The Great Montagnard Debate III
From nina@easynet.fr Fri Oct 29 11:32:20 1999
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 04:43:55 -0700
From: Nina McPherson <nina@easynet.fr>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Scottish sticky-rice
Dear Frank,
Wow. If I had known my well-intentioned query and example would have provoked such an outpouring of contempt and invective against evil literary editors and translators imposing their personal ears on your usage (??!!) and Duong Thu Huong, (who spent much of her youth in the highlands during the last war-which-I-dare not-name) branded as an "anachronistic romantic" who uses "sociologically invalid terms" and stereotypes all mountain people as sticky-rice eaters, I would have "effaced" my own cultural diversity and kept my hillbilly mouth shut. I'd find your comment amusing if it weren't also a bit disturbing. The level of discourse - and bizarre ad-hominem labelling and counter-labelling -bears an unfortunate resemblance to a "certain political establishment" in Vietnam which still insists on confusing literature and history and likes to make writers and translators responsible for what fictional characters say. You can't regulate fiction or word choice or irony unless you are the Communist Party. And even the Communist Party has had a hard time regulating Duong Thu Huong. Before I beat a retreat, a final word of clarification on behalf of Chi Huong, an innocent who I should never have dragged into this, though she would be highly amused: The passage in her novel Luu Ly that I referred to was, in fact, her caustic parody of the way her FICTIONAL drunken male Vietnamese artists (sorry, they usually are all of the former) tend to talk and wax pseudo-philosophical about sex and food and wine and tea and the way nguoi mien nui cook rice. I'm not even sure it was sticky rice, by the way. But maybe we could just "laisse tomber" as the French say and get back to work? Yours, a hybrid-Scottish-Hungarian-highlander-Montagnard(upper case, original French Revolution sense)-sticky-rice eater in Paris,
Nina McPherson (or Mac "son of" Pherson "the Parson")
From wturley@siu.edu Fri Oct 29 11:33:04 1999
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:20:05 -0500
From: William S. Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: words 'n stuff
>I'm not even sure it was sticky rice, by the way. But maybe we
could just
>"laisse tomber" as the French say and get back to work?
It is heartening to see some detachment and humor return to this discussion
in the last couple of days. But before you laissé tomber, let
me remind you of the lesson one can draw from the meaning of "Viet
Cong" in common parlance among Vietnamese today, including younger
members of the Party. Time and events have eroded its original resonances
and meaning, even for those whom it originally disparaged. Many of the
differences and arguments among you are more properly traced to the
same process than to politically incorrect ideas, erroneous interpretations,
or evil intent. Such is the fate of words, including the neutral ones
you are trying to find or invent in the present.
For those of you who wish to get back to work on the grubby stuff of
politics and economy, allow me to note the recent publication of "The
Politics and Economics of Transition to an Open Market Economy in Viet
Nam," by James Riedel and William S. Turley (Paris: Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Development Centre, Technical
Paper No. 152, September 1999). It is available through the OECD or
at http://www.oecd.org/dev/publication/tp1a.htm.
Cheers,
Bill Turley
William S. Turley
Department of Political Science
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, Illinois, USA 62901-4501
phone: (618) 453-3182
fax: (618) 453-3163
From proschan@indiana.edu Fri Oct 29 11:34:12 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:41:18 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Scottish sticky-rice - ambiguities and apologies
Nina,
I'm sorry for making the freshman faux pas of mistaking the author for
her character, and imputing the character's words or ideas to the author.
Your third message (below), alerting us that the phrase in question
occurs in the context of a "caustic parody" of a drunken artist,
clears up the confusion. I think my initial imputation of the drunken
artist's words to the ironic author was an honest mistake, since you
had first told us simply that "writers, like Duong Thu Huong write
about how the "nguoi mien nui" prepare tea or sticky rice"
and in a second message "Duong Thu Huong used it in her characteristically
romantic, fairly sweeping way to evoke the way the nguoi mien nui prepared
sticky rice." I think it was a fair (if incorrect) conclusion from
that limited information that it was an authorial or at least narrative
voice, rather than a character's voice presented by the author in a
"caustic parody." So, again, my apologies for imputing ideas
to Duong Thu Huong that you now explain she intended to parody. Ironically,
this may serve to underscore the point that I made previously (perhaps
a little more vehemently than was warranted): if the task is to translate
a historical document or a fictional work, one must be faithful to the
time and tone. Depending on how caustic Huong intended her parody to
be, one might choose from among terms such as hillbilly, mountaineer,
montagnard, highlander, etc. - depending on whether the author sees
the drunken artist as simply a nostalgiac romantic, a patronizing paternalist,
or a respectful elegiast (even if drunk). (Including, of course, some
terms that would be unacceptable in contemporary scholarly or public
discourse.) That the undifferentiated category of "nguoi mien nui"
is an operative one among certain contemporary artists and/or writers
is apparent from a stroll through any Hanoi art gallery - it is of course
differently nuanced and one might need a repertoire of words to capture
those diverse artistic or authorial intentions.
But none of this, it seems to me, suggests that the ear-test is any
better than the syllable-count-test in choosing or rejecting a neutral
term for academic and public discourse, or for the occasions when a
fictionalist is writing in a voice for which she/he is willing to assume
authorial "answerability" (Bakhtin) - nor would I want to
give up "highlander" because Mel Gibson looks silly in a kilt.
So, apologies to any translators, authors, editors, (even drunken painters)
I have offended. And Nina, I'll even buy a legal copy of the book before
the postcard sellers around Hoan Kiem have come up with a cheap photocopied
knock-off.
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Temporary telephone in Hanoi, until 27 October 1999 - 826-5328 rm. 9,
or fax
to 84-4-836-0351
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073 fax: 1-812-855-4008
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Fri Oct 29 11:34:49 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 04:56:37 -0600 (MDT)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: The Montagnard Debate and VSG
Dear Fellow Members,
For your information, there is a thorough study by FURUTA Motoo on
"the Vietnamese Communist policies toward various ethnic groups
in Indochina" from the 1920s to the 1980s.
Furuta's book, based upon his doctoral disseration submitted to the
University of Tokyo in 1990 and published by the Otsuki Shoten in Tokyo
(1991), is entitled "Betonamu kyosanshugisha no minzoku seisakushi
-- Kakumei to esunishiti" (Revolution and Ethinicity: A History
of the Vietnamese Communist Search for a New Vietnamese Identity in
Connection with Other Ethnic Groups in Indochina). My review of Furuta's
monumental work ("Doc sach: Cong trinh nghien cuu cua mot hoc gia
Nhat Ban ve chinh sach dan toc o Viet Nam") was published in the
Nghien cuu lich su (no. 2, 1992).
VINH Sinh
From soh@hawaii.edu Fri Oct 29 11:37:06 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 10:08:35 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: nguoi mien nui and "sauvages" -- what term to
use in VNese?
