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Land and Economy in Traditional Vietnam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

John Adams  and
Nancy Hancock
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Extract

When the French assumed effective political control of Vietnam in the late nineteenth century they were confronted with the dual problem of raising revenues and securing administrative control of the countryside. In seeking a solution they were forced to consider Vietnamese land tenures and the distribution of agricultural output prevailing at that time. Their early moves reflected a sharp bias in favour of French law and almost total ignorance of the wide divergence between their system of property and taxation and Vietnamese custom and procedure. On a broad scale what was involved was an attempt to reinterpret indigenous practices to achieve compatibility with the French conception of private and public property categories and the legitimate rights and claims inherent in each. Le Code Annamite was translated by P.L.F. Philastre and gradually Vietnamese property laws were drawn towards conformity with French practices.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , September 1970 , pp. 90 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1970

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References

1 See: Cotter, M.G., “Towards a Social History of the Vietnamese Southward Movement,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, IX (March, 1968), pp. 12–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gerald C. Hickey also discusses north-south differences in his recent ethnographical study of Khanh Hua, in the Mekong delta south of Saigon: Village in Vietnam (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

2 Van Hien, Vu, Communal Property in Tonkin. A Contribution to the Historical, Juridical and Economic Study of Cong dien and Cong tho in Annam (Green, Liliane, Translator; New Haven: Human Relation Area Files, 1955), pp. 25–27.Google Scholar

3 Luro, E., The Country of Annam (Mrs.Lopez, Claude A., translator; New Haven: Human Relations Area Files, 1956), pp. 165–66.Google Scholar

4 Lan, J.. Rice: Legislation, Cult, Beliefs (Botsford, Keith, translator; New Haven: Human Relations Area Files, 1953), p. 125.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 6.

6 Vu Van Hien, op. cit p. 37.

7 It should be stressed that the sources contain mixed historical and ethnographical information. We have obviously drawn heavily on statements about what laws and procedures were believed to prevail — the folkways — but we feel that we have also, through use of the available descriptive materials, been able to include information about how various persons operated within these patterns to create the substance of traditional Vietnamese society as it worked out in the routine of daily life.

8 Hickey reports that the ablest son was sometimes chosen to assume the responsibility of parental remembrance in the south. Hickey, op. cit., p. 89.

9 Vu Van Hien, op. cit., p. 84.

10 A mau is ·36 hectare, ·9 acre; a sau is one-tenth of a mau, a thoc is one-fifteenth of a sao.

11 Later the village collected a large rental share from those who cultivated the tu dan dien property.

12 Gourou, Pierre, Peasants of the Tonkin Delta (Miller, Richard R., translator; New Haven: Human Relations Area Files, 1953) p. 392.Google Scholar

13 Robequain, Charles, The Economic Development of French Indochina (Ward, Isabel A., translator; New York: International Secretariat, Institute for Pacific Relations, 1944), p. 353.Google Scholar

14 Vu Van Hien, op. cit., pp. 11, 14.

15 Ibid., pp. 13–14. Hickey notes that although cong dien and cong tho were absent in many southern villages, community interest in all lands remained high. He quotes Yves Henry's computations for the later period which showed that only 3% of the cultivated paddy land in Cochinchina was communal land, while Tonkin and Annam had 21% and 25% communal paddy land, respectively. Hickey. op. cit., pp. 14, 42.

16 The notables of the Vietnamese commune were chosen with the consent or the male members. The oldest men of standing in the village were usually selected, since age is associated with wisdom. The notables were generally of two classes, major notables who considered matters of communal importance and minor notables who were administrative assistants.

17 It should be stressed that the ethnographical information is not complete enough to allow us to do more than speculate about the actual importance of the list, the manner in which people operated within the framework of the village system to advance (or fall) in rank, and the degree to which position on the list was correlated with other dimensions of village position such as wealth, prestigo, or power. Nor is it clear how given ranks were subject to change, or how they varied from place to place and time to time within Vietnam. Some twentieth century legal changes and; their effects on village government are described in Hickey, op. cit., pp. 178–213.

18 Vu Van Hien. op. cit., p. 104.

19 Ibid.: p. 114.

20 Gourou, op. cit., p. 393. Most other cults, such as the cult of Buddha and the cult of the village spirit were administered by the village and fell under the category of tu dan dien.

21 Ibid., p. 109. A Jigature is ten strings of sixty zinc coins.

22 Ibid., pp. 582–584.

23 Ibid., pp. 611–612.

24 Gueffier, op. cit., p. 65.