Widening the Colonial Encounter: Asian Connections Inside French Indochina During … · 2017-01-08 · khao) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri, 1998) and Masaya Shiraishi, Phong trao

Modern Asian Studies 43 5 (2009) pp 1189ndash1228 Ccopy 2008 Cambridge University Pressdoi101017S0026749X0800351X First published online 16 October 2008

Widening the Colonial Encounter AsianConnections Inside French Indochina

During the Interwar PeriodCHRISTOPHER E GOSCHA

History Department Universite du Quebec a Montreal 4283 rue SaintHubert Montreal Quebec H2J 2W6 Canada

Email christophergoschasympaticoca

Abstract

Relying on three inter-Asian colonial debates from French Indochina this paperattempts to widen our analytical approach to the study of colonialism in Indochinabeyond the lsquocolonizerrsquondashlsquocolonizedrsquo opposition by factoring in the relationshipsamong the diverse Asian colonized living within the colonial state withoutdownplaying the important role Western colonialism played in transformingthose very relationships or being affected by them The French Indochinese caseis helpful for it suggests that inter-Asian connections did anything vanish butrather intensified because of the colonial experience Numerous Lao KhmerVietnamese and Chinese subject elites continued to engage each other and theFrench in fascinating and sometimes heated debates about the political legalcultural and economic place each group held in French Indochina ndash or did notwant to hold This directly affected how they came to interact with one anotherin new ways essential to understanding the complexity of the colonial encounterat the time and can provide new insights into post-colonial and internationalhistory Lastly this wider approach to studying the colonial encounter allows usto view the French side of the colonial equation from a new vantage point

Introduction

It is rare in international history and colonial studies to talk aboutAsian connections during the colonial period Scholars of colonialismtend to concentrate on one specific colonial state or on the relationshipbetween the lsquocolonizerrsquo and the lsquocolonizedrsquo International relationsspecialists are understandably more concerned with the sovereignentities of the time (the colonial states of British India the DutchIndies or French Indochina) rather than the state-less colonized

1189

terms of use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpdxdoiorg101017S0026749X0800351XDownloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Universiteacute du Queacutebec agrave Montreacuteal on 07 Jan 2017 at 115828 subject to the Cambridge Core

1190 C H R I S T O P H E R E G O S C H A

The Asian side of the story in international relations usually resumesin 1945 with the onset of decolonisation and the birth of new nation-states (India Indonesia or Vietnam) The emphasis in post-colonialstudies on the opposition between the lsquocolonizerrsquo ndash lsquocolonizedrsquo has alsooverlooked inter-Asian colonial connections While the importance ofthis relationship is certainly crucial it was not the only one defining thecolonial experience And by projecting this opposition into the past wecan sometimes exclude other ways by which the lsquocolonial encounterrsquo (lasituation coloniale)1 to borrow Georges Ballandierrsquos famous expressionintersected in other complex and little studied ways at the time2 In allthree cases we learn little about how say colonized Vietnamese andChinese or Burmese and Indians interacted with one another duringthe colonial period ndash both inside and outside the colonial states ndash orhow this might have affected relationships with the colonizers3

In this paper I would like to argue that the dynamics of colonialismactually set into motion a new set of inter-colonial Asian connectionsones which directly affected the nature of the lsquocolonial encounterrsquoin ways overlooked by the lsquocolonizerrsquo ndash lsquocolonizedrsquo binary approachUsing colonial French Indochina as my case study this essay seeks towiden our analytical approach to the study of colonialism in Indochinaby factoring in the relationships among the diverse Asian colonizedliving within the new colonial state without however downplayingthe important role Western colonialism played in transforming those

1 Georges Balandier lsquoLa situation coloniale Approche theoriquersquo Cahiersinternationaux de sociologie Vol XI (1951) pp 44ndash79

2 Frederick Cooper has recently warned against projecting such binary oppositionson to more complicated colonial situations at the time Frederick Cooper Colonialismin Question Theory Knowledge History (Berkeley CA University of California Press2005) pp 1ndash32

3 However new work is being done on Asian connections during the colonialperiod both inside and in-between the Western colonial states See for exampleErez Manela The Wilsonian Moment Self Determination and the International Originsof Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford UK Oxford University Press 2007) MichelineLessard lsquoOrganisons-nous Racial antagonism and Vietnamese economic nationalismin the early twentieth centuryrsquo in French Colonial History Vol 7 (2007) pp 171ndash201and Lorraine Patterson Tenacious Texts Vietnam China and Radical Cultural Intersections1890ndash1930 PhD (New Haven CT Yale University 2006) The Japanese have longblazed the trail on inter-Asian regional contacts though what I have read has comevia Vietnamese translation Furuta Motoo Viet Nam trong Lich Su The Gioi (sach thamkhao) (Hanoi Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri 1998) and Masaya Shiraishi Phong trao dantoc Viet Nam va Quan he cua no voi Nhat Ban va Chau A Tu tuong cua Phan Boi Chau ve cachmang va the gioi 2 volumes (Hanoi Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia 1999) to nameonly two of the most recent works of this kind See also my Thailand and the SoutheastAsian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution (1887ndash1954) (London Routeledge 1999)


W I D E N I N G T H E C O L O N I A L E N C O U N T E R 1191

very relationships Numerous Lao Khmer Vietnamese and Chinesesubject elites continued to engage each other and the French infascinating debates about the political legal cultural and economicplace each group held in the French Indochinese colonial state ndash ordid not want to hold This directly affected how they came to interactwith one another and the French colonizers in new ways essentialto understanding the complexity of the colonial encounter at thetime and can provide new insights into post-colonial and internationalhistory

I use three inter-Asian colonial debates to make my point4 The firstone is a lively exchange between Vietnamese and overseas Chineseliving in southern Vietnam what I call the lsquoGreatrsquo Sino-Vietnamesedebate It lasted from 1919 to around 1923 and focused on neweconomic political and cultural problems opposing the two sides Thesecond case study focuses on the lsquolongrsquo Vietnamese-Cambodian debateof the 1930s On one level it provides a new look into how Vietnameseand Cambodians came to perceive each other in new ways at thetime On another level it also shows how the French creation ofthe unprecedented colonial legal categories defining those livingwithin Indochina gave rise to new interactions between these twogroups as well as with the colonizer For the third exchange I usea 1935 colonial decision to change the legal standing of the ethnicVietnamese living in Laos by placing them under the jurisdictionof Lao authorities This lively exchange allows us to examine moreclosely how the Vietnamese Lao Khmer and French engaged eachother over the questions of modern citizenship and its territorialboundaries all of which would become major issues in post-colonialand international history from 1945 I conclude by suggesting howthese little studied inter-Asian colonial trajectories could help us towiden our understanding of the colonial encounter in less binary andmore connected ways

Reconfiguring Inter-Asian Contacts in a Time of Colonialism

French colonialism profoundly affected how the formerly independentcountries and peoples it subjugated would view each other in the

4 By lsquointer-Asianrsquo here I mean exchanges among the colonized Asians residingwithin the French Indochinese colonial state (which consisted of the present-dayNation-states of Laos Cambodia and Vietnam)



future By colonising eastern mainland Southeast Asia the Frenchplaced a number of pre-existing kingdoms and their subjects withina larger colonial entity named the lsquoIndochinese Unionrsquo from 1887No longer did local sovereigns direct their own foreign and internalmatters the French did Pre-colonial kingdoms became subordinatesub-units or countries (pays was the colonial shorthand) of theIndochinese colonial state The ethnic Vietnamese kingdom of DaiNam (Vietnam) was dismantled into three colonial parts lsquoAnnamrsquoin todayrsquos central Vietnam and lsquoTonkinrsquo in the north became legallyconstituted protectorates while lsquoCochinchinarsquo was transformed intoa colony in the south5 The French established a protectorate overCambodia while Laos became a complex amalgam of protectorateskingdoms and military territories The colonial division of Vietnaminto three parts was based less on racial criteria than on the drawn-out nature of French colonial expansion between the second Empireand the Third Republic the result of complex politico-legal andeconomic considerations as well as the need to divide in order to ruleSignificantly the French also created colonial nationalities (nationalite)for each of the new territorial sub-units (pays) a point to which I willreturn below

The creation of French Indochina reconfigured the nature of Asiancontacts inside the new colonial state as did the Dutch colonialproject in lsquoIndonesiarsquo or the British one in India Most importantlyVietnamese Lao Cambodians and a variety of lsquoethnic minoritiesrsquowere now living within the same state ndash a colonial one ruled by aEuropean power This was unprecedented The Dai Nam Empire hadnever managed such an extensive state (though the French relied onearlier Vietnamese territorial claims to Laos and Cambodia to justifythe making of colonial Indochina) Second the French facilitatedVietnamese and Chinese immigration to and within all of Indochina Asin British Burma and Malaya the mechanics of Western colonialismin Southeast Asia had important demographic social and politicaleffects which would be a point of legal contention long after 1945

for nationalist leaders throughout the region In 1874 an early

5 Yet the French themselves had to coin a term to refer to all three ethnicVietnamese pays They came to use the word lsquoAnnamesersquo which technically onlyreferred to the nationals of the territorial protectorate of Annam in central Vietnamtoday but unofficially it was used to refer to all the ethnic Vietnamese living inCochinchina Annam and Tonkin (as well as in Laos Cambodia and outside thecolonial state) Meanwhile nationalists would revive lsquoViet Namrsquo (the Vietnamese ofthe South) to evoke the national unity of the ethnically Vietnamese countries



colonial census noted 4452 Vietnamese out of a total Cambodianpopulation of 746424 In 1911 Vietnamese immigration weighed inat 79050 for 1360188 Cambodians Ten years later however theVietnamese population in Cambodia almost doubled to 140225 outof a total Khmer population of two million While these numbers aresubject to caution the impact of French colonialism on Vietnamesemovements is clear The most visible manifestation of this increase inimmigration obviously occurred in Cambodian urban centres aboveall in Phnom Penh where the Vietnamese numbered only 18990 in1921 but represented 6151 of the total urban population6 Therethey worked as bureaucrats shopkeepers policemen and tailors Theyincreasingly played a role in the colonial transformation of westernIndochina working away as mechanics plantation workers pumpinggas and driving buses across the pre-colonial borders dividing Vietnamfrom Cambodia and Laos In July 1936 the Cambodian populationtopped three million with the Vietnamese numbering 1910007

The Vietnamese were not the only ones on the move during thecolonial period Across colonial Southeast Asia European colonizersincreased Chinese and Indian immigration to help man and build theircolonial states New shipping lanes roads railway lines canals busescars and even outboard motors led to increased movements of morepeople who were moving faster and further than before The colonialneed for cheap labour in Southeast Asia the coastal and maritimecolonisation of China by foreign powers and the weakness of the Qingand subsequent nationalist states in China well into the 1920s onlyfacilitated massive movements of Chinese immigrants into colonialparts of Asia In 1879 there were some 45000 Chinese living inCochinchina In 1921 the French counted around 1560008 Evenmore Chinese moved to the British Straits Settlement while Indiansimmigrated to Burma to work in the British colonial bureaucracyand urban economy in Rangoon and Mandalay (Until the late 1930s

6 Alain Forest Le Cambodge et la colonisation francaise Histoire drsquoune colonisation sansheurts (1897ndash1920) (Paris LrsquoHarmattan 1980) pp 445ndash448 and Khy Phanra Lacommunaute vietnamienne au Cambodge a lrsquoepoque du protectorat francais (1863ndash1953)Doctoral Thesis (Paris Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III 1974) pp211ndash219

7 Cambodge lsquoNote de la Residence Superieure sur lrsquoEtat social des populationsdu Cambodge et activite administrativersquo p 2 file Bc box 23 Commission GuernutCentre des Archives drsquoOutre-mer Aix-en-Provence France [hereafter cited CAOM]

8 Tsai Maw-Kuey Les Chinois au Sud-Vietnam (Paris Bibliotheque Nationale 1968)p 38



Burma was part of a larger British Indian colonial state) Indiancivil servants circulated within the wider British colonial state notunlike the thousands of Vietnamese pushing paper in colonial officesin western Indochina

If Lao and Khmer nationalists would later resent this Frenchreliance on the Vietnamese ndash and the Vietnamese the Frencheconomic dependence on the Chinese ndash both forgot that the Frenchwould have been just as willing to work with Vietnamese commercialnetworks had they existed or to recruit and dispatch Khmer and Laocivil servants or labourers to work in Hanoi Saigon or the mines ofHon Gay had the latter been so disposed The French preferred insteadto tap into pre-existing Chinese commercial networks and Vietnamesebureaucratic proclivities in order to operate their local Indochinesecommercial networks administration public works and postal serviceson the ground Moreover Vietnamese elites collaborated with thecolonizer in much greater numbers and with more fervour than theKhmer and the Lao If the French developed a policy of lsquoFranco-Annamese Collaborationrsquo with the Vietnamese after World War I forexample they never created such a colonial policy for the Khmer andthe Lao until the Japanese and Thais forced Vichy France to do soAnd even then it was too little and too late9

