Category Archives: economics

by | 16 May 2024 · 5:20 am

Sicily Under Spain, from 1479

From Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, by John Julius Norwich (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 148-149, 152-153:

The accession of [Aragon’s King John II]’s son Ferdinand in 1479 was of immense historic importance, since Ferdinand was already married to Queen Isabella of Castile. This marriage united the two kingdoms and created a third—that of Spain itself. Sicily thus suffered a further loss of importance. But a worse misfortune lay ahead. In 1487 there arrived the first members of the dreaded Spanish Inquisition. This had been established by Ferdinand and Isabella as early as 1481—with the blessing of Pope Sixtus IV—and remained under their direct control. It was intended principally to ensure the orthodoxy of those who had recently been persuaded to convert to Christianity from Judaism or Islam; and after the royal decrees of 1492 and 1501—which ordered Jews and Muslims to convert or leave the country—it substantially tightened its grip. Few converts slept soundly in their beds for fear of accusations that they were secretly observing the old customs, the punishment for which was burning at the stake.

Both the Inquisition and the expulsion decrees struck Sicily hard. The Muslim population, which had once been a majority in the island, was now relatively small, but the Jews were many; in the cities and towns they may well have constituted more than a tenth of the population. And Sicily needed them: they were active as merchants, as metalworkers and weavers, and especially as doctors and of course moneylenders. Doctors tend to be popular among the people; but moneylenders are less so and there were, after the middle of the century when interest rates climbed above ten percent, occasional outbreaks of anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, the citizens of Palermo appealed to Spain on behalf of their native Jews, protesting that they were doing no harm and begging that they might be allowed to remain. Their request went unheeded.

History shows us all too many cases of Jewish persecution, and in every case the persecuting country ends up impoverished. Spain and Sicily were no exception. We do not know the numbers involved—how many Jews decided to emigrate rather than deny their faith and how many “converted”—although the converts too lost much of their property, and even then were never safe from the Inquisition. But whatever the proportions, there can be no doubt that Sicily—like Nazi Germany in more recent years—lost a vast number of her most skilled, talented and intelligent citizens. And her economy suffered accordingly.

Another somewhat unsettling trend made itself evident during the sixteenth century’s opening decade: a steady increase in royal authority. For well over two centuries the barons had had things very much their own way. Thanks to corruption, carelessness on the part of the authorities, or quite often simply the passage of time, many of them held estates that were technically crown property, or had long since been allowed to forget their feudal obligations. But those days were over. With every passing year it became more evident that King Ferdinand was gradually tightening his grip. This was confirmed in 1509, with the appointment as Viceroy of a general named Ugo Moncada, who was bent on the conquest of North Africa and saw Sicily as the obvious springboard. From the beginning the barons hated him. Not only did he show them no respect; on his arrival he instituted searching inquiries as to their legal positions—in many cases with extremely embarrassing results. Arrests were made, frequently leading to imprisonment; fiefs were confiscated, including several that had been formally claimed by the Church. Meanwhile, the Inquisition was making its presence increasingly felt, particularly after it began burning its victims alive in the public squares.

…

The events of the last decade of the fifteenth century had changed the civilized world. On April 17, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella had given their formal approval to Christopher Columbus for his voyage, putting at his disposal three tiny caravels—the largest of them little more than a hundred feet long. Moreover, just four years before the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María set sail, the Portuguese Bartholomew Diaz had rounded the Cape of Storms (renamed by John II of Portugal the Cape of Good Hope); just six years afterward, on May 20 1498, his compatriot Vasco da Gama had dropped anchor at Calicut on the Malabar coast. Not only had he found a continuous sea route to India; he had proved that Portuguese ships were capable—just—of getting there and back.

The stories of these three great adventurers are not ours; what is important to us is the effect they had on the fortunes of the Mediterranean. Henceforth the writing was on the wall. Until now, even if the Turks did not make trouble—as they usually did—all cargoes bound for the further east had to be unloaded in Alexandria or some Levantine port. Thence they would be either transported overland to the pirate-infested Red Sea or consigned to some shambling camel caravan across central Asia which might take three or four years to reach its destination. Now, merchants could look forward to a time when they could sail from Lisbon—or London—and arrive in India or Cathay in the same vessel. Meanwhile, thanks to Columbus and those who followed him, the New World was proving infinitely more profitable than the Old, possessed as it was of fabulous wealth, the lion’s share of which went to Spain—and legally too. Within only seven months of Columbus’s first landfall, the Borgia Pope Alexander VI—himself a Spaniard—had issued the first of his five bulls settling the competing claims of Spain and Portugal over the newly discovered territories; within twenty-five years the galleons were regularly returning to their homeland loaded to the gunwales with loot. No wonder the successors of Ferdinand and Isabella had their eyes fixed so firmly on the west.

It was not immediately apparent that this sudden opening up of the oceans on both sides had dealt trade in the Mediterranean what would prove to be a paralyzing blow. Gradually, however, men realized that, at least from the commercial point of view, the Middle Sea had become a backwater. East of the Adriatic the Turks now allowed passage to western ships reluctantly or not at all. To the west, it was still indispensable to Italy; but France was nowadays finding her northern ports on the English Channel a good deal more useful than Marseille or Toulon, while Spain, now entering her years of greatness, had other, tastier fish to fry. Not for another three centuries, until the building of the Suez Canal, would the Mediterranean regain its old importance as a world thoroughfare.

And Sicily, as always, was the loser.

Leave a comment

Filed under Spain, religion, Mediterranean, migration, economics, Portugal

by | 13 May 2024 · 5:38 am

Chinese in Colonial Vietnam

From The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Vietnam, by Tran Khanh (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1993), pp. 21-25:

Two major factors converged to cause an upsurge in Chinese migration to Vietnam in the second half of the nineteenth century. A push factor was the political upheavals in China, which led to its people seeking better conditions overseas. A pull factor was French colonization and the policy of the colonial government to recruit Chinese labour for Vietnam.

After the Treaty of Nanking in AD 1842 forced the Manchu court in Beijing to cede Hong Kong to the British and open five treaty ports to Western powers, it was no longer possible for the Chinese authority to control the movement of their nationals in and out of the country. At that time, the Chinese Government had officially banned travelling beyond the shores of China. Thus China became an increasingly stable source of manpower for labour-hungry Western colonies in Southeast Asia and Latin America. By AD 1860, articles within the Treaty of Peking signed between China and both Britain and France literally compelled the Manchu authorities to recognize the right of Chinese workers to seek a livelihood abroad under contracts they themselves could freely enter into. Dovetailing with this relaxation of laws on emigration was the political turmoil of the times which contributed to the urge to leave. During AD 1850-61 there was a large-scale uprising in the form of the Taiping Revolution. Added to that were the intermittent wars fought with Western powers. The majority of migrants in this exodus were the usual land-deprived peasants and impoverished city dwellers. But there was also a sizeable number of small and middle-scale business­ men, intellectuals, and military personnel.

