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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
The colonization of the land that is now Vietnam and the establishment of a French protectorate in Tonkin in the late nineteenth century led to new methods of agricultural production and new means of exploiting natural resources. This article examines this evolution by focusing on the endogenous and spontaneous movement of colonization that developed “illegally” during the first half of the twentieth century and which concerned several villages located in the hills of two districts in Phú Thọ province. A comparison of archival sources produced by the protectorate authorities with the testimonials recorded by former colonist-planters and their descendants reveals how the colonial state manipulated and falsified information in order to subsequently claim ownership of this colonial movement, which transformed the region’s environment, society, and economy.
This article is accompanied by documentary material available under the heading “Complementary Reading” on the Annales website: http://annales.ehess.fr.
1. Programme de colonisation dans la province de Phú Tho, no. 67031, 1939, Fonds de la Résidence supérieure du Tonkin (hereafter “RST”), National Archives of Vietnam (hereafter “NAV”), Hanoi.
2. Most of the territory of Phú Tho province lies in the “Middle Region” (Trung Du), a hilly region wedged between the Red River Delta—a densely populated area that, up until the early 1990s, was completely dominated by intensive irrigated rice farming—and the mountainous ring of the “High [or Upland] Region,” which was sparsely inhabited and contained around thirty ethnic groups who practiced rice farming in the valley and/or slash-and-burn farming.
3. The protectorate over Tonkin was imposed on the Huê´ court by the Harmand Treaty of August 23, 1883, which was reaffirmed by the Patenôtre Treaty on June 6, 1884. In contrast to the system of direct subjugation employed in the French colonies—when, for example, Cochinchina became an integrated part of the empire on June 5, 1862 (Treaty of Saigon)—, the political regime in the protectorate did not include a legal transfer of sovereignty over the conquered territories to the occupying power. In the protectorates of Tonkin and Annam, two administrative and judicial systems existed side by side: the Vietnamese-Mandarin system, which extended to the district level in the figure of the tri huyên (or quan huyên), a Mandarin of the court at Huê´; and the central French administration whose decentralized agencies on the political-administrative level extended only as far as the province, with the Résident de France at its head. In reality, colonial power considerably encroached on monarchic prerogatives in Tonkin, which were formally held by the court in Huê´, quickly making the protectorate resemble a full-fledged colony.
4. No exact translation exists, but the function of the lý tru’ỏ’ng can be compared to that of the mayor of a commune. [The commune is the smallest French administrative unit, similar though not identical to a municipality or township in the United States. It is generally headed by a mayor or council.—Trans.]
5. Mr. Nguyê˜n Văn Mán, born in 1927, Thái Ninh commune, interviewed by Olivier Tessier, October 9, 1997.
6. Mr. Nguyê˜n Văn Châ´t, born in 1915, Vu˜ E n commune, interviewed by Olivier Tessier, August 11 and 15, 1997.
7. Detailed analysis of the results of my fieldwork can be found in the second chapter, entitled “De la guerre de conquête à la ‘revolution’ du thé : mobilité de la population et recomposition des espaces villageois,” of Olivier Tessier, “Le pays natal est un carambole sucré [Quê hu’ὀ’ng là chùm khê ngot]. Ancrage social et mobilité spatiale. Essai de définition d’un espace social local au nord du Vietnam” (PhD diss., Université de Provence, 2003), 116-63.
8. Paul Veyne, Writing History: Essays on Epistemology, trans. Mina Moore-Rinvolucri (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press: 1984), 4.
9. Pierre Lefèvre-Pontalis, Notes sur l’exploitation et le commerce du thé au Tonkin (Paris: E. Leroux, 1892), 6.
10. Henri Brénier, Essai d’atlas statistique de l’Indochine française. Indochine physique, population, administration, finances, agriculture, commerce, industrie (Hanoi: IDEO, 1914), 167.
11. Philippe Eberhardt and Maurice Aufray, Contribution à l’étude du thé en Indochine, in Bulletin Économique de l’Indochine no. 33 (Hanoi: IDEO, 1919), 8-9.
