The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng launches the failed Yên Bái mutiny in hope of overthrowing French protectorate over Vietnam.

The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng, also known as the Vietnamese Nationalist Party and abbreviated VNQDĐ or Việt Quốc, was a nationalist and democratic socialist political party that sought independence from French colonial rule in Vietnam during the early 20th century. Its origins lie in a group of young Hanoi-based intellectuals who began publishing revolutionary material in the mid-1920s. In 1927, after the publishing house failed because of French harassment and censorship, the VNQDĐ was formed under the leadership of Nguyễn Thái Học. Modelling itself on the Kuomintang of Nationalist China the VNQDĐ gained a small following among northerners, particularly teachers and intellectuals. The party, which was less successful among peasants and industrial workers, and was organised in small clandestine cells.

The Yên Bái mutiny or officially Yên Báy general uprising was an uprising of Vietnamese soldiers in the French colonial army on 10 February 1930. This took place in collaboration with civilian supporters who were members of the Vietnam Nationalist Party.

Annam, or Trung Kỳ (中圻), was a French protectorate encompassing what is now Central Vietnam from 1883 to 1949. Like the French protectorate of Tonkin, it was nominally ruled by the Vietnamese Nguyễn dynasty. Before the protectorate's establishment, the name Annam was used in the West to refer to Vietnam as a whole; Vietnamese people were referred to as Annamites. The protectorate of Annam became a part of French Indochina in 1887. The region had a dual system of French and Vietnamese administration. The government of the Nguyễn Dynasty still nominally ruled Annam and Tonkin as the Empire of Đại Nam, with the emperor residing in Huế. On 23 May 1948, the protectorate was partly merged in the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam, which was replaced the next year by the newly established State of Vietnam. The French legally maintained the protectorate until they formally signed over sovereignty to the Bảo Đại and the government of the State of Vietnam in 1950 after the Élysée Accords took over in June 1949. The region was divided between communist North Vietnam and anti-communist South Vietnam under the terms of the Geneva Accord of 1954.