Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931

by Trương Bửu Lâm

The first three decades of the twentieth century in late-colonial Vietnam--the period that also marked the transition between the dominant Confucian and nascent Western worldviews--generated an abundance of political literature in that country. The documents from this transitional era belong to a variety of propaganda pamphlets, open letters to government officials, texts for private or clandestine classrooms, manifestos of political or cultural organizations, columns from newspapers, public proclamations, petitions to international agencies, and poems. Whether from the old or the new era, however, they all expressed an opinion on the colonial status of their country.
Scholar Truong Buu Lam has collected twenty of these documents, all written between 1900 and 1931, into an anthology which captures the spirit of the conflicting ideologies and the political struggles of this time. Written originally in Vietnamese, French, or classical Chinese, the documents have been translated into English by Lam and given individual introductions in an effort to clarify their historical contexts most accurately. Lam also provides a lengthy overview of the contemporary scene at the time of the writings to further illuminate the grander themes tying the writings together.
In Vietnam, all of these writings are well-known texts, quoted in every publication that examines the period under consideration; yet, to the best of our knowledge, few have been reproduced in their entirety and none has ever been translated into English. This translation marks an important addition to the fields of Southeast Asian and colonial studies and will be welcomed by historians, political scientists, and anthropologists alike.
Truong Buu Lam is Associate Professor of History, University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is editor of the collections Patterns of Vietnamese Response to Foreign Intervention, 1858-1900 and Borrowings and Adaptations in Vietnamese Culture , and the author of Resistance, Rebellion, Popular Movements in Vietnamese History and New Lamps for The Transformation of the Vietnamese Administrative Elite .

Genres: History

346 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2000

About the author

Dr. Trương Bửu Lâm is a retired professor of history. He earned his doctorate in History from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium). In 1957, he began working for the Viện Khảo Cổ [Institute of Archaeology(?)] of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Vietnam. At the same time, he concurrently taught history at the Universities of Saigon and Huế, and French and Latin at the University of Dalat. In 1964, a fellowship enabled him to continue his studies in several American universities until he obtained a teaching position at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1971 he accepted a position at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he taught Southeast Asian History until his retirement in 2001.

Reviews

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a helpful guide to the French colonial system in Indochina. It tells about and explains all the things that the authors of most historical works about this period expect you to know in advance, such as the responsibilities and authority of the Governor General, the workings of the local administration, tax collectors, the army, and so on. It paints a complete picture of what French Indochina was like, underscoring the exploitative nature of colonialism. 

I liked that the author briefly and competently explains the Indochinese judicial system, which I already knew was complex because it distinguished between French citizens and the natives of Vietnam. There were actually separate courts: French tribunals, which heard all cases involving French citizens or foreigners and followed French law, and Vietnamese courts under the Gia Long code, made by Emperor Gia Long, the founder of the Nguyen dynasty of Vietnam. The most important cases involving citizens of Vietnam were submitted to the emperor himself. 

It was also interesting to learn how the colonial administration funded the budget of Indochina. According to the author, each of the three Ky — Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin — had its own budget financed by direct taxes, which were a tax on land, income tax, and “head” tax. The last one was imposed on all men between the age of eighteen and forty-five, and they had to pay it to get an “identity card”, which they had to carry with them all the time. The police could demand to see their identity card when it wanted, and if they did not have it, they could be jailed or fined. For the Vietnamese, this tax was humiliating. 

An important source of income for the colonial government was France’s monopolistic sale of opium, alcohol, and salt. The colonial administration reserved for itself the privilege of selling these goods, while the local population had to consume them. French efforts to promote the consumption of opium as much as possible only harmed the people’s health. Since opium poppies did not grow well on Vietnamese soil, the colonial government bought opium from China, Burma, and India, so the people of Vietnam could not grow opium poppies and receive money for their work. All they were supposed to do is consume opium. They were allowed to buy it only from official opium dens, which were owned by the government. 

The author discusses the educational system of the colony, whose purpose, not surprisingly, was to prepare local people to serve the colonial administration. The French needed interpreters and literate staff to work in the numerous new offices established by the new government because many mandarins, who were the traditional Vietnamese bureaucrats, refused to work for the colonial government. For this purpose, the French focused on teaching the Vietnamese the national romanized writing system. It was easy to learn. It turned the Vietnamese away from their traditional mentors, the Chinese, and it alienated them from the emperor and his government, which continued to use Chinese characters. The educational system was divided into four levels — primary, secondary, university, and “superior learning” — and to advance to each next, students had to pass difficult examinations. Education in Vietnam became extremely selective, its goal being to train a small elite that would then assist the colonial government. This system discouraged most Vietnamese from continuing their schooling beyond the secondary, or even primary, level. As the author explains, Vietnam was an agricultural society, and “an able-bodied youngster” was needed more in the rice fields than at school, so families did not see why they should let their sons spend all their time studying for examinations they were more likely to fail than pass. 

The author also shows the effect that French colonialism had on the rural population. It might seem that the villagers were far removed from the colonial administration in the big cities and that the only time the French bothered them was when they sent local officials to collect taxes. However, the situation was actually different — the Vietnamese villagers were, more or less, serfs. The colonial government took away their land and gave it to French citizens, to whom the villagers then needed to pay with either a lot of work or taxes to be able to grow crops for themselves and for sale on this land. This plunged the people of Vietnam into even worse poverty. Another much despised colonial demand was that each village sent some of its young men to be soldiers in the Indochinese army. During the Second World War, 100,000 Vietnamese soldiers fought to defend France, the country that had reduced Vietnam to an exploited colony. 

COLONIALISM EXPERIENCED is a well-written and informative work that traces the changes in the society of Vietnam in the years when the French decided to modernize and Westernize their colony. This book would be of interest to those readers who would like to improve their understanding of French Indochina, its colonial administration and society. It also includes documents written by different Vietnamese nationalists, which discuss their perceptions of French colonialism in their country and suggest solutions to the issues that plague it.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-curated collection of important Vietnamese sources on the colonial era. A gem for both experienced Southeast Asian scholars and chumps (like myself) who don't know Vietnamese. The notes and context were incredibly helpful. One nice surprise: I found the author's introduction to the colonial state better than most scholarship on French administration.