« Return to About the Organization
Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2002
Session 5: Social Change in the Red River Delta: Results from the Vietnam
Longitudinal Survey
Organizer and Chair: Charles Hirschman, University of Washington, Seattle
Discussant: Hy Van Luong, University of Toronto
Keywords: Social change, modern Vietnam, family, sociology.
This panel will present new empirical research based on a large household
sample survey of 1,855 households (and 4,464 adults in the selected
households) in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam. The 1995 Vietnam
Longitudinal Survey, based on a stratified probability sampling design,
covers the old province of Ha Nam Ninh (currently three provinces),
one of the largest and most populous areas of the densely-settled Red
River Delta. The sample design includes the three largest towns in the
province and seven rural communes, stratified by distance from major
highways. The papers presented in this panel will cover a range of demographic
and sociological topics on contemporary social change in Vietnam, including
mortality decline, arranged marriage, educational stratification, and
occupational attainment. In addition to presenting baseline description
of social and demographic change, each of the papers will test a major
hypothesis about the sources of social change. The presenters on the
panel are recent Ph.D.'s and graduate students who represent a new generation
of international researchers with both strong disciplinary skills and
in-depth knowledge of Vietnamese society. Professor Hy Van Luong of
the University of Toronto, a distinguished scholar of Vietnamese society,
will discuss the papers.
Mortality Decline in Northern Vietnam following Independence
M. Giovanna Merli, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Jonathan London,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
This paper uses an innovative approach to reconstruct historical trends
in adult mortality by using data on the birth and death dates of parents
and siblings of the respondents in the 1995 Vietnam Longitudinal Survey.
Vietnamese survey respondents appear to give very accurate demographic
reports of dates, perhaps because birth and death dates have significant
cultural importance. This analysis documents the rapid decline in mortality
following independence. Even with the rise in deaths due to war-related
causes in the 1960s and early 1970s and slow economic progress in the
1970s and 1980s, Vietnam has maintained low levels of mortality by international
standards. Explanations of mortality decline are evaluated in light
of Vietnam's distinct historical stages since 1954.
From Traditional to Modern Marriage and Mate Selection
Huu Minh Nguyen, Institute of Sociology, Vietnam
One of the most dramatic changes in Vietnamese marriage patterns has
been the shift from traditionally arranged marriages where the marital
partners were matched by parents to the modern practice where young
marriageable adults select their own spouse. For the oldest marriage
cohort in the Vietnam Longitudinal Survey, the majority of respondents
report arranged marriages, while "free choice" of spouse is
almost universal among the youngest marriage cohorts (freedom is usually
tempered by parental approval of marriage choices). Education is the
most important factor explaining the historical change of mate choice
during the last 50 years. The Marriage and Family Law of 1959 and broad
policies aiming at restructuring socioeconomic structure after 1960,
as well as religious affiliation also appear as important factors in
shaping the patterns of mate selection. Catholics are more associated
with arrangements by their parents in mate selection process. Family
influence also remains significant as measured by the continued role
of family participation in the introduction of prospective marriage
partners. The most important new source for the introduction of couples
is "friends." These results are similar to findings on marriage
selection from other East and Southeast Asian societies-perhaps suggestive
of an Asian style of limited courtship with only one person prior to
marriage. This Asian style of courtship is different from both the Asian
past and the Western present.
Educational Opportunity and Stratification in Socialist Vietnam
Lan Phuong Nguyen, University of Washington, Seattle
Although socialist ideology claims to promote equality and to reduce
the impact of family background on life chances, this study shows that
patterns of educational stratification are very similar to those of
most other countries. Urban residence and parental socioeconomic status
(father's and mother's education and occupation) have significant effects
on educational attainment in northern Vietnam. Having a parent who is
a member of the communist party has a significant positive effect on
education, net of other family status variables. This study, based on
the 1995 Vietnam Longitudinal Survey, was able to trace the trend in
educational attainment for successive birth cohorts of Vietnamese who
reached school-going age from the 1950s to the 1990s. Following independence
in the 1950s, there was a significant increase in average levels of
education as primary school became universal. The traditional gender
gap in schooling has all but disappeared. Over the last few decades,
there has been little further progress in average levels of schooling,
and some signs of declining rates of secondary schooling, particularly
for boys.
The Impact of Social Origins, Human Capital, and Political Capital
on Occupational Attainment: A Test of the Market Transition Hypothesis
Kim Korinek, University of Washington, Seattle
Although the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese men, and especially
women, continue to work in the family agricultural economy, there is
an increasing minority who work in household non-agricultural enterprises,
employees for private businesses, and as government workers. As Doi
Moi, the policy of economic reform, takes root in the countryside, more
individuals will respond to emerging opportunities in market economy.
Victor Nee, a specialist on China, has proposed "market transition
theory" to explain emerging patterns of social stratification in
post-socialist societies. Nee predicts that human capital (education)
will become a more important predicator of socioeconomic attainment
relative to traditional status in the socialist system (communist party
membership). This hypothesis has met with only mixed support in China,
but it has stimulated considerable research in other post-socialist
societies. I will test the market transition hypothesis for Vietnam
with the VLS data in a preliminary fashion. The survey analysis will
be supplemented with in-depth accounts of occupational careers based
on interviews conducted by the author in a rural and urban community
in the Fall of 2000.
Session 28: Individual Papers: Identity Matters in Southeast Asia
Organizer: Kenneth M. George, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Chair: Katherine A. Bowie, University of Wisconsin, Madison
On the Historicity of the Vietnamese Goddess Princess Lieu Hanh:
A Prostitute or a Saint?
Olga Dror, Cornell University
Princess Lieu Hanh is one of the most famous "Mother" deities
in Vietnamese popular religion. Her cult ostensibly originated in the
sixteenth century in Northern Vietnam. The scope of the paper is to
investigate the origins of her cult, its development and its transformation
since the sixteenth century, considering the factors which played a
decisive role in Lieu Hanh's deification, such as personalities (her
biography written by the eighteenth-century woman writer Doan Thi Diem),
events (the internecine wars and dynastic recognitions of her cult)
and popular religious tradition, in which context Lieu Hanh's cult is
now placed. The paper will address the contradictory accounts of Lieu
Hanh's cult, namely accounts written by European missionaries claiming
Lieu Hanh to be a prostitute and the legends and literary works created
in Vietnam sanctifying Lieu Hanh's virtues. I will suggest some preliminary
considerations to diminish this outward contradiction in the context
of the process of deification in Vietnam. One more point which will
be analyzed is the local or indigenous character of the cult in comparison
with possible borrowings from neighboring cultures and similarities
found between customs connected to Lieu Hanh's cult and those among
the Chinese and the Cham peoples.