Friends,
Yes, this thread is going on a bit and it would be good to have things
put together as a publication -- I have already downloaded several of
your comments and made an unofficial samizdat for my students -- attributed,
of course. I maintain that notions of ethnicity as currently constructed
are an artifact of our age and, in the case of VN, largely but not 100%,
an artifact of Western influence. My reading of older texts is that
what we today would call "political considerations" were of
greater weight in, say, contracting marriages with Cham princesses or
activites of that nature. And, by the way, trying to construct an an
ethnographically acceptable "Cham" ethnicity for the pre-modern
period is really hairy -- probably even less tenable that trying to
come up with a good definition for pre-modern "Kinh" (which
term looks suspiciously modern itself). As far as I can detect, there
may have been an ethnically classifiable group in the Champa elite,
but it is highly quesitonable whether this "Cham" classification
could have stood up at any level below the court. I think you were politically
a "Cham," if you owed your protection to a Cham lord, but
what you were ethnically was anybody's guess. I'll bet this was true
elsewhere in what was to become Viet Nam and perhaps elsewhere in SEAsia
(or many other places in the world, for that matter). Let's blame it
all on the German romantics and their notions of "volk" --
now if we could only figure out who the "Germans" were (are?)
... All this aside, I was thinking, in actual practice, when I am in
VN, do I say "montaignards" or "minority peoples"
or what?
Actually, when I'm in Viet Nam, this is a topic which does not come
up too often, and the expats I deal with usually don't give a damn what
terms I use about anything, as long as the beer is cold, and with Vietnamese
folks I speak Vietnamese, so the question is "what do *they* say
in their own lanugage?" Last June, I was having dinner 'en famille'
(at my mother-in- law's house) in deepest Giang Vo district and it was
pretty late in the evening and suddenly there appeared at the door the
proverbial "little old lady." Much rejoicing, "O quy
hoa qua! Lau qua! Vui qua! v.v...." She was not an inch over five
feet tall, exceedingly thin, and disarmingly (and. it turns out, deceivingly)
frail-looking, dressed in dark trousers, a long-sleeved grey ao ba ba
and black turban. Much hugging and laughing. So this was obviously an
old friend who had dropped by without warning, as people of the older
generation, unused to the availability of telephones and the like, often
do in the North. We were introduced in the almost totally uninformative
way one is - "This is Hang's husband; here is "'Chi Hai Nho'"
or something like that; as usual she was pretty clear who I was, or
pretended to be, and I hadn't a clue (what's new?) who she was -- she
was my elder and that's all I had a need to know.
Next day, I asked my mother-in-law who that was last night. "Oh,
she is one of my oldest friends - we were in the maquis together up
north." (MIL was in the Viet Minh from 1946 through 54, out in
the styx) "She just came down to Hanoi for a few days and whenever
she does she comes to see me -- we never know when she is coming because
she doesn't send many letters." "What is her real name?"
My mother-in-law gave her name and it struck me as slightly out of the
ordinary so I asked "what kind of a name is that?" "Oh,
she is a Tho" ("O, nguoi Tho day." "Nguoi Tho a?"
"Nguoi dan toc thieu so - thoi khang chien nguoi Tho rat nhieu,
con a!")
So, here is an ordinary woman, once upon a time an elementary school
principal, in her 70s, native of Hai Duong, long time Hanoi resident,
not a Party member but an old Viet Minh member and somebody who is not
apt to go against the government line or use terminology that is much
different from the "accepted" talk she and her peers use.
She seems to call folks by the ethnonym that is commonly attributed
to that particular people, but since her generation used "Tho"
for a group who I believe currently call themselves something else in
Vietnamese ("Day"??? could this simply be a quoc ngu transliteration
for a T'ai language family word), that usage on her part must date her
-- the inclination to try to use an acceptable (to her friend, I should
think) name is the key point. As a conglomerate, she referred to non-Kinh
folks as "nguoi dan toc thieu so."
* * * * * * *
By the way, she seemed a little surprised when I asked about her friend;
for my mother in law, she's just "Chi Hai Nho," just an old
friend from the days when they all suffered together for national independence
-- I don't think she thinks of Chi Hai Nho in anything but human individual
terms.
When you get old, everybody starts to look alike -- when I was a kid,
I thought Konrad Adenhauer was Chinese.
Aloha,
Steve O'Harrow
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Fri Oct 29 11:37:26 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 19:21:57 -0400
From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: tho and moi
to Steve et al:
In the South, the term "Tho" (Chinese "t'u") which
might very roughly be rendered as "indigenous" tended to be
used as a derogatory term for Khmers while "moi" which does
mean "savage" was more likely to be used for upland minorities.
Dong bao thuong was an attempt by the SVN government to be more respectful
(even if only when speaking) toward mountain minorities. In premodern
time, there was a bureaucratic position "tho ty" (Chinese
t'u ssu) which was reserved for local official in charge of minority
affairs.
Wasn't Le Loi a tho ty? So I wonder whether "tho" in the anecdote
you relate, Steve, refers to a specific group or to a larger category,
and used interchangeably with "dong bao thieu so." It is not
unusual for people to use both the common and un-p.c. terminology and
the more official, more neutral terminology all in one breath. I believe
that the term Cham as opposed to Champa (Chiem Thanh) is of fairly recent
coinage. You are right that premodern Vietnamese rulers did not bother
much about the ethnicity of their subjects. In that sense, the very
concept of minority is a byproduct of the attempt to construct a majority
(see your colleague Dru Gladney's edited book, Making Majorities).
Dru Gladney, Jonathan Lipman, Frank Dikotter and others have in fact
pointed out the influence of the German concept of the volk on the construction
of race and national identity in China. I would suspect that the same
thing happened in Vietnam. The year that the Tonkin campaign began,
Ernest Renan gave his lecture at the College de France which is much
quoted in American discussions of nations and nationalism, "Qu'est
ce qu'une nation?" in which he discussed the respective contribution
of Franks and Gauls in the making of France (we come back to your query
re: "nos ancetres les Gaulois.")
Best,
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From soh@hawaii.edu Fri Oct 29 11:37:56 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:47:37 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: tho and moi
Hi,
Fun, fun, fun. Well, my mother-in-law wouldn't know a "PC"
term (by our lights) if it bit her on the knee but, in her own way,
she tries to be kinda PC. But I think her use of Tho is a bit more specific
and was attached to a single group of "T'ai"-speaking people,
as was the practice during what some folks called the "Tho Rebellion"
of the early forties (on the back of which, the Viet Minh began to build
its new military arm). Doubtless the word comes from the earlier Chinese
generic. The usage over time has probably become narrowed in the case
of the North but may have retained its broader applicaitons elsewherer
-- I am far from being very knowledgable.
"Wasn't Le Loi a tho ty?" I'd really like to see your reference.
He was called a "Phu Dao" in the Lam Son Thuc Luc, I believe,
and as far as I have been able to ascertain, the LSTL (in some no longer
extant version???) is the mother of nearly all other indigenous texts
referring to LL's career, including the passages in the Dai Viet Su
Ky Toan Thu. But I could be wrong (mirabile dictu) and I would love
to find something new on the subject.