Colonial stereotypes also influenced how the Asian colonized wouldcome to view each other during the colonial period From the outsetthe French considered the Vietnamese to be more lsquoindustriousrsquolsquointelligentrsquo and lsquocunningrsquo whereas the Cambodians and Lao werecharacterized as lsquochildlikersquo lsquosweetrsquo and lsquolazyrsquo10 Because the Khmerand the Lao were considered to be lsquoindolentrsquo the French turned to themore lsquodynamicrsquo Vietnamese Speaking of the Vietnamese working ascivil servants in the Residence superieure in Cambodia in the 1930s oneFrench administrator said that they had lsquoprovided precious serviceswhile waiting for the Khmer to evolve sufficiently to take the place ofthe Annamese in his [the Khmerrsquos] own country secretaries technical

9 On Franco-Annamese collaboration see Agathe Larcher-Goscha La legitimationfrancaise en Indochine Mythes et realites de la collaboration franco-vietnamienne et du reformismecolonial (1905ndash1945) Doctoral thesis (Paris Universite de Paris VII 2000)

10 These stereotypes are present in French official and non-official documentsand discourses For a nice example see Albert Peyronnet Senator from Allier lsquoLarenovation du Cambodgersquo in Les Annales Coloniales (31 March 1914) On this questionsee Alain Forest lsquoLes portraits du Cambodgienrsquo in ASEMI Vol IV No 2 (1973) pp81ndash107



agents mailmen doctors and Indochinese veterinarians etcrsquo11 Sucharguments would be repeated as mantras throughout the colonialperiod and taken up in many cases by the colonized themselvesBiased though they were these stereotypes impacted upon how Asiansperceived each other and often reacted as we shall see below

All of this posed a problem for the French by the 1930s For ifthey had justified their colonial intervention in Cambodia on thegrounds that they had lsquosavedrsquo the Khmers from being swallowedby the Thais and the Vietnamese in the nineteenth century thisclaim was contradicted by the French decision to rely on Vietnamesebureaucrats and workers to run the lower but vital levels of thecolonial state in western Indochina Worse their reliance on thelsquoindustriousrsquo and lsquodynamicrsquo Vietnamese did not please Cambodian andLao colonial nationalists opposed to lsquohistoricrsquo Vietnamese expansionin this French colonial guise By the 1930s many French colonialadministrators who had long lived and worked in the country knew itand began calling for policies that would directly affect the natureof inter-Asian contacts well into the post-colonial period (see thesecond and third debates below) Some became active supportersof western Indochinese interests considering themselves to be moreLao and Khmer than the Lao and Khmers Speaking of the problemof Vietnamese immigration to Cambodia one French official wrotearound 1938

The immigrating French subject or protege12 undoubtedly has the right to oursolicitude however the indigenous [the Khmer in Cambodia] has fought toohard for his independence for the protecting country [France] to help develop[Vietnamese] colonies who remain for the Cambodians lsquoforeignersrsquo In hismisfortune the Cambodian turned to us in full confidence By organisingadministratively mass migrations [of ethnic Vietnamese to Cambodia] wewould run the risk of losing the friendship of the Khmer country (pays)13

That said while the expansion of the pre-colonial Vietnamese statesouthwards had shrunk the Cambodian empire by the nineteenthcentury marking the Cambodian memory the two peoples were not

11 Le Bon lsquoResidence de Kratie enquete no 3rsquo sub-file Residence de KampotEnquete no 3 1 June 1938 file Commission drsquoenquete dans les territoires drsquoOutre-mer Enquete no 3 Migrations interieures box 96 Commission Guernut CAOM

12 That is the ethnic Vietnamese from the Cochinchinese colony (subjects) or fromthe protectorates of Annam or Tonkin (protected subjects)

13 P Chalier Pursat file Enquete no 3-A Questions generales not dated box 96Commission Guernut CAOM (circa 1938)



always lsquohereditary enemiesrsquo Nor were the Chinese and Vietnameselsquoeternal enemiesrsquo in spite of some one thousand years of Chinesecolonial rule of lsquoAn-Namrsquo the lsquopacified Southrsquo Sino-Vietnamesemarriages were common long before the French arrived andChinese traders had long contributed to the economic and culturalvibrancy of pre-colonial Vietnam Nor were relations between Khmerand Vietnamese always antagonistic Numerous uprisings in thenineteenth century even saw Vietnamese Catholics and Khmersjoining hands together against colonial expansion14 At the local levelthere were mixed marriages between Vietnamese and Khmer andmany southern Vietnamese could speak Khmer ndash and vice versa Thewell-known Khmer nationalist Dap Chhuon had two Vietnamesewives at one point Son Ngoc Thanhrsquos mother was Sino-VietnameseNgo That Son a ranking member of the Viet Minh in southernVietnam after 1945 grew up in Cambodia spoke flawless Khmerstudied at the Lycee Sisowath and fought with Khmer anti-colonialistsduring the first Indochina war And Vietnamese in Cambodia couldeven be part of Khmer cultural events at the local levels15

The problem was that an increasing number of Vietnamese locatedin urban centres pushing pencils in the colonial bureaucracy ortoiling away on rubber plantations bumped up against an urban-basedCambodian nationalist elite increasingly opposed to the growing rolethe Vietnamese were playing in the administration and developmentof their state and increasingly angry at the French colonizer forallowing these lsquoforeignersrsquo to do so Rather than continuing to see theVietnamese or the Chinese as important historical contributors to thedevelopment of the Cambodian and Vietnamese states as in the pastmodern Cambodian and Vietnamese nationalists increasingly beganto construct the Vietnamese and Chinese as lsquooutsidersrsquo a threat to anemerging inclusive national identity in the making during the colonialperiod

French colonial legal categories reinforced this lsquootheringrsquo bycreating new social groups based as noted on race the drawn-out nature of French colonisation politico-economic imperatives

14 Forest Le Cambodge p 458 and his lsquoCambodgiens et Vietnamiens au Cambodgependant le protectorat francais (1863ndash1920)rsquo in Pluriel Vol 3 No 4 (1975) pp 3ndash24

15 Ambassade de France au Cambodge lsquoGorce au MAErsquo 2 March 1959 p 4volume 11 series Cambodge grouping CLV [Cambodge Laos Vietnam] Ministeredes Affaires etrangeres Paris France and DVC lsquoLe theatre cambodgien vu parun Annamitersquo Le Khmer (11 January 1936) p 2 We will explore the question ofinter-Asian mixed unions in Indochina in a separate study



and the need to divide and rule Like the modern nation-statesspreading across Europe in the nineteenth century16 the colonialstate not only created new territorially bounded spaces in the non-Western world but it also introduced new legal categories definingwho belonged to the colonial domain and its subunits ndash and who didnot For those living legally in the colonial state ndash the colonized ndashthese new juridical categories counted for they assigned them newlegal identities regardless of how they defined themselves culturallyreligiously or nationally in their heads or in conversations at homeat work or while chatting in street cafes However in the SoutheastAsian context the creation of the lsquoDutch Indiesrsquo lsquoBritish Malayarsquo andlsquoFrench Indochinarsquo may have given rise to new territorially boundedstates but these colonial states ndash unlike their nationalist counterpartsin Europe ndash did not necessarily create one homogenous inclusive orcorresponding colonial nationality or citizenship17 Only politicallyindependent Thailand and Japan were in a position to apply modern

16 Rogers Brubaker has argued for 19th France and Germany that the constitution

of modern citizenship marked lsquoa crucial moment in the development of theinfrastructure of the modern state and the state systemrsquo Rogers Brubaker Citizenshipand Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1992)p 72

17 New scholarship has provided insights into the emergence of modern Europeancolonial citizenship and its impact upon relationships between the colonizers andcolonized and especially that of the metis the offspring of mixed marriages betweenEuropeans and lsquonativesrsquo See Emmanuelle Saada lsquoPaternite et citoyennete ensituation coloniale Le debat sur les ldquoreconnaissances frauduleusesrdquo et la constructiondrsquoun droit imperialrsquo in Politix Vol 17 No 66 (2004) pp 107ndash136 her lsquoVolontesde savoir coloniales Les enquetes sur les metis 1908ndash1937rsquo in Gerard Grunbergand Monique Lakroum (eds) Histoire des metissages hors drsquoEurope Nouveaux mondesnouveaux peuples (Paris LrsquoHarmattan 1999) pp 65ndash685 and her Les enfants dela colonie Les metis de lrsquoEmpire francais entre sujetion et citoyennete (Paris Editions LaDecouverte 2007) Lora Wildenthal lsquoRace gender and citizenship in the Germancolonial empirersquo in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler eds Tensions of EmpireColonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley CA University of California Press1997) pp 263ndash283 On colonial categories in Dutch Indonesia bringing in inter-Asian relationships see Charles Coppel lsquoThe Indonesian Chinese Foreign orientalsNetherlands subjects and Indonesian citizenrsquo in Barry Hooker (ed) Law and theChinese in Southeast Asia (Singapore Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 2002) pp131ndash149 and C Fasseur lsquoCornerstone and stumbling block Racial classificationand the late colonial state in Indonesiarsquo in Robert Cribb (ed) The Late ColonialState in Indonesia Political and Economic Foundations of the Netherlands Indies 1880ndash1942 (Leiden KITLV 1994) pp 31ndash55 Charles Hirschman lsquoThe Making ofrace in colonial Malaya Political economy and racial ideologyrsquo in Sociological ForumVol 1 No 2 (Spring 1986) pp 330ndash361 and his lsquoThe meaning and measurement ofethnicty in Malaysia An analysis of census classificationsrsquo in Journal of Asian StudiesVol 46 No 3 (August 1987) pp 555ndash582 On the legal status of the Indiancommunity in colonial Indochina see Nasir Abdoul-Carime lsquoLes communautes



nationalist notions of citizenship to territorially bounded nationalistborders The Thais understood the power of modern nationality wellto the point of using their own racially constructed categories fornationality to justify the deconstruction of western French Indochinaalong Thai national lines18

The French created unprecedented legal identities for thelsquoindigenousrsquo (indigenes) living within French Indochina Those bornin the French colony of Cochinchina the lsquoCochinchinesersquo became asnoted French subjects Those coming from the protectorates (that isthe lsquoAnnamesersquo lsquoTonkinesersquo Lao Cambodian and the native denizensof Kouang Tcheou Wan) were considered legally to be proteges francais(French-protected subjects)19 Ethnic Vietnamese born or residingin lsquoCochinchinarsquo were defined by colonial law as lsquoCochinchinesenationalsrsquo while the Annamese and the Tonkinese enjoyed their ownnationalities respectively There was no such thing as lsquoVietnamesersquocitizenship for Vietnam did not exist Significantly for our purposesno inclusive Indochinese colonial citizenship ever existed either20

indiennes en Indochine francaisersquo in Siksacakr No 7 (2005) pp 19ndash24 andNatasha Pairaudeau lsquoOther Frenchmen Indian Renoncants in the colonial servicein Cochinchinarsquo paper presented at the Euro-Viet Conference Saint-Petersburg May2002

18 See David Streckfuss lsquoThe mixed colonial legacy in Siam Origins of Thairacialist thought 1890ndash1910rsquo in Laurie Sears Autonomous Histories Particular TruthsEssays in Honor of John Smail (Madison University of Wisconsin Center for SoutheastAsian Studies 1993) Monograph No 11 pp 123ndash143 Thongchai Winichakul SiamMapped A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Chiang Mai Silkworm Books 1994) andSoren Ivarsson lsquoMaking Laos our space Thai discourses on history and race 1900ndash1941rsquo and Akiko Iijima lsquoThe Nyuan in Xaignaboury and cross-border links to Nanrsquo inChristopher E Goscha and Soren Ivarsson (eds) At the Crossroads Contesting Lao Pasts(Copenhagen Nordic Institute of Asian Studies 2004) pp 239ndash264 and 165ndash180respectively

19 In French colonial law lsquoindigenousrsquo (the equivalent of the British colonial termof lsquonativersquo at the time) referred generally to the lsquoaboriginal populationrsquo of a colonialterritory that had been annexed by France (a colony) or placed under a protectorateor a mandate Sujets francais could be an indigenous Vietnamese from the legallyconstituted colony of Cochinchina or those lsquoborn in and resident inrsquo the coloniallsquomunicipalitiesrsquo of Hanoi Haiphong and Tourane (Da Nang) French proteges couldbe ethnic Vietnamese from the protectorates of Tonkin Annam Laos or CambodiaTheoretically French colonial law apparently considered Laos to be a colony andhence its members sujets francais Henry Solus Traite de la condition des indigenes en droitprives Colonies et pays de protectorat (Paris Recueil Sirey 1927) pp 11ndash12 35ndash45 55

