the regime, there is first of all "a total divorce between
knowledge and power," (p. 251) and especially a congenital
inability to offer the country any sort of political solution.
All the Vietnamese generals had to do was to deliver a
stable government and an effective pacification
program-the United States would do the rest. (p. 275)
The author also knows the pro-American politicians,
so-called opponents of the regime: Phan Quang Dan, Dang Van
Sung, Tran Van Tuyen ...
They have had no real influence and provide no political
alternative. (p.241)
The internal logic of American policy is depicted as
necessarily leading to genocide, the total destruction of
villages, and the "forced urbanization" of millions of peasants.
A whole chapter is devoted to "Nixon's war" in which it is
shown how the war, instead of abating, was considerably
intensified: bombing raids and civilian terror (Operation
Phoenix) alike were greatly stepped up.
With the Phoenix program the United States succeeded in
fashioning much the same instrument of civilian terror that
the Diemist laws for the suppression of Communism had
created in 1957-1958. The only difference was that given
the numbers of A merican and GVN troops and the
participation of'statistics-hungry U.S. intelligence services,
the terror was a great deal more widespread than it had
been before. The program in effect eliminated the
cumbersome category of "civilian"; it gave the GVN, and
initially the American troops as well, license and
justification for tbe arrest, torture, or killing of anyone in
the country, whether or not the person was carrying a gun.
(p.412)
Frances Fitzgerald is not content with mentioning the
material destructions, massacres and torture. She also stresses
the liquidation of social structures, of the most fundamental
social relationships, which leads to the moral and spiritual
destruction of man himself.
Millions of people have been forced to leave their villages
to go and live in refugee camps, in tar-paper villages, whose
populations, uprooted and having no occupations to live on,
entirely depend for their survival on what they can steal or beg
from others. Hundreds of thousands of women have thus been
forced to sell their bodies; hundreds of thousands of children,
orphaned or abandoned by their parents, wander in the streets
of the towns, having no longer any family life, no longer
receiving any education, and left entirely to their instincts.
The cities have become "the real strategic hamlets of the war."
(p.430)
This American policy, dictated by considerations of
military strategy, takes on a marked racist character.
In Vietnam American officers liked to call the area outside
GVN control '''Indian country" ... According to the
official rhetoric, the Viet Cong did not live in places, they
"infested areas"; to "clean them out" the American forces
went on "sweep and clear" operations or moved all the
villagers into refugee camps in order to "sanitize the area. "
Westmoreland spoke of the NLF as "termites. " (p. 368)
Frances Fitzgerald has thus brought out the full scope
of the material and moral destructions caused to Viet Nam by
the Americans. She points out the immense difficulties that
South Viet Nam will have to overcome, even after the
withdrawal of the American troops.
Over the years of the war it [the United States] has not
taken money out of Vietnam, but has put large amounts in.
And yet it has produced much the same effects as the most
exploitative of colonial regimes. (p. 434)
The reason, for her, is that American funds have gone
not into agricultural or industrial development but simply into
the creation of services for the Americans-the greatest service
being the Saigon army. American wealth has gone into creating
millions of people who do not engage in any form of
production.
Looki.ng into the future, after the withdrawal of the
American troops, she clearly discerns the main obstacle for a
political settlement.
This reconciliation may be difficult to achieve. The Nixon
administration is, after all, determined to prevent it. It is
determined for the sake of what its officials imagine to be
American prestige to force the Saigon government to go on
fighting for as long as possible after an American troop
withdrawal. . .. Nixon may well succeed in compelling
Vietnamese to kill each other for some time to come. (p.
440)
How to resolve those problems, which are so
difficult and complex? Fitzgerald scorns the plans for
post-war economic development worked out by more or less
qualified experts of the Lilienthal type, for, she says,
"economic development does not exist in a void," "in a
57
society that is politically organized in such a way as to make
all economic progress impossible." (p. 435) The
reconstruction of Sou.th Viet Nam through the agency of the
Saigon government, she says, is in itself an insoluble
contradiction. American officials predict the worst
catastrophes-massacres, economic collapse-in case American
intervention and aid are withdrawn. Frances Fitzgerald, while
recognizing the great difficulties that the Vietnamese people
will have to face, feels great confidence in the latter.