Session 42: AAS Presidential Panel: Abortions, Agent Orange, and AIDS:
Social Suffering in Vietnam and Thailand
Organizer and Chair: Charles F. Keyes, University of Washington
Discussant: Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University
The volume, Social Suffering, edited by Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das,
and Margaret Lock (first published in 1996), began with the recognition
that many modern experiences entail a fundamental problem of meaning
that has traditionally been left to religion to address. In the words
of Arthur and Joan Kleiman in their introduction to Social Suffering
"suffering is one of the existential grounds of human experience;
it is a defining quality, a limiting experience in human conditions."
The rise of modern societies organized around secular institutions,
science, and rationalized action have not only failed to provide people
with adequate means to address the suffering that pushes humans to the
ultimate conditions of their existence but they have also generated
new forms of social suffering. Those who conceived of and contributed
to the book Social Suffering have redirected the attention of social
scientists to what "political, economic and institutional power
does to people and, reciprocally how these forms of power themselves
influence responses to social problems" (from the introduction
to the volume).
Understanding social suffering always requires situating such suffering
in particular cultural contexts. This panel has been conceived of as
a forum for reflections on the innovative work on social suffering initiated
by Kleinman and others. The presenters take up three contemporary experiences
of peoples in Vietnam and Thailand who confront very modern manifestations
of social suffering-abortion, the impact on humans of the use of defoliants,
and the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. While each case is distinctive,
each also deals with deep existential problems that underlie all manifestations
of social suffering as Kleinman and his associates have shown.
Second Trimester Abortion in Contemporary Vietnam: Social Vulnerability
and Moral Responsibility
Tine Gammeltoft, University of Copenhagen
With an annual number of 1.4 million induced abortions, Vietnam has
the world's highest abortion rate. Pregnancy terminations can be legally
performed until the 22nd week of gestation and around 1% of abortions
take place in the second trimester of pregnancy. Nearly all women obtaining
late abortions are young and unmarried. In the spring of 1998, as an
element in a larger study on premarital sexuality and abortion, I conducted
a series of in-depth interviews with young women who had recently undergone
an abortion in their fourth or fifth month of pregnancy. These women
told me about how it feels to kill one's own child-this was what they
felt they did-sometimes under brutal circumstances. Having to decide
to terminate the life of another human being, and a human being that
could have lived to become one's own son or daughter was deeply existentially
shattering. The pain suffered by these young women was moral at its
core, stemming from having to inflict pain on another, from feeling
forced to act against one's own deepest moral convictions, from failing
to act in accordance with one's intentions to do good, from doing something
that makes one feel inhuman.
In this paper I shall consider moral dimensions of the suffering experienced
by these young women. First, seeing induced abortion as a moral practice
rather than as an abstract ethical issue, I shall examine the young
women's moral deliberations as they opted for a late abortion as the
most viable response to an unwanted pregnancy. Second, arguing that
the most urgent ethical issue at stake here concerns the social conditions
which compel women to opt for a late abortion rather than the act of
abortion itself, I shall analyze the social forces which motivate young
Vietnamese women to undergo a second trimester pregnancy termination,
in spite of their moral qualms in doing so. Finally, throughout the
paper I shall reflect upon my own role as a researcher and as a fellow
female human being, as I listened to and recorded the young women's
accounts.
Agent Orange and Narratives of Suffering in Viet Nam
Diane Fox, University of Washington
"For the anthropologist, an inquiry into the meanings of illness
is a journey into relationships," writes Arthur Kleinman in The
Illness Narratives. In this paper, I consider relationships encountered
in the process of trying to understand the ways Vietnamese have confronted
illnesses and suffering that many believe may be traced to the effects
of defoliants dropped by the United States from 1961 to 1971.
During that period, American forces sprayed 19 million gallons of chemicals
over the south of Viet Nam, destroying twenty percent of the forests,
three percent of the cropland, and causing an unknown and perhaps unknowable
number of human health problems. What have been the human responses
to these consequences?
Families living with the illnesses and disabilities thought to be caused
by the spraying tell stories that are at times reflective, at times
angry, at times inspiring as they define their experiences in terms
of religion, science, or irreducible uncertainty.
The United States government, after thirty years of official silence
and denial, has haltingly begun to engage in preliminary discussions
with Viet Nam, though the two sides have yet to find a common language.
While the U.S had insisted on scientific discourse, Viet Nam has refused
to speak if humanitarian concerns are not considered simultaneously.
This paper is one step in a search for a language adequate to the subject.
It is based primarily on interviews carried out in 2000 and 2001 with
38 families from the north, center, and south of Viet Nam, and with
the community workers who have supported them these last twenty to thirty
years.
Session 68: Crossing Borders, Changing Life: Vietnamese Diaspora in
20th-Century France
Organizer and Chair: Kimloan Hill, University of California, San Diego
Discussant: Keith Weller Taylor, Cornell University
Keywords: World War I, Vietnamese diaspora, transnational identity,
France, Indochina.
In World War I, due to a shortage of manpower, France had to turn to
its neighbors and the colonies in Africa and Asia to recruit volunteers
for its army and factories. In effect, this practice opened a floodgate
that had previously kept the people in the colonies from entering France.
Since then, the Vietnamese immigrants have arrived in France in many
waves for different reasons and with different purposes.
In France, these immigrants were given a glimpse of the constraints
and potentials of the French social, political, and legal institutions.
They utilized such knowledge to advance their economic interests, to
serve their political agenda, to preserve their culture, and to build
the country they had left. In doing so, the Vietnamese immigrants have
actively participated in the making of both countries' history and have
constantly redefined their identities in order to find their places
in both societies. As a result, Vietnamese identity in diaspora has
taken many forms and meanings to fit the immigrants' visions and images.
Hence, this panel seeks to examine the developments of Vietnamese diaspora
in France and its contribution to history. It focuses on France and
Viet Nam from the point of view of sociology, literature, anthropology,
and military, social, and economic history. Kimloan Hill examines the
labor markets in France and Indochina (Viet Nam) and the participation
of the Vietnamese soldiers and workers in World War I to argue that
the war was a watershed in the history of French colonialism and Franco-Indochinese
relationship. For the first time, people from Indochina could enter
the French labor market en masse and joined the French people and members
of the Allied Forces in a "sacred union" against the Germans.