20 Significantly inside the Indochinese colonial state each pays was given its owncolonial nationality Even ethnic minority groups born within the colonial sub-unitsof Indochina were considered to be lsquonationalsrsquo of one of those pays each of which wasdefined in separate colonial civil codes See for example Code Civil de lrsquoAnnam (partiefrancaise) Hue Imprimerie Phuc Long 1936 p 13 Livre Premier des Personnes



The ethnic Chinese were classified as lsquoAsian foreignersrsquo or Asiatiquesetrangers The French maintained and consolidated pre-existingChinese congregations (bang) for their own economic interests Unlikethe Japanese the Chinese were theoretically subject to Vietnameselaw and courts as Asiatiques etrangers and not to French law In realityhowever the Chinese congregational heads answered to the Frenchcolonial state paid high taxes and continued to serve as economicintermediaries and sources of labour for the colonial power Accordingto the colonial legal specialist Henry Solus the French categorisationof the lsquoChinesersquo as lsquoAsiatiques etrangersrsquo was based on lsquoracersquo rather thanon French notions of jus solis21 Thus by maintaining the congregationsapart on racial grounds the French made it harder to assimilate theChinese to the local population during the colonial period and sowedthe seeds for inter-ethnic clashes later on22

It is not sure that French colonial experts truly grasped thepotentially divisive impact that their categories could have on relationsamong the Asian colonized and even for the survival of their owncolonial state And yet one of the French Indochinarsquos most eminentlegal architects at the time Ernest Hoeffel had put his finger on theproblem when he wrote the following

To grant to a select few of them a particular legal status can be seen as akind of privileged status especially when it is analogous to the special statusreserved for the nationals of the protecting people [the French] This spreadsthe seeds of future dissensions ever growing rivalries it is tantamount tobreaking the unity of the country the cohesion of its interests and its normalsocial evolution23

Colonialism itself generated new set of inter-Asian exchanges withinthe colonial state This is at the heart of each of the following threedebates and the lsquocolonial encountersrsquo they reveal

Titre premier de la Nationalite Articles 13 14 15 and 17 According to Article 14non-Vietnamese ethnic minorities were considered to be defined legally as Annamesesubjects lsquoSont egalement consideres comme sujets annamites tous individus issus degroupements ethniques non rattaches a une nationalite jouissant de la personnaliteinternationale et fixes de facon permanente sur le territoire de lrsquoAnnamrsquo

21 Solus Traite de la condition des indigenes en droit prives pp 60ndash71 and also LouisNicolas Les etrangers et le domaine cambodgien (Paris Editions Domat Montchrestien1934) p 149

22 Solus Traite de la condition des indigenes en droit prives pp 64ndash65 176 and MelissaCheung lsquoThe Legal Position of Ethnic Chinese in Indochina under French Rulersquo pp35ndash36

23 Cited by Khy Phanra lsquoLa communaute vietnamienne au Cambodgersquo p 313



The lsquoGreatrsquo Sino-Cochinchinese Debate Inter-Asian Relationsin Colonial Times

One of the first major public inter-colonial Asian debates to hitthe front pages of the Indochinese press occurred as World War Icame to an end The protagonists were the lsquoCochinchinesersquo and thelsquooverseas Chinesersquo (asiatiques etrangers) in todayrsquos southern Vietnamwhere Chinese immigration had always been heaviest24 This long andheated debate would last until around 1923 and it would resurfacerepeatedly into the 1930s if not well into 1980s Signs of Sino-Cochinchinese tension had emerged before World War I as a numberof budding Vietnamese traders and businessmen tried to break into adomain historically dominated by the Chinese commerce in generaland the rice trade in particular During 1907ndash1909 one of Vietnamrsquosfirst modern businessmen Bach Thai Buoi took on Chinese tradersin a fierce battle to carve out a place in the commercial sun forVietnamese entrepreneurs Indeed Bach Thai Buoi was part of anew breed of Vietnamese merchants increasingly active at the timeThey all however ran up against Chinese domination of local tradingnetworks especially in the transport milling distribution and ricetrade in the Mekong Delta and Haiphong If the Cochinchinesenever dislodged the Chinese from their pre-eminent place in thesouthern economy before 1945 Bach Thai Buoi became something of anationalist hero for holding his commercial ground in competition withthem25

Economic change was of course behind a new set of Sino-Vietnameserelations The development of an ethnic Vietnamese bourgeoisie andcommercial agriculture during the colonial period was an importantfactor In the south Jacques Le Van Duc Le Phu Mau Nguyen PhuQui Nguyen Chanh Sat and Bui Quang Chieu among others hadbegun to take up the cause of Vietnamese trade and commerce They

24 Chinese immigration to Vietnam was greatest in the south both before andduring the colonial period In 1921 the Chinese population there numbered around156000 whereas only 32000 lived in Tonkin and 7000 in Annam By the late1930s the Chinese population in Cochinchina had grown to 171000 or 37 of a totalpopulation of 4616000 Tsai Maw-Kuey Les Chinois au Sud-Vietnam pp 38ndash39 WhileI do not read German Thomas Engelbert Die chinesische Minderheit im Suden Vietnams(Hoa) als Paradigma des kolonialen und nationalistischen Nationalitatenpolitik (Frankfurt amMain Peter Lang 2002) is the most recent and single most comprehensive study todate of the Chinese in southern Vietnam during the colonial period

25 Nguyen Van Vinh lsquoLa mort de Bach Thai Buoirsquo in LrsquoAnnam Nouveau (24 July1932) p 1



had the financial means property and colonial connections to assertthemselves in this area In a bid to help loosen the Chinese grip on therice trade between 1912 and 1918 the French colonial governmentassisted them in setting up agricultural unions in the six southernprovinces of Cochinchina The French opened a commercial school inthe south in January 1919 though it only attracted two students26

The Chinese served as models for Vietnamese emulation too Thecreation of the first Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Cholon in 1910

attracted much Vietnamese attention as did the Chinese nationalistswho were using boycotts against the Japanese in Asia and in Indochinain the wake of World War I

Given that this budding Vietnamese economic nationalism wasmuch more palatable to French colonial authorities than its anti-colonialist and more violent strains a number of southern Vietnamesenewspapers were able to publish in favour of the economic andagricultural modernisation of Cochinchina and of the lsquoliberationrsquo ofthe southern Vietnamese economy from the lsquoforeignrsquo Chinese Someof the most important papers voicing such concerns were the ThoiBao Co Minh Dam Nam Trung Nhut Bao Cong Luan and after WorldWar I the vibrant French language papers ndash La Tribune Indigene ofBui Quang Chieu and LrsquoEcho Annamite of Nguyen Phan Long27 TheFrench contributed to this Governor general Albert Sarraut raisedVietnamese hopes that long awaited political changes were in the airwhen he spoke of undertaking colonial reform in collaboration with theVietnamese the privileged colonial partners of France in IndochinaThe Vietnamese had made good on their promise of sending thousandsof troops to Europe to support the Mere Patrie during World War IIn April 1919 Sarraut spoke of a new policy of lsquoFranco-Annamesecollaborationrsquo an lsquoIndochinese Charterrsquo the creation of new politicalinstitutions possible autonomy and the colonial modernisation ofVietnam28 Many Vietnamese allies felt that it would be possible tobuild a new and modern state in collaboration with the colonizer andif not a Vietnamese one then it would have to be an Indochineseone under the French but with the Vietnamese at its helm not theChinese The lsquogreatrsquo Sino-Vietnamese debate broke out in this largerpolitico-economic context

26 lsquoBoycottage des Chinois par les Annamitesrsquo pp 3ndash4 d Boycottage descommercants chinois par les Annamites cote 39827 GGI CAOM

27 See also Micheline Lessard lsquoOrganisons-nousrsquo pp 171ndash20128 Larcher-Goscha lsquoLa legitimation francaise en Indochinersquo



So what set it off On 1 August 1919 two coffee shops on Hamelinstreet in Saigon increased the price of a cup of coffee from 2 to 3 centsTheir clientele mainly Vietnamese civil servants working in the PublicWorks offices nearby reacted angrily to the news Vietnamese editorsentrepreneurs and politicians quickly latched on to the incident tomove against the Chinese Economically minded southern Vietnamesepapers like the Thoi Bao Luc Tinh Tan Van and Cong Luan Bao exhortedthe Vietnamese to avoid buying Chinese-made coffee and eventuallyboycotting all Chinese shops and goods29 By the end of the monththe press and nationalist-minded journalists turned a minor incidentinto a vitriolic crusade against the Chinese lsquostrangle-holdrsquo over theVietnamese and their economy The Chinese papers responded inkind underscoring the important role the Chinese played in the lsquomod-ernisationrsquo of Cochinchina and in meeting vital Vietnamese needsVietnamese nationalists reacted angrily when the overseas Chinesenewspaper the Hue Kieu Nhut Bao (The Overseas Chinese Daily) calledthe Vietnamese lsquoungratefulrsquo and lsquoignorantrsquo for criticising the Chineserole in southern economic affairs If anything the Chinese werealleged to have said the Vietnamese should be thankful to the Chinesefor bringing their lsquocivilisation and their capitalrsquo to their less developedneighbours to the south Stereotypes of the worst kind were soon beingbantered back and forth among these two colonized Asian groups30

Between 1919 and 1920 it would not be exaggerated to say thatCochinchinese newspapers were obsessed with the lsquoChinese perilrsquo andthe need to break their perceived economic lsquostrangleholdrsquo over the Vi-etnamese while Chinese editors bemoaned Vietnamese lsquoingratitudersquo

I donrsquot want to get bogged down in the details What interests mehere is how this exchange revealed new dynamics in Sino-Vietnameseinteractions and points up the wider framework within which thecolonial encounter was operating For one the Sino-Vietnameseexchanges provide us with glimpses into how pre-existing Vietnameseperceptions of the Chinese were being recast in increasingly exclusiveand often racist ways and diffused to a wider readership thanever before Thanks to the modern press cartoons lampooning the

29 See especially Thoi Bao No 64 (1 August 1919) p 1 and Cong Luan Bao No242 (5 August 1919) p 1

30 lsquoNotre dette chinoisersquo in La Tribune Indigene (24 April 1919) p 1 Ten years laterone Vietnamese still resented the Chinese accusations that the Cochinchinese werelsquolethargicrsquo lsquoLes Chinois commencent a perdre le monopole du negoce au profit desAnnamites Le nationalisme commercialrsquo in La Tribune Indochinoise No 233 (28ndash29

June 1929) p 1



Figure 1 The Chinese merchant exploiting the Cochinchinese farmers and youngwomen31

lsquorapaciousrsquo and lsquoarrogantrsquo Chinese traders were splashed across thefront pages of southern newspapers Slovenly dressed Chinese menwere portrayed as stealing lsquoVietnamese womenrsquo from the Nation andgrowing fat off of the blood sweat and tears of the down troddenpeasant Racist slurs such as lsquochecrsquo (chink) became increasinglycommonplace in the press One gets a taste of this in the politicalcartoons reproduced in Figure 1 Fights broke out and Chinesemerchants were often attacked as anti-Chinese racism raised its uglyhead in eastern Indochina32

Of course anti-Sinicism was not just limited to colonial VietnamOne Thai King at about the same time referred to the Chineseas the lsquoJews of the Orientrsquo And true anti-Chinese sentiments andviolence had existed before the French arrived on the scene Howeverthe modern press boycotts and the political cartoon acceleratedthe lsquootheringrsquo of the Chinese along racialist exclusive lines Themodern print media allowed local writers to broadcast their venomousanti-Chinese or anti-Vietnamese propaganda to a wider audiencewhile the modern political cartoon provided these bigots with a newway of communicating images of the lsquorapacious Chinesersquo or thelsquoinvading Vietnamesersquo And by transforming the Chinese into thisneeded nationalist lsquoOtherrsquo Vietnamese nationalists had to forgetthe important economic and cultural role the Chinese and theirtrans-national networks had historically played in Vietnam and

31 La Tribune Indochinoise (7 October 1919) p 132 lsquoEst-ce que cela recommence Un incident entre Chinois et Annamites a

Vinhlongrsquo in LrsquoEcho Annamite No 7 (23 January 1920) p 2



above all in the south And as elsewhere across Southeast Asia thecombination of the emergence of modern nationalism among thecolonized and the special economic and legal privileges provided tothe Chinese by the Western colonialists for the good of their colonialstates reinforced the image of the overseas Chinese as a foreign threatand as a separate ethno-social group rather than as a key nationalplayer

Second while the Chinese may have been the Vietnamese targetthis debate between colonial Chinese and Vietnamese saw the Frenchcolonizer get involved Down below French traders journalists andeditorialists often sided with the Vietnamese in this battle sharingthe latterrsquos hostility for the perceived stranglehold over them33 JeanMorere at the Opinion publicly supported and lauded the boycott of theChinese showing how the colonizers could make common cause withthe colonized against another social group in colonial society IndeedMorere was instrumental in stoking the anti-Chinese flames of theVietnamese boycott34 Another sympathetic French ally argued thatthe Vietnamese were simply trying lsquoto unify themselves with the solegoal being economic [ ] and thereby show their spirit of solidarityrsquo35

