FROM HUE TO GUANGZHOU: INTELLECTUAL MIGRATION AND THE FORMATION OF THE VIETNAMESE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNITY (1908-1930)

Abstract

The study examines the migration of Vietnamese intellectuals from Hue to Guangzhou between 1908 and 1930, emphasizing its role in shaping the modern Vietnamese revolutionary community. It seeks to understand how a generation of scholars trained in Hue’s Confucian milieu evolved from reformist nationalism to proletarian revolutionary consciousness through the transnational networks of Vietnamese activists in Paris. Drawing on French and Vietnamese archival sources, contemporary newspapers, and secondary scholarship, the research employs a historical-sociological and logical approach within the frameworks of transnational intellectual history and community politics. The findings reveal a continuous three-phase progression: from the Duy Tan reform movement in Hue in 1908, to the emergence of a patriotic intellectual community in Paris between 1917 and 1925, and finally to the institutionalization of revolutionary ideology in Guangzhou from 1925 to 1930. This intellectual migration represented not merely a physical displacement but a profound transfer of knowledge and identity, transforming Paris into a “school of revolution.” Ultimately, the movement from Hue to Guangzhou signified the conversion of traditional morality and nationalist ideals into organized political action, laying the intellectual foundation for Vietnam’s twentieth-century revolutionary consciousness.