The war experiences, however, changed their lives and altered the course
of the colonial enterprise in postwar period. Marie-Eve Blanc analyzes
how the Vietnamese immigrants in France utilized a Southeast Asian tradition,
the associative practice, to re-establish their identities, rebuild
their communities, and maintain many cultural practices in diaspora.
The function of this practice, she points out, changed with social and
political developments and the immigrants' visions and needs. Henri
Eckert studies the experiences of Vietnamese soldiers who came to France
in the 1920s. The military leaders in Paris wanted the people from Indochina
to assume a greater share of the "national" defense burden.
This attempt, however, backfired. Although the experiences of the sojourn
in France turned the men from Indochina from "peasants to Frenchmen,"
like the Frenchmen at the time, they engaged in many anti-colonial and
anti-government activities. Finally, Dan Duffy offers a different way
to examine the transnational identity of Vietnamese immigrants and the
culture of Vietnamese diaspora in France; that is, through the examination
of Vietnamese literature and the organization of libraries and bookstores
in Paris. His recent research reveals that although these institutions
differ in goals and operations, their activities have facilitated the
diversity of Vietnamese culture, provided the immigrants with community
support, and contributed to the foundation of the modern nation of Viet
Nam.
World War I and the Developments of Indochinese Colonies in France:
A Historical Perspective
Kimloan Hill, University of California, San Diego
During World War I, to meet the demand for more manpower on the battlefields
and in the factories France had to turn to its neighbors and its colonies
in Africa and Asia to enlist volunteers. In Indochina, poverty, social
disorder, and economic crisis prompted nearly 100,000 men to volunteer.
In France, they adopted many French values (i.e. the value of labor)
and exercised many rights that did not exist in the colonies (i.e. the
right to protest and to form political associations). Their experiences
also changed their worldview. In their eyes, France was no longer a
superpower and the French people were no longer a superior race. When
the war was over, while most of these men returned to Indochina, a few
hundred remained in France to get married, to work, and to pursue a
higher education. In the 1920s, as France continued to recruit more
manpower from Indochina, Indochinese colonies began to appear on French
soil; and the immigrants formed a significant political bloc. They utilized
the existing political and legal practices to establish their place
in the Metropole and remove French yoke from Indochina.
In short, this paper examines the economic conditions and the labor
markets in France and Indochina before and after the outbreak of World
War I to argue that the war was a watershed in the history of French
colonialism. It set the stage for the downfall of the colonial enterprise
in Indochina. The Vietnamese diaspora, on the other hand, contributed
to its downfall.
Indochinese Soldiers in Europe, 1920-1939
Henri Eckert, Lycée de Crépy en Valois
In 1920, General Charles Mangin, a military leader of the colonial army
felt that the colonies should have had contributed more troops to the
defense of the "Greater France." Starting in 1922, small groups
of Indochinese troops were sent to Europe on a three-year duty. Some
served in the colonial infantry units in the remote Vosges Mountains.
Others went to Lebanon or Morocco and helped local troops to put down
native revolts. Several thousands, however, were employed as military
workers in the metropolitan army.
To help these military workers cope with their new living and working
conditions, military leadership in Indochina gave them lessons in French
language and culture and some professional training in clerical work,
truck driving, health services, and some other special skills before
sending them to Europe. As a result, during their sojourn in France,
these Indochinese soldiers were accorded a better treatment and enjoyed
a greater freedom than the men who served France in the First World
War. They had more opportunities to participate in French social life
and to make contacts with the communities of Indochinese civilians in
France. Their participation in French way of life and their contacts
with other Indochinese immigrants changed their perceptions about France
and Indochina and led to their participation in anti-French activities.
In the end the leaders of the Metropolitan Army decided to replace these
Indochinese military workers with French civilian workers when it realized
that the Indochinese soldiers had become a political liability.
Vietnamese Immigrants' Associations in France: A Tool for Shaping
Identity
Marie-Eve Blanc, Institut de Recherche sur le Sud-Est Asiatique,
Marseille
In most Southeast Asian societies, associative practice is a common
tool to organize the community, not only to foster religious, cultural
and political life but also to build solidarity among the members of
the association. During the colonial period, the French changed the
law concerning the right of association to control associations with
political aims. But the practice forming association continued to flourish,
especially among those who left their native villages to work overseas
or to live in new resettlements. This practice was particularly prevalent
among northern immigrants who resettled in South Viet Nam during the
colonial era.
In the 1920s and 1930s France, the Vietnamese immigrants' associations
were the places to manufacture nationalist identity and breed anti-colonialism
activities. After 1954 and more so after 1975, Vietnamese immigrants
have accepted the idea that they will never return to their native country.
In that sense, their associations have been tie places to preserve their
memories and "real traditions," and to build a polyvalent
identity-the identity of a Viet Kieu.
In summary, this paper will first show how in the first period of the
immigration into France "association" is a tool to promote
democracy and shape nationalist identity. It then will explain how,
after the war, "association" is a tool for the immigrants
to re-establish and maintain their identities.
Strands and Contexts in Vietnamese Identity in the Diaspora: Vietnamese
Literature in the Libraries and Bookstores of Paris
Dan Duffy, University of North Carolina
The presentation investigates Vietnamese identity in the diaspora by
focusing on libraries and bookstores, institutions of Vietnamese literature
in Paris, France. Vietnamese books, and the institutions that bring
them into being and pass them around, are material evidence of the activity
of Vietnamese identity. Paris is a site of Vietnamese diaspora that
pre-dates the modern nation of Viet Nam.
Searching for Vietnamese literature in the bookstores and libraries
of Paris reveals the diverse institutions that came together to found
the modern nation of Viet Nam. There is a store in a Buddhist temple,
two lending libraries in Catholic churches, stores sponsored by the
Vietnamese government and others by exiled nationalists. Meanwhile,
French research libraries and mainstream bookstores locate Vietnamese
literature firmly in the Orientalist discourse that governed the French
conquest of Indochina.
However, in the diaspora, diverse Vietnamese cultural institutions stand
alone and articulate separately with the world outside of Viet Nam.
One store that came into being as a place to rally Western support for
Ha Noi against the United States' intervention now sells crafts to help
artisans in the homeland succeed in the liberal economy. Other sites
engage with the discourses of social welfare and cultural diversity
within France.
To recapitulate, looking at the Vietnamese books of Paris brings attention
to different strands in Vietnamese national identity. Looking at the
social life around these books shows different contexts in which Vietnamese
identity now makes itself in the world outside of the nation.
