Truong Dinh - Legacy

Legacy

The reputation of Dinh and his southern rebels persisted long after his death. Phan Boi Chau, the leading Vietnamese revolutionary of the early 20th century, travelled into the south in 1904, seeking to start a new anti-French movement. He specifically attempted to recruit followers among the surviving elderly members of Dinh's movement. Dinh was highly regarded as a revolutionary hero by Vietnamese of both communist and anti-communist persuasions. In 1964, an article in the North Vietnamese Nghiên cứu lịch sửu described Dinh as "the hero symbolising the spirit of resistance to the foreign colonialists of the people of Southern Viet-Nam". The same article extolled Dinh's physical appearance and his capabilities, stating "He was handsome in appearance, understood the military manual and was a good shot". During the Vietnam War era, North Vietnamese historians sought to portray the Viet Cong—which fought against the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and the United States—as Dinh's modern successor. Dinh was also highly regarded among anti-communist South Vietnamese scholars. A prominent thoroughfare in the centre of Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam is named after him.

Although Dinh received little attention in French academia, the North Vietnamese heavily relied on French sources for their accounts of the guerrilla leader. In the most detailed French account by Paulin Vial, Dinh is depicted as a "criminal" or "rebel". Osborne said that Dinh's final manifesto before his death showed him "to have been a man with a high concept of duty, an awareness of his own weakness and with a sense of despair, common to many of his countrymen, at the ambivalence of the Huế court".