Vietnamese non-communist politician who led the French-created Provisional Government of the Republic of Cochinchina until his death on 10 November 1946. Born in Cholon in southern Vietnam, he graduated as a doctor from the Pasteur Institute and the Institut de médecine coloniale in Paris, where he wrote his thesis on beriberi. He acquired French citizenship, became a member of the Indochinese Constitutionalist Party in 1926, and served as a federal counselor during the Vichy period. He was a delegate to the Indochinese Economic Conference in Tokyo in 1942. He was also the owner of large rice fields in southern Vietnam and was at one time the president of the Rice Growers’ Union.
Following the Japanese overthrow of the French in the coup de force of 9 March 1945, he became president of the National Relief Commission. With the Japanese defeat a few months later, he refused to collaborate with the newly created Democratic Republic of Vietnam in order to serve as the first president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Cochinchina from 7 May 1946, though formally announced by High Commissioners Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu on 1 June 1946. Nguyen Van Thinh was président du Conseil (prime minister) and minister of the Interior of the new government. As a French citizen, he largely enjoyed the support of the French settler community. He held his post until 10 November 1946.
Disillusioned by the course of events, he hung himself, dealing a severe blow to French colonial efforts to build up Cochinchina against nationalist pressure to incorporate it into Vietnam. His suicide sparked a crisis among French decision-makers fearful of losing Cochinchina to the DRV and led in part to the adoption of a much harder line in French relations with the DRV based in Hanoi. French attention increasingly turned to resurrecting the Bao Dai Solution of the early 1930s. In the suicide note he left behind, Nguyen Van Thinh explained that the leaders of Vietnam had to act: Si la masse de notre peuple ne m’a pas compris, je veux que vous, mes amis, les intellectuels Trung, Nam, Bac, vous qui avez la charge du destin de la patrie, ne vous cantonnez plus dans une expectative criminelle. Vous devez réagir. See also ATTENTISME; COLLABORATION; FRANÇAIS D’INDOCHINE.