Session 88: Representing Ethnicity in Vietnam
Organizers: Frank Proschan, Smithsonian Institution; Hjorleifur R.
Jonsson, Arizona State University
Chair: Vinh Quoc Nguyen, Harvard University
Discussant: Frank Proschan, Smithsonian Institution
Keywords: Vietnam, ethnicity, representation, tourism, ethnography.
Ethnographic representation has never been the exclusive province of
academically credentialed anthropologists. Rather, ethnicities constantly
represent themselves to others and are just as constantly represented
by others in diverse forms. Some of those representational forms approximate
the forms of knowledge production employed by anthropologists: monographs,
articles, or essays. Others take the form of tourist guides, military
memoirs, paintings, advertising billboards, internet web sites, policy
documents, or political tracts, to name but a few representational genres.
How are Vietnam's diverse ethnicities-both minority and majority-represented
by themselves and others today, and how have they been in the past?
How do these forms of ethnographic representation compare with the canonical
representational genres of academic ethnography? And what are the effects
and consequences of these representational acts on the people who are
their subjects?
This panel draws together Nora A. Taylor and Hjorleifur Jonsson's examination
of how contemporary visual culture in Vietnam-billboards, posters, and
paintings-depicts minorities as backwards contributors of diversity
to the overarching unity insisted upon by the state; Duong Bich Hanh's
comparison of how Hmong in northwestern Vietnam are represented in international
touristic literature and ephemera, and how they choose to represent
themselves to those tourists; Jean Michaud's discussion of the French
military officers and missionaries who served to represent Vietnamese
highland groups prior to the professionalization of ethnography as a
science; and Philip Taylor's consideration of how both ethnic groups
and religious sub-cultures in the Mekong Delta are perceived and represented
vis-à-vis state projects of defining national identity.
Other Attractions in Vietnam
Hjorleifur R. Jonsson, Arizona State University; Nora A. Taylor,
Arizona State University
What is the attraction of Vietnam's Others, representations of ethnic
minorities and of pre-national populations that signify different regions
of the now unified country? Our examination of this issue concerns the
place of ethnic and regional diversity in Vietnam's visual culture,
particularly billboards, posters, and paintings, and the recent international
tourist interest in highland minorities. For decades, artists have appropriated
markers of ethnic difference in propaganda posters about national unity
and progress. Contemporary Vietnamese notions of ethnic groups draw
on a historical trajectory that involves colonial racial classifications
as well as the anti-colonial notion of "the people." The inclusion
of ethnic minorities in official portrayals of the people has roots
in the historical conditions of Vietnam's nation-building and the armed
struggle for independence. Equally important, the visual appropriation
of the markers of ethnic and national difference projects national unity
and progress through the mapping of variety and backwardness on highland
ethnic groups. We argue that the visual emphasis on ethnic and regional
diversity in the Vietnamese public sphere is in fact about national
unity and state control. The recent traffic in minority artifacts and
in paintings of ethnic minorities, and the emergence of minority culture
shows are fuelled by Western tourists' interest in encounters with non-modern
and non-Westernized peoples. We argue that the transnational traffic
in culture reinforces the Vietnamese projection of backwardness on highland
peoples, and suggest that the facilitation of cultural exchange is simultaneously
about state officials' control of the practices of identity.
Lonely Planet Comes to Sa Pa: Seeing the Hmong Through Others' Eyes
and Their Own
Duong Bich Hanh, University of Washington, Seattle
Not until the early 1990s was Sa Pa in northwestern Vietnam opened up
again to visitors, after almost fifty years of no outsiders other than
lowland Kinh (Viet) migrating into New Economic Zones in the 1960s and
government officials enjoying subsidized holidays. But nowadays, due
to its magnificent landscape, favorable climate and diverse minority
communities, Sa Pa has once again become one of the most popular destinations
within Vietnam. It is featured in every tourist guidebook, and dozens
of tour agencies in Hanoi provide color brochures with detailed information
and pictures of the Sa Pa area. In this paper I explore how Sa Pa and
especially its ethnic minorities are represented in the recent tourist
literatures, by analyzing a wide range of guidebooks, tour agencies'
materials, web sites, postcards, and other documents.
While outsiders are actively engaging in the new strategy of using ethnic
minorities to draw tourists to Sa Pa, how do the Hmong in the area represent
themselves to tourists? In many similar situations elsewhere, scholars
claim that local people use "staged authenticity" or "constructed
identity" as a way to attract tourists. Is this conclusion valid
to the case of Sa Pa as well? Do the Hmong in Sa Pa wear Hmong clothes
because they think that is what tourists look for, or simply because
they are Hmong? The paper will discuss this question using young Hmong
girls who have left their home villages to go live in town as a case
study.
French Military and Missionary Ethnography in Upper Tonkin, 1885-1925:
A Critical Assessment
Jean Michaud, University of Hull, England
At the time of France's conquest of Tonkin at the end of the 19th century,
the Third Republic was busy back home promoting republican values, pushing
the aristocracy out of military command, and seriously curtailing the
Church's prerogatives. The professionalization of French ethnography
had begun only with the 1789 Revolution, despite earlier systematic
and prolonged contact of French observers with the 'savages' in New
France (Canada). Through the course of the 19th century, while the evolutionist
movement triggered further formalization of French anthropology as a
discipline, political turmoil prevented it from reaching beyond academic
circles. Even after a century of development, French ethnography in
the colonies of Indochina still had to be incidental and instrumental.
Men without specific academic formation in observing unfamiliar cultures
were pushed to the forefront of France's encounter with the Other, and
asked to record their observations. In Upper Tonkin, these 'incidental
ethnographers' were diplomats, military officers from middle-class families,
and missionaries with peasant backgrounds. The way they conceived and
represented the populations in upland northern Vietnam and the texts
they produced bear the marks of their individuality. I argue that understanding
the biographical details of these early ethnographers is the first step
in evaluating the intellectual context of production of their writing
and methods in order to critically assess their texts as ethnography,
test its validity today, and measure its contribution to current debates
on colonial missionary and military ethnography.
The Predicament of Local Cultures in the Mekong Delta: Representing
Colonialism and Ethnicity
Philip Kenneth Taylor, University of Western Australia
The Vietnamese portion of the Mekong delta is home to a number of ethnic
groups and religious sub-cultures with a distinct history of settlement
in the area. Members of these groups identify serious threats to their
way of life, which include the erosion of cultural heritage, the undermining
of human capacities and social marginalization. The state is often represented
as in opposition to local ethnic and religious cultures, leading some
to describe it as colonialist in nature. Yet the predicament of local
cultures may not be as bleak as is sometimes presented, for the fonts
of identity in the Mekong delta are particularly subtle, resilient and
diverse. This parallels considerable flux and diversity in portrayals
of the 'national essence' by the state and Vietnam's social scientists.
