ABSTRACT
When Nguyen Ai Quoc arrived in Canton in late 1924, he was largely a stranger to the Asian anticolonial operations I have described so far. Indeed, Quoc's arrival in Canton by way of Moscow gave away the fact that he was not of the Dong Du school. When he left Vietnam in 1911, he had first travelled to the West (Di Tay) by way of the Suez Canal, much like the man with whom he collaborated in Paris, Phan Chu Trinh. In Europe, Quoc would improve his French and learn a little English. It was also during his voyage to France that Quoc was converted to communism, convinced that it was the best way of liberating Vietnam from colonialism. In making this choice, however, Quoc would enter into an international revolutionary movement that would send him back to Asia by way of Moscow as one of the most important leaders of the Comintern's Far Eastern Bureau. He was charged specifically with promoting revolution not only in Vietnam, but throughout much of what we call Southeast Asia today. Quoc aimed to do this by taking control of Asian anticolonial organisations already rooted among the Viet kieu and the Hoa kieu. At the heart of this reorientation was Siam.