S. O'H.
From seacom@eyeonline.de Fri Oct 29 11:38:36 1999
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:33:41 +0200
From: SEACOM <seacom@eyeonline.de>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: tho and moi
Dear Steve and all,
the term "Tho" is also a designation for an ethnic group in
North Vietnam (dan toc Tho) belonging to the Viet-Muong language family
(classification according to Dang Nghiem Van/ Chu Thai Son and Luu Hung:
Les ethnies minoritaires du Vietnam, Hanoi 1986; also To Ngoc Thanh:
Musical instruments of Vietnam`s ethnic minorities, Hanoi 1997) Vietnames
scholars in their works mostly make clear which ethnic group or sub-group
they mean by using the term dan toc (in german simly "Ethnie",
in English maybe "ethnic minority"?, but "dan toc"
does not include "minority") and adding the name of the language
group or the family (dan toc /name of the group/; for example dan toc
Thai den for the Black Thai; or for classification of several groups
of one language family they use cac dan toc /name of the language family/
for example cac dan toc Thai-Tay for the Tai-speaking groups, dan toc
Mon-Kh`mer etc.) I mean, these designations are neutral enough to be
used in academic dispute. The strict usage of these desigantions might
be part of the early SRV´s policy to abandon terms with negative
connotation, such as "montagnards", for example. Nguoi mien
nui or dan toc mien nui is seldom to be found in scholarly works. We
have translated several works of Cam Trong on the Black Thai, there
the designation dan toc Thai den is used strictly.) Part of this policy
also was to have member of the ethnic groups as researchers in the National
Institue of Ethnology, in the Museum of Ethnology and in several Universities.
Cam Trong, Vi Van An and Hoang Luong for example - well known scholars
specilizing in Thai studies - all are members of the dan toc Thai. The
same polica one can find in Laos. There, also members of the ethnic
groups were involved in research. In Laos, all the ethnic groups are
classified as "Lao Loum" (meaning lowland Lao, includes all
Tai-Lao speaking peoples), "Lao Theung" (meaning highland
Lao, including all Mon-Khmer speaking peoples) and "Lao Soung"
(meaning mountain Lao, includes all Hmong-Yao and Tibeto-Burman speaking
peoples). there was not longer made a difference between minorities
and majorities. This policy - at least officially - constructed an atmosphere
of equality between the different ethnic groups. Nevertheless, designations
with negative connotations as they were used since centuries ("Meo"
for the Hmong, of "Kha" for the Mon-Khmer speaking groups)
are used inofficially further on.
Best greetings,
Jana Raendchen (also in the name of Oliver Raendchen)
SEACOM southeast asia communication centre Berlin
From cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us Fri Oct 29 11:39:41 1999
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:54:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chuong Chung <cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: tho and moi
Dear all,
I remember reading these scholar/beauty and knight errand type of novellas
(tieu thuyet) the term" tho" is often connected with the "tho
phi" which is a brigand (highway robbers). Then, my folks in refering
to the minorities use several terms: Mien or Men (in this case Cao Mien
or Cao Men to talk about Cambodian and not Yu-Mien) again they put together
these thang Mien, thang Tho (to refer to the darker skin folks and i
would think that it does have a pejorative meaning) to talk or to refer
to the minorities. Parents to get children to go home or to listen to
them threatened "coi chung thang Tho no bat!" (you might get
kidnapped by these minorities) I guess to go back to the etymology of
the words if "tho" cames from "Tho Ty" then what
is the "Nom' or the "Han Viet" character representing
it? How do we write "tho phi" in Han Viet? Whethe Tho Ty and
Tho ty have the same "Tho" character?
I guess Michele and Nina in asking where you could find the translation
of Montagnard as Sauvage, they raised a valid question. I have not found
these translations in Baudesson' Primitive People of Indo-China although
he refered to the highlanders as "Moi" but then the term "Moi"
is not French. It is Vietnamese. The question again whether the Vietnamese
coined this term "Moi" or they translated from "sauvages"?
Earlier, Steve Denney talked about Nguyen Van Huy and the Museum of
Ethnic Vietnam. There all monorities are called "nguoi dan toc"
and not " nguoi dan toc thieu so" Should we use "nguoi
dan toc" as well?
Cheers,
Chung Hoang Chuong
From proschan@indiana.edu Fri Oct 29 11:40:06 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 07:34:08 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: nguoi dan toc and nguoi dan toc thieu so
Re Chung's final comment (below), "dan toc" or "cac dan
toc" is generally used in both scholarly and political/journalistic
usage for "ethnicities" or "ethnic groups" (including
both minorities and majorities) and "dan toc thieu so" or
in older works "dan toc it nguoi" is used to distinguish "minorities"
or "ethnic minorities" from all ethnicities. In common usage,
however, there is often a slippage, so that Vietnamese in Hanoi have
a common misconception that the "Bao tang Dan toc hoc" --
official English translation "Vietnam Museum of Ethnology"
and official French translation "Musee d'Ethnographie du Vietnam"
-- is understood to be the "Ethnic Museum" or "Minorities
Museum" even though roughly 40% or more of its exhibit space is
devoted to the Kinh/Viet. (I've had two or three conversations in the
last few days in which Vietnamese friends referred to the museum with
an incorrect term, whether in English or Vietnamese.)
In the Museum's labels, texts, and publications, "dan toc"
is ALWAYS translated into English as "ethnicities" or "ethnic
groups" or "peoples" and NEVER translated as "minorities"
unless it is part of the expression "dan toc thieu so." I
think that the French translations are equally consistent in following
this rule, but wouldn't want to assert an unconditional claim without
rechecking. "Dan toc" of course can also mean simply "national"
so that "dan toc Viet Nam" means the VNese people altogether
and "mon an dan toc" does not mean "ethnic food"
or "minority food" but simply "national cuisine"
(what in Mexican Spanish would be called "platos tipicos").
Off for a bowl of pho (a typical mon an dan toc, of course imported
from China, but nationalized so pervasively that it has become the symbol
of Vietnameseness).
Best,
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Temporary telephone in Hanoi, until 27 October 1999 - 826-5328 rm. 9,
or fax
to 84-4-836-0351
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073 fax: 1-812-855-4008
From dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au Fri Oct 29 11:41:26 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 14:43:38 +1000
From: David Marr <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: nguoi dan toc and nguoi dan toc thieu so
I just returned from Alaska to encounter the half-month explosion of
VSG messages triggered by a query about the word `montagnard'. Fun to
read, and sometimes thought-provoking. But at the end of the day (or
will there be more?), I particularly noticed a confusion over three
kinds of labeling:
a)How a group labels itself;
b)How those around it label the group; and
c)How those of us who write for a mostly western and/or English-language
audience should label.
Now a question. Is there a literature in any discipline on multiple identities and how to relate them to each other? For Vietnam, identification with the nation has dominated most writing (including mine), whereas it should be obvious that, varying by time and space, individuals also identify with family, village, occupation, class, political organization, ethno-linguistic group, gender, religion, sports team and much more. Where are some theoretical and methodological tools to grapple with this human condition? And has anyone written about this in relation to 20th century Vietnam?
