Ho Chi Minh

At birth, given the name Nguyen Tat Thanhg and born in 1890 in the town of Hoang Tru, Ho Chi Minh grew up in Kim Lien, Nma Dan District, Nghe An Province, Vietnam.

His father, Nguyen Sinh Sac, was a Confucian scholar employed by the French and was described as being incredibly intelligent, but his unwillingness to obey and to learn the French language resulted in him losing his job. As a nationalist, Nguyen always taught his children to resist the French rule and undoubtedly all his children grew up to be committed nationalists willing and wanting to fight for the independence of their country.

Ho Chi Minh's sister gained employment with the French army, where she used the position to steal weapons that she envisaged being used to drive the French out of Vietnam. Eventually she was caught and imprisoned.

Despite refusing to learn French himself, Nguyen had decided to send Ho to a French school. He was under the impression that it would help his son to prepare for the forthcoming struggle against the French.

However, whilst being quite intelligent himself, Ho struggled during his school life and was eventually expelled for being caught distributing banned books and papers on Vietnamese history to other students. Even from this young age Ho used his highly patriotic views in which he had gained from his father, as a fellow classmate whilst learning about the French revolution quotes him " The first concern of the French colonisers is to make arrangements for their relatives. The next is to grab and steal as much and as quickly from the indigenous people as possible."

At the conclusion of his studies, Ho decided to become a sailor as it enabled him to travel to many different countries and left Vietnam in 1911. After several years at sea, he settled briefly in London where he embraced communism and then at the end of World War 1 he went to France, where he continued his insight into the ideas of communism.

Whilst in Paris, Ho changed his name to Nquyen Ai Quoc, which roughly translates