Haydon Cherry

Mr. Cherry will explore the role of the urban poor in the making of the Vietnamese revolution in late colonial Saigon. Traditional explanations of the Vietnamese revolution have focused on educated elites and the development of communism or nationalism, or on rebellion and unrest in the countryside. Mr. Cherry s research will focus on the role of the poor of Saigon who, throughout the colonial period, engaged in forms of everyday resistance against the French. Mr. Cherry s research will also explore daily relationships between the poor themselves who, he contends, took up arms to bring relief from neighbors as much as from those who ruled over them.