Cheers,
David
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Fri Oct 29 11:45:10 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:24:53 -0600 (MDT)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply) (fwd)
There is a piece of information concerning the usage of the term "kinh"
that might have some relevance to the ongoing debate on "ethnicity"
or "ethnic groups", etc. in Vietnam.
In one the of the books I read in the last 6 months (unfortunately I
can't recall its title), its author speculates -- in the book the author
writes in a more affirmative tone -- that the term "kinh"
at the beginning was used by the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam to refer
to themself, and only afterward that "kinh" began to be used
in the sense that we now understand it.
Though it may be difficult to prove its validity, this interpretation
nonetheless seems apropos to the way that I've come to understand the
manner in which Chinese culture has been assimilated throughout Vietnamese
history. Just like the adoption and adaptation of "pho" (that
we read in an interesting e-mail from Hanoi the other day) and so many
other things...
VINH Sinh
From: Judith Henchy [SMTP:judithh@u.washington.edu]
Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 10:25 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Subject: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply) (fwd)
At the risk of adding additional fuel to this blaze which seems to need
no such assistance, I thought that you should be aware that there is
a parallel debate being conducted on the H-SEASIA list which has gone
in a very different direction.....
jh
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judith Henchy
Head, Southeast Asia Section, Box 352900
University of Washington Libraries
Seattle, WA 98195
Telephone: (206) 543 3986
Fax: (206) 685 8049
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:42:53 +0800
> From: H-SEASIA <cassea@nus.edu.sg>
> Reply-To: H-Net Discussion List on History and Study of Southeast
Asia
> <H-SEASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
> To: H-SEASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU
> Subject: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply)
>
> From: Charles F. Printz [mailto:cfphrai@bellatlantic.net]
>
> I am also in full agreement with Jan and Clive Christie and Professor
Voth
> regarding the use of the term Montagnard (French, "Mountaineers"
or
> "Highlanders"). I would venture to suggest, based on
my own experiences,
> that Montagnard is used in an affectionate and praiseworthy manner
by the
> vast majority of us who lived with and fought with these brave
people we
> consider our brothers and sisters, the gentle and caring people
many of us
> call "Yards" for short.
>
> It is also true that some academics and self-proclaimed experts
on the
> Montagnards, and Indochina's ethnic minorities generally, consider
the
> termoffensive. A small minority of these same people, - ("I
mean no prejudice
> to any particular person") - however, also have a less than
favored
> reputationin cirles busy at rendering help to the "Yards"
both in the US and the
> Highlands. While some of the groups have prefered slightly altered
> versions of their group names (i.e. Rhade to Ede, by example) none
of the "Yards" I
> work with today have bristled or
> suggested to me that I utilize any other term for them in lieu
of Montagnard.
>
> In fact, most of the advocacy groups dominated by Montagnard Boards
of
> Directors have Montagnard in their organizational titles: Montagnard
> Foundation, Inc., Montagnard Dega Association, Montagnard Human
Rights
> Organization, etc. The one possible exception to the Montagnard
reference
> might be the use of the term Dega people/s, but even when this
term is
> used you find it matched to the term Montagnard, as can be seen
above. The
> French scholar George Condominas certainly
> means no harm, nor does the leading US authority on the "Yards"
Gerry
> Hickey by their use of the term Montagnard.
>
> With best regards, and thanks to Professor Voth and to Jan and
Clive
> Christie for their well thought out views.
>
> S/ Chuck Printz
>
> Charles F. Printz, Deputy Director
> & Southeast Asian Affairs Specialist,
> Alternate Representative to the United Nations
> Human Rights Advocates International, Inc.
> c/o Law Offices of Philip H. Teplen, P.L.L.C.
> (Empire State Building)
> 350 Fifth Avenue/Suite 5508
> New York, NY 10118-5589
> Home Office - Ph: (908) 352-6032
> Office - Ph:(212) 563-3505; Fax:(212) 564-7387
> E-Mail: cfphrai@bellatlantic.net
>
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Wed Nov 17 12:29:43 1999
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 07:50:24 -0700
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply) (fwd)
Thank you Judith for alerting us to this parallel discussion. This
interesting and revealing statement by Chuck Printz is a perfect illustration
and vindication of the views put forward by - amongst others - Frank
Proschan, Chris Giebel, Nora Taylor, Leif Jonsson and my person regarding
the colonial connotations of the labels "Montagnard" and "Yard".
For instance, Printz "would venture to suggest, based on [his]
own experiences, that Montagnard is used in an affectionate and praiseworthy
manner by the vast majority of [those] who lived with and fought with
these brave people we consider our brothers and sisters, the gentle
and caring people many of us call "Yards" for short."
This clearly situates the contemporary use of the term in the US intervention
in Vietnam over 25 years ago rather than in contemporary Vietnam itself.
"Yards", then, becomes the petname for those brave people
who were duped (or to some extent duped themselves) into fighting a
neocolonial war for an outside power, but I am sure that the same level
of affection is not bestowed upon those "Yards" who chose
to "follow the Revolution".
The "Montagnard" organizations mentioned in Printz' statement
are based in the US, not in Vietnam, and their particular histories
are intertwined with the US intervention in Vietnam. To my knowledge,
however, Vietnam is a sovereign country which lies across the Pacific
and has successfully resisted western domination in series of wars.
Perhaps it would be appropriate if the ethnic labels - if any - should
be decided on in Vietnam, first of all by those who are being labeled.
Sadly, their voices have been absent from this debate.
Regarding the nature of the "great debate", Biff Keyes has
suggested that the fault lines in this debate largely follow disciplinary
boundaries; others made different suggestions. All these distinctions
have merit, but I would like to venture a more outrageous (for politically
explicit) assumption: It seems that "Montagnard" or "Yard"
is preferred by those whose perspective on Vietnam is the result of
a personal entanglement with the neocolonial (US) intervention, or the
French colonial intervention (either pro or contra). The label itself
is thus part of a colonial legacy and an expression of colonial nostalgia.
On the other hand, "some academics and self-proclaimed experts
on the Montagnards " of a younger generation regard these wars
as history in a more literal sense, and take a more distant view (which
their adversaries then confuse with political correctness). This distinction
is, of course, far from absolute, and reveals my own bias as a likely
member of a "small minority of these same people [who] have a less
than favored reputation in cirles busy at rendering help to the "Yards"
both in the US and the Highlands."
As always pleased to live up to my reputation.
Oscar Salemink
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 12:31:12 1999
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 14:52:48 -0600 (MDT)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply) (fwd)
Dear Oscar and Other Members
I have tried but am still unable to locate this reference. I only rembember
that it is from a book written in Vietnamese by a reliable scholar,
and that I came across this information only lately. At the time, this
debate/discussion has not taken place yet, but I have a clear recollection
of this information because I was also caught by surprise when I read
it.