Underlying these considerations, the majority of those living in the
Mekong delta are poor and economically marginalized, environmentally
vulnerable and subject to class and gender distinctions. The metaphor
of colonialism, with its rich resonances in Vietnamese history, may
be an apt way to describe the relations of domination to which local
cultures are subject, but this process is best understood as multiple
and overlapping. This brings into consideration not only inequalities
within and between groups and their historically layered relationship
to the state, but also the potent local effects of other distant loci
of power such as large cities, distant centers of economic power and
development projects along the course of the Mekong river, which further
undermine the precarious conditions of life in the delta.
Session 109: Locality and Practice: Reinterpreting Vietnamese Christianity
(Sponsored by the Vietnamese Studies Group)
Organizer: Wynn Wilcox, Cornell University
Chair: Michele Thompson, Southern Connecticut State University
Discussant: Peter C. Phan, Catholic University of America
Keywords: Vietnam, Christianity, 17th and 18th centuries, culture.
Existing historical studies have tended to interpret Christianity in
Vietnam as inextricably tied to the presence of Europeans in Vietnam.
Therefore, Christianity has typically been depicted as something imposed
upon unsuspecting Vietnamese from the outside. Not surprisingly, this
perspective has oriented studies of Vietnamese Christianity toward European
bringers of the religion, and away from Vietnamese practitioners of
the faith. Consequently, we still know relatively little about the concrete
realities of Vietnamese Christianity, particularly in the precolonial
period, a gap the papers in this panel propose to address.
The papers in this panel suggest that both the development and the practice
of Christianity in Vietnam were far more complex than has been previously
understood. Christianity, as it developed in Vietnam, was very much
the product of local adaptations, reflecting existing social and cultural
realities. These papers explore these adaptive processes, both at the
popular cultural and the elite political levels, revealing the complex
negotiations that shaped emergent Christian practices in Vietnam. More
specifically, the papers in this panel examine the relationships between
missionaries and mandarins, catechists and ordinary Christians in Vietnam
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In looking at these relationships
we hope to be able to contribute to a more balanced and more nuanced
understanding of Vietnamese Christianity in this period, and of the
political and cultural context in which it developed.
Reassessing Vietnamese Christianity in the Tay Son Period, 1771-1802
George Dutton, University of California, Los Angeles
Christianity in Viet Nam has roots dating to the early seventeenth century,
yet few studies have examined this religion in its local context or
looked closely at pre-nineteenth-century aspects thereof. This paper
will examine Vietnamese Christianity in a particular political context,
that of the Tay Son uprising of the last three decades of the eighteenth
century. Scholars of European missionary activity and of Vietnamese
peasant movements have both examined this period in some detail, but
the accounts of each have substantial flaws. Scholars of the missionary
movements have too frequently ignored Vietnamese Christians as they
focused on the spiritual struggles and occasional martyrdoms of European
clerics. Vietnamese historians of the Tay Son uprising have equally
distorted the realities of this period by portraying the rebels as very
sympathetic to the new faith, when in reality Tay Son attitudes toward
Christianity were far more complex, vacillating between tolerance and
forceful repression.
My paper will consider both the constantly shifting actions and attitudes
of Tay Son leaders toward this religious minority, and the responses
of members of Vietnamese Christian communities during this period. In
doing so, my paper will show that Tay Son actions with regard to Christianity
most frequently reflected political and military calculations rather
than ideologically-motivated suspicion of the faith. Moreover, the paper
will demonstrate that rather than constituting an exceptional period
in Vietnamese history in terms of attitudes toward Christianity, the
period of the Tay Son regime was one of continuity, offering obvious
parallels to regimes that preceded and followed it.
The Bishop and the Prince: A New Look at an Overblown Relationship
Wynn Wilcox, Cornell University
This paper examines one of the most analyzed personal relationships
in Vietnamese history. It suggests that the relationship between Ba
Da Loc (The Bishop of Adran, Pigneau de Behaine) and Crown Prince Nguyen
Phuc Canh has become overemphasized in colonial and nationalist historiography
because of the use of both figures as prototypical stereotypes of the
French colonizer and the Vietnamese collaborator. In fact, neither figure
can be seen as prototypically French or Vietnamese, because neither
seems to be concerned with their respective ethnicities or national
states. This relationship has also been used to generate a foundational
myth about the connection between Christianity and the French colonization
of Vietnam. Pro-colonial authors use the Bishop as an example of the
French Catholic civilizing mission in Vietnam, while nationalist authors
claim that the Bishop demonstrates the clear link between Christianity
and the imposition of French colonial domination. Because of their desire
to use the relationship between the Bishop and the Prince as an allegorical
device, these interpretations make the relationship out to be more dramatic
than it appears to have been. The relationship between these is best
understood as an extended relationship between teacher and student.
Canh, like many students, was at times in awe of his mentor; at others,
he rebelled against the Bishop. This relationship saw many of the vicissitudes
of a relationship between a middle-aged teacher and a bright teenage
student, including resistance and the distraction of the temptations
of sex and drugs.
The Outlook of Native Catechists in Jesuit-Led Christian Communities
in Vietnam, 1629-1665
Brian Ostrowski, Cornell University
The existence of a well-trained corps of commissioned spiritual leaders,
or catechists, has often been credited for the success of the early
Jesuit mission in seventeenth-century Vietnam. The writings of both
Jesuit missionaries and native catechists themselves suggest ways in
which the catechists conceived of their role in the Jesuit community
and a wider world Christendom. The catechists thoroughly enmeshed themselves
in the international Jesuit community. They devoted themselves to the
maintenance of spiritually fervent Catholic communities, were open to
international travel for education and other purposes, and came to share
many of the missionaries' attitudes toward affairs not only religious,
but political and social as well. At the same time, the catechists maintained
a deep intimacy with Vietnamese customs, local geography, administration,
and a popular sense of the past. Their ability to straddle the intellectual
and emotive worlds both of Jesuit Christianity and of Vietnamese tradition
uniquely qualified them to communicate the spiritual instructions of
the missionaries to native Christians, and in turn to Vietnamese tradition,
uniquely qualified them to communicate the spiritual instructions of
the missionaries to native Christians, and in turn to communicate the
needs and aspirations of the local faithful to the Church hierarchy.