Up above the French Governor of Cochinchina M Maspero met withthe disgruntled Vietnamese elites On this occasion one of Vietnamrsquosmost active economic nationalists Nguyen Chanh Sat presenteda detailed report to the governor on this economic battle for lifewith the Chinese Maspero listened to their desiderata and promisedaction36 These Vietnamese economic patriots were after all Sarrautrsquosmain allies in the construction of a real policy of lsquoFranco-Annamesersquocollaboration The French issued a few warnings and censured thewildly exaggerated editorials in order to head off possible race riotsbut went no further37 And as noted above the French created tradeschools to help train young Vietnamese entrepreneurs and futurecommercial elite While this was easier said than done the entry

33 The French editors of the Opinion stood firmly behind the Cochinchinesenationalists in 1919 lsquoLes Chinois en Indochinersquo in LrsquoOpinion No 6091 (22 July1919) p 1

34 Jean Morere lsquoOpinion drsquoun Saigonnaisrsquo in Opinion No 6107 (9 August 1919)p 1

35 lsquoAnnamites contre Chinois Pour parer au boycottagersquo in LrsquoOpinion No 6120 (27

August 1919) p 136 lsquoM le gouverneur Maspero chez les commercants et industriels annamitesrsquo La

Tribune Indigene No 213 (14 October 1919) p 137 lsquoSinophobie et xenophobiersquo in La Tribune Indochinoise No 812 (29 December

1923) p 1 and lsquoBoycottage des Chinois par les Annamitesrsquo p 9



of the colonizers into the fray shows that colonial alliances betweenthe French and the Vietnamese were not always oppositional onesAlliances could change in terms of the interests in question And someFrench traders no doubted sided with the Chinese

Third this debate quickly stimulated wider Vietnamese reflectionson their own identity It was not enough to take on the Chinese onthe economic battlefield Vietnamese nationalists agreed that theyhad to change themselves in order to succeed Editors in the southcalled upon their compatriots to consolidate their national solidaritylsquoOrganisationrsquo lsquounityrsquo and lsquosolidarityrsquo (doan ket) became the buzzwordsin the early 1920s on the lips of bourgeois economic nationalistsrunning from north to south This meant creating new associationscommercial clubs and even a chamber of commerce (as the Chinesehad done) in order to bring together Vietnamese entrepreneurs Asone economic nationalist argued the Vietnamese traders would thenbe able to lsquomeet in the evenings to chat about business in a leisurelyway The French have their sports and colonial clubs the Corsicanhave [their own] associations etc where people of identical cultureand similar tastes come together in the evening after working hoursin order to discuss the events of the day or join in games and theirfavourite pastimesrsquo38 La Tribune Indigene even thanked the OverseasChinese Daily albeit sardonically for having awakened the lsquolazyrsquo andlsquoindolentrsquo Vietnamese from their slumber39 This was a new typeof Asian exchange occurring in the public sphere And clearly theChinese and not necessarily the French were the mobilising force inthis brand of economic Vietnamese nationalism

One of the most important consequences of this Vietnameseinteraction with the overseas Chinese was the creation of modernVietnamrsquos first national bank40 In order to break the hold of theChinese the Vietnamese sought to establish a credit institution undertheir full control In mid-1919 as the boycott fever raged southernnationalists met to form an Executive Committee for a Cochinchineselending association Nguyen Phu Khai became president whileNguyen Chanh Sat and Tran Quang Nghiem served as vice presidents

38 lsquoLa solidarite annamitersquo in La Tribune Indigene No 99 (29 August 1919) p 139 lsquoUn peu drsquohistoirersquo in La Tribune Indigene (3 April 1919) p 140 Micheline Lessard and Philippe Peycam also take up the boycotts and the

emergence of economic nationalism in early twentieth century Vietnam SeeMicheline Lessard lsquoOrganisons-nousrsquo pp 171ndash201 and Philippe Peycam LesIntellectuels Sud-Vietnamiens Essai drsquoun phenomene emergent 1917ndash23 (Paris Diplomedrsquoetudes approfondies Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (IVe section) 1996)



Many of the most important southern elites were on its board ThislsquoEconomic Organisationrsquo came to life officially on 26 August 1919 asthe boycott got underway and was transformed the next day intothe Societe commerciale annamite Its Vietnamese name ndash Viet NamDoan The Hoi ndash uses the word lsquoVietnamrsquo to evoke a unified nationalidea Indeed this credit organisation would work to promote pro-Vietnamese propaganda and support Vietnamese commerce fromnorth to south via the collection of funds and investment capital Itwould be essential in getting lsquonationalrsquo businesses off the ground AsNguyen Phu Khai put it this bank lsquowill allow us to lessen some of theweight of the intolerable tutelage that the Chinese have over usrsquo41

The Societe commerciale did garner important investment capital andit would eventually be transformed into the first lsquoAnnamese Bankrsquo inlate 191942 While this bank would never become an economic forcewhat is noteworthy for our purposes here is how this conflict with theChinese led to its creation as an important element of an emergingVietnamese national identity43 As one Vietnamese writer capturedthis unifying effect

Is that to say that there is an irreducible opposition between the interestsof the traders and the consumers Not always especially when the two sidesare the nationals of the same country and when they are confronted withthe presence as is our case of foreigners in this case the Chinese We aredependent on them for the smallest of things that we consume as well asfor our clothes and food Even the products coming from our own land arriveby way of their networks [ ] Confronted with this danger do not we feelCochinchinese and Tonkinese unified since we are all children of Annam44

Another issue flowing from the lsquoGreatrsquo Sino-Vietnamese debate wasthe growing Cochinchinese resentment of the separate legal colonialstatus the Chinese enjoyed under the French Particularly annoying

41 lsquoLa difference sino-annamitersquo in Le Courrier Saigonnais No 143 (25 September1919) p 1

42 BC lsquoApres trois mois de campagnersquo in La Tribune Indigene (30 October 1919)p 1 and lsquoViet Nam Doan The Hoirsquo in An Ha nhut Bao No 132 (11 September 1919)p 1 One French report estimated that this bank had accumulated some 10 millionpiastres by the end of the year lsquoBoycottage des Chinois par les Annamitesrsquo p 11

43 BC lsquoApres trois mois de campagnersquo p 1 It would be interesting to know moreabout the relationships between the Vietnamese and money lending Hindus fromsouthern India the so-called Chettys Le Thang lsquoLes Chettysrsquo in LrsquoAnnam Nouveau (1March 1934)

44 Dac Van lsquoLa solidaritersquo in La Tribune Indigene (1 April 1919) p 1 Our emphasislsquoAnnamrsquo here is clearly being used in the wider territorial and national sense oflsquoVietnamrsquo



for these nationalists was that the colonial category Asiatiques etrangerslocated the Chinese outside of direct Vietnamese national controlboth in terms of limiting immigration to southern Vietnam andin terms of defining who and who would not belong there lsquoYesby the generalized infiltration of a prolific and inexhaustible raceand one which does not assimilate the Chinese are a real dangerfor Indochinarsquo one nationalist lamented Cochinchinese elites askedcolonial administrators to control this influx in light of Vietnameseinterests in their own lsquocountryrsquo45 Vietnamese nationalists objectedto the legal existence of the five Chinese congregations (convenientlyforgetting that the French had continued a policy first implementedby the Nguyen kings themselves) They also opposed the existence ofa special colonial status for the Chinese as Asiatiques etrangers To theVietnamese all of this allowed the Chinese to run a lsquoState within aStatersquo As one Cochinchinese editorial put it on the front page of LaTribune Indigene in October 1919

It is the Chinese congregation as it exists and functions that poses theproblem This particular organisation which creates a State within a Stateis the original mistake which we the indigenous people pay the price todaywhile waiting on the French to suffer its consequences as much as if notmore than us [ ] Within the organisation of the congregation the Frenchgovernment for its own tranquility and convenience abdicated a part of itspowers to the congregation heads said to be elected As long as the taxes comein and public order is not threatened the Chinese have the right to take careof their own problems among themselves they have their own justice systemschools budget houses clubs associations goods in short they constitutethanks to the will of the French government independent states [ ]46

In the north the well-known intellectual educator and future PrimeMinister of Vietnam in mid-1945 Tran Trong Kim published thetravel notes of his 1923 trip to Hai Ninh province located alongthe Sino-Vietnamese border Having witnessed with his own eyes theincrease of Chinese into border regions and upset by their legal specialstatus Tran Trong Kim published his travelogue with a clear messagein mind stop Chinese immigration and transform those living inTonkin into Tonkinese or better yet lsquoVietnamizersquo them all Like hissouthern compatriots he warned of the national dangers of Chineseimmigration their preponderant role in northern commerce and of

45 BC lsquoLes Chinois sont un danger pour lrsquoIndochinersquo in La Tribune Indigene (28

October 1919) p 146 lsquoUne organisation qui fut une grave erreurrsquo in La Tribune Indigene No 210 (7

October 1919) p 1



the need for Vietnamese to act now to prevent the creation of a statewithin a state For Tran Trong Kim defining and controlling legalcategories was crucial to the Vietnamese ability to transform theChinese (and the Nung) into lsquoVietnamesersquo or at least in the colonialcontext to naturalize them as a lsquoTonkinesersquo Following on the Sino-Cochinchinese debate of 1919 Tran Trong Kimrsquos voyage to Hai Ninhconvinced him of the need to assimilate the Chinese and to competewith them economically47

Lastly the Sino-Vietnamese debate even triggered wider inter-Asian reflections on such questions as lsquomodernityrsquo lsquoprogressrsquo andlsquocivilisationrsquo For example while the Vietnamese acknowledged thehistorical and cultural influences of the Chinese on Vietnam in thecontext of this nationalist debate with the Chinese the Cochinchineserepresented themselves in a new superior position in light of theirspecial alliance with the French in Indochina48 In one of the morefascinating offshoots of this exchange Cochinchinese nationaliststurned to French culture science and Western civilisation in order tocounter Chinese claims to civilisational and economic superiority InNovember 1919 La Tribune Indigyne fired back that because of Frenchcolonialism the Vietnamese were now more modern than ever andcapable of competing culturally with the Chinese lsquoWestern educationhas had the effect of penetrating into the large popular mass of theland of Annam There men and things are no longer seen in terms ofthe secular Chinese culture of our ancestors If we are not yet [entirely]Westernized we have ceased to be lsquosinifiedrsquo (chinoises [sic])rsquo49

Missing from these building legal debates on nationality andpretensions of cultural superiority however was any Vietnamesemention of the fact that like the Chinese in Cochinchina theVietnamese enjoyed many of the same special legal rights in Laosand Cambodia and made remarkably similar claims to civilisationalsuperiority and progress there in order to justify their own colonialprivileges Unsurprisingly the Lao and the Khmer would counter

47 Tran Trong Kim lsquoSu du lich dat Hai Ninhrsquo in Nam Phong No 71 (May 1923)pp 383ndash394 During a trip to Saigon in 1922 Pham Quynh Nguyen Van Vinh andPham Duy Ton had discussed with their southern counterparts the importance of thelsquoChinese problemrsquo They spoke to none other than Truong Van Ben Le Quang Liemand Nguyen Chanh Sat Pham Quynh lsquoPhap-du hanh-trinh nhat-kyrsquo in Nam PhongIDEM No 58 (April 1922) pp 253ndash257

48 lsquoNotre dette chinoisersquo in La Tribune Indigene (24 April 1919) p 149 lsquoLa felure sino-annamitersquo in La Tribune Indigene (15 November 1919) p 1



along lines remarkably similar to those developed by the Vietnamesein opposition to the Chinese The colonial encounter cut in many ways

The Long Vietnamese-Cambodian Debate of the 1930s

If the Vietnamese regretted not being able to turn the Chineseinto Vietnamese a decade later many of these same Vietnamesefought tooth and nail against Cambodian efforts to limit Vietnameseimmigration expel them or transform them into Cambodians Duringthe 1930s Vietnamese Cambodian and French elites became involvedin a fascinating exchange focused mainly on two issues (1) theCambodian legal right to assimilate the Vietnamese into Cambodiannationals and (2) the Vietnamese attempt to block this Cambodianassimilation by advocating a wider inclusive Indochinese citizenshipbased on the colonial model An inclusive Indochinese citizenship itwas thought would allow the Vietnamese to live work and move inwestern Indochina free of Cambodian and Lao assimilation whetherit be colonial or national