France colonized six provinces of southern Vietnam (Nam Ky), which constituted Cochinchina, in AD 1867 and established protectorates in cen­tral and northern Vietnam by AD 1884. The two protectorates were named Annam and Tonkin, respectively. From the start, the French colonial admin­istration took measures to regulate Chinese immigration with a mixture of control and encouragement. In AD 1874 a special Immigration Bureau was established in Saigon which allowed Chinese immigrants into the country but only if they belonged to dialect groups already existing in the country and if the groups would provide sponsorship for their own kind.  The Bureau was very active, and as early as AD 1897 it had a department that could arbitrarily decide on the suitability of a Chinese immigrant for work; this aroused such an angry protest from the Chinese community that the administration was forced to close it down. After this, streams of Chinese immigrants could cross freely into Vietnam, and they congregated mainly in big cities.

The French colonial administration allowed the Chinese to deal freely in rice, opium, and alcohol. Other legal rights included the right to own land, to travel without restriction within the Indochinese Federation, to establish commercial organizations, to return to China for a visit, and to transfer their wealth out of the country. Such favourable conditions continued to attract Chinese migrants as in the days of the Nguyen dynasty. Within a ten-year span, the number of Chinese in Cochinchina shot up from 44,000 in 1873 to 56,000 in 1889, concentrating mainly in big cities. Cholon in the year 1889 had a population of nearly 16,000 Chinese; Saigon, over 7,000; and Gia Dinh, nearly 3,000. In Tonkin and Annam, the Chinese migrants also gathered in Haiphong, Hanoi, Danang, and the Quang Ninh province, which bordered China. The Chines here were involved mostly in commerce and service.

Chinese immigrants during the period of late nineteenth and early twen­tieth centuries also consisted of labourers contracted by the French to work in Vietnam. They were sent to excavate mines, specifically in Quang Ninh province, to build the railway linking Vietnam to the southern provinces of China or to tap rubber in plantations. By the 1920s, Chinese workers accounted for 7 per cent of the total number of miners and 17 per cent of the total number of industrial workers in Vietnam. The influx of Chinese labourers contributed not only to the country’s manpower but also to the emergence of a working class in Vietnam.

This rapid influx of Chinese migrants continued up till the middle of the twentieth century. Data published during the period AD 1912-22 give their number as 158,000. Between 1923 and 1933, nearly 600,000 arrived from China. Another set of data estimates the number to be 1.2 million between 1923 and 1951, which was a record at any given period of time during the whole history of Chinese emigration. But the traffic was prone to ebb and flow. The figures were high in the years 1925-30, 1936-38, and 1946-48, correlating with the security situation in China. China was ex­periencing civil wars during the periods 1924-27 and 1946-49. The years 1936-38 saw the beginnings of Japanese military encroachment on China. Going by official statistics, the figure for the Chinese population in Vietnam in the years just before the French left in 1954 would range from 600,000 to 750,000. Variations of this figure for different years are shown in Table 1, estimated to be 2 per cent of Vietnam’s population.

The distribution of population also shows Chinese preference for urban centres and the southern part of the country. Before 1945, some 90 per cent of the Chinese community were residing in Cochinchina, where they made up 7 per cent of the population. The proportions of Chinese in Tonkin and Annam were minimal, 0.5 per cent and 0.2 per cent, respectively. Table 2 illustrates the urban characteristic of the Chinese population in Vietnam.

In 1952 the Chinese population in Saigon-Cholon constituted about 34 per cent of the total population of the city. Their proportions in Hanoi and Haiphong were 4 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively. Besides these three big cities, the Chinese were also found in sizeable numbers in other cities of the South. As mentioned earlier, the border province of Quang Ning in the North also had concentrations of Chinese, as in Cam Pha, Ti  Yen, Quang Ha, and Mong Cai. With towns where large numbers of Chinese reside, they would also gather in particular quarters or streets. For example, in Sai­gon, they are to be found in districts 5, 6, 10, and 11. District 5 is Cholon, where before 1975, 80 per cent of the residents were Chinese. In Hanoi, they were gathered at the Hang Buom and Ma May quarters.

With the division of the country into two halves in 1954, complete in­tegrated statistics were not available for the whole of Vietnam. The South became the Republic of Vietnam (ROV) while the North was the Demo­cratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and it was not till 1976 that they were united under the name of the Social Republic of Vietnam (SRV). By Tsai Maw Kuey’s data, the Chinese population in the ROV in 1968 reached 1,035,000. The French magazine Le Monde puts it at 1,200,000 in the ROV and 208,000 in the DRV in 1970. Wu Yuan-Li and Wu Chun-Hsi’s figures are 2 million for the South and 175,000 for the North at the collapse of the ROV. According to official figures for 1976, the year of reunification, the Chinese population in Vietnam was 1,236,000, which was about 2.6 per cent of the total population. Summing up these various estimates, it can be concluded that the Chinese population in Vietnam in the middle of the 1970s was around 1,500,000, of which 85 per cent lived in the South. The Chinese community made up 3 per cent of the total population of Vietnam.

The problems of estimating the Chinese population in Vietnam contin­ued after 1975 because of large-scale population movement caused by political changes. When the Saigon regime collapsed in April 1975, some 150,000 people left the country, among whom were high-ranking government and military officials of the old regime as well as Chinese businessmen. Shortly after, beginning in 1978, another exodus of Chinese residents took place, with 230,000 leaving for China and another 220,000 leaving for Southeast Asia by boat. This was the result of the socialist transformation of private capitalist industry and trade in the newly liberated South and tense relations with China. The latter arose because of differences over Cambodia, and Beijing exploited the issue of the Chinese community in Vietnam to complicate matters. From a population of 1,236,000, the ethnic Chinese population shrank to 935,000 on 1 October 1979. By the time of the cen­sus in April 1989, the Chinese population had increased to 961,702 but its proportion of the total population had dropped to 1.5 percent. The distribution of this community across Vietnam is given in Table 3. In some areas, the proportion of ethnic Chinese had dropped very significantly. For example, before 1978, ethnic Chinese residents in Quang Ninh province numbered about 160,000, or 22 per cent, of the provincial population. This was about 60-80 per cent of the total ethnic Chinese population in North Vietnam. In the 1980s, Quang Ninh’s ethnic Chinese population dropped to 5,000, or 0.6 per cent, of the provincial population.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, China, economics, France, industry, Japan, labor, migration, nationalism

by | 11 May 2024 · 5:08 am

Chinese Under Vietnamese Dynasties

From The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Vietnam, by Tran Khanh (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1993), pp. 17-20:

When Vietnam became independent of its Chinese colonial masters in AD 938 and power was consolidated by the Ly dynasty (AD 1009-1225), the issue of the ethnic Chinese as a resident community of foreign nationals and how they are to be treated arose. Thus began a form of assimilation policy. During the reign of the Ly’s and the the subsequent Tran dynasty (AD 1226-1400), the us of ethnic Chinese scholars and officials in leading administra­tive position was advocated. But this applied to only those Chinese who had chosen to settle permanently in Vietnam. Those who retained their migrant status could not even travel without permission from the local authorities.