The American war has created a social and economic chaos,
but it has not stripped the Vietnamese of their vitality and
powers of resistance. The Vietnamese survived the invasions
of the Mongol hordes, and they may similarly survive the
American war. (p. 437)
Frances Fitzgerald has faith, first and essentially, in the
strength of the National Front for Liberation, which for many
years has led the struggle against the United States, carrying on
the tradition of an age-old national movement and relying on
national resources.
Their [the NFL's] victory would notbe the victory of one
foreign power over another but the victory of the
Vietnamese people-northerners and southerners alike. Far
from being a civil war, the struggle of the NLF was an
assertion of the principle of national unity that the Saigon
government has endorsed and betrayed. (p. 438)
The author also knows that the NFL owes its strength
to its revolutionary line and strategy and to the policy of
coalition that it has constantly recommended. While men like
Kissinger do not believe in the possibility of reconciliation
between the Vietnamese groups and parties which American
intervention and war have pitted against each other, Frances
Fitzgerald, much better informed of Vietnamese realities, is of
the opinion that the great majority of the people aspire not
only to peace but also to the establishment of an organized
society and the safeguarding of national identity. She believes
not only in the possibility of national reconciliation, but also
in the "conversion" of a large part of elements hitherto
corrupted by the dollar. The "flame of revolution" will
"cleanse the lake of Vietnamese society from the corruption
and disorder of the American war," and the Vietnamese can
"restore their country and their history to themselves." (p.
442)
II. Tradition and Revolution
Of the great problems of American intervention and
war, of the nature and characteristics of the national character
and the policy of the National Front for Liberation, Frances
Fitzgerald has taken a clear and accurate view. We won't cavil
about her details, even when she repeats certain erroneous
affirmations of American official propaganda, for instance
when she writes that the North Vietnamese have created the
FUNK (p. 415), or commits some error of documentation,
ascribes a motto of Mao Tse-tung to General Giap (p. 382),
gives a far too low figure for the number of French troops in
Viet Nam (p. 140), etc. The real problem is not there.
The Vietnamese resistance has victoriously confronted
the greatest imperialist power, which has vainly resorted to the
most colossal and most inhuman means. How should this fact
be explained?
First of all, how to explain the in error and
barbarity which has characterized American policy vis-a.-vis.
Viet Nam over the last twenty years? Without going to the
length of saying that Frances Fitzgerald has ascribed it solely
to a total failure by the Americans to understand Vietnamese
culture, we may nonetheless reproach her for having laid
undue stress on this aspect, to the point of hiding
Washington's true policy, namely neo-colonialism, the will to
crush at all costs the Vietnamese revolution and make an
example of it and dissuade the Third World from following the
path of national and social liberation. In its global
counter-revolutionary strategy, Washington has chosen to
focus its effort on the national liberation movements of the
colonial peoples and to strike especially at the Vietnamese
movement, which is in the van.
Frances Fitzgerald makes the mistake of speaking of the
Americans in general vis-a.-vis Viet Nam and the Vietnamese.
Doubtless there are Americans among those who execute
official policy for whom a daily problem is to grasp
Vietnamese psychology and traditions. But for the promoters
of American policy, Johnson-Nixon and Taylor-Kissinger,
Vietnamese culture and psychology matter little. Their actions
and decisions are prompted by the place of the Vietnamese
national movement in the context and by the policy
they want to carry out in the present-day world. In our time,
imperialism is confronted by a world revolutionary movement,
of which a main component is the national liberation
movement of the colonial peoples. Washington has understood
this and for years has worked out a whole series of strategies,
tactics and armaments and mobilized all the technological and
scientific resources of the USA in an attempt to crush the
movement. Frances Fitzgerald has brought out various aspects
of the implementation of that policy-for instance,
pacification and forced urbanization-but has failed to trace it
back to its source, American neo-colonial policy. The Tliet
Nam problem is also a problem of our time. Fire in the Lake
lacks this dimension, which would have given it greater depth
and the reader a better grasp of the problem.