It was just a question of time before an incident brought thequestion of colonial nationality into the open It occurred in earlyOctober 1931 when La Presse Indochinoise reported that the Residentsuperieur had unilaterally expelled to Cochinchina an lsquoAnnamesemayorrsquo (meaning an ethnic Vietnamese village leader here) Thisdecision was apparently the result of a local altercation betweenhis village and Khmers living in the area La Presse Indochinoise askedwhether the colonial state had the legal right to expel this lsquoAnnamesersquofrom Cambodia since this particular individual had been born in thepays of Cambodia After all it was argued the French assimilationistconception of nationality jus solis in particular theoretically shouldturn anyone born in that territory (the pays of Cambodia) into one ofits nationals regardless of ethnicity But did the French concept ofnationality apply in the colonial state and to its colonized the paperasked lsquoWhat is the legal status of an Annamese born in Cambodiarsquoit continued Thinking in Republican terms the French editorsdefended the AnnameseVietnamese individual born in Cambodiaalong metropolitan lines lsquoIn France a foreigner who is born there[in France] is French But here in [colonial] Cambodia We wouldbe very happy to be informed of this matter And this is a usefulmatter [to elucidate] For here we will have all the Annamese [ethnicVietnamese] in Cambodia who are going to have a reason to beginshaking if the bizarre procedure that we have noted becomes a



regularized onersquo50 In other words could a fellow colonized of the sameFrench Indochinese colonial state be deemed ndash legally ndash a lsquoforeignerrsquoin one of its member pays especially if heshe had been born thereAnd to what degree would ethnicityrace ndash and not place of birth ndashdetermine legal belonging in this colonial context This was clearlyan important question for those threatened by expulsion or for thosedetermined to control immigration It also brings out the complexityof the colonial encounter in revealing ways

Shortly thereafter a second essay appeared penned by aVietnamese who had consulted a French lawyer about the Residentsuperieurrsquos recent decision According to this legal expert the Residentsuperieurrsquos decision to expel the Annamese was lsquoillegalrsquo because theAnnamese in question had been born in the pays of Cambodia Thisdidnrsquot change the outcome the Vietnamese mayor in question wasforced to leave Cambodia As this Vietnamese writer asked his readerslsquoare we thus at the mercy of any decision to run us out of this countryrsquo51

Imagining Cambodian Colonial Nationality Assimilation or Exclusion

In 1934 La Presse Indochinoise set off a bigger debate when it publisheda series of Vietnamese letters critical of the Khmer mentality andingratitude towards the Vietnamese and what they had done for thedevelopment of western Indochina52 Just as the Overseas Chinese Dailyrsquoscritique of Vietnamese lsquolethargyrsquo and lsquoingratitudersquo had intensifiedthe Sino-Vietnamese debate focused on economics in 1919 so toodid an equally insensitive stereotype bring Vietnamese and Khmernationalist elites into heated confrontation over the question of legalidentity While I unfortunately cannot identify their real identities

50 lsquoPoint de droit Peut-on expulser du Cambodge un Annamite qui y est ne Surtoutquand il a raisonrsquo in La Presse Indochinoise No 346 (3ndash4 October 1931) p 5

51 lsquoLe statut des annamites nes et travaillant au Cambodgersquo in La Presse IndochinoiseNo 347 (10ndash11 October 1931) p 6 Unfortunately we have no study of such questionsbased on the legal archives of the Indochinese colonial state If the colonized werewriting in newspapers they were most certainly trying to defend themselves beforecolonial courts Such sources would provide a gold mine of information on suchcomplex questions of nationality race relations and social history On the history of thelegal status of the Vietnamese in Indochina see Jean-Christophe Careghi lsquoLe statutpersonnel des Vietnamiens en Indochine de 1887 a 1954rsquo Aix-en-Provence ThesisUniversite drsquoAix-Marseille 2002 (which I have not been able to consult myself)

52 Achay lsquoFreres ennemis Se resoudra-t-on enfin a une politique ethnique auCambodge rsquo in La Presse Indochinoise (30 June ndash 1 July 1934) p 5 and Nguyen NgocQui LrsquoAurore cambodgienne (7 June 1934)



four Khmer writers stand out in terms of their responses andarguments to the Vietnamese and the French Nimo Rathavan lsquoIKrsquoKhemarak Bottra and above all Khemeravanich which means lsquoKhmerCommercersquo53 While they all naturally objected to this pejorativecharacterisation of the Khmer lsquosoulrsquo what really concerned them wasthe need to control continued Vietnamese immigration and assimilatethose living in Cambodia into legal Cambodians54

Khemeravanich led the debate from the Cambodian side On 1

July 1934 he initiated a long series of articles supporting Khmergrievances and opposing the privileged position and activities ofthe Vietnamese in colonial Cambodia He argued that the coloniallevel of the Cambodian administration should be reserved for theKhmers not the lsquoforeignrsquo Vietnamese He insisted that just as a Polishnational would not be allowed to work in the French bureaucracy as aforeigner so too should the Vietnamese be barred from working in theCambodian civil service The difference of course was that France andPoland were separate nation-states whereas Annam (Vietnam) andCambodia were legal sub-units of a larger Indochinese colonial stateIn colonial law the lsquoAnnamesersquo were theoretically not lsquoforeignersrsquoin French Indochina Khemeravanich knew it but he was thinking inincreasingly nationalist terms lsquoItrsquos not the same thing you will tell meThe Annamese is not a foreigner hersquos an Indochinese and Cambodia isan integral part of the Indochinese Union Ah That beautiful UnionYou said it yourself I admit it in your article But after all this Unionit has opened all our gates to the Annamese immigrants The Unionis the reason for all our troublesrsquo55

Khemeravanich contested the viability of Indochina as a territorialidentity for the Khmers lsquoIrsquom not a juristrsquo he lamented but lsquowasit we who instituted this Indochinese Union Did anyone ever askour opinion before creating itrsquo56 The question now he said wasto determine lsquoto whom does Cambodia belongrsquo57 The answer wasobvious of course Two weeks later Khemarak Bottra responded

53 Unfortunately I have been unable to identify these four individuals It seemsclear that they are using noms de plume

54 Nimo Rathavan lsquoVraiment Cambodgiens et Annamitesrsquo in La Presse IndochinoiseNo 486 (21ndash22 July 1934) p 6

55 Khemeravanich lsquoFreres ennemis Il y a pourtant place pour toute le monde auCambodgersquo in La Presse Indochinoise (30 June ndash 1 July 1934) p 6

56 Khemeravanich lsquoFreres ennemis rsquo p 657 lsquoA qui donc appartient le Cambodge rsquo in La Presse Indochinoise No 488 (4ndash5

August 1934) p 4



that Cambodia belonged to the Cambodians lsquoCambodia to theCambodians and Cambodians for Cambodiarsquo This slogan was on thelips of budding Khmer nationalists everywhere in the 1930s58

Nevertheless this mantra still left unanswered who could and couldnot be a member of this lsquoCambodiarsquo Was it for example ethnicityor place of birth that defined membership Khemeravanich providedin 1934 an assimilationist answer to this question Non-Cambodiannationals such as the Vietnamese (and the Chinese) could becomelsquoCambodianrsquo nationals To turn the foreigners into Cambodians hecalled for three things First all these denizens in Cambodia hadto learn to speak Khmer A common language would ensure theirlsquokhmerisationrsquo as he put it Instruction in the Khmer language heinsisted had to be made mandatory in all Cambodian classroomseven for the Vietnamese and the Chinese The school would belsquoan excellent instrumentrsquo for the nationalisation of Cambodiarsquosforeigners59 Second Khemeravanich called for the creation of a Chairin Cambodian Literature in order to improve and enrich the Khmerlanguage Third he requested that all lsquoAnnamesersquo be held accountablebefore the Khmer courts60 On this last point Khemeravanich wasdetermined to terminate colonial categories which had effectivelygranted extra-territoriality to certain Asians living on Cambodianterritory by removing them legally from local law Khemeravanichwas willing to keep Cambodia colonial but on the condition that theVietnamese were assimilated to this wider Cambodian nationality61

58 Khemarak Bottra lsquoCambodge aux Cambodgiens et Cambodgiens pour leCambodgersquo in La Presse Indochinoise No 490 (18ndash19 August 1934) p 6

59 lsquoA qui devrait appartenir le Cambodge rsquo in La Presse Indochinoise No 491 (26

August 1934) p 660 lsquoA qui devrait appartenir le Cambodge rsquo in La Presse Indochinoise No 491 (26

August 1934) p 661 Contrary to what is commonly asserted the French language was not imposed at

all levels of the colonial education system Local languages and traditions continuedto be taught for fear of creating lsquouprootedrsquo youngsters (deracines) and revolutionariesIn Cambodia the French also allowed instruction in Vietnamese in order to facilitatethe training of their much needed Vietnamese bureaucrats In 1918 Vietnamesewas recognized as a local native language In 1925 ethnic Vietnamese students inCambodia could obtain the Certificat drsquoEtudes elementaire in Vietnamese The potentiallydivisive nature of this policy is obvious in light of the increasingly large numbers ofethnic Vietnamese living in urban centres and sending their children to school In1926 the proportion of Khmer students to Vietnamese ones in Cambodia was at49 In 1929 it increased to 53 This language policy constituted an obstacle toabsorbing the Vietnamese into the Cambodian national community Khemeravanichwas envisioning above Khy Phanra lsquoLa communaute vietnamienne au Cambodgersquo



Significantly he was not arguing along ethnic essentialist lines butrather inclusive assimilationist ones

Another Khmer nationalist using the initials lsquoIKrsquo chimed in alongsimilar lines in 1937 He called for the mandatory teaching of theKhmer language in all public and private schools in Cambodia Viet-namese should in his view only be allowed to be taught as a lsquosecond for-eign living languagersquo Second he requested that all Asiatiques etrangersliving in Cambodia including the Annamese (ethnic Vietnamese)be held accountable before Cambodian courts Finally Vietnameseimmigration had to be stopped momentarily in order to promote apolicy of lsquokhmerisationrsquo of Cambodiarsquos ethnically diverse populationsLike Khmeranavich IK was no ethno-culturalist He insisted thatKhmer nationality be given to any lsquoyellow child born in Cambodiarsquo62

What worried Khemeravanich and IK like the Cochinchineseuneasy about the Chinese was that continued Vietnameseimmigration would create a mass of non-assimilated foreigners outsideof Khmer national control lsquoBut these reforms of a scholastic andlegal nature designed to assimilate the Annamese [into Cambodians]will not be able to bear fruit as long as the immigration movementcontinues to intensify as is the case for some time nowrsquo And like theVietnamese keen on controlling the Chinese Khemeravanich calledfor a halt to Vietnamese emigration to Cambodia He submittedhis suggestions to the King of Cambodia who he said still hadimportant judicial powers as the head of a protected state Butagain he insisted that ethnic Vietnamese could and should becomelsquoCambodianrsquo because lsquoCambodia belongs to all of its members withoutracial or religious distinctionsrsquo63 An inclusive definition of colonialnationality thus had backers among the Cambodians in the 1930smuch to the surprise of the Vietnamese and the French

Colonial Indochina or Colonial Cambodia Choosing the Territorial Domain

The problem was that Khmer colonial nationalists had to dealwith two potential territorial states the nation-state of Cambodia

pp 201ndash202 In 1923 63 Khmer students attended the College Sisowath against61 ethnic Vietnamese In 1929 there were 246 Khmer students and 259 ethnicVietnamese elementary students in the Sisowath school

62 IK lsquoReponse a lrsquoaimable M Vu Dinh Da Lrsquoimmigration annamite auCambodgersquo in La Presse Indochinoise (2 September 1937) p 4


August 1934) p 6



they were imagining in their heads and the Indochinese colonialstate in which they were living as colonial subjects While Khmernationalists wanted to Khmerize the members of Cambodia theywere confronted by a major legal problem Cambodia did notexist as an independent state It was but a sub-unit (a pays) ofthe legally constituted colonial state called the Indochinese UnionThis is where the Indochinese entity proposed by the French metincreasingly fierce national resistance from Khmer nationalists whosaw the pays of Cambodia as the only possible bounded territory fordefining citizenship colonial or national The emphasis on Cambodiaand on an inclusive Cambodian nationality was the only way tohalt Vietnamese immigration for an Indochinese colonial state andcorresponding Indochinese citizenship would prevent the Cambodiansfrom controlling Vietnamese immigration into their pays and wouldinstead assimilate the Khmers into a wider Indochinese citizenship inwhich they would be a minority compared to the ethnic Vietnamese

Conversely determined to head off the lsquoKhmerisationrsquo of ethnicVietnamese living in Cambodia many Vietnamese understood theimportance of pushing not only for the creation an IndochineseFederation but also for the establishment of a correspondingIndochinese colonial citizenship Hostile to just such a thingKhemarak Bottra argued as follows to his Vietnamese readers temptedby the Indochinese idea