During the Later Le dynasty (AD 1428-1592) and under the rule of the Trinh lords in the north up till AD 1788, assimilation and surveillance of the Chinese community intensified. The Chinese had to abide by Vietnamese laws, conform with Vietnamese customs and traditions, even to the extent of dressing the Vietnamese way. Chinese immigrants were not free to travel within Dai Viet (Great Viet, the name of the country then), particularly in the vicinity of Thang Long, the country’s capital. The more stringent Vietnamese  attitude towards the Chinese community was because the Le’s reign came as a result of having defeated the occupied force of China’s Ming dynasty. The Chinese army had earlier entered Vietnam on the pretext of helping the then Tran emperor to quell a rebellion. They stayed on for twenty years (AD  1407-1427).

This was how assimilation gradually proceeded over the centuries. However, as mentioned above, new waves of migrants in the later part of the seventeenth century strengthened the identity of the Chinese community. It was not just a question of numbers. A new factor had also emerged to raise the socio-economic status of the Chinese. That was the growing importance of international commerce as more Western powers started to make their appearances in this part of the world in the seventeenth century. To understand the extent of Chinese participation in this important trade, let us look at some of these trading centres.

As mentioned earlier, small Chinatowns started to emerge in almost every main city and in various important economic centres in Vietnam around this time. Examples would include Pho Hien, Hoi An (then known by foreigners as Faifo), Phien Tran (today’s Gia Dinh), Tran Bien (today’s Bien Hoa), Cholon, and Ha Tien. Pho Hien, located in the centre of the Red River plain in the north, came into being in the thirteenth century. Due to the thriving business in the beginning of the seventeenth century, more Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans were attracted to this town. The Dutch East India Company sent a trade representative there in AD 1637. The English East India Company also established an office there in AD 1672. Unlike the European and the Japanese, Chinese merchants not only traded, but also par­ticipated in the production of black incense, alum sugar, sedge mat, Chinese medicinal herbs.

The old town of Hoi An, 26 km north of Danang, was reputedly the most busy trading port of Vietnam from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Its rise was mainly owing to foreign merchants, especially Chinese and Japanese, who controlled the external trade since native Vietnamese were not active in the seafaring business. European traders who called at this port in the seventeenth century related that Hoi An town had two special quarters: one Chinese and other Japanese, with each ruled by a Vietnamese governor.

According to Le Qui Don, a renowned historian of that time,  commerce and handicraft were the two main livelihoods of Hoi An’s Chinese residents. They bought brass utensils transported there by European vessels and resold them in their own quarters. The seven-month long trading season began approximately  with each new year and the natives would bring their prod­ucts here for sale, things such as raw and processed silk, various kinds of wood and spices, and rice. Vessels from China arrived loaded with porcelain, paper, tea, silver bars, arms, sulphur, saltpeter, lead, and lead oxide. According to another source of history, the amount of gold extracted in South Vietnam was mainly for export. Chinese merchants from Hoi An bought over this volume to export. Gold, which was reserved entirely for export, was monopolized by the Chinese merchants of the town. Historic documents stated that by the eighteenth century (AD 1714), Chinese merchants of Hoi An established the Sea Trading Association. This was probably the first in stance of institution-building by the Chinese migrants. There were in AD 1768 nearly 6,000 Chinese, most of whom were engaged in trading.

Chinese-dominated trading centres have their ups and downs, a result of political changes within Vietnam and the Chinese community’s relationship with the ruling powers of the time. This relationship and the status of the community was sometimes a function of state-to-state relations between China and Vietnam. Cholon, which is today still famous as a hub of Chi­nese economic activities, was one such example. It began as a small settlement of villages 5 km. from Saigon, born of the Tay Son rebellion, which began in the early 1760s and ended with its leaders taking over the whole country in AD 1788. In order to escape the ravages of the Tay Son uprising, in AD 1778 a group of Chinese moved from their settlement in Tran Bien (today’s Bien Hoa), northeast of Saigon, to a place that came to be known as Cholon (today’s districts 5 and 6 of Ho Chi Minh City), southwest of Saigon. This land was given to them by Le Van Duyet, the lord of that area and who was opposed to the Tay Son rebels. In AD 1792, during the reign of Tay Son, there was a massacre of the Chinese in Cholon.

There were explanations to account for the Tay Son period, both dur­ing their uprising and when they were in power, this being a difficult time for the ethnic Chinese. The latter were on the wrong side since they were generally supportive of the Nguyen lords, the corrupt ruling order which the Tay Son leaders were seeking to overthrow. The Nguyen lords, and the imperial court at Hue that they controlled, had allowed Chinese migrants into the country and to prosper in their business. This effete regime was also heavily steeped in Confucianism and patterned on the Chinese imperial court, influences which the Tay Son leaders sought to remove. Furthermore, the Tay Son rebellion took its roots from widespread peasant discontent and the Chinese, a distinctive urban elite, were therefore a natural target. Finally, the Nguyen lords called on the assistance of the Qing emperor in China to help fight the rebels, and in AD  1788 an army from China invaded. It was defeated, however, but it must have added to anti-Chinese feelings within the Tay Son movement.

In AD 1802 the Tay Son dynasty was toppled by Nguyen Anh, one of the last Nguyen lords. Nguyen Anh then established the Nguyen dynasty, declared himself Emperor Gia Long, and reverted to a Confucian orthodoxy patterned after the Qing court in China. Chinese business activities flourished under the Nguyens. By the time the French acquired South Vietnam as a colony of Cochinchina in AD 1867, Cholon had 500 tiled houses, two man-made canals, and five bridges under construction, including one of iron. The quay along the Arroyo Chinois was covered with warehouses and shipyards. In the centre of the town was placed a fountain of Chinese design, and the streets were lit by lamps using coconut oil.