One should not reproach the author for having analyzed
the cultural problem and depicted the disappointments and
frustrations of the Americans in face of Vietnamese realities,
but these psychological facts are not prime ones. Contacts
between Americans and Vietnamese have not taken place in
the abstract, but within the framework of the implementation
of a given policy. It is the political problem which makes it
possible to put the psycho-cultural questions in their context,
not the reverse. The confrontation between Americans and
Vietnamese has been primarily and essentially one between
neo-colonialist aggressors and a people engaged in a vigorous
struggle for self-liberation, and this during a given period . .It is
not one between men formed by different cultural traditions.
It is not cultural incomprehension that has led to genocide,
but the policy of neo-colonialism and world hegemony
practiced by an imperialist power with a colossal technological
potential and the determination to vanquish "people's war" by
"scooping water away from the fish." The Washington
strategists, indeed, take Vietnamese cultural characteristics
into account only to lick into shape their strategies and tactics.
Even though the French act differently from the
Americans, and the Vietnamese react in their own way, not
like the Cubans or the Algerians, nonetheless it is the kinship
between the French colonialists and the American colonialists,
and between the Vietnamese and the Algerian, or Cuban,
patriots, which assumes primary importance. In spite of the
differences that may exist between them, it is first of all the
multiple aspects of a given national context that are decisive:
the colonialist of 1970 cannot act in the same way as that of
1900, and the Vietnamese patriot who has fought the
Americans under the leadership of the NFL can no longer be
the same as one of 1945.
To leave concrete history for abstract psychological
considerations, as Frances Fitzgerald has done in the wake of
Otare Mannoni, means first of all to commit an error of
method. That man keeps all his life complexes formed during
his childhood is an undeniable truth. Freud has shown that an
adult reacts against people symbolizing social authority
in a pattern of behavior determined by his attitude towards his
parents during his childhood, and we are the first to admit
this.
However, to extrapolate, to extend this notion of
individual psychology to social psychology, to the psychology
of a people, is to forget that one has left one field of
knowledge for another. Psychoanalysts have explained the
French Revolution by the Oedipus complex: the French
people killed Louis XVI simply to avenge themselves on the
"father." Why, one may ask, did they not attack Francois I or
Louis XIV? One can only smile before such assertions.
One can only regret that Frances Fitzgerald, so lucid
and, besides, so conversant with history, has strayed into this
"psychology of the depths" to the point of affirming that the
French conquest of Viet Nam had met small resistance (p.
296). This is flying in the face of history, a history that French
authors are the first to recognize. The French historian PaUu
de la Barriere, who was with the French expeditionary force in
the first years of conquest, wrote:
The fact was that the centre of resistance was everywhere,
subdivided ad infinitum, almost as many times as there
were Annamese. It would be more accurate to look upon
each peasant who was tying a sheaf of rice as a centre of
resistance. (Histoire de la Cochinchine, 1861.)
One sees where "pure'" psychology divorced from
concre1;e histo"ry can lead. There is no stereotyped Vietnamese;
there does not exist a colonizer and one colonized who are
shaped once and for all by the reviviscence of certain infantile
complexes or by a dialectic of the slave and the master. In face
of colonial conquest, the Vietnamese of various classes,
religious and ethnic groups have reacted differently. The king
and high-ranking mandarins of the Court of Hue, caught
between colonialist aggression and peasant revolts, chose to
collaborate with the foreigners to fight the poor peasants,
while the popular masses, the peasantry in particular, faithful
to the national tradition, responded to the appeal of scholar
patriots and conducted against the occupiers a struggle which
was to last from 1860 to 1900. After 1900, new social classes
and strata were born, which resumed the national struggle on
new bases.
Frances Fitzgerald is well acquainted with this history.
She even uses it to demolish the main themes of American
official propaganda; yet curiously enough, she affirms in
another chapter that all that history had brought no change to
the psychology of the Vietnamese.
Before the Revolution:
The Vietnamese Peasants under the
French
by Ngo Vinh Long
Although the United States has been in
volved in Vietnam for over twenty
years, there has been no book in En
glish that provides both a historical per
spective on the Vietnamese peasants,
who are more than 80 percent of the
population, and a firsthand account of
their living conditions under colonial
rule during the first half of this cen
tury.