12. Brénier, Essai d’atlas statistique, 166, map XXXVI.
13. Robert du Pasquier, La production de thé en Indochine (Hanoi: IDEO, 1941), 4.
14. Jean Goubeaux, “Étude agronomique et économique de la province de Phu-Tho (Tonkin),” Bulletin économique de l’Indochine 31, no. 195 (1928): 403.
15. Paul Braemer, “La production du thé au Tonkin,” Bulletin économique de l’Indochine 30, no. 185 (1927): 212.
16. In 1891, the province of Hu’ng Hóa was completely restructured by Gouverneur Général Jean-Marie de Lanessan’s decree no. 541 (September 8, 1891), and its capital was moved to the city of Phú Tho on May 5, 1903. In 1905, the colonial authorities remapped the northern provinces of Tonkin. Out of sections of territory from So’n Tây, Hu’ng Hóa, and Thái Nguyên provinces, they created three new provinces: Phú Tho, Vĩnh Yên, and Phù Lỗ. See Tu’ọ’ng, Lê and Biên, Vu˜ Kim, Lich siu ‘ Vı˜nh Phú [History of Vı˜nh Phú Province] (Việt Trì: nxb Vaăn hoá và Thông tin Vı˜nh Phú, 1980), 128 Google Scholar.
17. The historical presence of plantations was the reason behind a series of requests for the shipment of seeds that were addressed to the Résident de France in Hu’ng Hoá. On October 3, 1901, the Résident de France in Thái Nguyên asked for tea seeds for French planters and received eighty baskets. On December 7, 1901, the Résident de France in Baốc Ninh requested the shipment of ten to fifteen kilos of seeds after the Résident Supérieur of Tonkin had informed him that he had a stockpile of forty kilos. And on December 1, 1902, the director of the Botanical Gardens made a similar request, noting that “there is an abundance of tea trees in the region that you administer.” “Culture alimentaire, le théier,” N 45, no. 1151, 1900-1905, Fonds de la province de Phú Tho, NAV, Hanoi. [In the French colonial system, “Résidents” were government officials who lived on-site in colonial protectorates.—Trans.]
18. “Affaires indigènes, village de Man Lan,” no. 714, 1893-1910, Fonds de la province de Phú Tho, NAV, Hanoi.
19. Ibid.
20. Goubeaux, , “Étude agronomique et économique,” 408-9 Google Scholar.
21. Trai literally means “camp, encampment, colony.” However, according to Gustave Dumoutier (as cited by Nguyê˜n Tùng), in the rural context of the north it can be translated as “small isolated homesteads” or “dispersed settlements”: see Tùng, Nguyê˜n and Krowolski, Nelly, “Noms et appellations au Vietnam,” in D’un nom à l’autre en Asie du Sud-Est. Approches et ethnologiques, eds. Massard-Vincent, Josiane and Pauwels, Simone (Paris: Karthala, 1999), 281 Google Scholar.
22. This station was created during a revival of the agricultural agencies of Indochina, which was launched by Gouverneur Général Albert Sarraut and, in 1913, was put in the hands of Auguste Chevalier, a botanist at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris. Between 1917-1918, Chevalier founded a veterinary college and the École supérieure de l’agriculture et de sylviculture in Hanoi in addition to opening four experimental stations, two of which (Phú Hộ and Pleiku) were dedicated to the improvement of tea cultivation. See Brocheux, Pierre, Une histoire économique de Viet Nam, 1850-2007. La Palanche et le camion (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2009), 73 Google Scholar.
23. Du Pasquier, La production du thé en Indochine, 4.
24. Henri, Yves, Économie agricole de l’Indochine (Hanoi: IDEO, 1932), 680 Google Scholar.
25. Braemer, “La production du thé au Tonkin,” 214.
26. Goubeaux, “Étude agronomique et économique,” 401.
27. “50,000 hectares of tea and coffee bushes were abandoned by French planters between 1926 and 1931; the area of cultivated land stabilized at 2,950 [hectares].” André Guinard, “La culture du thé en Indochine” (1953), cited by Brocheux, , Une histoire économique du Viet Nam, 86 Google Scholar.