The Nguyen rulers used Chinese merchants in the collection of taxes, encouraged them to set up shipyards to build boats and ships, allowed them to buy houses, acquire land, and foorm their own social and economic organizations. Historical records show that in some economic sectors, the Chinese were even more favored than the Vietnamese. They could, for example, build ships of any capacity while the Vietnamese were allowed to build only small ships. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Nguyen court exempted new Chinese immigrants from all taxes in the first three years after their arrival. Such preferential treatment for the Chinese community helped them to expand their economic power. It also encouraged further immigration by the Chinese.

What was the motivation of the Nguyen court for encouraging the Chinese? First, the increasing wealth of the Chinese community served the interest of Vietnam’s ruling class. Officials got financial spinoffs from Chi­nese businesses. The Chinese also brought useful handicraft skills. There were also common strategic interests at that time as Asian countries were starting to experience the encroachment of Western imperial powers. For Vietnam, a bigger and stronger China next door may be useful to fend off Western powers.

Besides commerce, the Chinese in Vietnam were also actively involved in investment and mining. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Chinese operated 124 mines in the North on lease. They recruited their own miners, mostly new arrivals from China. Materials extracted from these mines, such as iron and coal, were generally for export with a small propor­tion reserved as tax payment to the Vietnamese authorities. Despite measures by local authorities to restrict Chinese miners, their numbers rose to 700-800 at times. It was a general tendency then for successful Chinese mine formen to return to China or revert to trading after having reaped huge profits from mining. Even though Chinese mining entrepreneurs paid taxes to the royal court and also reinvested part of their earnings, the overall participation of the Chinese in mining represented a loss rather than a gain of capital for Vietnam. Chinese leasing of mines was subsequently prohibited by law when the French colonized the country.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, China, economics, Japan, language, migration, military, nationalism, Netherlands, Vietnam

by | 9 May 2024 · 6:02 am

Early Chinese Emigration to Vietnam

From The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Vietnam, by Tran Khanh (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1993), pp. 14-16:

Chinese contacts with the Indochina peninsula began in 1110 BC during the sixth year of the reign of King Cheng, the second ruler of the Zhou dynasty. During the third century BC the first emperor of the Qin dynasty (221-225 BC), Shih Huang Ti conquered the area that is North Vietnam today. Thus began the long period of Chinese colonization and it also resulted in the first massive migration of Chinese into Vietnam. In 214 BC nearly half a million Chinese troops and fugitives were resettled in the north­ern part of Vietnam.

After the crushing of the Vietnamese uprising by the two Trung sisters (popularly referred to in Vietnam as Hai Ba Trung), the Western Han dynasty (140-87 BC), which ruled China at that time sent peasants and soldiers to resettle on land further to the south, where the Chinese prefecture of Giao Chi, Cuu Chan, and Nhat Nam were located. Among these mi­grants were Chinese scholars and government officials.

Throughout the period of Chinese colonization, which spanned ten centuries, Vietnam was to become one of the big receiving countries of Chinese migrants. Historical documents stated that Vietnam, after having regained independence from China in the tenth century AD, returned 87,000 Chinese nationals to China. A large number of other Chinese requested permanent resettlement in Vietnam and were granted permission to do so by the Vietnamese state. A large proportion of this group were registered into the Vietnamese head-tax book and were treated as Vietnamese.

From the tenth century on, when successive wars of aggression were waged against Vietnam by the Song (tenth and eleventh centuries), the Yuan (thirteenth century), the Ming (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), and the Qing (eighteenth century), new waves of Chinese immigration took place. In AD 1279, for example, when the Song dynasty was about to be toppled by the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty, many civilian and military officials of the Chinese court fled to Vietnam with their families, relatives, and dependents. The Vietnamese Tran dynasty (AD 1226-1400) allowed them to settle permanently in Vietnam.

Then there was the Ming occupation (AD 1407-1427) and in the war of liberation against the Chinese court, large numbers of Chinese soldiers were captured and they chose to remain in Vietnam. They were placed under strict supervision, however, and were not allowed to change residence within Vietnamese territory. From that time on, the Dai Viet government (Great Vietnam, then the name of Vietnam) started to enforce an assimilation policy which went as far as making the Chinese adopt the Vietnamese way of dressing.

The next influx came after the Ming dynasty in China was usurped by the Manchus, who set up the Qing dynasty in AD 1644. According to the Dai Nam Chronicle, in AD 1679, about 3,000 Chinese officers, soldiers, and their families landed at Thuan An (today’s Thua Thien province near Hue) in central Vietnam and proceeded to ask the Vietnamese court at Hue for land to farm in return for which they would pay tax. The court was recep­tive and gave them land on what is today known as Dong Nai in newly acquired territory to the south, popularly known in Vietnamese as Nam Ky or Nam Bo.

The Dong Nai plain was then called Dong Pho and historical records show that by the end of the seventeenth century, Chinese merchants and artisans had cleared land and founded villages in this area, currently the districts of Binh Thach, Phu Nhuan, and Bien Hoa on the fringe of Ho Chi Minh City. These were known as Minh Huong villages, a term referring to descendants of Ming loyalists. More Chinese migrants were attracted to these villages by the bustling atmosphere and thriving business climate. They also attracted merchants from Japan, the Arabic countries, India, and even as far as Europe.

Another influx of Chinese refugees came at the end of the seventeenth century and they settled in what was then Cambodian territory in the south­ern tip of present-day Vietnam. Most significant among them were 400 military officers and soldiers led by Mac Cuu (Mo Jiu), who was given suzerainty in AD 1708 over the territory known as Ha Tien, in return for which Mac Cuu had to pay homage to the Vietnamese court at Hue. The Nguyen lords who then controlled the southern half of the country in the name of the Le dynasty appointed Mac Cuu as Lord of Ha Tien despite protests from Cambodia. Mac Cuu’s men settled in both Vietnamese and Cambodian territory. After his death in AD 1735, his son Mac Ti Tri continued to be recognized by the Nguyen lords as Lord of Ha Tien. Mac Tien Tri opened markets as well as encouraged the development of commerce and handicraft. He also founded schools to teach the Chinese language. Ha Tien thus gradually became a commercial port and a centre for the diffusion of Chinese culture into South Vietnam in the eighteenth century.

Thus by the end of the seventeenth century, Chinese settlements con­centrated in Nam Ky (south). Prior to this, Chinese migration was a gradual process and the migrants would tend to assimilate over the years. It was only from this time that there was a critical mass of Chinese migrants which together with steady inflows from China thereafter, hastened the formation of a distinct and relatively permanent Chinese community within Vietnam­ese society. Small Chinatowns sprouted in or close to almost every big city and major trading centre. The settlement patterns of the Chinese were also becoming more complex as the increasing numbers allowed them to con­gregate according to dialect groups or kinship or even the causes which led to their leaving China. Their growing economic sophistication also meant the creation of institutions to regulate business activities and some of these were in turn meshed with traditional Chinese allegiance according to kinship or birthplace. For instance, there existed in Vietnam’s Chinese popula­tion, the bang, which are communities based on dialect groups, clans, and secret societies. There were also respective Chambers of Commerce to regulate business practices.