The subject of this study is the impact
of French colonial administrative pol
icies on Vietnamese peasant society be
tween the 1880s and 1945-a period
that is crucial for an understanding of
the nature of the peasants' determined
struggle not only against the French
colonizers but also against their Amer
ican successors. In his Foreword to the
book, Professor Alexander Woodside
(East Asian Research Center, Harvard)
remarks that "for English-speaking
readers, this book is likely to serve as a
forceful, unpleasantly chilling intro
duction to some very representative
Vietnamese views about what Vietnam
ese relations with the industrial West
have meant to Vietnamese society over
the past century."
The book is divided into two nicely
complementary parts. In the first, Mr.
Long presents a brief but detailed his
tory of the effects that the French pol
icy of land expropriation and free land
concession had upon the peasant; the
resulting problems of tenant farming
and sharecropping; and the roles of
taxes, tax collection, usury, government
agrarian credit programs, and industry
and commerce in determining the peas
ants' living standards.
This history provides an objective
background for the second part of the
book, which introduces moving personal
Vietnamese accounts in fran slat ion of
life in the twenties and thirties. "The
Peasants," by Phi Van; ''When the
Light's Put Out," by Ngo Tat To; "Dead
End," by Nguyen Cong Hoan; "Mud and
and Stagnant Water," by Hoang Dao;
and "Who Committed This Crime?" by
Tran Van Mai are only samples from
the rich legacy of Vietnamese writings
on social change that were produced
during this period and that because of
stringent censorship took the form of
the short story and the novel. "Some of
of the best documentation of the con
ditions of peasant life appeared in fic
tional disguise," writes Mr. Long-and
the prolific outpourings of these tor
mented and often short-lived writers
became a most sophisticated means of
indirect opposition to French rule.
Ngo Vinh Long was born in Vinh
Long province in the Mekong Delta
and spent his boyhood in rural South
Vietnam. He came to the United
States in 1964 and was educated at
Harvard University; he has been
serving as Director of the Vietnam
Resource Center in Cambridge.
September-6 x 9-352 pp.
$12.95Ta- -l. 5.85
November-U.K. and Europe
The MIT Press
The resistance war was a political revolution and not a
transformation of the Vietnamese personality. (p. 299)
Such a peremptory affirmation sounds odd to those who
know t?e closely, as well as from a purely
theoretical pomt of VIew. How is a people's personality
shaped? Is it determined once and for all by some genetic
mystery, a whim of destiny, or is it formed in the course of
and well-defined history? When history stagnates for
centurIes, the psychology, the personality of a people seems to
frozen in a permanent pattern; but there are periods when
hIstory accelerates, revolutionary periods when real mutations
happen in many fields. Men make their history, and history
transforms men.
Let us take for instance the Vietnamese Confucian
scholars of the nineteenth century. Since time immemorial
the idea been impressed upon them that absolute
the kmg was the cardinal virtue of man; to disobey one's
king was the most heinous of crimes, which no other virtue
could redeem. Tragedy came when the king capitulated before
the conquerors and ordered an end to the struggle.
Truong Dmh, who commanded royal troops in the South in
1862, was about to obey the order of the king when delegates
of the population came and besought him to continue the
After long hours of reflection, his heart rent by a feeling
whIch . those with a profound understanding of
Confuclamsm could comprehend, Truong Dinh decided not to
obey his king.
All the scholar patriots of the late nineteenth
century-and there were many-knew that tragedy of
conscience. Concrete history led them to oppose their king,
and the twentieth century began, the monarchy had lost
all prestige, not only because the kings had collaborated with
the .occupiers but also because all efforts made by scholar
patrIots put on t?e throne a patriotic and enlightened king
had ultImately faIled. By the early twentieth century,
Confucianism in Viet Nam, deprived of its leader, of its
keystone, had become a mere survival. A persistent survival
present in many fields, but no longer playing the leading role
that had been Its own for centuries. The national idea became
definitively detached from the monarchic idea, and the
Vietnamese people were looking for a "way" other than
Confucianism.
After 1900, many things in Viet Nam could still be
explained by Confucianism, but they were only vestiges of the
past. This doctrine no longer presided over the great events,
the great trends that determined the course of the country's
history. The Sinologist Paul Mus, for whom Chinese texts
assumed greater importance than Vietnamese historical reality,
might find an explanation to those great events in the
Confucian notion of "Heaven's mandate"; not the Vietnamese
. lived through and deeply felt all the attemprs,
inSUrrectIOns, demonstrations, and plots which had marked
national history since the beginning of colonial conquest.
