UC Berkeley

This study centers on the rise and fall of a major political-military force called the Bình Xuyên. At the end of World War II, members of the Saigon underworld, seeking to thwart French reoccupation, organized local toughs, farmers, laborers, fugitives, and military deserters into a confederation of armed bands. Between 1945 and 1955, the Bình Xuyên played a key military and political role on both sides of the First Indochina War—first as part of the communist-led Việt Minh insurgency, then as an anticommunist bulwark against it. In its latter role under the auspices of the French military, the Bình Xuyên fielded an army of over three thousand, gained command of the national police, cultivated a six-thousand-member political mass organization, and built a lucrative business portfolio—all in the heart of Saigon-Cholon. As insurgent and pacifier, the group harnessed its military capacity, economic resources, and patriotic reputation to vie for political power. In the process, these erstwhile criminals came to assume the mantle of nationalism and the guise of the state.

Conventionally, the study of modern Vietnam has focused on elite politics and narratives of collaboration and resistance. This study in contrast decenters traditional protagonists, complicates familiar cleavages, and in turn reframes 20th century Vietnamese political history. I trace the unheralded rise of colonial-era violence entrepreneurs—anh chị, as they were called—who came to reconfigure political and state power in the postcolony. I foreground the convergence between the political and criminal milieux, as common criminals often mingled with nationalists of all stripes inside colonial prisons and beyond. This political-criminal nexus was one of the key legacies of French colonial power.

This project aims to explain what made the Bình Xuyên’s path to power possible and how this new reality shaped political authority, governance, and war. The first part of the dissertation, comprising two chapters, examines the transformation of gangsters into insurgents. I show that links forged between nationalist activists and criminals in the face of colonial repression laid the foundation for the political-criminal nexus of the post-1945 period. The civil war between competing nationalists amplified the importance of violence specialists. I argue that pre-1945 relations with both communist and anticommunist activists played a significant role in the empowerment and legitimation of the Bình Xuyên as a nationalist force. The second part of the dissertation, made up of three chapters, tracks the Bình Xuyên’s partnership with the non-communist Vietnamese state and its French backers. As the group cleared the city and the countryside of insurgents, it grew rapidly in manpower, wealth, and influence through clever politicking and brute force. I show how the Bình Xuyên steadily encroached on and ultimately assumed key state functions as it exposed intrastate competition and elevated its own political profile.