It would be useful to know the proportion of the Chinese community within the larger Vietnamese population during that time but unfortunately no  definitive statistics are available as no census was ever conducted before the  colonial period. Nevertheless, a number of publications estimated the Chinese population in Vietnam in the first half of the nineteenth century to be in the tens of thousands or less than 100,000. In Tonkin (the French term for the northern part of Vietnam), there was said to be about 20,000-30,000 Chinese, the majority of whom worked in the mines.

Leave a comment

Filed under China, Vietnam, military, language, migration, labor, nationalism, economics

by | 8 May 2024 · 4:50 am

Studies of Chinese in Vietnam

From The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Vietnam, by Tran Khanh (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1993), pp. 1-7.

Close to twenty years have passed since South Vietnam was liberated in 1975. The economy of a re-unified Vietnam, however, is still poverty-ridden. One of the reasons for this is the lack of effectiveness in the use of private domestic resources. particularly that of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Before 1975, Chinese capital, entrepreneurship, and skilled manpower in South Vietnam played an important role in the development of domestic markets and international trade. After 1975, however, Chinese participation in the Vietnamese economy underwent a decline brought about by the socialist transformation of the South and an exodus of capital. However, the residual economic potential of the Chinese who have remained in Vietnam is still considerable.

Under doi moi, which is the programme of economic and political reforms in Vietnam, there is evidence that the Chinese are once again contributing significantly to the expansion of internal markets and capital accumulation for small-scale industrial development. Accordingly, the role which the Chinese have played in the past and are beginning to play again seems eminently worthy of study.

…

A survey of the literature on the role of the Chinese in Vietnam’ economy indicates that between 1964 and 1975, the Chinese community in South Vietnam flourished and prospered. Furthermore, during this period the Chinese community underwent important changes, both qualitatively and quantitatively: Chinese businesses, for instance, grew and became more diversified as reflected in the growth of Chinese-owned capital and in terms of the occupational structure of the community. After 1975, however, political changes in the South following the fall of Saigon resulted in a change in the fortunes of the ethnic Chinese and the part that they played in the economy of a unified Vietnam.

The situation of the Chinese in Vietnam after 1975 and the economic ups and downs which they faced have been little researched. Nevertheless, the Chinese community has undoubtedly experienced considerable changes as a result of the political and economic changes that have taken place in Vietnam since 1975. There are no readily available Vietnamese documents, reference books, and research papers in libraries or even specific research centres inside and outside the country covering this period in any great detail, although this is, to some extent, now slowly changing with new governmental policies on access to hitherto restricted official sources of information. Where information exists, the data are not always comparable in the post-1975 period, and comparisons with data from the pre-1975 period are even more problematic because of gaps in the data, different methods of data gathering, and so on. Despite such difficulties, a study of the economic position of the Chinese in Vietnam especially after 1975 is much needed, precisely because so little is known about it.

The topic is large and complex, and it would not be possible, in a single study, to deal with all aspects of the Chinese in Vietnam after 1975. Thus, the present study attempts to focus specifically on changing patterns of Chinese involvement in the economy of Vietnam as well as the impact of changes in the overall Vietnamese economy on the Chinese business system in the country. In dealing with this in the post-1975 period, it is necessary, however, to review the situation of the Chinese before 1975 so that the changes experienced by the Chinese in more recent times may be better understood.

Leave a comment

Filed under China, economics, migration, scholarship, Vietnam, war

by | 7 May 2024 · 7:03 am

Sicilian Slave Revolts vs. Romans

From Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, by John Julius Norwich (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 36-39:

One thing is certain: that the Romans treated Sicily with little respect. That monstrous inferiority complex to which they always gave way when confronted with Greek culture led to exploitation on a colossal scale. A few Greek cities managed to retain a measure of independence, but much of the island was taken over by the latifundia: those vast landed estates, owned by absentee Roman landlords, setting a pattern of land tenure which was to ruin Sicilian agriculture for the next 2,000 years. Liberty, meanwhile, was almost extinguished as the slave gangs toiled naked in the fields, sowing and harvesting the grain for Rome.

It was thus hardly surprising that the second half of the century should have seen two great slave revolts. Tens of thousands of men, women and children had been sold into slavery during the third-century Sicilian wars, tens of thousands more as a result of warfare on the mainland in the century following. Meanwhile, the Hellenistic east was in a state of turmoil. The tidy distribution of territories among Alexander’s generals was a thing of the past; Asia Minor, Egypt and Syria were now torn apart by dynastic struggles. This meant prisoners, both military and political, a vast proportion of whom, with their families, were swept up by the slave traders and never heard of again. And in Sicily, still steadily developing its agriculture, a strong and healthy worker would fetch a more than reasonable price.

The slave population was in consequence dangerously large, but it gave the authorities little cause for alarm. After all, mass revolts were rare indeed. Almost by definition, slaves—branded, beaten and frequently chained together—were permanently demoralized by the life they led, while the conditions under which they were kept normally made any consultation and planning between them impossible. On the other hand, it should be remembered that many of those who had landed up in Sicily were intelligent and educated, and nearly all of them spoke Greek. And just sometimes, out of sheer desperation, they were driven to action.

The first revolt began, so far as we can gather, in 139 B.C. on the estates of a certain Damophilus of Enna, “who surpassed the Persians in the sumptuousness and costliness of his feasts” and whose slaves most understandably resolved to kill him. Before doing so, however, they consulted another slave, a Syrian named Eunus, who was generally believed to possess magic, or at least oracular, powers. Would the gods, they asked him, give their blessing to such a plan? Eunus’s reply was as categorical as any of them could have wished. He personally marched into Enna with a following of some four hundred fellow slaves; the murder, rape and plunder lasted for several hours. Damophilus and his termagant wife, Megallis, were away in their country villa, but were quickly brought back to the city; he was killed at once, she was handed over to her own female slaves, who tortured her and then flung her from the roof. Eunus had meanwhile been proclaimed King, making his mistress (and former fellow slave) Queen at his side.