The story told by Paul Mus is well known: he recounts
how after the Japanese coup of March 9, 1945, which
overthrew the French colonial administration, and then after
the August Revolution, he was surprised to see that the entire
Vietnamese people rejected French supremacy and accepted
with disconcerting readiness the new power, the government
of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam. Proceeding from the
idea the Yietnamese people had accepted colonial power,
he ascrIbes thIS change in attitude to traditional behavior: the
Vietnamese people, in his view, had believed that the mandate
of Heaven had passed from French to Viet Minh hands.
Oblivious of that long history of national struggle waged by
the Vietnamese people in various forms from 1860 to 1945
Paul Mus is unable to perceive that historical maturation which
had radically transformed Viet Nam, i.e., the psychology and
personality of her people.
In particular, Paul Mus did not know, or took no
account of, the history of the preparation of the August 1945
revolution, and the unfolding of that revolution in which
millions of people in the conquest of power in each
locality from North to South. In fact, after the failure of the
various patriotic movements which succeeded each other from
1860 to 1930, the year of the Yen Bai insurrection the
Vietnamese patriots had realized the necessity for the national
movement to follow a new "way." This "way" was discovered
by Nguyen Ai Quoc for the entire people. It continued the
national tradition of undaunted struggle for the defense of
w?ile opening up entirely new prospects by
Integratmg the VIetnamese national movement into a historical
evolution and a revolutionary movement on a world scale.
The economic crisis of 1930, the coming to power of the
Front in France which made it possible for the
VIetnamese people to engage in mass political activities on a
large scale, the careful preparation of armed and political
struggle in the years 1939-1945, the development of that
struggle under the leadership of a Communist party which had
both. !oreseen the events and known how to organize and
mobIlIze the masses, the inter-imperialist contradictions
especially those between the Japanese fascists and the French
colonialists-all that concrete history had led the Vietnamese
people as a whole to accomplish-and not merely to
.August Revolution. Millions of Vietnamese, led by
the VIet Mmh, had participated in meetings, demonstrations
in national salvation associations of peasants, women, writers:
and youth, in guerrilla actions; in attacks on Japanese-held
stores of rice. When the opportune moment came they
assaulted the organs of local and central power rigged up by
the Japanese. The August Revolution and the establishment of
the Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam
were the outcome of that long and great march.
One understands more easily how, in the years that
followed, the Vietnamese people found the strength to defeat
the French expeditionary corps, then the American forces. To
explain all those developments by a nebulous notion of
"Heaven's mandate" and of purely psychological attitudes
(some gestures and actions of President Ho Chi Minh are
interpreted by Frances Fitzgerald in the sense of some
stage-managing to corroborate that notion of mandate from
Heaven) is to bypass true history and purely and simply create
a myth.
. The extent to which the revolution has changed the
VIetnamese personality is shown in the following
document, whIch IS by no means from a revolutionary source.
It is a report sent in 1958 by the governor of Dinh Tuong
province to Ngo Dinh Diem, who wanted to assess the results
of his campaign for the "denunciation of Communists":
Indeed the people are no longer what <they were ten years
ago. Some have been awakened by the revolutionary
ferment. All have matured in blood and fire and become
acutely conscious of their daily interests. The sight of
women and children facing French tanks and machine-guns
60
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Documents and Analysis 1973Paris AgreementonViet Nam
This 96-page handbook provides a basic Price: $l.80(includes postage)
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tracing the Viet Nam negotiation process
since 1954 and assessing how the Agreement
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quently asked questions about the pro
visions and protocols of this newly
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IIThis is the essential pub1ication.
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15, 1973
during the resistance, and the national [i.e., Saigon] troops
recently, and demonstrating to demand general elections,
proves that the people' are no longer passive. The
motivation which causes the people to scorn death and defy
the authorities must be sought in the spirit of class struggle
inculcated into them by the Communists and in their faith
in certain victory. They have a strong belief in their
historical mission, a salvation mission. How many
intellectuals left Saigon for Hanoi at the time of the
regrouping, or, having remained in Saigon, nonetheless look
to Hanoi for their ideal? They are attracted by an
extremely fascinating theory, Marxism, which is endowed
with an immense power and is capable of turning the
common people, hitherto naive and meek, into fighters
ready for all sacrifices.