When I began to consider it in a broader perspective, I thought it makes
sense. It is congruent with other aspects in the Vietnamese adoption
of China's culture, e.g., notions such as "Middle Kingdom"
(Vietnam as a "Tie^?u Trung Hoa",Little Middle Kingdom) and
"hoa-di" (civilized vs barbarous), etc. Kinh, as you said,
means "capital", and like "hoa", also implies "elegant/civilized".
By the way, "kinh-hoa", the combination of "kinh"
and "hoa", also means "capital". If I happen to
come across the information on the origins of the usage of "kinh"
in VN again, I will certainly let you know.
Cheers,
VINH Sinh
From michaeld@netnam.org.vn Wed Nov 17 12:31:46 1999
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 10:19:37 +0700
From: Michael Di Gregorio <michaeld@netnam.org.vn>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Kinh
I posed a question about the term "kinh" to Steve Oharrow
about 2 weeks ago. Neither one of us knew when or how it came to replace
"Viet" as an ethnic term. It is not an organic term, even
for "kinh" . That is to say, people do not go around saying
"I am kinh, what is your ethnicity?". My sense is that it
appeared in its contemporary sense as a replacement for Viet , which
identified an ethnic group with the nation. Kinh allows the majority
a place within the "family of nations" that make up Vietnam
without that association, while at the same time signifying rights to
leadership through the term's association with a higher stage of cultural
acheivment. In this way, the roots of "kinh" as a term to
signify "civilized" culture representitive of "people
from the capital" seems to fit. There is no need to link this with
Chinese, however. Let's just say that the elite in what is now the Red
River delta (and its associated territories) considered themselves part
of a larger civilized world, that inculdes present day China, that shared
common cultural characteristics. In this way, "kinh" as a
historical term is opposed to both "uncivilized" and to the
countryside in general.
Steve has pointed out distinctions on the rural-urban border many times,
some of which have become linked to ethnic identities and others which
have been encorporated into the "kinh" identity. I think a
similar process of incorporation and separation has been noted in the
Pearl River delta as well. In my own contemporary view, I do not know
a single rural person living in Hanoi who is not aware of the stigmas
attached to their ruralness. They are afraid, even if they have been
in Ha Noi for long periods of time, that they will slip and their ruralness
will be revealed. And what does this mean in practice? It means that
rural people form their own networks and tend to identify themselves
by regional, provincial, district, and village identities. They are
"kinh" in the sense that they are not "dan toc".
[I agree with Frank: outside of academic circles, "dan toc"
on its own generally replaces the more correct terms].
By the way, no need to look to Bac Kinh (Beijing) for a refence to "kinh".
Kinh Bac (roughly from the uplands of current Bac Giang province to
the Duong river (east of Ha Noi)) was a center of the civlized world
roughly 1,000 years ago.
All of this has not answered my original question to Steve. When does
"kinh" appear as a term that represents the majority ethnic
group of Vietnam? Does it replace terms like "Annamite", which
divided the ethnic majority? Does it fill a space among ethnic groups
in the "family of nations that Viet could not fil?
Michael DiGregorio
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 12:32:07 1999
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 10:47:52 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Kinh
Dear Michael,
In your recent letter re. the use of the term "kinh" in VN,
you indicated that "there is no need to link it with Chinese culture".
My first reaction is that if we are to discuss things related to the
Sinified countries located on China's periphery (e.g., Korea, Japan,
and Vietnam), we have no choice but to refer to China. Not only about
VN. For example, if one is to discuss the Japaneseness in the pre-modern
period, one has first to deal with question such as "was there
an impact from China?", if there was, then "was there a difference
in its adaptation", etc. (In relation to Vietnam, see, for example,
Alexander Woodside's Vietnam and the Chinese Model. Comparing the experiences
of the Vietnamese and the Japanese, I have written an article entitled
"Japanese and Vietnamese Attitudes toward China: A Comparison",
Asian and Pacific Quarterly, vol. XXI, no. 2, Autumn 1989).
Your statement "there is no need to link it to Chinese culture"
thus appears to me as a way to stay away from issue rather than attempting
an anwer to the question. So far as my previous responses to the ongoing
discussion on "Montagnards" were concerned, they were not
intended to answer your question to Steve (which I was unaware of),
but rather to share some historical perspectives which I thought could
have made the overall picture a bit clearer.
In short, when I brought in the Chinese dimension, I did not intend
to complicate the discussion, but simply tried to share with fellow
members the way that I conceive the issue. Please allow me to explain
my position a bit clearer. We all know that after a long period of confronting,
on the one hand, the threat to independence from China and adapting
Chinese culture and civilization, on the other, at least from the 15th
century,the Vietnamese had a Chinese-style centralized state, and had
developed a self-consciousness vi-a-vis the China (I am of course referring
to the Nam Quo^'c, Southern Country, consciousness). In this consciousness,
the Vietnamese saw themselves as a "civilized people" sharing
the same civilization with China, but differentiated themselves from
neighbouring peoples of different cultures. It is in this context that
the ethnic Vietnamese refer to themselves as "Nguoi Kinh"
(metropolitans), belonging to "a shining metropolis", and
saw other peoples as "barbarians". We know that in the East
Asian world order in the pre-modern times, countries such as Vietnam,
Korea, etc. were tributary states of China -- the Middle Kingdom. To
the Chinese emperor, the Vietnamese rulers addressed themselves as "Vuong"
(vua), because there was only one emperor (dde^') in all under-Heaven,
i.e. the Chinese emperor. However, the Vietnamese rulers would see their
country as a "Middle Kingdom" (hence the term "Little
Middle Kingdom", Tieu Trung Hoa) in dealing with states such as
Thuy? Xa', Hoa? Xa', etc. in the regions that cover present Kontum,
Buon Me Thuot, etc.). These states were regarded as tributary states
of VN. To the rulers of these tributary states, the Vietnamese would
addressed themseves as Hoang-de, i.e. emperor.
In other words, in the South of China, Vietnam created own "Heaven",
seeing herself as the centre. The reference that I came across in a
book indicates that "Kinh" was a term first used in VN by
the ethnic Chinese to refer to themselves. If this interpretation is
correct, the next question that we might ask is "when did the Vietnamese
begin to adopt this term to refer to themselves?". I do not know,
and I am also unable to locate the above reference. In the meantime,
I thought this interpretation makes sense, because throughout Vietnamese
history, there were figures whom we know for sure were originally ethnic
Chinese, but they also spoke on behalf of the interest of the Vietnamese,
and of course, in the name of the Vietnamese. A typical example is Phan
Thanh Gian, who came from a ethnic Chinese family, but who also wrote
a statement in Thap Ba (Nha Trang) to Vietnamize the goddess of this
Champa temple. I think I should stop here.