Once started, the revolt spread like wildfire. A certain Cleon, a Cilician herdsman working near Agrigento, joined Eunus with 5,000 men of his own; soon they were at Morgantina, then at Taormina. By this time their numbers probably approached the 100,000 mark, though we shall never know for sure. Another mystery is why, in contrast to the speed and efficiency they showed in dealing with similar but much smaller uprisings in Italy, the Romans were so unconscionably slow in sending troops to restore order. Admittedly they had other preoccupations at home and abroad, but the truth is that all through their history the Romans consistently underestimated Sicily; the fact that it was not part of the Italian peninsula but technically an offshore island seemed to lower it in their estimation. Had they properly considered the scale and importance of what was going on, had they sent an adequate force of trained soldiers to the island as soon as the first reports arrived, Eunus and his followers would hardly have stood a chance. As things turned out, it was not until 132 B.C.—seven years after its beginning—that the revolt was finally crushed. The prisoners taken at Taormina were tortured; their bodies, living or dead, were flung from the battlements of the citadel. Their leader, after wandering for some time at liberty, was finally captured and thrown into prison, where he died soon afterward. The vast majority of the rebels, however, were released. They no longer constituted a danger—and, after all, if life were to go on as it always had, slaves were a vital commodity.

Unlike the first, the second slave revolt had a specific cause other than general dissatisfaction. It began in 104 B.C., when Rome was once again under severe pressure, this time from Germanic tribes to the north. In order to deal more efficiently with these, she appealed for military assistance from Nicomedes III, King of Bithynia in Asia Minor.*2 Nicomedes replied that he unfortunately had no young men to spare, thanks to the activities of the slave traders who were seizing so many of them and who were actually protected by the Roman authorities. At this the horrified Senate ordered that all those of Rome’s “allies” who had been enslaved should be released at once. The effect of this decree when it reached Sicily may well be imagined. Huge crowds of slaves assembled before the Governor in Syracuse, demanding immediate emancipation. He granted freedom to some eight hundred, then realized that, if he continued, he would be destroying the entire base of the Sicilian economy. Laying down his pen, he ordered that the still-growing crowds should disperse and return to their homes. Not surprisingly, they refused—and the second slave revolt was under way.

Since the Roman decree—and the Governor’s refusal to enforce it—affected the slaves all over Sicily, the whole island was soon in an uproar.

Leave a comment

Filed under economics, Greece, Italy, labor, Mediterranean, slavery

by | 5 May 2024 · 6:20 am

Who Killed Weimar Democracy?

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 673-678:

Given all the cumulative problems it faced, it is surprising Weimar democracy lasted as long as it did, but we need to remember that it endured longer than Hitler’s Third Reich. The period from 1918 to 1923 was politically and economically turbulent, but democracy survived. Between 1924 and 1929, the economy stabilised, Germany regained international respectability, and democratic rule was never threatened. Even in the period of deep political and economic crisis between 1930 and 1933, during the time of authoritarian ‘presidential rule’, there was no attempt to overthrow the Republic.

The commonly held view is that the ‘Great Depression’ led to the collapse of Weimar democracy, and brought Hitler to power, is not credible. The USA and Britain suffered economic problems often as difficult as those of Germany, but democracy did not collapse in either of those countries. This suggests there was something specific about the nature of the political and economic crisis that was peculiar to Germany at this time.

The two decisive ingredients in the period from 1930 to 1933 were the supreme indifference of President Hindenburg, and his inner circle, to sustain democratic government, and the dramatic rise in electoral support for Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP. It was a toxic mixture of these two factors, operating at a time of deep economic depression, which ensured Germany’s experiment with democracy failed.

Yet the seeds of the Weimar’s democratic tragedy were planted by the type of democratic system established after the November Revolution of 1918, and embedded into the Weimar Constitution of 1919. The November Revolution was a very strange one indeed, which left Germany’s judicial, bureaucratic, and military elite largely intact. Weimar judges punished those on the Left with harsh sentences, while treating radicals on the Right very leniently, and the Reichswehr remained a law unto itself, being more preoccupied with shaking off the military restrictions placed upon it by the Treaty of Versailles than defending democracy.

One of the essential ingredients for the successful transition from an authoritarian to a democratic form of government is the existence of a strong, resilient party of the moderate Right, committed to the ideals of democracy. In Britain, the Conservative Party fulfilled this role, evolving from the late 19th century into a mainstay of the British party system. In Germany, no such party was able to take on that stabilising role. The leading conservative party in Germany was the DNVP. Between 1919 and 1930, its voter support reached a high point of 20.5 per cent and 103 seats in the December 1924 election, but then fell to a low point of 7 per cent at the September 1930 election, when it gained just 41 seats. During the Weimar era, the DNVP was a bitter opponent of Weimar democracy, with a leader in Alfred Hugenberg who moved the party to the extreme Right.

Germany’s military defeat in the Great War also cast a giant shadow over the Weimar Republic. The ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth, which held that Germany was not defeated on the battlefield, but betrayed by Liberals, Jews and Socialists on the home front, remained a powerful one. Some of these negative feelings fed into the general hatred of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The inclusion of Article 231, known as the ‘war-guilt clause’, seemed particularly vindictive. Add in the bill for reparations and you have a perfect recipe for deeply held animosity towards democracy. Any government forced to sign such a treaty would have been unpopular, but the fact this task fell to the SPD-led coalition government was deeply damaging for the stability of democracy. The tag ‘November Criminals’ was hung around the necks of those politicians who had instigated the fall of the Kaiser and were responsible for the establishment of democracy.

There were also two aspects of the Weimar Constitution which undoubtedly contributed to the failure of democracy. The first was the voting system, based on proportional representation, which gave Reichstag seats in exact proportion to the votes cast in elections. In Germany, this system did not work. In July 1932, 27 different political parties contested the election, ranging across the political spectrum, with each representing one class or interest group. These differing parties reflected the bitter divisions in German society and made the task of creating stable coalition governments extremely difficult, and eventually impossible. Some coalitions took weeks to form, but could fall apart in days. The last functioning Weimar coalitions were those led by SPD Chancellor Herman Müller between 1928 and 1930, involving the SPD, Zentrum, the DDP, the DVP, but they finally broke apart over the increasing payments of unemployment benefits.

The Weimar Republic also lacked the one key factor that made democracy stable in the USA and Britain – that is, a two-party system, with one left-wing liberal democratic and one conservative party, alternating in periods of power, with each loyal to the democratic system. If there had been a first-past-the-post electoral constituency system, as operated in Britain, then probably a small number of parties would have ruled, and there would have been a better chance of stable government, although given the deep differences between the Weimar political parties that is by no means certain.