One clearly sees the failing of a certain orientalism,
which when dealing with the peoples of Asia seeks only to
learn about their past. Paul Mus, in spite of forty-odd years of
contact with Viet Nam, had ignored all that contemporary
history which has profoundly marked the Vietnamese people,
to the point of explaining present-day history by an entirely
out-of-date notion which had become almost alien to them. By
treading in his steps, by taking what he says for gospel,
Frances Fitzgerald has simply let herself be led astray, going
even to the length of affirming that Ho Chi Minh had
"rejected" a "secular, industrial proletarian-based revolution"
(p. 220) and explaining guerrilla warfare by Confucianism (p.
382).
In consequence of that, she not only loses the sense of
present history, but also comes to acquire a false idea of
Vietnamese past and traditions. The traditions of Viet Nam
cannot be reduced to a few Confucian texts. Confucianism
itself, in the old society, did not have that absolute supremacy
attributed to it by Mus and Frances Fitzgerald. Running side
by side with Confucian orthodoxy, the ideology of the ruling
classes, mandarIns and notables, there was a stream of
deep-rooted popular culture, essentially peasant. While for the
official historiographers, changes in the royal dynasties were
the major events, for the present-day historian the many
peasant insurrections which took place along the centuries
assume even more importance. Like peasants anywhere else in
the world, the Vietnamese peasant of former times was a
stick-in-the-mud, often superstitious, and resigned to royal
power, which he accepted as emanating from Heaven. But
often he revolted, too, and, in the daily life in the village, he
rebelled against orders and ideas from mandarins and notables.
While official texts taught about the mandate of Heaven
held by kings, saying and proverbs, which embodied popular
wisdom, said on the contrary:
You win and you are king; you lose and you become
a pirate.
Indochina ResourceCenter 1322 18thStreet,NW Washington,DC 20036
Also Includes
*Ful1 Text of 1973 Paris Agreement
*1954 Geneva Accords
*Major Peace Proposals, 1965-1973
61
and:
The king's son will surely be king,
While the sexton's son will succeed him in sweeping
the alleys of the pagoda.
But let storms and tempests rise,
And the king's son will sweep up dead banyan leaves
from the paths.
One should have seen the buffoon of popular opera
pulling the legs of mandarins and notables to get an idea of
that peasant rebellion, both social and ideological, which was a
permanent feature of Vietnamese history and society of
former times. .
Traditional Viet Nam, contrary to what is imagined by
Frances Fitzgerald, faithful disciple of Paul Mus, was a
community that was neither homogeneous nor static. It was
agitated by a vigorous class struggle between, on the one hand,
the great dignitaries who were owners of vast estates, and on
the other, the enslaved peasants of those domains, the free
peasants, and the village communes; this, until the fifteenth
century. From that date onward, as a result of the
disappearance of t h ~ large estates and consequently of the
aristocracy, the struggle was circumscribed to become one
between the landowners and the peasants, who were also
juridically free but were in practice deprived of all rights.
Within the nation as well as the villages, a complex
struggle-economical, social, ideological-opposed the poor
peasants to the landowners and to the administrative machine
of the regime: king, mandarins, notables. The scholar, the
C.C.A.S. Books in Print
village intellectual, was in normal times the clerk of the
regime, who maintained the people's ideological loyalty. But
when the wind of revolt blew among the peasant masses, many
of the scholars leaned towards the people and this affected
their ideology. Confucian orthodoxy no longer held
supremacy. This class struggle, permanent and often
exacerbated by bad harvests and natural calamities, did not,
however, prevent the nation from coming closely together
whenever the country was threatened by a foreign aggressor.
Perhaps no nation was more divided than Viet Nam in the
thirteenth century: the enslaved peasants of the large estates
were astir, the free peasants and the communes vigorously
opposed encroachments on their lands by great dignitaries,
subordinate mandarins recruited through competltlons
contended with the aristocracy, Confucian scholars fiercely
attacked Buddhism, the State religion of the time. Yet, when
the Mongols, on three occasions, invaded Viet Nam, the people
were one in defending the country. The royal army, local
troops commanded by high dignitaries, and village militia
closely coordinated their actions to wear down and decimate
the Mongol troops and finally drove them out of the country
after winning resounding victories over them.
