Photograph of a Vietnamese Worker in France During the First or Second World War

France, 1940. ingle photograph measuring 5 x 7 inches. Editorial overpainting recto and manuscript and typed captions verso (English and French) with other manuscript markings. Some wear and marginal damage; excellent.. A photograph of a Vietnamese man posing with a boring machine (“Les amanites a l’arsenal machine a aleser”). The English caption reads: “The Anamites [i.e., Vietnamese] have so taken to the intricacies of machinery that a large proportion of the motor transport, mechanically, is in their hands.” During the First and Second World Wars, France brought over many peasants from French Indochina, including from Vietnam, to work as soldiers and laborers. The laborers were known as MOI, “Main d’Oeuvre Indigéne,” and were stationed on the outskirts of major cities like Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles. The Second World War saw an even larger influx of Vietnamese labor which, under control of the Vichy government, was poorly treated. Following the war, the Vietnamese intellectuals began politically organizing the workers, and the Vietnamese French were for a number of years a highly politically active group.[1]

[1] Virginia Thompson, “The Vietnamese Community in France,” Pacific Affairs 25, no. 1 (March 1952): 49–58.