Military Reforms Resulting From The Yen Bai Mutiny

Military Reforms Resulting From The Yen Bai Mutiny

The failure of the Yen Bai mutiny by Vietnamese soldiers in the French colonial army on February 10, 1930 caused the French authorities to engage in a reform of military policies which were aimed at preventing future uprisings. French trust in the Vietnamese soldiers' loyalty as colonised subjects who were simultaneously enforcers of colonial order had never been high, and the mutiny resulted in increased safeguards against Vietnamese soldiers in an attempt to prevent future incidents. Around 80% of the Vietnamese soldiers in Tonkin were transferred to other districts in order to disrupt any secret plots that may have been in progress, and some soldiers who had returned from foreign service were discharged in the fear that their overseas experiences made them less likely to accept colonial subjugation. The internal reform saw the rules for expelling Vietnamese soldiers from the army were liberalised and an inquiry into military intelligence resulted in closer cooperation between military intelligence and their French colonial civilian counterparts, while French officers were ordered to improve their Vietnamese language skills. The French authorities decreed that the proportion of ethnic Vietnamese soldiers was too high and reduced the proportion of Vietnamese by replacing them with European, Cambodian, Lao and ethnic minority Montagnard people.