Traditions in Vietnam mean first of all the collective
labor to build dykes and dig canals, in short to construct and
maintain great water conservation works, and the constant
struggle against natural calamities, which have formed a
persevering and industrious people, strongly attached to the
land which they had conquered inch by inch from a harsh
nature; next, those traditions mean the long series of wars for
1. The Indochina Story, compiled by the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (New
York: Bantam Books, 1970, paper; Pantheon Books, 1971, hard cover).
2. America's Asia: Dissenting Essays in Asian-American Relations, edited by Edward Fried
man and Mark Selden (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971, hard cover; Vintage, paper).
3. Laos: War and Revolution, edited by Nina Adams and Alfred McCoy (New York: Harper
Colophon, 1970, paper and hard cover).
4. Cambodia: The Widening War in Indochina, edited by Jonathan Grant, Laurence
A. G. Moss, and Jonathan Unger (New York: Washington Square Press, 1971, paper
only).
5. China! Inside the People's Republic, compo by CCAS (New York: Bantam Books, 1972,
paper only).
6. Voices from the Plain of Jars, edited by Fred Branfman (New York: Harper and Row,
1972, paper and hard cover).
7. "The Opium Trail: Heroin and Imperialism," compo by CCAS et. al. (Boston: New
England Free Press, 1971, paper only; revised and expanded 2nd edition).
8. Open Secret: The Kissinger-Nixon Doctrine in Asia, edited by Virginia Brodine and Mark
Selden (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
9. Helen B. Lamb, Vietnam's Will to Live: Resistance to Foreign Aggression from Early
Times Through the Nineteenth Century, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972, paper
and hard cover).
62
independence which the people had to wage against a much
more powerful feudal empire and which led them to work out
appropriate tactics of people's war. Then, stress should be laid
on the tradition of the poor peasant who day after day
defended his rights in the village and stood ready, whenever
the occasion arose, to revolt against the authorities; on the
tradition of the intellectual, the scholar, who sided with the
people in moments of crisis. It is this double tradition of
struggle against nature and foreign aggression which
characterizes Viet Nam, and not the notion of a heavenly
mandate invented by defenders of the monarchy, a notion
which did not always find large support among the people.
Even such a stalwart supporter of the monarchy as Nguyen
Trai (fifteenth century) bluntly wrote to the heir to the
throne, of whom he was the preceptor, that:
The people support the throne in the same way as the water
supports the boat; and just as the water can capsize the
boat, they can overturn the throne.
This double tradition of national and popular struggle
has been raised by the Communist Party to a much higher level
than in former times, so as to make it possible for the
Vietnamese nation to mobilize all its energies in a gigantic
combat waged for thirty years, successively against the
Japanese occupiers, then the French colonialists, and lastly the
Americans. By holding out prospects of tot;al social renewal to
Vietnamese patriots and a well-defined future to the peasant
masses, by relying on appropriate revolutionary methods of
political and military organization, by working out sound
strategies and tactics for each moment, the Communist Party
has helped the Vietnamese people to clear all obstacles
victoriously. Anyone with even scanty knowledge of
Vietnamese history over the past thirty years is struck by the
gigantic effort needed to overcome the difficulties facing
them. The NFL is not, as Frances Fitzgerald tries to suggest,
something entirely new. It continues, in a new context, the
China Books
Literature from China &Vietnam
struggle that the patriots had begun against colonialism as
early as 1860; it continues the work of the Viet Minh, and its
successes are due to the fact that at every turn it has found the
correct line and tactics, in the light of revolutionary theory
and practice. The mandate of Heaven has nothing to do with
the history of its birth and development.
In all this there does not lie, as Frances Fitzgerald may
imagine, something irreducibly Vietnamese. Revolutionary
theory and experience, in spite of their complexity, can be
communicated. We are living in a period when many peoples
other than the Vietnamese may find themselves facing an
American neo-colonialism that is as aggressive and barbarous as
in Viet Nam. But Washington, which is pursuing its policy of
conquest of the Third World, will see its attempts and
maneuvers opposed by peoples who know how to defend
themselves. This is borne out by the Cambodian people, whose
tradition is Buddhist, not Confucian.