Cheers,
VINH Sinh
From Tana_li@uow.edu.au Wed Nov 17 12:32:51 1999
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 10:35:10 +0100
From: Tana Li <Tana_li@uow.edu.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re:"kinh"
"Kinh" and "trai"
The term "kinh" to refer to certain group of people perhaps
began in the Tran dynasty, when the "kinh trang nguyen" (Number
One Scholar, title confered on the one who came first in the highest
imperial exam) and "trai trang nguyen" were chosen. The "kinh
trang nguyen" was designed for those scholars who came from the
Red river delta, especially the capital area, thus "kinh";
and those from Thanh Hoa and Nghe An - "trai", which means,
literally, "mountain stronghold". See Dai Viet su ky toan
thu, year 1256.
Li Tana
History and Politics
University of Wollongong,
Australia
From Nora.Taylor@asu.edu Wed Nov 17 12:34:18 1999
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 06:29:20 -0700
From: Nora Taylor <Nora.Taylor@asu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re:"kinh"
Leif Jonsson reports:
There is a similar term in Thailand "Muong" meaning "capital"
was used to differentiate the people who came from the "forest"
from those who came from the city. The term is still used today to designate
Thais who call themselves "Muong." Much like the Vietnamese
refer to themselves as "Kinh". But many Vietnamese also say
"Nguoi Viet." they are not mutually exclusive.
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 12:35:21 1999
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 10:45:18 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: nguoi dan toc and nguoi dan toc thieu so
Hello,
see below
On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Frank Proschan wrote:
> STUFF DELETED
>
> "Dan toc" of course can also mean simply "national"
so that "dan toc Viet
> Nam" means the VNese people altogether and "mon an dan
toc" does not mean
> "ethnic food" or "minority food" but simply
"national cuisine" (what in
> Mexican Spanish would be called "platos tipicos"). Off
for a bowl of pho (a
> typical mon an dan toc, of course imported from China, but nationalized
so
> pervasively that it has become the symbol of Vietnameseness).
Haven't kept up for several days - been on another planet (Texas). I
must say, at the risk of sounding normative and quite probably somewhat
arrogant, that not all native speakers speak all the languages of which
they are native speakers in a "correct" fashion all the time
(surprise surprise), even by the lights of their own indigenous, native-
speaker-type arbiters of correctness (the Academie francaise et al.).
This is, of course, heresy from the "You're-right-if-you-say-you're-right-and-
you're-a-native-speaker" school of thought in linguistics, a school
into which I was initiated as a lad, but from whose true and shining
path I must admit I have occasionally strayed (Forgive me, Lord Boas,
for I have sinned!).
Now Frank says '"Dan toc" of course can also mean simply "national"'
-- uhh, well, NOT in felicitous usage. If there is some advantage to
having and keeping separate meanings for words, in order to have the
most tools and the most precise tools available, to use "dan toc"
in this way (I note that, strictly speaking, nothing in Vietnamse "means"
anything in English) is misleading, even when done by a native-speaker.
There are better (more precise and etymologically consistent) terms
for conveying the sense that the term "national" conveys in
English (note that I did not say "means in English") An unfortunate
example, from an etymological standpoint, was the official title of
the NLF ("Mat tran Dan toc Giai phong Mien Nam Viet Nam")
in which the significance that apparently was intended to be conveyed
by "dan toc" would have been better served by "nhan dan."
Of course any such commentary implies a standpoint (in this case, somewhat
classicist) and languages do change through usage. But politics and
hype seem to be the greatest enemies of lucid discourse, in Vietnamese
as in English, and the politicos in Viet Nam have done a lot of damage
to the language's "carrying capacity," just as Madison Avenue
and the soundbite merchants have in America. Acadmeics have to be well-trained,
skeptical, and sophisitcated when they deal with how Vietnamese terms
are used in official publications of any kind, as I am sure most readres
here would agree.
Certainly "dan toc" is the closest, apparently most neutral
term to convey the meaning that is conveyed by the term "ethnic
group" in English and this has been the history of its usage in
Vietnamese scholarly writing for quite some time, which is exactly what
can be said about "min tsu," (pardon the outdated transcription)
in Chinese. which is the term from which "dan toc" Vietnamese
is directly derived.
I guess the main point to be made here is: what concerns many folks
in the West is to find the best term for those people who were often
referred to in the past as "Montaignards," with all the less-than-flattering
overtones that that term implied, to find a term that some would say
is "politically correct." This concern, though laudable, is
somewhat parochial in that it imputes a paramount importance (in the
eyes of folks in Viet Nam) to what Western academics say them. So let
us try to separate things. Many people would olike to find a term in
English that is sufficiently neutral and yet adequately precise, to
be useful when speaking/writing in English (not Vietnamese) about people
in Viet Nam who consider themselves to be historically and/or lingusitically
and/or religiously and/or ethnically somehwot apart from and/or different
from those folks in Viet Nam who nowadays would use the term "Kinh"
to describe themselves in Vietnamese.
Let me suggest two things:
1) a single term to do all this work may currently be unavailable in
the English academic inventory and perhaps we shall need to coin one
upon which we can all agree;
2) what folks say in Vietnamese might help us in determining how we
want to go about finding an acceptable English term of art but, then
again, it may not, and we must satisfy our own criteria, regardless
of what we may think the right term is in Vietnamese or what some interest
group in Viet Nam (political party, NGO, academic faction, "ethnic"
group,
take your pick) may desire us to say.
Tall order.
Aloha, Steve O'H.
From mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu Wed Nov 17 12:35:44 1999
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 16:39:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Well well. . .
Dear all:
Perhaps this thread on montagnards, dan toc, and so on is going around
in circles a bit, but two comments (I awaken from my non-participation
so far. . .)
1) Oscar tells us to try using "Montagnard" in Vietnam and
see what reaction it gets. I am not sure what (and I am not trying to
be sarcastic) this proves. I see no reason, for example, why (mostly)
ethnic Vietnamese enthnologists have more right to name highland peoples
than highlanders (or ex-highlanders) themselves. If some highlanders
want to call themselves "montagnards," then why can't they?
By analogy, when I go into an Asian grocery in the US (with the sign
on the outside that says "Oriental Grocery"), I don't chastise
the owner for using the wrong term.
2) Steve O'Harrow says (in response to Frank Proschan) that "dan
toc" would best be translated by "ethnic group," given
its derivation etc. . . . and not "nation." Hmmmm. . . . This
desire to attach precise meanings to terms can get maddening. It's quite
positivist. I do not think that Steve's solution is a solution for two
reasons: a) "nation" in English is one of the most maddening
terms around, open to multiple framings. . . . so establishing any equivalence
of terms in problematic b) the attempt to shift the meaning of "dan
toc" over the past 50 years means, I think, that when we translate
a term like "chu nghia dan toc," we'd be better off translating
it as "ethnonationalist populism" to convey such a variety
of meanings.
3) To note: there is a tension in academia and beyond between those
who want to reject past terms for their pejorative meanings and those
who want to embrace even pejorative terms to transform them. If soneone
gay wants to use the term "queer," I'm not about to lecture
that person that the term is inappropriate!
Enough.
Shawn McHale
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Wed Nov 17 12:37:31 1999
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 07:30:08 -0800
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Well well. . .