Of course Cambodia is not a province It is a real country with its nationalpatrimony and its consciousness of its future Though it constitutes partof the Indochinese Union it must be considered separate in terms of itsdevelopment in all areas and in terms of the use of its resources It can onlybe considered an integral part of the IU [Indochinese Union] in terms ofits [foreign] relations and external security [ ] I can well imagine that theFrench ideal is to lead all of the Indochinese countries together But nothingprevents it from [administering Indochina] by its parts [pays] in respondingto each in terms of its own means [ ] and as for the accomplishmentof its obligations in the future France should adopt the idea of lsquoAnnamfor the Annamese and Annamese for Annamrsquo just as she should supportlsquoCambodia for the Cambodians and Cambodians for Cambodiarsquo There youhave something which is entirely logical and equitable64

64 Khemarak Bottra lsquoCambodge aux cambodgiens et cambodgiens pour leCambodgersquo p 6 This slogan emerged in 1934 apparently It was directly linkedto increasing Khmer demands to have a bigger role in their administration and jobslsquoA qui devrait appartenir le Cambodge rsquo in La Presse Indochinoise No 491 (26 August1934) p 1



Unlike their Vietnamese and French counterparts few Khmernationalists before World War II were willing to speak of lsquoIndochinafor the Indochinesersquo let alone Indochinese citizenship As KhemarakBottra put it lsquoAs for France itrsquos always the same for Her Shersquos alwaysfor the IU [Indochinese Union]rsquo65 Not him In 1937 in what wouldhave shocked French colonial republicans as heresy Khemeravanichcalled for the deconstruction of the French Indochinese colonial statein favour of creating a separate Khmer colonial state closer in linewith the Cambodian national form he had in mind It was this smallerterritorial space located outside of French Indochina which wouldserve as the basis of a new Cambodian nationality of an assimilationistkind

The institution known as the Indochinese Union the equivalent in fact of theannexation of Cambodia by the Annamese is bad for our national future Ifin effect the Annamese countries and our own belonged to different mastersfor example the former to the Netherlands and us to the French ndash our frontierin the East would have survived and the Annamese would not be able to strideacross it without having to deal with endless passport formalities I have thefirm conviction that the generous French people will not let such a situationcontinue for long in Cambodia something which they would have neverallowed in France If not then [France] will have to answer before HistoryThose who hold the levers of power should put themselves in our shoes inorder to govern us They should make an effort to Khmerize here all Asians whoare not Khmers which is about one third of the population In short the Frenchshould give us at least the semblance of a having a national government66

The problem of course was that the colonial state was territoriallyIndochinese Cambodia was but a subgroup In a fascinating twisthowever several Cambodian came up with a solution they foundelsewhere in colonial Southeast Asia On 2 September 1937 lsquoIKrsquoasked the French to detach Cambodia from French Indochina toadminister it as a separate colonial entity just as the British had donein India when they created a separate colonial Burma (in part becauseof Burmese hostility to growing numbers of Indians working withinthe colonial state) Cambodia like Burma would remain a Frenchcolony but it would adopt an inclusive nationality transforming the

65 Khemarak Bottra lsquoCambodge aux cambodgiens et cambodgiens pour leCambodgersquo p 6 One French official reported to Paris that the creation of a Dominionindochinoise would not work because lsquothere is not yet common Indochinese aspirationsrsquolsquoNote drsquoensemble sur les problemes evoques par les vux politiquesrsquo p 27 in box BKIVGuernut Commission CAOM

66 lsquoLrsquoeternelle questionrsquo in LrsquoAnnam Nouveau No 677 (15 August 1937) p 1 whichhad first appeared in the Presse Indochinoise as a response to Chu Ha



Vietnamese into lsquoCambodiansrsquo The reality of colonial Indochina wasclearly already in trouble lsquodown belowrsquo among the colonized beforethe Japanese brought down the colonial edifice in March 194567

As in the Sino-Vietnamese controversy this Cambodian-Vietnamese exchange brought the colonizer into the picture InNovember 1937 the Resident superieur himself Mr Thibaudeau calledon the Khmer elites to take their destiny into their own handsand to put Cambodia on the road to lsquoprogressrsquo If lsquoCambodia wasto be for the Cambodiansrsquo he retorted then the Khmers had towork harder Yes he responded the Vietnamese had long dominatedcivil servant posts but it was because Khmer youths had not sharedthe Vietnamese enthusiasm for working in the colonial bureaucracyin western Indochina68 The protectorate had had no choice but torely on others while waiting for the Khmer elite to take up thechallenge

Mr Marinetti the delegate for Cambodia to the Ministry of theColonies a man who considered himself lsquomore Khmer than the Khmerthemselvesrsquo also opposed these Cambodian calls for lsquoseparatismrsquo TheBritish may have detached Burma from British India he said but it wasunthinkable for the French to do so Colonial or not separatism wasunthinkable The bottom line as he commented on the Vietnamese-Cambodian debates was that lsquoin Cambodia we live under French lawrsquomeaning that colonial Indochina took precedence over Cambodia interritorial terms While he did not say it he was implicitly callingon the Khmers to be good little lsquoIndochinese citizensrsquo instead ofsecessionist-minded Cambodian nationalists However he forgot tomention that there was still no such thing as a legally constituteddefinition of lsquoIndochinese citizenshiprsquo for turning those living withinthe borders of colonial Indochina into lsquoIndochinesersquo69

The Cambodians were not impressed by the French argumentsIn a remarkable extension of the debate Khemeravanich respondeddirectly to the colonizer Mr Marinetti via the press He criticizedthis French defender of Cambodia publicly by saying that if he werereally lsquomore Khmer than the Khmerrsquo then he should logically tryto change French laws detrimental to the Cambodians Speaking


68 Khy Phanra La communaute vietnamienne au Cambodge pp 234ndash23669 Marinetti lsquoLe probleme irritant de lrsquoimmigration annamitersquo in LrsquoAnnam Nouveau

No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1



ironically he called on this French friend of Cambodia as Cambodiarsquosrepresentative to the Ministry of Colonies to support Khmernationalist aspirations or implicitly to resign lsquoIs it not the duty of theadministration to help them [the Cambodians] to stand up since theyadmit that they are unable to do it themselves It is a request which wesend to the governmentrsquo70 Khemarak Bottha was even blunter lsquoAndas long as [France] does not change its current disastrous Indochineseregime to which it forces our Kampuchea to join how can Francedeserve the title of protector of the Khmer tell me rsquo71

It appears that this friend of Cambodia Mr Marinetti woke up toKhmer calls for change Around 1938 still as a member of the Conseilsuperieur de la France drsquoOutre-mer he sent a report to the Ministry ofthe Colonies arguing that the French had to respond to the needsof all the Indochinese and not just those of the Vietnamese Thiswas a significant change in tack Marinetti asked the governmentto reserve administrative posts for Khmer elites and in a majorvolte-face he solicited a greater degree of political and economiclsquoautonomyrsquo for Cambodia within the Indochinese edifice He concludedthat these lsquoreasonable demandsrsquo were needed and that it would belsquounforgivable not to implement themrsquo Colonial alliances could clearlychange

The Vietnamese editors of La Tribune Indigene were stunned bythis shift in colonial alliances shocked that Marinetti a Frenchcolonial administrator could make such a concession to Cambodiannationalists The Vietnamese feared that the French governmentmight just pursue some of his suggestions To them Marinettirsquosrecommendation of increased autonomy for Cambodia within FrenchIndochina smacked of lsquoseparatismrsquo In such a scenario what wouldhappen to their lsquonationalsrsquo if Cambodia were to attain increasedlegal autonomy vis-a-vis the rest of Indochina La Tribune Indochinoisethe mouthpiece of southern Cochinchinese elites replied that ratherthan going towards a break up of the colonial state along nationallines it was essential to move towards the creation of a moreinclusive Indochinese identity72 La Tribune Indochinoise asked why theCambodians were talking of quitting Indochina when the French

70 Khemaravanik lsquoLe probleme annamite au Cambodgersquo in LrsquoAnnam Nouveau No693 (10 October 1937) p 4

71 Khemarak Bottra lsquoCambodge aux Cambodgiensrsquo p 672 Khy Phanra La communaute vietnamienne au Cambodge p 234 and lsquoLrsquoautonomie

cambodgienne rsquo in La Tribune Indigene No 1746 (10 August 1938) p 1 4



were trying to turn the Federation into a reality lsquoBut why evokesuch an eventuality when for ages French policy has precisely triedto turn the Indochinese Union into a homogenous and harmoniousfederation in all its connectionsrsquo73 Fearful that the French would cedeto Cambodian demands for increased autonomy these Vietnamesefocused their sights on the French Indochinese model as the bestway to protect their lsquonationalsrsquo in Laos and Cambodia from potentiallsquokhmerisationrsquo lsquolaoificationrsquo or expulsion as we saw above As oneVietnamese responded to Khemeravanichrsquos separatist arguments lsquoItis necessary to think of Indochina as a great family whose membersmust love one another protect each other help each other and supportone another mutuallyrsquo74 Bui Quang Chieu one of their leadingspokesmen had already spoken in 1931 of the need to create anlsquoIndochinese citizenshiprsquo in order to hold Indochina together75 It wasthe same Bui Quang Chieu who led the charge against the specialcolonial privileges of the Chinese in Cochinchina after World War I(see above)

As this debate shows colonial legal categories clearly transformedrelations among lsquoIndochinesersquo elites during the colonial period Thesecategories were contested resented and often rejected but theywere also coveted and pushed by the colonized depending on whereone was residing in colonial Indochina These categories contributeddirectly to how the lsquocolonizedrsquo saw themselves in relation to thecolonizer and in relation to other colonized lsquoAsianrsquo groups livingin the colonial state As Bui Quang Chieursquos case shows one coulddemand the nationalisation of the Chinese on the one hand whilesimultaneously defending a special colonial status for Vietnamesesubjects in Cambodia if not the creation of Indochinese colonialcitizenship Again the colonial encounter was not static and thoseldquocolonizedndashcolonizedrdquo relationships can even shed new light on thepost-colonial nation-states and the issues dividing them from 1945The prickly question of modern nationality for example clearly beganduring the colonial period as our last debate demonstrates nicely

73 lsquoUne these etrange de M Marinetti Lrsquoautonomie cambodgienne rsquo in La TribuneIndochinoise No 1746 (10 August 1938) pp 1ndash2

74 La Xuan Choat lsquoA propos de la lettre de M Khemeravanickrsquo in La PresseIndochinoise No 672 (29 July 1937) p 3

75 Bui Quang Chieu lsquoLe statut du citoyen indochinoisrsquo speech given in Saigon in1931 cited in file Bc box 23 Commission Guernut CAOM



The Failure of Indochinese Citizenship The Decreeof 31 May 1935 in Laos

In 1935 the French set off a veritable Indochinese-wide debatewhen they approved an assimilationist definition of nationality forthe colonial territory of Laos In so doing they paradoxically ifdisingenuously called into question the reality of French Indochinaas a viable territorial framework and corresponding nationality On31 May 1935 Louis Marty the former head of the Indochinese Suretenow stationed to Laos signed into law a decree that changed in thestroke of a pen the legal status of ethnic Vietnamese living in LaosThis law effectively placed ethnic VietnameseAnnamese76 villagesand their headmen under the legal supervision of Lao authorities(chau muong) Unlike the Chinese congregations in eastern Indochinathe Vietnamese in Laos could no longer legally bypass the localLao authorities to deal directly with the French colonial authorities(though they continued to do so) Theoretically the Vietnamese chiefhad to interact both with the French Resident superieur and the Laonaiban andor tasseng who determined who would be chief of theVietnamese groupings77

Outraged Vietnamese nationalists across Indochina argued thatsuch a legal change could potentially exclude Vietnamese emigrantsfrom Laos whereas the subordination of the Vietnamese living in Laosto Lao authorities could transform these ethnic Vietnamese colonialsubjects into Lao nationals Numerous Vietnamese went straight tolocal libraries to check out the French legal texts again They cameback with revealing arguments For one some said French law aslaid down in the 1884 treaty held that as French proteges and sujetslsquothe Annamese abroad will be placed under the French protectoratersquoTherefore they could not be subjected to lsquoforeignrsquo Lao authorityThose Vietnamese residing or working in Laos were thus under

76 As the legal language put it ldquotout sujet ou protege francais indochinoisoriginaires drsquoun autre pays de lrsquoUnion que le Laosrdquo

77 lsquoArretersquo Vietnaine 31 May 1935 signed Louis Marty file 2398 (2) box 271Nouveau Fonds CAOM and Pham Huy Luc lsquoLe statut politique des Annamitesau Laosrsquo in La Tribune Republicaine No 13 (1 March 1936) p 6 Children bornin Laos of an lsquoIndochinese mother and father who are not Laorsquo would not berequired to obtain an identity card on obtaining major status While it was notstated explicitly it appears that they would be considered as Laotian colonialnationals