28. In the mid-1920s, the situation of the peasantry in the Red River Delta worsened. Local mechanisms of regulation, notably the periodic redistribution of communal lands, and revenue created by a large and dynamic sector of traditional artisans were no longer enough to counteract the increasing pauperization of the peasantry and the growing number of landless peasants. But it was only following the international crisis of 1929 and its impact on the colonial economy, and therefore on the colonized peoples, that the attitude of the protectorate’s authorities began to change. The “policy of aid for the rice paddies,” launched between 1931-1932, aimed to equip the Red River Delta with hydraulic infrastructure that could expand the bi-annual rice harvest while simultaneously reducing congestion in the most densely populated provinces through the organization of migratory movements toward the underpopulated areas of Central and South Vietnam. See Tessier, Olivier and Fontenelle, Jean-Philippe, “Pression démographique et contraintes publiques : la paysannerie nord vietnamienne dans la tourmente du XXe siècle,” in Population et dévelopment au Viêt-nam, ed. Gubry, Patrick (Paris: Karthala/ CEPED, 2000), 499-500 Google Scholar.
29. “By 1932, production began to suffer from the effects of global overproduction (90 million kilos were stockpiled in London in 1935); in France, Indochinese tea was in competition with tea from Ceylan (Sri Lanka) and the Indies.” Pierre Brocheux noted that while, during the 1930s, the area of cultivated land fell from 13,000 hectares in 1935 to 6,100 hectares in 1938, exports increased: the deficit in the balance of annual imports as compared to exports from 1924-1930 (2,131/946 metric tons) gradually became a sizeable surplus in 1940 (200/2,556 metric tons). See Brocheux, , Une histoire économique du Viet Nam, 86-88 Google Scholar.
30. “Affaires indigènes, village de Thái Ninh,” no. 732, 1901-1921, Fonds de la province de Phú Thọ, NAV, Hanoi.
31. “Affaires indigènes, village de Ninh Dân,” no. 729, 1896-1922, Fonds de la province de Phú Thọ, NAV, Hanoi.
32. Du’o’ng Thị The and Thoa, Phạm Thị, Tên làng xã Việt Nam đầu thế kỷ XIX [Names of Communes in Vietnam at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century] (Hanoi: nxb Khoa học Xã hội, 1981 Google Scholar).
33. Tessier, Olivier, “Fondateurs, ancêtres et migrants : mobilité et reformulation des espaces d’appartenance dans un village du nord du Viêt-nam,” Moussons 6 (2002): 103 Google Scholar.
34. Beginning in 1850, the Taiping Rebellion in China created an influx of thousands of Chinese mercenaries and bandits who penetrated deep into Tonkin territory, as they did in Thái Nguyên province, where they were halted by Emperor Tụ’ Duú’c’s army in 1851. The pillaging and violence perpetrated by the Black Flags (Cò’đen), the Red Flags (Cò’dđỏ), and the Yellow Flags (Co’vàng), which were grouped together under the generic term “Chinese pirates,” were directly linked to the French wars of colonial conquest. Alliances with these different bands of pirates were periodically declared and then denounced by both the future colonial power and the imperial state, which was destabilized by the intrusion of a Western power. See Khôi, Lê Thành, “Absolutisme et immobilisme,” in Histoire du Viêt-Nam, des origines à 1858 (Paris: Sudestasie, 1981), 383 Google Scholar.
35. This excerpt from a June 1902 request made by the lý tru’ỏ’ng of the commune of Ninh Dân to the tri huyện of Thanh Ba provides a succinct overview of the situation: “Our village is located in the forest zone, which extends over an enormous swath of territory. It was excessively populated in the past. Later, the inhabitants were dispersed by piracy and, as a result, the lands were left fallow.” “Affaires indigènes, village de Ninh Dân,” Fonds de la Résidence de Phú Thọ, NAV, Hanoi. On the same topic, Pierre Gourou wrote: “Very ancient Annamite villages are located on the terraces between the Red River and the Clear River as well as between the terraces on the right bank of the Red River, a little bit upstream of Thanh Ba (Phú Thọ province). These ancient Annamite settlements suffered greatly during the troubles of the nineteenth century when the country was at the mercy of bands of pillagers, the most famous of which were the Black Flags. Many villages have disappeared, and there is a great deal of land for Annamite colonization to recover.” Gourou, Pierre, Les paysans du delta tonkinois. Étude de géographie humaine (Paris: Les Éditions d’art et d’histoire, 1936), 201 Google Scholar.