In the successes recorded by the Vietnamese resistance
over the enormous American war machine, national traditions
have come into play only to the extent that they have been
fecundated by a new revolutionary doctrine. Frances
Fitzgerald gives a hint of this revolutionary reality in many a
page of her book, but one feels that a certain reserve and-the
word must be said-a certain "complex" hold her back every
time she is about to make the step which should have allowed
her to grasp Vietnamese reality. By straying from what she had
seen and felt concretely in Viet Nam and treading in the steps
of Paul Mus and Otare Mannoni, she has got lost in mirages
that impart to her book a depth that is more apparent than
real.
However, we think that in her quest for truth on Viet
Nam Frances Fitzgerald is now only halfway through her
journey.
s
Poems of
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the Japanese Left. News and anCllysis to pene
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trate the myths aoout Japan and her new em
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pire,written by people who are in struggle.
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63
CODIribalors
Luzviminda Francisco is a Filipina studying modern Philippine
history and politics in London.
Mark J. Scher is a graduate student in modern China studies at
Columbia University. He is also working on a book on the
Chinese cinema.
Ralph Thaxton is a graduate student at the University of
Wisconsin.
John Comer is a British poet.
Connie Young Yu is a director of the Peace Union of Palo
Alto, California, and was co-editor of the special Bulletin issue
on Asian-America.
Richard M. Pfeffer teaches political science at Johns Hopkins
University.
Nguyen Khac Vien is editor of Vietnamese Studies (Hanoi);
see editor's note for a brief sketch of Mr. Vien's life and work.
I
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INDEX
1973: Volume 5, Nos. 1-4
Vol. S, No.1, July 1973
G. Omvedt, "Gandhi and the Pacification of the Indian National
Revolution"
C. Riskin, "Maoism & Motivation: Work Incentives in China"
E. Ahmad, "South Asia in Crisis" & India's Counterinsurgency War
Against the Nagas and Mizos
G. Kolko, D. Rosenberg, et aI., "The Philippines Under Martial
Law"
REVIEWS
R. Kagan & N. Diamond, Solomon's Mao's Revolution and the
Chinese Political Culture
M. Roberts, Scott's The War Conspiracy
CCAS and E. Vogel, Funding of China Studies, cont.
Vol. S, No.2, September 1973
G. Porter, "The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam's Land Reform
Reconsidered"
H. Schonberger, "Zaibatsu Dissolution and the American Restoration
of Japan"
J. Fairbank, J. Esherick, & M. Young, "Imperialism in China-An
Exchange"
B. Kerkvliet, "The Philippines: Agrarian Conditions in Luzon Prior to
Martial Law"
Communist Party of the Philippines, "Tasks of the Party in the New
Situation"Idocument
A. Kuo, "New Letters from Hiroshima"lpoem
REVIEWS
P. Scott, "Opium and Empire: McCoy on Heroin in Southeast Asia"
M. Klare, "Restructuring the Empire: The Nixon Doctrine after
Vietnam"-Brodine and Selden, eds., The KissingerNixon
Doctrine
Vol. S, No.3, November 1973
F. Baldwin, "The Jason Project: Academic Freedom and Moral Respon
sibility"
H. Bix, "Regional Integration: Japan and South Korea in America's
Asian Policy"
J. Comer, "The Assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem" and "The Front"l
poetry
REVIEW ESSAY
J. Halliday, "What Happened in Korea? Rethinking Korean History
1945-1953"
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. Selden, "Imperialism and Asia: A Brief Introduction to the
Literature"
Vol. 5, No.4, December 1973
L. Francisco, "The First Vietnam: The Philippine-American War of
1899"
R. Thaxton, "Modernization and Counter-Revolution in Thailand"
R. Comer, "Correspondent" & "The People"lpoetry
M. Scher, "U.S. Policy in Korea 1945-1948: A Neo-Colonial Model
Takes Shape"
REVIEWS
C. Yu, "Chinatown as Home Base"-V. & B. Nee, Longtime Californ'"
R. Pfeffer, "Revolting: An Essay on Mao's Revolution, by Richard
Solomon"
N. K. Vien, "Myths and Truths: Frances Fitzgerald's Fires in the Lake"
Index, 1973, Volume 5, nos. 1-4

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