Hồ Chí Minh (born Nguyễn Sinh Cung; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), colloquially known as Uncle Ho (Bác Hồ) among other aliases and sobriquets, was a Vietnamese communist revolutionary and statesman who founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 (known as North Vietnam after 1954). He served as its first president from 1946 until his death in 1969 and as its first prime minister from 1945 to 1955. A committed Marxist–Leninist, Hồ played a central role in establishing the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 and later led its successor, the Workers' Party of Vietnam (renamed Communist Party of Vietnam after 1976), as chairman until his death.
The details of Hồ's life before he came to power in Vietnam are uncertain. He is known to have used between 50 and 200 pseudonyms. Information on his birth and early life is ambiguous and subject to academic debate. At least four existing official biographies vary on names, dates, places, and other hard facts while unofficial biographies vary even more widely. It is believed Hồ was born in Nghệ An province, Annam in French Indochina, and received a French education. Starting in 1911, he worked in various countries overseas, including France where he was a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. After studying in the Soviet Union, Hồ moved to China where he founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League in 1925, which became the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. In addition to being involved in politics, Hồ was a writer, poet, and journalist. He wrote several books, articles, and poems in Chinese, Vietnamese, and French.
On his return to Vietnam in 1941, Hồ founded and led the Việt Minh independence movement against the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, and in 1945 led the August Revolution against the Vietnamese monarchy and proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. After the French returned to power, Hồ's government retreated to the countryside and initiated guerrilla warfare from 1946, leading to the First Indochina War.
Between 1953 and 1956, Hồ's government implemented a land reform campaign aimed at redistributing land and consolidating power, which included the execution of landowners. In 1954, the Việt Minh defeated the French at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, ending the war.
Following the 1954 Geneva Conference, Vietnam was divided into two de facto separate states: North Vietnam under the Việt Minh, backed by the Soviet Union, and South Vietnam under anti-communist nationalists, backed by the United States. Hồ remained president and party leader during the Vietnam War, which began in 1955. He supported the Viet Cong insurgency in the south, overseeing the transport of troops and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail until his death from heart failure in 1969. North Vietnam won the war in 1975, and the country was re-unified in 1976 as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Saigon–Gia Định, South Vietnam's former capital, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.
Hồ Chí Minh was born as Nguyễn Sinh Cung, also known as Nguyễn Sinh Côn, in 1890 in the village of Hoàng Trù in Kim Liên commune, Nam Đàn district, Nghệ An province, in northern Central Vietnam which was then a French protectorate. Although 1890 is generally accepted as his birth year, at various times he used four other birth years: 1891, 1892, 1894 and 1895. He lived in his father Nguyễn Sinh Sắc's village of Làng Sen in Kim Liên until 1895 when his father sent him to Huế for study. He had three siblings: his sister Bạch Liên (Nguyễn Thị Thanh), was convicted of breaking into and stealing weapons from a French military barracks; his brother Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm (Nguyễn Tất Đạt), a geomancer and traditional herbalist; and another brother (Nguyễn Sinh Nhuận), who died in infancy. As a young child, Cung (Hồ) studied with his father before more formal classes with a scholar named Vương Thúc Quý. He quickly mastered chữ Hán, a prerequisite for any serious study of Confucianism while honing his colloquial Vietnamese writing. In addition to his studies, he was fond of adventure and loved to fly kites and go fishing. Following Confucian tradition, his father gave him a new name when he turned ten: Nguyễn Tất Thành.
His father, Sắc, was a Confucian scholar and teacher, and later, in 1909, an imperial magistrate in the remote district of Bình Khê in Bình Định province. He was demoted for abuse of power after an influential local figure died several days after having received 102 strokes of the cane as punishment for an infraction. Sắc was both a patriot and a collaborator with the French colonial state, supporting the claimedly 'civilizing mission' of the French. Thành received a French education, attending Collège Quốc học (lycée or secondary education) in Huế in Central Vietnam. His disciples, Phạm Văn Đồng and Võ Nguyên Giáp, also attended the school, as did Ngô Đình Diệm, the future President of South Vietnam and political rival.
His early life is uncertain but there are some documents indicating activities regarding an early revolutionary spirit during French-occupied Vietnam, but conflicting sources remain. Previously, it was believed that Thành (Hồ) was involved in an anti-slavery (anti-corvée) demonstration of poor peasants in Huế in May 1908, which endangered his student status at Collège Quốc học. However, a document from the Centre des archives d'Outre-mer in France shows that he was admitted to Collège Quốc học on 8 August 1908, which was several months after the anti-corvée demonstration (9–13 April 1908).
In Saigon, he applied to work as a kitchen helper on a French merchant steamer, the Amiral de Latouche-Tréville, using the alias Văn Ba. The ship departed on 5 June 1911 and arrived in Marseille, France on 5 July 1911. The ship then left for Le Havre and Dunkirk, returning to Marseille in mid-September. There, he applied for the French Colonial School but did not succeed. He instead decided to begin traveling the world by working on ships and visiting many countries from 1911 to 1917.
On board of Amiral de Latouche-Tréville, Thành (Hồ) arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1912. After contracting a mysterious disease aboard, the ship left him in the city to die and continued its route. Whilst recovering, he settled in the neighbourhood of Santa Teresa and worked in a restaurant in Lapa. In Rio, he encountered a fervid atmosphere largely defined by the contrast between its bohemian city life and the social exclusion of its black population. Thành would frequently return to the port, seeking to find a ship on which he could embark. He eventually became acquainted with a black union leader named José Leandro 'Pernambuco' da Silva. Just two years after the Revolt of the Lash had broken in the same harbour, Da Silva led a struggle against corporal punishment inflicted against black workers, a practice dating back from the time of slavery.
Later in his life, Ho Chi Minh would recount José Leandro da Silva's struggle in his International Solidarity article. He describes how Da Silva led a strike demanding an eight-hour working day and equal pay for black and white workers, which resulted in him being ambushed by ten police officers, who shot him eleven times. According to Ho, Da Silva sang The Internationale in the ambulance and was later acquitted in court following a campaign of pressure organised by workers and lawyers, an outcome that Thành celebrated.
In either September or October of 1912, Thành embarked on a ship that brought him to Boston. From 1912 to 1913, he may have lived in New York City (Harlem) and Boston, where he claimed to have worked as a baker at the Parker House Hotel. The only evidence that he was in the United States is a single letter to French colonial administrators dated 15 December 1912 and postmarked New York City (he gave his address as the poste restante in Le Havre and his occupation as a sailor) and a postcard to Phan Chu Trinh in Paris where he mentioned working at the Parker House Hotel. Inquiries to the Parker House management revealed no records of him ever having worked there. It is believed that while in the U.S he made contact with Korean nationalists, an experience that developed his political outlook. Sophie Quinn-Judge states that this is "in the realm of conjecture". He was also influenced by Pan-Africanist and black nationalist Marcus Garvey during his stay, and said he attended meetings of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.