36. Tessier, “Fondateurs, ancêtres et migrants,” 104-8.
37. Thọ, Ngô Đú’c, Nguyên, Nguyên Va˘n and Papin, Philippe, eds., Đồng Khánh đia du’ chí [Descriptive Geography of the Emperor Đồng Khánh] (Hanoi: EFEO/Purple Ink, 2004), 943 Google Scholar.
38. Độ, Phạm Xuân, Phú Thọ tinh đia chí [Geography of Phú Thọ Province] (Hanoi: nxb Tổng Phát hành Nam-Kỷ, 1939), 34-35 Google Scholar.
39. Henri Brénier points out that, as of 1914, the transportation of goods provided the railroads in Indochina with their highest gross takings. This was particularly true for the Hải Phòng-Yunnanfou line, even though the price of each metric ton transported was three times higher than on public lines. See Brénier, Essai d’atlas statistique, 205. It should also be noted that this form of transport was faster and less risky than shipping via the Red River, which was impossible to navigate during the rainy season.
40. Over the course of the first decades of colonization, the disastrous decimation of the forests in Cochinchina was such that two decrees, the first in 1891 and the second in 1894, sought to create a system regulating all the forests in Indochina. The creation of forest reserves was at the center of this project. But even if free use of these reserves was forbidden, “this law, which was very hard on the ‘natives,’ should not be seen as the result of a growing desire for conservation. It was nothing more than a means to regenerate forests that had been depleted by twenty years of colonial use in order to avert the total depletion of these forests.” Thomas, Frédéric, Histoire du régime et des services forestiers français en Indochine de 1862 à 1945 (Hanoi: nxb Thê´ Gio´’i, 1999), 25 Google Scholar.
41. Arrêté du gouverneur général de l’Indochine, 31 juillet 1914, Journal officiel de l’Indochine française, 1327-28; arrêté du gouverneur général de l’Indochine, 9 novembre 1928, Journal officiel de l’Indochine française, 3351-52. These two reserves were among the nineteen reserves established between 1908 and 1931 in Phú Thọ province. Their total surface area was 38,386 hectares, over 10% of the total surface area of the province (approximately 3,740 km2).
42. “Forêts – Réserves dans la province de Phú Thọ,” N 92, no. 75 747, 1908-1939, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
43. This situation is confirmed by a location report from the head of the Division forestière de Phủ Đoan Forest Department. Dated October 3, 1927, it specifies the composition of the future reserve of Naăng Yên. The proposed forest classification project concerned 2,263.30 hectares spread over the territories of nine communes belonging to two districts: 753.82 hectares of “medium-density forest,” 1,145.86 hectares of “forest clearings,” and 138.14 hectares “in recovery.” See decree dated 9 November 1928, “Réserve forestière” sub-file, ref. no. 490 Naăng Yên, “Forêts – Réserves dans la province de Phú Thọ,” N 92, no. 75 747, 1908-1939, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
44. A comparison of the nineteen classification decrees highlights variations in the way they were formulated, and the contents of the regulatory measures are similar. For example, “the inhabitants of the villages bordering the Naăng Yên reserves are recognized as having the following rights of usage: 1. Free logging of wood and bamboo as needed for their personal use in the construction and maintenance of their huts and pagodas as well as heating, subject to the presentation of a request before the Service forestier and obedience to the Service’s instructions; 2. Free harvest of Củ-nâu, edible, medicinal, or chewable roots; 3. Free harvest of the leaves of palm trees already existing in the forest, without in any way encouraging the spread of this species; 4. The authorization to freely harvest the sap of the Trám traống (canarium copaliferum).” Arrêté du gouverneur général de l’Indochine, 9 November 1928.
