Tran le xuan biography wikipedia

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As sister-in-law of the unmarried Ngo Dinh Diem , became acting first lady of the Republic of South Vietnam ; became founding president of the paramilitary Women's Solidarity Movement ; lost power and went into exile in France upon the assassination of her husband Born into a Vietnam torn by deeply disruptive forces, the woman who was to attain a worldwide reputation as "Madame Nhu" was a daughter in one her country's most powerful families, the Tran, and married into another, the Ngo.

From to , these ties placed her at the epicenter of Vietnamese politics, where she earned a reputation as an extremist supporter of the regime of her brother-in-law, Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of the Republic of Vietnam. But during that time, she also fought to modernize her country, and in particular to liberate its women from traditional Confucian feudalism.

The name Tran Le Xuan means "beautiful spring," suggesting a tranquility rarely found in the adult life of the woman to whom it was given at birth. She lived during modern Vietnam's most turbulent times, when its people experienced the occupation and control of their country by both France and Japan, a war fought on their soil against the United States , and finally the revolutionary Communist regime of Ho Chi Minh that came to power in Vietnam's most recent struggle against foreign domination began in the middle of the 19th century, but it had been making adjustments to outside powers since long before that.

In the s, it was the French who slowly occupied and conquered the country, believing it to be a region rich in mineral resources and also wanting it as a base for additional expansion into neighboring south China. In an effort to cloak the harsh realities of their colonial domination, they left in place the traditional Vietnamese government, a monarchy seated at the central Vietnamese city of Hue, but further weakened anti-colonial resistance by separating the country into three administrative divisions: Tonkin in the north, centered upon Hanoi; Annam in the center, with the national capital at Hue; and Cochin China in the south, with its center at Saigon.

Combined with these divisions were the adjacent countries of Cambodia and Laos, also under French control, which altogether made up French Indochina. The Vietnamese resisted the French invasion from the beginning. Vietnam's people had come together as a unified country as early as the 10th century, and always lived under China's long shadow.