Those who drafted the Weimar Constitution were unwittingly culpable in offering a means of destroying democracy. This was the special powers the Weimar Constitution invested in the role of the President. No one realised when drafting the Constitution how an anti-democratic holder of the post could subvert the power of the President. Article 48 gave the German President extensive subsidiary powers in a ‘state of emergency’ to appoint and dismiss Chancellors and cabinets, to dissolve the Reichstag, call elections and suspend civil rights. The two German presidents of the Weimar years were quite different. Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert was an enthusiastic supporter of Weimar democracy. He used Article 48 on 136 occasions during the period 1918 to 1925, but always with the intention of sustaining the Republic by preventing coup attempts, not with the aim of undermining or threatening its existence. Paul von Hindenburg, elected in 1925, was a great contrast. He was a right-wing figure, who had led Germany’s militaristic armed forces during the Great War of 1914–1918. Up until March 1930, Hindenburg never used Article 48 at all. Henceforth, influenced by a small inner circle of advisers, all militaristic and authoritarian in outlook, he appointed Chancellors of his own choosing, who remained in power using emergency powers granted under Article 48.

It was President Hindenburg, therefore, who mortally damaged the infant democratic structure in Germany more than anyone else. It was not the Constitution or the voting system that was the fundamental problem, but the culpable actions of Hindenburg, who chose to deliberately subvert the power it had invested in him. Hindenburg appointed three Chancellors between 1930 and 1933: Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen, and Kurt von Schleicher, all of whom governed using emergency decrees granted by the President.

The political crisis after 1930 was deliberately manufactured by Hindenburg, who refused to involve Social Democrats in government, who were the strongest supporters of democracy. It must not be forgotten, however, that from 1930 onwards Adolf Hitler was the single most dynamic and popular politician in Germany. He united the voters on the Right of German politics in a way no other politician had been able to do so since the beginning of the Weimar years. The NSDAP managed to be anti-elitist and anti-capitalist while at the same time being patriotic and nationalist. The spectacular voting rise of the NSDAP from 2.63 per cent of voters in national elections in 1928, to 18.3 per cent in 1930, then to a high point of 37.3 in July 1932, was on a scale never seen in a democratic election before.

It was not by elections that Hitler finally came to power, however, but he would not have even been considered as a potential German Chancellor without his huge electoral support. A total of 13.74 million people voted for Hitler of their own free will in July 1932. Solid middle-class groups, usually the cement that holds together democratic governments, decided to support a party openly promising to destroy democracy. This mass electoral support was the decisive factor that propelled Hitler to a position where he could be offered power. Hitler’s party grew because millions of Germans felt democratic government had been a monumental failed experiment. To these voters, Hitler offered the utopian vision of creating an authoritarian ‘national community’ that would sweep away the seeming chaos and instability of democratic government, and provide strong leadership.

Yet Hindenburg needed a great deal of persuading before he finally made Hitler the Chancellor of a ‘national coalition’. It was former Chancellor Franz von Papen who played the most decisive role in convincing Hindenburg that Hitler could be ‘tamed’ by being invited to lead a cabinet of conservatives. By then, the only alternative to Hitler taking on the role was for Hindenburg to grant Schleicher, the current Chancellor, the power to declare a ‘state of emergency’, ban the Communists and National Socialists, suspend the Reichstag indefinitely and rule with the support of the Reichswehr. Behind-the-scenes intrigues and the personal rivalry between Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher were also factors that played a crucial role in bringing Hitler to power. But it was Hindenburg’s decision in March 1930 to create a presidential authoritarian right-wing regime that was the most decisive step that opened a path towards this solution.

The real problem Hindenburg faced was that the three previous Chancellors, Brüning, Papen and Schleicher, had no popular legitimacy, and no parliamentary support. Hindenburg’s presidential rule had taken Germany down a blind alley. The only politician who could add popularity to Hindenburg’s faltering presidential regime was Adolf Hitler. It was the decision to appoint the NSDAP leader as Chancellor which put the final nail in the coffin of Weimar democracy, and opened the path to catastrophe for Germany and the world. Hindenburg had been the gravedigger and the undertaker.

The history of the Weimar Years is therefore a warning sign of how a democracy under poor leadership can drift towards a form of authoritarian rule that ultimately destroys it, under the pressure of economic crisis and unrelenting political instability. This is a question that continues to engage us today.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, democracy, economics, Germany, nationalism, philosophy, religion, U.S., war

by | 1 May 2024 · 2:23 pm

Political Violence in Germany, 1932

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 597-599:

Out on the streets, there was an alarming increase in violence between the National Socialists and the Communists. Yet the idea Germany was nearing civil war after 1929 has been greatly exaggerated. On 12 October, the Liberal-left newspaper Die Welt am Montag (The World on Monday) published statistics, based on official sources and newspaper reports, on those killed and injured during political clashes since the beginning of 1923 to July 1931. These revealed that 457 people had been killed, and 1,154 had been injured in the period. However, just over half of those fatalities (236), and one-third of those injured (462), had occurred in 1923 alone. Between 1924 and 1928, the period of economic stability, there had been 66 fatalities and 266 injured. From 1929 to July 1931, the number of deaths increased to 155, with 426 injured. Violence was certainly on the rise after 1930, but it never reached the levels of the 1919 to 1923 period. A closer look at the post-1929 statistics reveals which side suffered more victims. The Communists and Left radicals suffered 108 deaths since 1929, while in the same period, right-wing organisations, including the National Socialists, suffered 31 dead. There were only eight fatalities among pro-republican groups such as the SPD-led Reichsbanner. There were also 10 police officers killed. Most violent clashes resulting in death involved the National Socialists and Communists.

This picture can be confirmed in greater detail with the help of statistical surveys, and police reports in the German state of Saxony. In 1929, there were 51 recorded Communist–NSDAP clashes, in 1929, this jumped to 172, and then hit 229 in 1931. The most violent clashes happened during indoor meetings. There was, however, a noticeable difference in how the police dealt with these violent confrontations. The police acted against Communist ‘troublemakers’ far more often than against National Socialists. In 1929, the ratio of police interventions was 30 KPD to 11 NSDAP; in 1930, it was 121 KPD to 32 NSDAP, and, in 1931, it was 140 KPD to 63 NSDAP. It was only during 1932 that political violence really escalated, with the Prussian Ministry of the Interior recording 155 deaths; of these 55 belonged to the NSDAP and 54 to the KPD.

The information on weapons seized by police during NSDAP– KPD clashes shows that in 1929 the police confiscated only two guns and eight knives, a figure that rose to 17 guns and 181 other weapons in 1930, but in 1931 this fell to 5 guns and 78 other weapons. This is in stark contrast to the earlier Weimar era, from 1918 to 1923, when firearms featured heavily in clashes between Left and Right. As bad as violence was after 1929, it would be totally misleading to suggest the police could not contain it or that Germany was nearing civil war. In rural areas, there were hardly any violent clashes which resulted in fatalities at all.