45. Henri, Économie agricole de l’Indochine, 395.
46. Goubeaux, “Étude agronomique,” 409-10.
47. Du Pasquier, La production du thé en Indochine, 26.
48. “Programme de colonisation dans la province de Phú Thoø,” Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
49. Letter dated 3 August 1937, “Déclassement partiel des réserves forestières de Đại Luøc et Naăng Yên,” sub-file, ref. nos. 292 and 490, decree no. 96, 8 June 1938, “Forêts – Réserves dans la province de Phú Thoø,” N 92, no. 75 747, 1908-1939, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
50. Letter dated 13 August 1937, “Déclassement partiel des réserves forestières de Đại Luøc et Naăng Yên,” sub-file, ref. nos. 292 and 490, decree no. 96, 8 June 1938, “Forêts – Réserves dans la province de Phú Thoø,” N 92, no. 75 747, 1908-1939, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
51. Nine letters were exchanged between September 14 and December 20, 1937, although some items are missing from the files.
52. Letter dated 13 August 1937,
53. Letter from the head of the Service forestier in Tonkin, 24 August 1928, “Réserve forestière” sub-file, ref. no. 490 Naăng Yên, decree dated 9 November 1928, “Forêts – Réserves dans la province de Phú Thoø,” N 92, no. 75 747, 1908-1939, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
54. Annuaire général de l’Indochine. Partie administrative (Hanoi : Impr. d’Extrême-Orient, 1914), 423-25.
55. Annuaire administratif de l’Indochine (Hanoi: Impr. d’Extrême-Orient, 1929), 279-80.
56. “Demande de défrichement présentée par Chu Vaăn Cu du hameau de Đông Lĩnh, village de Đào Giã,” no. 42454, 1927, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
57. “Demande de défrichement présentée par le village de Hu’o’ng Xa,” no. 42468, 1926, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
58. “Demande de défrichement présentée par Phạm Vaăn Nghiêm du village de Đào Giã,” no. 42460, 1927, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
59. The difficulty and complexity of such a procedure, for which the nature of the property, its surface area, the boundaries of the terrain, and the good faith of the applicant all had to be demonstrated, was enough to discourage even the most “legalistic” members of the administered population.
60. Phạm Xuân Độ, Phú Thọ tinh đia chí, 79-80.
61. The agronomist René Dumont and the geographer Pierre Gourou both advocated this Malthusian perspective. Dumont wrote that “no real progress can be made as long as the delta continues to have an excessive population, which, given the current economic realities, it can neither sufficiently feed nor house normally.” René Dumont, La culture du riz dans le delta du Tonkin. Étude et propositions d’amélioration des techniques traditionelles de riziculture tropicale (Patani: Prince of Songkia University, 1935; repr. 1995), 63. According to Gourou, “the excessive density of the population is a problem with no solution. ... These peasants are already using their soil at almost maximum capacity; neither hydraulic projects nor technical advances could increase production to the point of changing the material conditions of their lives [chronic poverty].” Gourou, Les paysans du delta tonkinois, 577. According to the unanimously agreed-upon number, in the 1930s, the Tonkin delta contained a demographic excess of 1.5 to 2 million people, out of a total population of 7-8 million. See Kherian, Grégoire, “Esquisse d’une politique démographique en Indochine,” Revue indochinoise juridique et économique I (1937): 41 Google Scholar.
62. Smolski, Thadeus, Notes sur le mouvement de la population en Indochine, in Bulletin Économique de l’Indochine no. 199 (Hanoi: IDEO, 1929 Google Scholar).
63. A first attempt at official colonization in 1907 resulted in the resettlement of eighty-four families (328 people) from the Thái Bình province to the Cần Tho’ province. Most ‘ of them were eventually repatriated in the years that followed. See Grivaz, Raymond, Aspects sociaux et économiques du sentiment religieux en pays annamite (Paris: Éd. Montchrétien, 1942 Google Scholar).
