Industry in Vietnam during the Second Colonial Exploitation of the French (1919-30)

Abstract

After the First World War, in the context of the second colonial exploitation of the French in Vietnam, due to the benefits and the needs of the metropolitan capitalists, some industrial branches in Vietnam were developed. Among those industries, there were the silk, cotton industries and processing industries which produced products from plants (paper, salt), or importable productions (exploited from mines and which from the building materials). To some extents, there were also sections of manufacturing the consumption products in the colonies, which formerly had been imported from the motherland and the industries aiming to service the people's life, like electricity, water...

These development was not a result of a planned industrialization of the French colonialism in the Indochina, but to some extent, the development of the Vietnam's industry in 1919-30, even not bring about the profits to Vietnamese people, but in political and social aspects they contributed greatly to speed up social stratification, fostered the struggle movements for national liberation of Vietnamese. The worker class became more strongly both in quantity and in class consciousness and that was the important factor that led to the foundation of the CPV in 1930.