French legal authority not that of the Lao78 Inversely if a protectedLao subject could not be subordinated to Tonkinese or Annamesemandarins and nationalities then how could the ethnic Vietnamesesujet protege be placed under local Lao control in Laos79 Or as anotherargument ran the French had to protect the Vietnamese protectedsubjects from lsquonationalisationrsquo even from within the Indochinesecolonial state

From its position by establishing its tutorship over our country Franceassumed the task of protecting Annam and its nationals both on the insideand the outside [outside lsquoAnnamrsquo or lsquoIndochinarsquo] However it was never aquestion for France to delegate her authority to a third power above all whenthis power is Laos that is a country which until a recent past was a tributaryof our country80

When the Popular Frontrsquos Guernut commission arrived in Laos in1937 charged with making a study of the situation in Indochinathe Vietnamese president of the Association mutuelle et sportive desAnnamites petitioned the French to elaborate a new legal status forthe ethnic Vietnamese in Laos so that they did not have to becomeLaotian nationals He specifically asked for the abrogation of theMay 1935 decree which had established the lsquoarbitrary pre-eminenceof the indigenousrsquo that is the lsquoLaotianrsquo over the Vietnamese inLaos Because of their modernising role in developing Laos thisrepresentative felt that the Vietnamese deserved a special legalstatus The French Resident superieur did not think so explaining tothe Ministry of the Colonies the importance of the 1935 decision

This [Vietnamese] petition inspired by questions of pride I would even saya racial consideration (quite strange to find in an element that complainsprecisely of being subject to lsquoracial prejudicersquo) is unfounded It is normalthat living in the Laotian country the Annamese immigrants are subject tothe control of the authorities of this country In practice this text has notbeen applied at least not in the province of Vientiane or in Luang Prabangwhere the tong truong works directly with the Residence At the most one couldallow the Annamese in Laos located in urban centres to interact directly withthe Residents concerning their affairs but they should [nonetheless] not

78 Nam Dan lsquoSous la couple des autorites laotiennesrsquo in La Gazette de Hue No 40

(29 November 1936) p 1 379 Pham Huy Luc lsquoLe statut politique des Annamites au Laosrsquo in La Tribune

Republicaine No 13 (1 March 1936) p 780 Nam Dan lsquoSous la couple des autorites laotiennesrsquo in La Gazette de Hue No 40

(29 November 1936) p 3



be exonerated from the indispensable control of the indigenous [Laotian]authorities81

The Resident superieurrsquos argument that it was lsquonormalrsquo that thoseliving in Laos were subordinated to indigenous Lao authorities nodoubt thrilled Lao nationalists like Phetsarath and his counterparts inCambodia seeking nationalist assimilation However it also set a ma-jor legal precedent that ran against a wider Indochinese legal identityIn fact it legally opened the way for the assimilation of other Asiangroups located elsewhere in the Indochinese Union82 The 1935 decreewas a landmark in identity making in colonial Indochina for it laidthe legal foundations for defining and constituting membership alongnational lines All of this was occurring during the colonial period

Vietnamese elites were shocked seeing themselves on thenationalist losing end of these new colonial legal decisions And incertain ways they were After all lsquoVietnamrsquo remained divided intothree legally distinct entities and nationalities To my knowledge theFrench had no intention of unifying Tonkin Annam and Cochinchinainto one single territorial entity and citizenship83 To make mattersworse Republican Chinese nationalists had successfully negotiatedan international treaty with the French by which many Chinese andmixed bloods (ming huong) living in Indochina would be considered asChinese lsquonationalsrsquo and not as lsquoCochinchinesersquo or lsquoIndochinesersquo Ina revealing objection in late 1935 a Vietnamese writer Nam Danwrote acerbically

At the time when the Chinese immigrants residing in Annam [meaning allthree Vietnamese pays] benefit from a favourable [legal] system developedby the new Franco-Chinese convention and see themselves promoted to theranks of privileged foreigners [like the Japanese] it is to say the least strangethat the Annamese immigrants in Laos are held to such a strict legal rulingand become there [in Laos] diminished nationals (ressortissants)84

81 lsquoResidence superieure au Laos 2B no 52BPAG Vientiane 21 December 1937p 2 file BC box 23 Commission Guernut CAOM

82 In 1939 under Khmer nationalist pressure the Resident superieur limitedeligibility for the exam for secretaries in his Residence to Cambodian candidates andlsquosujet francaisrsquo born in Cambodia Khy Phanra lsquoLa communaute vietnamienne auCambodgersquo p 235

83 Was this because demands for such unity and citizenship were less vocal thanthose of the Khmer and the Lao This question remains unclear

84 Nam Dan lsquoPour une amelioration de leur statut politiquersquo in La Gazette de HueNo 41 (6 December 1935) p 1



It was a good point The problem was that the Vietnamese werepart of a colonial state In the end the French defined the categoriesnot the Vietnamese If the Vietnamese hoped to prevent the potentialnationalisation of their compatriots into Lao and Cambodian colonialnationals the only other remaining alternative they had at theirdisposal was again to push for the creation of an Indochinese federalstate in which they would constitute the majority and a wider inclusiveIndochinese citizenship would over-ride the contesting national onesBui Quang Chieu the editor of La Tribune Indochinoise and one ofthe first to make this connection in 1931 was a fervent supporterof creating an Indochinese citizenship Less than a year after theapplication of the 1935 decree on Laos he argued in print that thepolitical structures for building an Indochinese identity were already inplace lsquoIn the Grand Conseil de lrsquoIndochinersquo he said lsquoLao members minglefraternally with those of Annam Tonkin and Cochinchina Evenbetter these representatives of Laos and Cambodia merge very oftentheir votes with those of the Annamese on a number of questions rsquo85

He categorically opposed the 1935 Lao decree knowing full well thatit set a precedent for the legal break up of Indochina right downthe middle In February 1936 he returned to the Indochinese ideasaying that while he understood the French desire to slow lsquoAnnameseexpansionrsquo westwards he countered that this immigration was onlynatural since the Vietnamese played the major role in the policy ofFranco-Vietnamese collaboration and in the modernisation of thecolony He warned implicitly however that the 1935 decision ifmaintained would mean that the lsquoIndochinese Union is nothing but avain formularsquo What he could have added was that of 1936 there wasstill no such thing as a coherent inclusive French Indochinese colonialstate or citizenship86

For anyone paying attention to these debates it was clear thatthe idea of realising an inclusive French Indochinese identity wasalready in trouble by the start of World War II Vichyrsquos Admiral JeanDecouxrsquos attempt to save Indochina from melting down in the faceof foreign threats only confirmed the fiction of Indochina On theone hand he loosened the colonial brakes on local patriotisms (alongVietnamese Lao and Cambodian lines) to maintain their support

85 Bui Quang Chieu lsquoLes annamites au Laosrsquo in La Tribune Indochinoise No 1378

(5 January 1936) p 186 Bui Quang Chieu lsquoLrsquoexpansion annamite en Indochinersquo in La Tribune Indochinoise

No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1



while on the other hand he tried to transform the heterogeneousIndochinese Union into a real and inclusive Indochinese identity viathe announcement of an Indochinese Federation But it was too littleand too late Competing national identities in Laos and especiallyCambodia were already in the making and Vichyrsquos national policiesonly fuelled things along already emerging non-Indochinese lines Tomy knowledge no colonized ever carried papers during the Vichyperiod referring to him or her as a legally constituted lsquoIndochinesecitizenrsquo or lsquosubjectrsquo It is not even sure that an Indochinese Federationever existed before 1945 Vichyrsquos attempt to assimilate the diverseethnic populations in Indochina into one wider identity was too littletoo late contradictory and largely ignored longstanding (and well-known) Lao and Khmer nationalist objections to the political realityof Indochina and hostility towards Vietnamese immigration (seeabove)87 In short French colonial legal categories had divided andbeen contested down below by the colonized for far too long

And yet the French returned in late 1945 determined to create anIndochinese Federation and citizenship Not only did they encounterVietnamese nationalists determined to unify Cochinchina Annamand Tonkin into one national entity but they were also caught offguard by Lao and Khmer objections to all that was Indochineseshocked to learn in 1946 that the Cambodian King was favourableto separating Cambodia from French Indochina88 And yet therewas nothing new about this proposal (see above) But to the Frenchcolonial mind Cambodiarsquos political separation from Indochina was asunthinkable as the unified Vietnamese nation-state being pushed bythe Democratic Republic of Vietnam It would take four more years

87 In 1939 and 1940 convinced finally that the Khmer elites and their politicalaspirations had to be taken seriously Resident Superieur Thibeaudeau informedGovernor Generals Catroux and Decoux of Khmer demands of a non-Indochinesekind However like the French negotiators of 1945 and 1946 Decoux could notaccept Khmer objections to the political reality of colonial Indochina let aloneits potential break up along national lines as the Thais resumed their efforts todeconstruct French Indochina from the west Decoux rejected these proposals in1940 Khy Phanra La communaute vietnamienne au Cambodge p 237 Regardless ofLao-Khmer opposition the Indochinese colonial model had to take precedent Theresult was a collection of fanciful Vichy fictions such as Ourot Souvannavong lsquoLesAnnamites et nousrsquo in Indochine No 57 (October 1941) pp 3ndash5 and dreams of a newIndochinese civilization joined together by the French See Tan Nam Tu lsquoCivilisationindochinoisersquo in Indochine No 42 (25 June 1942) pp 1ndash5

88 Commission drsquoEtudes franco-khmere seance du 6 decembre 1945 3eme seance

file Cambodge Modus vivendi et constitution box 1K306 Papiers Alessandri ServiceHistorique de la Defense Vincennes France



a war with the Vietnamese the arrival of the Cold War and the Laoand Khmer rejection of all that was Indochinese before the Frenchwere finally forced to create Associated States along national lineswith corresponding nationalities89

Conclusion

I would like to conclude with a few general remarks as to whyinter-Asian colonial exchanges might be worth studying First themodernising and categorising nature of the colonial project itselfactually accelerated interactions among the different Asian colonizedNew legal identities accorded by the European colonial states tothe Indians Chinese and Vietnamese for a variety of differentreasons brought about new exchanges many of which would becomepoints of national and international contention once decolonisationtransformed the colonial states into national ones

Second if post-colonial studies have focused on the lsquocolonizerrsquo andthe lsquocolonizedrsquo these debates on colonial legal categories for examplepoint up the rich sources and theoretical possibilities for studying whatwent on among the colonized themselves during the colonial periodand their relationships with the colonizer from a different vantagepoint Many of these debates are in the press which served as thelsquounofficialrsquo archives of the colonized one of the rare places theycould engage each other It seems likely that similar debates andsources could be located in other parts of colonial Asia such as in theIndonesiaDutch Indies and the former British Asian Empire BurmaMalaya Singapore and India The possibility for wider comparisonsis tantalising ones which cut horizontally among the lsquocolonizedrsquo andvertically between the lsquocolonizerrsquo and the lsquocolonizedrsquo

Third these debates on legal categories and economic nationalismpoint up the fact that the 1945 break between the lsquocolonial periodrsquoand the lsquopost-colonial periodrsquo may not be as sharp as we have beenled to believe in colonial and international studies These threeexchanges demonstrate the extent to which the modern concept ofnationality had already begun to make itself felt during the colonial

89 See the French colonial correspondence on lsquonaturalizationsrsquo in Laos in 1948 infolder 17 archival grouping Conseiller Politique CAOM See also Khy Phanra Lacommunaute vietnamienne au Cambodge pp 411ndash416 on the transfer of sovereignty to theCambodians and its impact on immigration laws



period Again I would think there would be similar inter-Asian inter-colonial debates on legal categories and colonial citizenship amongthe Indonesians and Chinese or the Burmese and the Indians allof which would have involved the Dutch and the British There iscertainly a parallel between the colonial separation of Burma fromthe larger British Colonial State of India and the Cambodian pleato be separated from the French Indochinese state It would beequally rewarding I think to compare the emergence of anti-Chinesesentiments among nationalists in various Southeast Asian colonialstates including Thailand90

Fourth French colonial legal categories in Indochina perhaps likethose of the Dutch and the British created racial political and culturaldivides This in turn triggered the desire to lsquonationalizersquo certaingroups or to exclude them The study of these categories in particularand law in general may allow us to go further in understandingthe construction of social barriers mutual perceptions culturalconstructions of the other and the mechanics of ethnic violence Inthe Empire European legal categories unlike their national types inEurope created lsquoOthersrsquo As the national idea rapidly developed inthe minds of the colonized privileged groups the Chinese in Vietnamand the Vietnamese in Cambodia and Laos found themselves outside ofthe national community or at its nationalising mercy These questionsdeserve more critical study and in a wider comparative context Forthese three debates strongly suggest that the colonial period wasno lsquoblack holersquo in relationships among the Asian colonized Many ofthe arguments developed in the 1920s and 1930s would be appliedsometimes violently as nation states worked themselves out afterWorld War II

