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French Christian Intellectuals and Decolonization Issues: The Case of French Indochina

  • Korean Review of French History
  • Abbr : KRFH
  • 2012, (27), pp.221~250
  • Publisher : KOREAN SOCIETY FOR FRENCH HISTORY
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

JAE-WON LEE 1

1연세대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

During Indochina War, the first French decolonization war, Christian intellectuals were absorbed in discussing the subject and gave their different opinions. Some blamed the solutions of the government including the military one, and others resisted what was considered to be giving up the French mission. However, the majority of Christian intellectuals were convinced that the colonial should be ended by the negotiation with Vietnam and by the withdrawal of French army. They considered Indochina War as an insoluble economic and financial burden as well as an ethical one caused by the victims of the war and by some military way against the terrorism and the revolutionary war. However, at the beginning of the war, some progressive Christians and the ‘serious’ magazines for intellectuals such as Esprit and Thémoignage chrétien didn’t change public opinion. Despite the thirst for peace being increased, there were few who doubted the necessity of sustaining French Union and believed that the colonial business was based on the violence, exploit, and the forced civilization. At the end of the war, especially after the defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the French finally experienced the feeling of “rage, humiliation, shock, grudge, kind of regret and bitterness” and welcomed the treaty of truce with relief. Nevertheless, it can be said that the attentive attitude of the Christian church and the intellectuals played an important role in awakening many Christians as well as those who support the maintaining the colonialization. While the majority of the French sticked to the myth of colonialism without understanding irresistible power of national liberation and didn’t respond to its effect and result, Christian intellectuals supported the resistance movement of the colonies, changed public perception, and made many Frenches accept decolonization. Although they could not overthrow the colonial ideology which was dominant in French society at that time, their behaviorism played an important role in providing the basis for decolonization by making the public aware the cultural relativism that resist the tradition belief for western civilization and by revealing the sense of guilt about what is called ‘the sin of colonialism’.

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