Session 128: Ethnic Dynamics and Policies in Vietnam (Sponsored by the
Vietnam Studies Group)
Organizer: Daniel Goodkind, U.S. Census Bureau
Chair: David Marr, Australian National University
Discussant: Neil L. Jamieson, Independent Consultant
Keywords: Vietnam, ethnicity, policy, environment, population.
In recent decades, Vietnamese authorities have attempted to forge a
sense of national unity within an ethnically diverse society, incorporating
ethnic groups within an overarching political structure. Yet over the
past few years, ethnic conflicts in Vietnam have drawn increasing attention.
Riots in the central highlands, the proposed forced migration of tens
of thousands of ethnic minorities in Son La to make way for hydroelectric
projects, and other inter-ethnic clashes threaten to spoil the image
of a unified ethnic fabric. In addition to reflecting tensions which
took root decades or even centuries ago, these conflicts have been sparked
by current disparities in living conditions, development plans amidst
market reforms, and mismatches between local and national policies.
Our panel examines the underlying dynamics and policies associated with
interethnic relations in Vietnam as well as prospects for such relations
in the future. Our wide temporal scope begins with an examination of
ethnic policies in the colonial era that shaped the composition of military
personnel. The colonial era provides a comparative foil for remaining
papers which focus on contemporary Vietnam. The demographic aspects
of ethnic group size, growth, and distribution are detailed through
results from recent censuses. A review of public policies towards ethnic
minorities over the past two decades illuminates strategies and challenges
for encouraging national unity. Finally, recent ethnic unrest in the
central highlands are traced to changes in local land rights policies.
Pan-Colonial Roots of Ethnic "Balancing" in the Colonial
Army of Indochina
Sarah Womack, University of Michigan
This paper will explore colonial understandings and manipulations of
ethnicity through an examination of ethnic "balancing" practices
in the garde indigene and penal corps of Indochina. It discusses primarily
the exploitation-or, in some cases, the invention-of inter-ethnic tension
in the creation of both the garde indigene and the penal corps, a policy
which was the result of the failure of the French to find a "martial
race" among "effeminate" Southeast Asians whose blood
had been weakened by either Indian or Chinese transfusions. This approach
was a technology of colonial rule borrowed by the French from the British
in India, whose use and mythologies of "martial races" such
as the Gurkhas was much admired by other colonial regimes. One of the
key divide-and-rule practices of the colonial regime in Indochina, this
attempt to cultivate and employ a sense of alienation between peoples
of the same land contributed to the development of both the character
and practices of the colonial state and the history of ethnic relations
in Indochina. This paper thus examines not only ethnic definition and
tension, but also the role of race and ethnicity in strategies of domination,
colonialism as a global network, and the use of "modular"
technologies of rule.
Ethnic Counting: Growth, Distribution, and Change Among Vietnam's Ethnic
Populations Since 1979
Daniel Goodkind, U.S. Census Bureau
This paper examines the relative size and growth of ethnic group populations
in Vietnam at the national and regional level. Data are drawn from national
censuses of 1979, 1989, and 1999. In addition to analyzing past trends,
the paper projects future ethnic populations as well as their regional
distribution. A variety of simplifying assumptions underlying the projections
are identified. In addition to offering empirical findings based on
recent censuses, this paper emphasizes how the process of "ethnic
counting" illuminates Vietnamese government authorities' thinking
about ethnic issues. Clues to such thinking include the form in which
census questions are asked, stated rules for determining ethnicity (e.g.,
for children of parents from different ethnic backgrounds), and the
ways in which results are tabulated, interpreted, and presented to the
public. The census also establishes a kind of referendum on ethnic identification,
and such identification is potentially fluid over time due to a variety
of contextual factors identified herein. We can determine whether such
fluidity has in fact existed in Vietnam by comparing our population
projections of ethnic groups from 1979 onwards with actual data from
1989 and 1999. Prospects for future fluidity in ethnic identification
and the general implications of these findings are discussed.
Becoming Socialist or Becoming Vietnamese: Ethnic Minorities in the
Doi Moi Period in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Pamela McElwee, Yale University
There are fifty-four official ethnic groups in the Socialist Republic
of Vietnam, and the treatment of minorities has always been a concern
of the state, starting with the earliest proclamations of the Indochinese
Communist Party in the 1930s. Particularly following reunification in
1975, various policies were implemented to transform the minorities
in the name of socialism, and eliminate harmful 'feudal' societies.
It was through a common identity as socialist that national unity among
the Vietnamese and the minorities would be achieved. However, many of
these policies-including transmigration, resettlement of swiddening
agriculturalists, and regulation of traditional rites and customs-had
the opposite effect and contributed to discontent and strife between
minority and majority populations. However, in line with the reformation
of state policies towards market economics (known as Doi Moi) that began
in 1986, many of these policies for ethnic minorities are also being
reformed. This paper will review the state policies toward minorities
over the last 25 years, particularly focusing on recent changes in policy,
and will assess their implementation at the local level in several research
fieldsites. The paper will particularly look at two recent events in
Vietnam directly related to the national policies on minorities: a corruption
scandal involving the national ministry for minorities, and large scale
protests by minorities in the Central Highlands in the spring of 2001,
which have prompted a security crackdown in that area. The paper will
conclude with an assessment of future trends for ethnic minority policies
in Vietnam.
Changing Land Rights and Land Use Histories: The Role of Forests
in Ethnic Communities in Dak Lak Province, Central Highlands
Huu Nghi Tran, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development
The Central Highlands of Viet Nam contain some of the last remaining
natural forests in the whole country, and are also the traditional homelands
of many ethnic minorities. However, in the years since reunification,
this area has been the site of rapid changes in land use, mainly attributable
to in-migrants who have come as agricultural pioneers to plant coffee
and other cash crops. The migration and deforestation has in many cases
completely altered the traditional land use systems of the indigenous
groups, who once practiced shifting cultivation and used the forests
for various subsistence and spiritual purposes. This has caused tension
and recent clashes over land rights.
Along with Viet Nam's transition to a market economy, long-term land
use rights are now being allocated to individuals, rather than continuing
state control of all land. However, forest lands have not been allocated
as quickly or successfully as agricultural land, and in most cases,
forests remains under state control. However, in Dak Lak Province, allocation
of stocked forestry land has been taking place, particularly allocation
to whole communities of indigenous minorities. This is the only area
in Viet Nam where this type of allocation is occurring. This paper will
discuss this local experiment, and how state law is being adapted to
the local realities of Dak Lak, a particularly important issue given
recent land conflicts in the area. The paper will conclude with a look
at the environmental and social effects of the new policy on indigenous
communities such as the Jarai and M'Nong groups.
