ABSTRACT
The sweeping entry of Vietnamese students into French universities, their embrace of radical doctrines there, and their return to their homeland to take charge of movements against the colonial power was part of a pattern of voyage and return, of education and rebellion that was being enacted all over the colonial world. By the end of World War I, the French system admitted a certain number of the empire's "subjects". In the minds of the French officials who were responsible for political order in the region, the politics of the North African students were every bit as pernicious and destructive to the colonial power rule as were those of the Vietnamese. Negritude, a literary movement born in Paris, would reverberate through French literature and global black culture for decades. There were as many styles of anti-French nationalism as there were colonies.