Hello Shawn,
Welcome to this well-rounded debate! It seems like nobody really wants
to participate but everybody is drawn into it. Hence, I cannot refrain
from responding (and drawing a few more circles in the process, I'm
afraid). First, I include the Central Highlands - where I have worked
in the past and which I still visit regularly - in the concept of "Vietnam"
(one could graphically convey that with a Venn-diagram, if one wanted
to draw more circles). It seems to me that the vast majority of people
labeled "Montagnard" are still living in Vietnam rather than
in North Carolina, and few people in the Highlands are now using that
label.
Second, I am not taking issue with people calling themselves Montagnards,
either in the US or Vietnam. But I do take issue with serious scholars
who adopt colonial labels while disregarding their political (say, colonial)
context of emergence/adoption and their connotations. No serious scholar
would now dare to use the label "Annamite" for Kinh people
living in Vietnam or elsewhere, and rightly so (though there may be
excellent Vietnamese restaurants called L'Annamite that one may wish
to frequent without complaints). This seems to be quite compatible with
your appetite for "oriental groceries" without necessarily
wanting to call the owner an "Oriental".
Third, I do think that place matters in this regard: People from Vietnam
(not necessarily ethnologists, though) have more right to decide about
ethnic labels in Vietnam than do outsiders (even though outsiders, including
myself, may be critical of the official ethnic classification which,
as Steve O'Harrow points out, is hardly consequential in the real world).
The reality of the international academic world, however, makes it much
harder for Vietnamese voices to be heard (take this debate, for instance)
than for American or European voices (or in my case even big mouths).
Simply disregarding what is happening within Vietnam in favor of adopting
colonial labels that have little use even for those who once were called
that way here, seems to indicate a measure of disrespect for locally
used ethnonyms incompatible with the claims and pretensions of serious
scholarship these days. .
Finally, Re "dan toc", it is used in both meanings in present-day
Vietnam, and its present-day use in Vietnam can be traced via China
to Stalin and his "nationalities" policy - as others have
pointed out already. For instance, "ban sac dan toc" can mean
both national identity and ethnic identity, depending on the context.
Sigh. You are right about these circles. I guess I must pledge now to
keep silent ever after. But you drew me into this by calling my name
so please don't tempt me again.
From mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu Wed Nov 17 12:38:32 1999
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 16:36:31 -0500 (EST)
From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Sanity?
Frank Proschan's example of a document that uses "Montagnard"
in a racist way: If I find a text that states that "Irish"
are pathological liars and drunks, does that mean we cannot use the
term "Irish"? (for the moment we will assume that such a description
of the inhabitants, or ex-inhabitants, of the Emerald Isle is not generally
accurate)
Shawn McHale
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 12:38:48 1999
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 11:45:52 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Well well. . .
Hello,
Well, "touche!" I think Shawn is entirely right about the
many problems attending to "nation, national" in English usage.
Indeed, it is the very ambiguity of the word over the years that has
made it so useful for causing political mischief. I think Oscar's point
about the Stalinist derivation (via Chinese) of "dan toc"
in official usage in DRV/SRV pubs. is also very well taken. All very
good stuff.
That this thread has taken up the interest (and time!) of so many in
the community of scholars from all over shows us that it is both of
some continuing interest and significance. Should we look for a panel
at an upcoming AAS? Would a subsequent publication with the VSG's backing
or imprimatura on it be in order? I think it is an exciting prospect
for this group that we seem to have both an issue and a group of interested
academics do deal with it. Not that the VSG has been entirely dormant
of late, but it might be a "good thing" (as is the term of
art in British history circles) for the vitality of the VSG to come
up with a publication in its name. How would we go about it? Do folks
even want to do it?
Should VSG try to interest an institution or a SEAsian Studies Center
with press connexions to get involved? What's your pleasure, if any?
Aloha, Steve O'H.
From Nora.Taylor@asu.edu Wed Nov 17 12:39:01 1999
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 10:36:08 -0700
From: Nora Taylor <Nora.Taylor@asu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Well well. . .
FYI: Leif Jonsson has been writing about ethnic labelling for some
time and talks about the associations made between ethnic groups and
the term savage in an upcoming issue of Ethnos. Y2K issue.
But he is interested in this whole debate and will be writing an article
about some of these issues in his upcoming book on Nation State/Minority
relations.
From judithh@u.washington.edu Wed Nov 17 12:41:20 1999
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 14:32:43 -0800 (PST)
From: Judith Henchy <judithh@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Montagnard - 1961-62 US government document
Yes, Montagnard (Vietnamese people) is the officially sanctioned Library
of Congress term. The LCSH books state that the former term was Nguoi
Thuong.
The interesting thing about this usage is that the qualification (Vietnamese
people) is usually used after a specific ethnic identification. The
usage here seems to serve to make a distinction from the French Revolutionary
left.
If VSG comes to a consensus that this is not acceptable terminology,
I can start the long process of suggesting to LC a revision of this
usage.
judith
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judith Henchy
Head, Southeast Asia Section, Box 352900
University of Washington Libraries
Seattle, WA 98195
Telephone: (206) 543 3986
Fax: (206) 685 8049
For information about library and internet resources, view the Section's
home page at http://www.lib.washington.edu/southeastasia/default.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu Wed Nov 17 12:43:04 1999
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 17:24:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Stephen R Denney <sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Montagnard - 1961-62 US government document
At 11:13 AM 11/2/99 -1000, Stephen O'Harrow wrote:
>FYI - the term "Montagnards" still appears to be preferred
U.S. government
>usage, as evidenced by the following, found in the U. of Hawaii
library
>(note the cataloguing remark "Montagnards (Vietnamese people)"
-- I
>believe that the UH cataloguers simply take their citations for
US govt.
>pubs. right from the LC or Super. of Docs. info) :
"Montagnards (Vietnamese people)" is a Library of Congress subject heading, and you are probably right that the UH cataloguers took their citation for this book from an LOC or Supt. of Docs. record. In our library here I found 13 LOC sub-category headings under "Montagnards (Vietnamese people)", so people doing research on ethnic minorities in the Vietnam highlands would need to follow this system when locating books. Some ethnic groups (maybe all?) of Vietnam have their own LOC subject heading. For example a book we have by Paul Guilleminet on the Jarai and Sedang (published in France in 1952, but just classified here) has three subject headings: "Sedangs"; "Jarai (Southeast Asian People)"; and "Montagnards (Vietnamese people)".
- Steve Denney
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Wed Nov 17 12:44:10 1999
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 06:10:19 -0800
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Montagnard - 1961-62 US government document
Judith,
If you do, you could start telling the LC people that "nguoi thuong"
is a 1960s translation of "Montagnard" rather than the other
way round, and was an attempt on the part of the Diem regime to be slightly
more respectful by substituting the label "Moi" with its connotation
of "savage" (in wide-spread use from precolonial days on,
later adopted by the French along
with 'sauvage" before they adopted "Montagnard" in the
early 1940s) .