Lastly these debates perhaps suggest that it is time to move beyondthe binary opposition in colonial and post-colonial studies opposingthe lsquocolonizerrsquo and the lsquocolonizedrsquo The possibility of developing ananalytical framework cutting horizontally among the colonized andvertically between the colonizer and the colonized would be an excitingprospect And I think itrsquos vital to keep the colonizer in the analyticalpicture to show how the French Dutch or British or even Europeansettlers could ally themselves in unexpected ways with the colonizeddepending on the interest involved the time and the place In this waya future history of the lsquocolonial encounterrsquo in Southeast Asia would be

90 Benedict Anderson The Spectre of Comparisons Nationalism Southeast Asia and theWorld (London Verso 1998) p 13



less of an oppositional or Eurocentric one than a lsquoconnected historyrsquoto borrow Sanjay Subrahmanyamrsquos term91 However in order to seethe complexity of the colonial encounter we need to reconfigure howwe approach it This essay has simply tried to suggest a few new waysof looking at an old problem

Bibliography

Nasir Abdoul-Carime lsquoLes communautes indiennes en Indochine francaisersquo inSiksacakr No 7 (2005) pp 19ndash24

Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities Reflections on the Origin and Spread ofNationalism (London Verso 1991)

Benedict Anderson The Spectre of Comparisons Nationalism Southeast Asia and the World(London Verso 1998) p 13

Rogers Brubaker Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge MAHarvard University Press 1992) p 72

Jean-Christophe Careghi lsquoLe statut personnel des Vietnamiens en Indochine de 1887

a 1954rsquo Aix-en-Provence Universite drsquoAix-Marseille 2002Gordon CK Cheung lsquoInvoluntary migrants political revolutionaries and economic

energisers A history of the image of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asiarsquo in Journalof Contemporary China Vol 42 No 14 (February 2005) pp 55ndash66

Melissa Cheung lsquoThe legal position of ethnic Chinese in Indochina under French rulersquoin Barry Hooker Law and Chinese in Southeast Asia (Singapore Institute of SoutheastAsian Studies 2002) pp 32ndash34

Frederick Cooper Colonialism in Question Theory Knowledge History (Berkeley CAUniversity of California Press 2005)

Charles Coppel lsquoThe Indonesian Chinese Foreign orientals Netherlands subjectsand Indonesian citizenrsquo in Barry Hooker (ed) Law and the Chinese in Southeast Asia(Singapore Institute of Southeast Asian studies 2002) pp 131ndash149

Thomas Engelbert Die chinesische Minderheit im Suden Vietnams (Hoa) als Paradigma deskolonialen und nationalistischen Nationalitatenpolitik (Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang2002)

C Fasseur lsquoCornerstone and stumbling block Racial classification and the latecolonial state in Indonesiarsquo in Robert Cribb (ed) The Late Colonial State in IndonesiaPolitical and Economic Foundations of the Netherlands Indies 1880ndash1942 (Leiden KITLV1994) pp 31ndash55

Alain Forest Le Cambodge et la colonisation francaise Histoire drsquoune colonisation sans heurts(1897ndash1920) (Paris LrsquoHarmattan 1980) pp 445ndash448

Alain Forest lsquoCambodgiens et Vietnamiens au Cambodge pendant le protectoratfrancais (1863ndash1920)rsquo in Pluriel No 4 (1975) pp 3ndash24

91 Sanjay Subrahmanyam lsquoConnected histories Notes towards a reconfigurationof early modern Eurasiarsquo in Modern Asian Studies Vol 31 No 3 (July 1997) pp 735ndash762 On that note it is worth recalling that different Asian groups were not alwaysengaging each other in oppositional terms as this essay would perhaps have us believeIndeed they were connecting in a myriad of non-confrontational ways ndash playing onthe same football teams going to church together intermarrying and fighting warsBut this is another story a connected one which I would like to take up elsewhere



Alain Forest lsquoLes portraits du Cambodgienrsquo in ASEMI Vol IV No 2 (1973) pp81ndash107

Charles Hirschman lsquoThe making of race in colonial Malaya Political economy andracial ideologyrsquo in Sociological Forum Vol 1 No 2 (Spring 1986) pp 330ndash361

Charles Hirschman lsquoThe meaning and measurement of ethnicty in Malaysia Ananalysis of census classificationsrsquo in Journal of Asian Studies Vol 46 No 3 (August1987) pp 555ndash582

Ernest Hoeffel De la condition juridique des etrangers au Cambodge (Strasbourg ImprimerieCentrale Ch Hiller 1932) p 7

Soren Ivarsson lsquoMaking Laos our space Thai discourses on history and race 1900ndash1941rsquo and Akiko Iijima lsquoThe Nyuan in Xaignaboury and Cross-border Links to Nanrsquoin Christopher E Goscha and Soren Ivarsson (eds) At the Crossroads Contesting LaoPasts (Copenhagen Nordic Institute of Asian Studies 2004) pp 239ndash264 and165ndash180 respectively

Agathe Larcher-Goscha La legitimation francaise en Indochine Mythes et realites de lacollaboration franco-vietnamienne et du reformisme colonial (1905ndash1945) (Paris Universitede Paris VII 2000)

Micheline Lessard lsquoOrganisons-nous Racial antagonism and Vietnamese economicnationalism in the early twentieth centuryrsquo in French Colonial History Vol 7 (2007)pp 171ndash201

Erez Manela The Wilsonian Moment Self Determination and the International Origins ofAnticolonial Nationalism (Oxford UK Oxford University Press 2007)

Tsai Maw-Kuey Les Chinois au Sud-Vietnam (Paris Bibliotheque Nationale 1968) p38

Furuta Motoo Viet Nam trong Lich Su The Gioi (sach tham khao) (Hanoi Nha Xuat BanChinh Tri 1998)

Louis Nicolas Les etrangers et le domaine cambodgien (Paris Editions DomatMontchrestien 1934) p 149

Natasha Pairaudeau lsquoOther Frenchmen Indian Renoncants in the Colonial Servicein Cochinchinarsquo paper presented at the Euro-Viet Conference Saint-Petersburg May2002

Lorraine Patterson Tenacious Texts Vietnam China and Radical Cultural Intersections1890ndash1930 PhD Dissertation (New Haven CT Yale University 2006)

Philippe Peycam Les Intellectuels Sud-Vietnamiens Essai drsquoun phenomene emergent 1917ndash23 (Paris Diplome drsquoetudes approfondies Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (IVesection) 1996)

Albert Peyronnet lsquoLa renovation du Cambodgersquo in Les Annales Coloniales (31 March1914)

Khy Phanra La communaute vietnamienne au Cambodge a lrsquoepoque du protectorat francais(1863ndash1953) (Paris Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle 1974) pp 211ndash219

Pham Quynh lsquoPhap-du hanh-trinh nhat-kyrsquo in Nam Phong No 58 (April 1922) pp253ndash257

Emmanuelle Saada Les enfants de la colonie Les metis de lrsquoEmpire francais entre sujetion etcitoyennete (Paris Editions La Decouverte 2007)

Emmanuelle Saada lsquoPaternite et citoyennete en situation coloniale Le debat sur lesldquoreconnaissances frauduleusesrdquo et la construction drsquoun droit imperialrsquo in PolitixVol 17 No 66 (2004) pp 107ndash136

Emmanuelle Saada lsquoVolontes de savoir coloniales les enquetes sur les metis 1908ndash1937rsquo in Gerard Grunberg and Monique Lakroum (eds) Histoire des metissages horsdrsquoEurope nouveaux mondes nouveaux peuples (Paris LrsquoHarmattan 1999) pp 65ndash85

Masaya Shiraishi Phong trao dan toc Viet Nam va Quan he cua no voi Nhat Ban va Chau ATu tuong cua Phan Boi Chau ve cach mang va the gioi 2 volumes (Hanoi Nha xuat banChinh tri quoc gia 1999)



Henry Solus Traite de la condition des indigenes en droit prives Colonies et pays de protectorat(Paris Recueil Sirey 1927) pp 11ndash12 35ndash45 55

David Streckfuss lsquoThe mixed colonial legacy in Siam Origins of Thai racialist thought1890ndash1910rsquo in Laurie Sears Autonomous Histories Particular Truths Essays in Honor ofJohn Smail (Madison University of Wisconsin Center for Southeast Asian Studies1993) Monograph No 11 pp 123ndash143

Sanjay Subrahmanyam lsquoConnected histories Notes towards a reconfiguration of earlymodern Eurasiarsquo in Modern Asian Studies Vol 31 No 3 (July 1997) pp 735ndash762

Nguyen The Anh lsquoLrsquoimmigration chinoise et la colonisation du delta du Mekongrsquo inThe Vietnam Review No 1 (AutumnndashWinter 1996) pp 158ndash163

Tran Trong Kim lsquoSu du lich dat Hai Ninhrsquo in Nam Phong No 71 (May 1923) pp383ndash394

Thongchai Winichakul Siam Mapped A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Chiang MaiSilkworm Books 1994)



The Asian side of the story in international relations usually resumesin 1945 with the onset of decolonisation and the birth of new nation-states (India Indonesia or Vietnam) The emphasis in post-colonialstudies on the opposition between the lsquocolonizerrsquo ndash lsquocolonizedrsquo has alsooverlooked inter-Asian colonial connections While the importance ofthis relationship is certainly crucial it was not the only one defining thecolonial experience And by projecting this opposition into the past wecan sometimes exclude other ways by which the lsquocolonial encounterrsquo (lasituation coloniale)1 to borrow Georges Ballandierrsquos famous expressionintersected in other complex and little studied ways at the time2 In allthree cases we learn little about how say colonized Vietnamese andChinese or Burmese and Indians interacted with one another duringthe colonial period ndash both inside and outside the colonial states ndash orhow this might have affected relationships with the colonizers3

In this paper I would like to argue that the dynamics of colonialismactually set into motion a new set of inter-colonial Asian connectionsones which directly affected the nature of the lsquocolonial encounterrsquoin ways overlooked by the lsquocolonizerrsquo ndash lsquocolonizedrsquo binary approachUsing colonial French Indochina as my case study this essay seeks towiden our analytical approach to the study of colonialism in Indochinaby factoring in the relationships among the diverse Asian colonizedliving within the new colonial state without however downplayingthe important role Western colonialism played in transforming those

1 Georges Balandier lsquoLa situation coloniale Approche theoriquersquo Cahiersinternationaux de sociologie Vol XI (1951) pp 44ndash79

2 Frederick Cooper has recently warned against projecting such binary oppositionson to more complicated colonial situations at the time Frederick Cooper Colonialismin Question Theory Knowledge History (Berkeley CA University of California Press2005) pp 1ndash32

3 However new work is being done on Asian connections during the colonialperiod both inside and in-between the Western colonial states See for exampleErez Manela The Wilsonian Moment Self Determination and the International Originsof Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford UK Oxford University Press 2007) MichelineLessard lsquoOrganisons-nous Racial antagonism and Vietnamese economic nationalismin the early twentieth centuryrsquo in French Colonial History Vol 7 (2007) pp 171ndash201and Lorraine Patterson Tenacious Texts Vietnam China and Radical Cultural Intersections1890ndash1930 PhD (New Haven CT Yale University 2006) The Japanese have longblazed the trail on inter-Asian regional contacts though what I have read has comevia Vietnamese translation Furuta Motoo Viet Nam trong Lich Su The Gioi (sach thamkhao) (Hanoi Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri 1998) and Masaya Shiraishi Phong trao dantoc Viet Nam va Quan he cua no voi Nhat Ban va Chau A Tu tuong cua Phan Boi Chau ve cachmang va the gioi 2 volumes (Hanoi Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia 1999) to nameonly two of the most recent works of this kind See also my Thailand and the SoutheastAsian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution (1887ndash1954) (London Routeledge 1999)


























































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography








































































































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography

































































































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography



























































































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography




















































































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography













































































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography




































































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography





























































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography























































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography















































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography





































































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography






























































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography






















































June 1929) p 1











































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography

























































































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography


















































































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography







































































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography
































































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography






















































October 1919) p 1

































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography















































































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography








































































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography


































































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography

























































August 1934) p 4




















August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography


































































August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography

























































August 1934) p 6






















No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography




































































No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography






























































No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography























































No 692 (7 October 1937) p 1


















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography
































































































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography
























































































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography

















































































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography










































































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography
































































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography






















































No 1391 (17 February 1936) p 1











Conclusion














Bibliography

























































Conclusion














Bibliography


















































Conclusion














Bibliography
























































Bibliography


















































Bibliography























































































Documents

Widening the Colonial Encounter: Asian Connections Inside French Indochina During … · 2017-01-08 · khao) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri, 1998) and Masaya Shiraishi, Phong trao