The front line of Left–Right violent confrontations after 1929 was primarily in the big cities. Communists felt they ruled the working-class urban streets. Any place that was home to large numbers of industrial workers was prepared to violently resist the advance of the National Socialists on the streets. Communists rarely took action to break up Social Democratic political meetings, except for a few large-scale events, mainly organised by the Reichsbanner. In contrast, Communists adopted a proactive approach whenever the National Socialists held rallies and meetings in the big cities. Most of these violent confrontations occurred during and after indoor meetings. Communists initiated most of them, keen to emphasise National Socialists were not welcome in working-class areas. Well-organised Communist gangs arrived in force at NSDAP meetings, hell bent on violence. The police authorities, however, had a broad spectrum of special powers to break up or ban demonstrations.

As violence escalated, a culture of political martyrdom emerged, with those killed on both sides receiving elaborate funerals attended by thousands of activists.

Leave a comment

Filed under democracy, economics, Germany, labor, nationalism

by | 30 April 2024 · 5:41 pm

Austrian-German Banking Crisis, 1931

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 575-576:

The bungled fiasco of the German–Austrian Customs Union led directly to the Austrian banking crisis. On 13 May, the Creditanstalt, the largest and most respected Austrian bank, suddenly declared bankruptcy, sending shock-waves through world financial markets. Jittery creditors everywhere withdrew funds. The bank’s initial losses amounted to 828 million Austrian schillings. During May, Austria’s foreign-currency reserves fell by 850 million schillings. Otto Ender, the Austrian Chancellor, was forced to put together a government-backed financial rescue plan by buying up 100 million schillings’ worth of Creditanstalt stock. Support in this rescue package was given by the powerful Rothschild banking family of Austria, and on 16 June the Bank of England provided a sizeable loan to the Austrian government to assist with the plan.

The Austrian banking crisis had a domino effect, with the panic-selling of the stock of German banks soon following. In early June, the Reichsbank announced it had suffered the withdrawal of 1 billion Reichsmarks since the Creditanstalt collapse, with foreign deposits falling by 25 per cent. The German government was now having great difficulty in raising foreign loans to service its huge public-spending deficit, and the Reichsmark was falling on currency markets. On 5 June, Brüning issued the Second Emergency Decree for the Protection of the Economy and Finances, which brought in reductions in welfare benefits, wage cuts for all public-sector employees, plus a ‘crisis’ tax, levied on better-paid white-collar workers, and increases in sales taxes on sugar and imported oil. The one concession to organised labour was a promise of 200 million Reichsmarks for the funding of public works. This new decree was accompanied by a blunt declaration from Brüning that ‘the limit of privations which we can impose on the German people had been reached’, and he further warned that Germany could not make the reparations payments due in 1931 under the Young Plan.

On 7 June, Heinrich Brüning, accompanied by Julius Curtius, the German Foreign Minister, met with Ramsay MacDonald, at Chequers, the British Prime Minister’s picturesque country retreat. The purpose of the visit was for a ‘mutual exchange of views’. Also present was Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, who expressed dissatisfaction with Brüning’s announcement of his intention to suspend reparations payments. In response, Brüning explained his declaration was really a warning of what would happen if the issue of Germany’s payments for 1931 was not urgently addressed. The friendly meeting only yielded the release of a joint statement, which laid stress on ‘the difficulties of the existing position in Germany and the need for alleviation’.

The US President, Herbert Hoover, was following European economic affairs closely, and he fully appreciated the impact the financial collapse of German banks would have on American creditors. The magnanimous proposal by Hoover of a payments moratorium was initially opposed by the French government, Germany’s principal reparations creditor, but was finally accepted, on 6 July, with the condition that the German government spent the one-year saving on reparations for domestic rather than military purposes. The Hoover Moratorium really marked the beginning of the end of German reparations payments, which were never resumed.

Leave a comment

Filed under Austria, Britain, democracy, economics, France, Germany, nationalism, U.S., war

by | 28 April 2024 · 1:12 pm

Weimar Elections of 1930

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 552-554:

Given the horrors that followed, it now seems impossible to understand why German people of their own free will could vote in such large numbers for a party pledged to destroy democracy. In Dresden, Victor Klemperer, an academic at Dresden University, wrote in his diary: ‘107 National Socialists. What a humiliation! How close are we to civil war!’ In contrast, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency there was no reason for despair over Hitler’s strong showing in the national elections because ‘it was only a symptom, not necessarily of anti-Jewish hatred, but was caused by unemployment and economic misery within the ranks of misguided youth’.

It seems 24 per cent of NSDAP voters were voting in an election for the first time, many of them young people and pensioners, 22 per cent of new NSDAP voters had previously voted for the DNVP, with 18 per cent moving from the middle-class liberal parties, and 14 per cent from the Social Democrats. In sum, the biggest movement of voters to the NSDAP came from the middle-class conservative and liberal parties, and the party received the least swing votes from the KPD and Zentrum. There was also a strong reluctance to vote NSDAP in the big cities with large working-class industrial workers.

The most impressive gains for the NSDAP were in Protestant rural areas, especially those of northern and eastern Germany stretching from Schleswig-Holstein to East Prussia. The party performed very well in large northern states such as Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Hanover, Brunswick and Oldenburg, and achieved comparable results in predominantly Protestant Franconia and Hesse-Nassau. Voting support in these areas came primarily from elements of the lower middle class: small shopkeepers, farmers, self-employed tradespeople such as builders, plumbers, electricians and joiners, but there was also an upswing of support from middle-class white-collar workers, lower civil servants, teachers and university students. It was these who would represent the party’s core voters during its rise to power, but the NSDAP was not simply a ‘middle-class protest party,’ as was once thought. It is now clear Hitler’s party was able to gain support from all sections of society in a way the other political parties could not.

It was not, as is often supposed, primarily economic misery that drove voters to the NSDAP. Hitler’s campaign had focused on the failure of the Weimar political system to solve Germany’s problems, and this issue seems to have struck a far stronger chord with voters than the state of the economy. There was a growing loss of confidence in the Weimar political system, which made the decision to vote for a party that was not tainted by involvement in that system much easier. An editorial in the Frankfurter Zeitung spoke of an ‘election of embitterment’ in which voters expressed deep disaffection with ‘the methods of governing or rather non-governing’ of parliamentary government.

Hitler’s dramatic election breakthrough had a devastating impact abroad. There was a large withdrawal of gold and foreign currency from the Reichsbank, and a sharp fall in German stocks on international markets. Even larger German banks were shaken by the wave of panic selling. Julius Curtius, the Foreign Minister, who was in Geneva while the League of Nations was in session, reported when he heard the results: ‘the mood was one of the greatest alarm’. The world now started taking much greater interest in Adolf Hitler.

Leave a comment

Filed under democracy, economics, education, Germany, labor, nationalism, religion