64. Conseil fédéral de l’Indochine, December 1941, report no. 5, “Le problème démo graphique, surpopulation et colonisation,” ANVNI GGI 1367, p. 6, Fonds du Gouvernement général de l’Indochine, NAV, Hanoi.
65. “Programme de colonisation dans la province de Phú Thoø,” Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
66. Discours de M. Tholanche à la Chambre des représentants du people du Tonkin, 20 octobre 1936, in Kherian, Grégoire, “Esquisse d’une politique démographique en Indochine,” Revue indochinoise juridique et économique II (1937): 43 Google Scholar, n. 1.
67. Letter dated 20 December 1937, “Déclassement partiel des réserves forestières de Đaại Luøc et Naăng Yên,” sub-file, ref. nos. 292 and 490, decree no. 96, 8 June 1938, “Forêts – Réserves dans la province de Phú Thoø,” N 92, no. 75 747, 1908-1939, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
68. Synthesis of two documents from the Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi: “Carte du programme de colonisation dans la province de Phú Thoø,” no. 67053, 1938-1939 ; “Programme de colonisation dans la province de Phú Thoø.”
69. Created on March 20, 1936, by a decree from the Résident Supérieur of Tonkin, the policy of “population concessions,” founded by and around a “benefactor” who was responsible for the recruitment of colonists and their moral and material management, represents the archetype of the evolutionist and paternalist colonial vision. ”Most of the success stories of Annamite colonization had as a central figure a person of this sort, sometimes a philanthropic high-ranking Mandarin, sometimes a French or Annamite missionary, sometimes even French colonists or mining companies.” Kherian, “Esquisse d’une politique démographique en Indochine,” 42.
70. “Minutes des fiches de concessions à Phú Thoø,” no. 166, 1936, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi. At this date, the districts of Thanh Ba and Haø Hòa did not contain a single European concession. It was not until 1941 that two concessions of this type were granted in Thanh Ba.
71. Letter to the Résident de France in Phú Thoø, 26 July 1938, “Demande de concession de 200 ha à Thái Ninh formulée par Trần Văn Hoø’i,” N 67 047, 1938-1940, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
72. Letter to the Gouverneur Général of Indochina, 25 October 1939, “Demande de concession de 200 ha à Thái Ninh formulée par Trần Văn Hoø’i,” N 67 047, 1938-1940, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
73. Letter from the Gouverneur Général of Indochine, 15 January 1940, “Demande de concession de 200 ha à Thái Ninh formulée par Trần Văn Hoø’i,” N 67 047, 1938-1940, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
74. He also haphazardly invoked the necessity of satisfying the North African market: “It was for this reason that an Indochinese agency was created in Algeria to promote agricultural products,” not to mention the “Propaganda Committee that was recently organized in Paris and headed by Mr. De Fol, which fully justifies the Metropole’s interest in the important question of Indochinese tea.” Letter to the Résident Supérieur of Tonkin, 12 October 1938, “Demande de concession de 200 ha à Thái Ninh formulée par Trần Văn Hoø’i,” N 67 047, 1938-1940, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
75. The decree of March 28, 1929 made free land grants of a maximum of 300 hectares officially available to Annamites. This policy was accompanied by the decree of March 20, 1936, which laid out the policy of “population concessions” and established the policy of group-based colonization.