Session 173: The Vietnamese Body: Memory, Myth, and Geo-Politics in
Viet Nam and the Diaspora
Organizer: Thu-huong Nguyen-vo, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair: Jayne Werner, Long Island University
Discussant: Angie Ngoc Tran, California State University, Monterey Bay
Keywords: body, gender, class, race, war memory.
This panel examines Vietnamese bodies as the material sites where active
agency intersects with social and historical structures of memory, gender,
class and race in villages, cities, and diasporic spaces. One paper
studies how village adolescents craft their identities as young men
and women on the corporeal topography of male and female bodies, given
the collective memories of past war violence. Another examines the contestations
over truth and normative gender values by a group of village mothers-in-law
and daughters-in-law after viewing a state-promoted film in which the
state reclaims the female body as a site of mythical construction in
the post-socialist era. The remaining two studies deal directly with
how global processes play out on the intimate landscape of the body.
One paper examines garment workers' use of global body products in negotiations
of class and femininity in rural/urban geographies and the shifting
landscape of global production and consumption. The final paper analyzes
how white Australians police the bodies of Vietnamese immigrants, marking
their danger and disorder, as a mean of reasserting larger geo-political
differences between East and West and to reinscribe the whiteness of
Australians at a historical moment when Australia is dependent on Asian
economies. Together, the papers explore how extreme categories of purity
and danger are used in discipline and self-discipline of bodies. The
panel is designed to encourage discussion across geographic and disciplinary
spaces with its multi-disciplinary focus (anthropology, cultural studies,
political science, geography) and its inclusion of rural, urban, and
diasporic contexts.
Incorporated Warfare Memories and Sexuality: Vietnamese Adolescents'
Construction of Identities
Helle Rydstrom, Linkoping University, Sweden
This paper addresses the ways in which a violent past of warfare and
dramatic bodily and sexual maturation influence rural Vietnamese adolescents'
ways of crafting their identities as young women or men. The paper draws
on anthropological fieldwork conducted in a rural community, which is
located in northern Vietnam.
During the last century, Vietnam has been engaged in several wars. While
generations of Vietnamese have been brought up in wartime, today's adolescents
represent the first Vietnamese generation of this century that has not
been directly confronted with the violence of wars. However, collective
memories of brutal warfare pervade adolescents' perceptions of females,
males, and their bodies. The reason is that ideas about femininity and
masculinity are bound up to collective experiences regarding the ways
in which violence neglects the boundaries of the human body and, by
so doing, redefines the corporal topography of female and male bodies.
In addition, adolescents' increasing bodily maturity, has a profound
impact on their configuration of a female or male identity. Because
adolescents undergo tremendous bodily changes, they encounter assumptions
about female and male sexuality. An intact hymen at marriage is still
highly appreciated by many Vietnamese, and both female and male adolescents
acquire knowledge about blood taboos and female impurity, which include
that females should observe certain taboos while menstruating.
In this way, collective memories of warfare violence and contemporary
body changes provide significant conditions for adolescents' constructions
of identities as young women or men.
State Mythical Projection of Embodied Womanhoods: Mother-Daughter-in-Law
Relations in the Red River Delta in Viet Nam
Jayne Werner, Long Island University
This paper examines the contestations over truth and normative gender
values by a group of village mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law after
viewing a state-promoted film in which the state reclaims the female
body as a site of mythical construction in the post-socialist era. Using
Altusser's notion of interpellation, the paper examines how gendered
and embodied subjectivities are negotiated by women in response to state
"hailing" via a state-produced popular film. The film "Me
Chông Tôi" is used to elicit commentary from a group
of mothers-in-law and a separate group of daughters-in-law about norms
governing the ideal features of both womanhoods. The data was obtained
in 1996, ten years after the launching of dôi môi. The paper
finds differences in the way the two groups of women react to the film,
and thus the way they respond to the hailing of the state. Some tentative
interpretations are provided for why this is the case.
Class Geographies: Vietnamese Garment Workers' Consumption of Body
Products
Thu-huong Nguyen-vo, University of California, Los Angeles
It is no longer news that garment workers in Viêt Nam, most of
whom are women, are part of global production. But the questions regarding
their class subjectivities have seldom been asked, perhaps because it
seems self-evident that they would belong to a global (feminized) working
class in the global economy. My investigation suggests we need to reexamine
this assumption. The question I address is how these workers negotiate
their class and gender subjectivities as consumers of global products
in local contexts.
I interviewed garment workers in 2000, who came to Hô Chi' Minh
City and its outskirts from rural areas. This paper explores the workers'
consumption of globally and locally produced products to be used on
the body-shampoo, soap, perfume, cosmetics, jewelry, clothing and accessories-to
suggest that these bodies are sites where a balancing act takes place
between the dreaming of a geographical and class elsewhere (e.g. overseas,
Hô Chi' Minh City, middle class), and the assertion of a geographical
place and class somewhere (e.g. Viêt Nam, rural origins, working
class). As the landscape of global production shifts them into urban
spaces, these workers attempt to draft a new geography in their use
of products on their bodies through categories of beauty, purity, and
hygiene negotiated locally in relation to urban middle-class femininity.
Their class signification suggests intersections with constructions
of gender, nation, and locality rather than a simple class location
in the global economy.
The Geo-Politics of Bodies: Defining East and West on the "Aberrant"
Bodies of the Vietnamese Diaspora
Allaine Cerwonka, Georgia State University
The paper examines the mapping and disciplining of "Asian"
bodies in Australia by the police. I look at how the production of Asian
bodies as "filthy" and the production of the Vietnamese immigrant
community in particular as criminal is a means by which Anglo-Celtic
Australians reconstruct the division between "the West" and
"Asia" in the international landscape. Imagined geographical
categories have been a means of coding and naturalizing the international
political hierarchies of states. They have also been a means by which
individual states like Australia have defined their own national identity
as white and civilized in the past. These fictional "neat"
borders between "the West" and "Asia" have been
disrupted by the presence of Asian bodies on Australian streets in the
last thirty years. This paper aims to contribute to our theories and
empirical understandings of how national identity and international
geography are constructed on Vietnamese bodies in highly local contexts.
