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Bao Dai

Surname Nguyen Given Name Phuc Vinh Thuy House Nguyen Dynasty Born 22 Oct 1913 Died 30 Jul 1997 Country French Indochina Category Government Gender Male

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbasePrince Nguyen Phuc Vinh Thuy was born in the Palace of Doan-Trang-Vien within the Imperial City in Hue, Annam, French Indochina in 1913 to Emperor Khai Dinh, the twelfth emperor of Nguyen Dynasty Vietnam, which by then a part of French Indochina. He was educated at the Lycée Condorcet an the Paris Institute of Political Studies in Paris, France. In 1926, upon his father's death, he was made Emperor Bao Dai, but returned to France to complete his studies shortly after his coronation. In 1934, he married Marie-Thérèse Nguyen Huu Thi Lan, a commonor from a wealthy Vietnamese family, who was renamed Nam Phuong upon the marriage; they would have five children, including Crown Prince Bao Long in in 1936. In 1940, Japan replaced France as the colonial master, although a French high commissioner was nominally in charge. Japan courted for his support, nominally helping him rebuild a nationalistic Vietnam. In Mar 1945, Empeorer Bao Dai declared Vietnamese independence with Japanese urging. After the war, having worked with the Japanese, he was easily maneuvered out of power by communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Abdicating the throne on 25 Aug 1945, he was made a supreme advisor of Ho's newly declared Democratic Republic of Vietnam. When the French regained power over Vietnam in 1946, he emigrated to Hong Kong and China. Between 1949 and 1955, he served as the Chief of State of Vietnam, situated in the south to counter the growing influence of Ho's forces in the north; he lived in Paris in the latter portion of this period, which made Ngo Dinh Diem's ouster of the former emperor easy. In 1972, he issued a public statement from exile, appealing to the Vietnamese people for national reconciliation, noting that "[t]he time has come to put an end to the fratricidal war and to recover at last peace and accord." He later spoke out against the presence of American troops in Vietnam and called for a government that could set politics aside to benefit the people of Vietnam. He visited the United States in 1982. He passed away in a military hospital in Paris in 1997, and was buried in the Cimetière de Passy.

ww2dbaseSources:

The New York Times

Wikipedia



Last Major Revision: May 2006

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