76. In a 1939 report, the Administrateur Résident de France in Phú Thoø justified the rejection of five requests for “population concessions”: “Large-scale colonization and population colonization should be limited to regions that are isolated, unhealthy, or unsafe, where, for whatever reason, spontaneous immigration is not an option. These conditions are only very rarely found in Phú Thoø province ... . To summarize, the policy of small-scale colonization (granting of concessions of less than 15 mẫu, as per the decree of November 13, 1925) appears to me to be in every way the only acceptable and desirable policy, from both a social and financial point of view.” “Programme de colonisation dans la province de Phú Thoø,” Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
77. Corporations (phu’òng) were a widespread form of professional organization in precolonial Vietnam. In popular culture, corporations were identified by their trades, from which the generic expression “association of 100 trades” is derived. Their activities varied, from the creation of tontines to the collection of funds for marriages or deaths, since the association “traditionally sent offerings, gifts, or money to members.” See Bính, Phan Kế, Viêt Nam Phong Tuc [Morals and Customs of Viêt-Nam] (Paris: EFEO, 1975), 209 Google Scholar. Beyond these material exchanges, the goal of these corporations was to “create a necessary communion between people in the same social condition” and to increase their prestige by offering religious objects to the communal house (dinh) that belonged exclusively to them and bore their name. See Tu’ Chi, Nguyê˜n, “Le làng traditionnel au Baốc Bộ, sa structure organisationnelle, ses problèmes,” Le village traditionnel (Hanoi: nxb Thê´ Gio´’i, 1993), 94 Google Scholar. The originality of this “Corporation of Native Planters” lay in its desire and ability to advance grievances.
78. “Pétition à Monsieur Le Résident Supérieur au Tonkin,” no. 67774, 1937, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
79. Ibid.
80. Ibid.
81. “Forêts – Réserves dans la Province de Phú Thoø,” Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
82. “Pétition à Monsieur Le Résident Supérieur au Tonkin,” Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
83. The forecasts made in 1937 by Paul Bernard, graduate of the École polytechnique and president of the Société française financière et coloniale (SFFC), are even more pessimistic. He estimated that, by 1948, the Tonkin Delta would contain an excess of 2.4 million peasants, while the transmigration envisaged by the Gouverneur Général would only be able to transplant a maximum of 40,000 individuals, due to the amount of money involved: 10,000 francs per family before the first harvest. For him, as well as for a certain number of high-ranking bureaucrats posted to Indochina when the Popular Front was in power, the crisis that continued to afflict the Western world, particularly France, required a transformation in the method of profiting from the colonies. This entailed replacing the export of capital to the colony with the export of French goods, widening the internal market, and fighting against the increasing pauperization of the peasantry through massive and rapid industrialization of the colony accompanied by gradual political reforms. See Brocheux, Pierre and Hemery, Daniel, Indochine. La colonisation ambiguë, 1858-1954 (Paris: La Découverte, 2001), 311-12 Google Scholar.
84. “Rôle des impôts personnels des différents phú, huyên, châu et centres urbains de la province de Phú Thọ,” 14, 1297, 1926-1927, Fonds de la province de Phú Tho, NAV, Hanoi.
85. “Modifications territoriales: érection en phủ du huyên de Thanh Ba,” no. 68830, 1939, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
86. Decree no. 4215, dated September 4, 1943.
87. “Érection en phủ du huyên de Cẩm Khê,” no. 68828, 1943, Fonds RST, NAV, Hanoi.
88. The Japanese occupation was harshly felt, even down to the village level: “The impact of the Japanese coup against the Vichy French was felt in the village when orders came to convert rice lands to the production of industrial crops like castor oil seed and jute.” Kleinen, John, Facing the Future, Reviving the Past: A Study of Social Change in a Northern Vietnamese Village (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999), 74 Google Scholar.
89. The famine that occurred between the fall of 1944 and the winter of 1945 caused the deaths of 1.5-2 million peasants, principally in the Red River Delta. See Anh, Nguyên Thê´, “La famine de 1945 au Nord Viêt-nam,” Approche Asie 8 (1985): 103-16 Google Scholar.
90. Độ, Phạm Xuân, Phú Thọ tinh đia chí, 68-69 Google Scholar.
91. Scott, James C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976 Google Scholar); Popkin, Samuel L., The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkley: University of California Press, (1979)Google Scholar.
92. By bringing Indochina into the demographic transition (lowering the mortality rate) without mobilizing the human and financial means necessary to create a corresponding rise in agricultural production commensurate with the exponential increase in the population, the colonial powers contributed to the chronic food shortage in Tonkin. The international crisis of 1929 accelerated and amplified this process and ultimately led to famine and revolt.