Session 213: Foreign Military Transfers in Mainland Southeast Asian
Wars: Adaptations and Rejections
Organizer: Christopher E. Goscha, Péninsule Indochinoise, Paris
Chair: Brantly Womack, University of Virginia
Discussants: Qiang Zhai, Auburn University; Stein Tonnesson, International
Peace Research Institute, Oslo
Keywords: military, technology, arms, foreigners, Southeast Asia, Ming
China, Japan, Europe, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia.
This panel has one main objective: To explore in pluri-disciplinary
ways the importance of foreign military transfers in mainland Southeast
Asian wars. As everywhere, external military technology, its transfer,
and adaptations have played an important role in the history of mainland
Southeast Asia. They will continue to do so. However, little research
and reflection have gone into this subject. This panel would bring together
three scholars, working on this question for mainland Southeast Asia.
They would be asked specifically to reflect on the importance of foreign
military transfers in critical and problematic ways, with special attention
to questions of adaptation, rejection, and the overall importance of
this phenomena.
Though focused on transfers to mainland Southeast Asia, this panel by
no means excludes discussion of 'Southeast Asian' and 'national' technology
transfers. This is a regional phenomena; the exchanges can flow in both
directions, as these paper would argue. Moreover, this panel examines
a variety of 'foreign' transfers, not just those coming from the West,
but from other parts of Asia, and even those moving from one Southeast
Asian state to another.
To get at this complex topic, this panel offers three critical studies,
extending from the 'premodern' to 'modern' period: (1) The overland
transfer of military technology from Ming China to upper mainland Southeast
Asia (c. 1390s-1526); (2) the maritime transfer of military technology
from Western Europe to lower mainland Southeast Asia (c. 16th-19th centuries);
and (3) Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese technology transfers during
the wars for Indochina (20th century).
This wider perspective would provide a rare opportunity to discuss critically
similarities and differences in technology transfers across the region
and time.
Transfer of Military Technology from Ming China to Northern Mainland
Southeast Asia (c. 1390s-1526)
Laichen Sun, California State University, Fullerton
There are two assumptions regarding the spread of military technology
to and from Southeast Asia. The first is that firearms appeared in Southeast
Asia only after the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century, while
the second one is that the Chinese learned from the Vietnamese artillery
technology. Thus the role of the Chinese in the spread of military technology
to Southeast Asia has been ignored. On the one hand, this paper shows
that from the late 14th century (more than 120 years before the appearance
of the Portuguese in Southeast Asian waters in 1511), Chinese firearms
and cannon started to spread to upper mainland Southeast Asia, including
the land of the Maw Shan, Lan Na (Chiang Mai), and particularly Dai
Viet. In this technological dissemination, war and trade were the two
major agencies and Chinese soldiers and traders acted as important agents.
On the other hand, this research demonstrates that the Southeast Asians
actively adopted and adapted the Chinese technology for their own political
consolidation and territorial expansion, which had significant implications
for mainland Southeast Asian history. This paper argues that several
major historical events during the period in question, including the
emergence of the Maw Shans and the subjugation of the Mon-Khmer speaking
people, the golden age of Lan Na, and Dai Viet's southward expansion
(the sack of Champa) and westward "long march" as far as the
Irrawaddy River, and the rise of Mongmit and Mohnyn, need to be explained
in the light of Chinese military technology and the absorption of it
by the Southeast Asians.
Military Technology Transfers from Europe to Lower Mainland Southeast
Asia (c. 16th-19th Centuries)
Frédéric Mantienne, Péninsule Indochinoise, Paris
During the 16th-18th centuries, the mainland kingdoms of Southeast Asia
(Arakan, Burma, Siam, and Cambodia) were eager to enroll European mercenaries.
These troops were used as royal guards, as well as elite force on the
battle field. Their strength was based on their extensive use of firearms,
muskets and guns. The two kingdoms of Dai-Viêt were not interested
in mercenaries, but sought to import European-made guns and attract
European founders. King Narai of Siam showed a real interest in importing
European technology from Holland and France and in developing Western-styled
manufactures in Siam (firearms and shipbuilding). In the 18th century,
the Burmese army was still heavily relying on European mercenaries,
mainly sailors and soldier-prisoners. They participated in the campaigns
in Siam and in the capture of Ayuthia.
The 'import' of military technology was a particularity of Vietnam during
the Tây-son civil war. Although the number of European soldiers
and sailors who served with Nguyên Anh has been grossly exaggerated,
this handful of Westerners nonetheless helped him to master modern European
military techniques and deal with the much more numerous Tây-Son
armies. Field artillery, infantry drill, fortifications, construction
of European square rigged vessels were the main fields of this fascinating
adaptation of European technologies to Vietnamese conditions. Although
Gia long and Ming Mang tried to resist the increasing pressure of Europe
in the early 19th century, they continued to purchase and build European
type vessels and master the latest European military technologies and
methods. From the arrival of Europeans in Asia until colonial conquest,
Southeast Asian rulers made wide use of European military force.
The Asian Context of Mainland Military Science: Japanese, Chinese,
and Vietnamese Military Transfers during the Vietnamese Resistance to
the French
Christopher E. Goscha, Péninsule Indochinoise, Paris
This paper examines the Asian channels of the spread of military science
into eastern mainland Southeast Asia during the 20th-century battles
over Indochina. Most studies of modern military science in Southeast
Asia assume either that the West or Western colonialism played the key
role in military modernization or that there was little foreign influence
during these wars of 'national liberation' against foreign intervention.
My goal is to muddy the waters methodologically and problematically.
While Western military science was certainly important in the modernization
of Southeast Asian armies, its entry and adaptation did not occur in
the linear and simplistic ways colonial and nationalist writers would
like us to believe.
Using the Vietnamese opposition to French Indochina, I argue there is
an Asian context which needs to be taken into consideration when studying
20th-century military and technical transfers in Southeast Asia. I use
three case studies to make my point. Part one argues that Japanese deserters
who crossed over to the Viet Minh played an important early role in
developing modern military science and training for the Vietnamese People's
Army. Part two examines the importance of Chinese military contributions
to the Vietnamese army, examining the Vietnamese sent to China for technical
and military training (Whampoa) and the Chinese advisors dispatched
to Vietnam to help defeat the French. How the Vietnamese adapted or
rejected these Sino-Japanese military transfers is analyzed critically.
The last part shows that the Vietnamese Army would, in turn, try to
export military techniques to Laos and Cambodia to create armies there.
The question of Lao and Khmer adaptations and rejections of this Vietnamese-brokered
military science is crucial to understanding the limits of these Asian
transfers.