93. It is generally held that the sufficient amount of rice to feed an adult is an annual ration of 300-350 kilos of paddy, or 210-250 kilos of rice per person per year.
94. Brocheux and Hemery, Indochine, 255.
95. My fieldwork set out to develop a quantitative evaluation of the migratory flow within three established lineages in the commune of Mạn Lạn, which was the departure point for many colonist-planters during the first half of the twentieth century. I found that 57-80% of adult men in each of these lineages left their village to settle in the historical zone of plantation development. A movement of this size, distributed relatively evenly over the area of departure, contradicts the image of migration as the final stage in the pauperization of the marginal group of peasant society for whom departure was the only means of survival. On the contrary, this study conveys an image of economic development, dynamism, and the characteristics of a pioneer movement, which is incongruous with this period of crisis. For individuals considering migration, the fact that some migrants returned to the commune of Mạn Lạn demonstrated that departure was not a one-way street in that it was not necessarily definitive. The fact that the migratory process was not considered irreversible made departure socially and economically more conceivable and widespread. See Tessier, “Le Pays natal est un carambole sucré.”
96. See the following case in point: “They [the villagers] docilely submit to all of the obligations placed on them by their dual dependence on family and commune. They are so bent by this discipline that they cannot conceive of the spirit of individual liberty that characterizes the European. ... These social and religious ties are so strong that the Annamite rarely leaves his village, and if he does, he always returns.” Delamarre, Émile, “La réforme communale au Tonkin,” Revue du Pacifique 1, no. 3 (1924): 211-12 Google Scholar. This culturalist approach did not disappear along with colonization: “Since each Vietnamese village is an identity and an entity in itself, distinguished from other villages by its traditions, social practices, moral rules, and tutelary deity who represents its protector and embodies its soul, the cult dedicated to this deity becomes the business of the community as a whole.” Ký, Nguy᷅n Va˘n, La sociétié vietnamienne face à la modernité. Le Tonkin de la fin du XIXe siècle à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995), 28-29 Google Scholar. For a more complete examination of this question, see Papin, Philipe and Tessier, Olivier, eds., Le village en questions [Làng ỏ’ vùng châu thổ sông Hồng : vắn đế còn bỏngỏ] (Hanoi: Publications du centre de l’EFEO, 2002 Google Scholar).
97. When Yves Henri, the inspector general of agriculture in the colonies, evaluated the necessary workforce for a French tea plantation of 500 hectares in 1932, he described the “natives” much like a horse trader: “1,500 coolies (men, women, children), or three per hectare, which is the normal number on plantations in Assam.” Henri, Économie agricole de l’Indochine, 595.
98. This undeniable blindness was fed by a series of presuppositions that were raised to the level of postulates, which the political and scientific elite would repeat after each aborted attempt at directed population migration: the unflagging attachment of peasants to their village (their “homeland”) and their local customs, as explained by economic, psychological, social (status), and spiritual factors (cults, superstitions); atavistic fear of altitude and unhealthy climates; the fact that people from the plains perished in the absence of rice paddies; and lack of individual initiative and the need to be guided and organized, etc. A detailed analysis is provided in the introduction and third chapter of Tessier, “Le pays natal est un carambole sucré,”1-29 and 164-244.
99. “In the province of Phú Thoø the capitalist sector of the economy consisted princi pally of French tea and paint plantations in the hilly parts of the province, a tea process ing plant in Phú Hôø, and a small pulp mill in Viêøt Trì. The plantations were set up on land conceded to French settlers and Vietnamese collaborators—concessions amounting to 10,969 hectares, or approximately 22 percents of the province’s cultivable land in the 1930s (Phạm Xuân Độ 1939 : 62-63 ; Henri 1932 : 23).” Lu’o’ng, Hy Vaăn, Revolution in the Village: Tradition and Transformation in North Vietnam, 1925-1988 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), 43 Google Scholar.
100. Bourdieu, Pierre et al., The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries, trans. Nice, Richard (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), 14 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
This is a translation of: Les faux-semblants de la « révolution du thé » (1920-1945) dans la province de Phú Thọ (Tonkin)