Oscar
From cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us Wed Nov 17 12:44:33 1999
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 08:45:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Chuong Chung <cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Montagnard - 1961-62 US government document
Dear all,
I agree with Oscar that "nguoi Thuong " is a translation of
Montagnard during the French. Montagnard came first before "nguoi
Thuong" . Recently, I read To Ngoc Thanh, Dang Nghiem Van and Dinh
Gia Khanh. They refer to those that we call Nguoi Thuong as Nguoi Tay
Nguyen (or Nguoi dan toc Tay Nguyen). Could it be that during the French,
Montagnard refered to those of the Lang Biang, Darlac, Pleiku and Kontum
plateau? And therefore, nguoi Thuong only address to those ethnic that
Condominas and Hickey talked about and not inclusive of the minorities
of the North highland (i.e.Pu Peo, Dzao, Thai, Lo Lo etc...)
Then the adopted "montagnard" term was also used by those
who worked with the French (i.e. FULRO) and those who worked with the
American Special Forces as well (Yards as so affectionately called).
Is there a taxonomy regarding minorities of Vietnam? If so, should we
based on geographical characteristics or linguistic characteristics
(Miao-Yao, Sino-Tibetan, Viet-Muong)?
I don't mean to drag on this stuff. Just a little note adding to the
discussion.
Best,
Chung Hoang Chuong
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Wed Nov 17 12:44:47 1999
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 13:56:22 -0500
From: hue-tam ho tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: dan toc
Re: Phan Boi Chau and dan toc.
The meaning of words shift over time as well as according to context. Liang Chi Chao actually made use of neologisms coined by the Japanese rather than directly translating himself. Minzu originally carried connotations of the German "volk". Vietnamese Communist thinking about and policies toward minorities ("nationalities") were influenced by Stalin's own. Dan toc thus has different meanings. On the one hand, it can mean "the whole nation" which in the Vietnamese context is often a way of referring to the majority population or kinh. Or it can be a shortened version of "dan toc thieu so" and thus correspond to "ethnic" in American usage, that is short of ethnic minority ( eating hot dogs and hamburger is not considered eating ethnic food, for example, but eating Chinese food is.)
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From johnev@netspace.net.au Wed Nov 17 12:45:08 1999
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 08:29:24 +1100
From: johnev <johnev@netspace.net.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: More on Dan Toc
I am delighted to see the recent discussion on 'Dan Toc', which has
long vexed me. A particular matter that has long vexed me is the proper
translation of the title of the magazine 'Cong Giao va Dan Toc'. Which
version is to be preferred?
- Catholics and the Nation
- Catholic and National
- Catholics and the People
- Catholics and Ethnicity
('Catholic and Racial/ethnic Group' sounds a little unlikely).
Your thoughts please.
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 12:53:54 1999
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 18:14:31 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Dan Toc
Dear All,
1) I think the English translation of "Cong giao va dan toc"
is "Catholicism and the Nation".
Reason: The title of the journal does not say "Nguoi Cong giao",
so "Catholics" does not seem to be appropriate. Dan toc is
a term originally coined by the Japanese during the early years of the
Meiji period (1868-1911). Minzoku, used in Japanese means "a race,
or a nation". Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, and other Chinese later introduced
these loanwords from modern Japanese in their writings in Ch'ing-i pao
(Thanh nghi bao), Hsin-min ts'ung-pao (Tan dan tung bao), etc.
It has been remarked by a Chinese linguist that in the celebrated article
'On practice' (Thuc-tien-luan; 1937, I have used the Sino-Vietnamese
transliterations, rather than the Chinese ones, because I thought the
majority of the members of the VSG would understand what I am trying
to say better),
Mao Tse-tung used many words borrowed from the Japanese language, such
as 'duy vat luan' (materialism), 'lich su' (history), and 'giai cap'
(class), etc. I have written an article on this subject, i.e. "Chinese
Characters as the Medium for Transmitting the Vocabulary of Modernization
from Japan to Vietnam in Early Twentieth Century", in Charles Le
Blanc, ed.,
La Societe civile en Asie de L'Est (Montreal: Centre d'etude de l'Asie
de l'Est, Universite de Montreal, 1996). I can't type French accents
on my computer, so please
kindly forgive me.
2) Phan Boi Chau and dan toc: An English translation (by Vinh Sinh &
Nicholas Wickenden) of Phan Boi Chau's autobiography PBC nien bieu,
with an introduction and notes, has recently been published by the University
of Hawaii Press (1999). Our translation is based on the original text
in literary Chinese. We have tried to render the terminologies used
by Phan as faithfully as possible. By the way, this autobiography in
places reveals Phan's views of the Catholics in Vietnam.
VINH Sinh
From proschan@indiana.edu Wed Nov 17 12:57:45 1999
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 15:48:45 -0500
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
Thanks to Vinh Sinh for tracing "dan toc" to its cognate terms
in Chinese and Japanese. Your expertise leads me to pose some further
questions: is the "dan" in "dan toc" the same as
the "dan" in De Rhodes' dictionary, where it is defined as
meaning "subjects, vassals", and did the Japanese and Chinese
roots "min" have the same connotation of "subjects"
or "people who were ruled," prior to being reinvested with
new meaning in Meiji Japan? In 19th century Vietnamese dictionaries,
did "dan" still have the same limited meaning as it had in
De Rhodes' time, or had it been generalized? The other term "toc"
does not seem to be in De Rhodes (at least not under any form I can
recognize), but was it used in other Vietnamese compounds before "dan
toc" began to be used? And what did the Japanese root "zoku"
mean (or is it "zo"?)?
Thanks,
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073
NEW fax number: 1-812-855-4008 (do not use 855-5584)
From CGoscha@aol.com Wed Nov 17 12:59:50 1999
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 15:57:11 EST
From: CGoscha@aol.com
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: dan toc
While this is not Stalin in translation, see the following source for
an early Vietnamese attempt to work out the "national question"
in light of earlier Soviet thinking.
Quoc Thuy, "Van De Dan Toc" [On the National Question], Hanoi,
Dai Chung, 1946, but the preface is dated 16 September 1945, pp. 28-32
in particular.
cgoscha
In a message dated 11/4/99 9:36:59 AM, hhtai@fas.harvard.edu writes:
<< Thanks to Michael Di Gregorio for the information. Stalin's
own "Marxism and the National and Colonial Question" has been
translated and published many times since the 1930s.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 11:15:06 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: "dan toc" & "narod"
Hello,
For what it's worth -- rather quietly, very early on, the Univ. of Hawaii
and the East-West Center (not the same thing, but cooperating entities)
began exchanging senior academics with the SRV. The first people we
received were always folks with mucho political clout (surprise surprise).
In the high ranks of "most respected" politico/academics were
always those whose "scientific" conclusions could be equated
with policy. Early in this program, in about 1981 as I remember, Dr.
Dat spent several weeks in residence here. His stated views on "minority"
questions could have almost qualified as textbook rehearsals of Stalin's
wrtitings on "nationalities" (one has the feeling working
in Hanoi nowadays that Prof. Dat represented a bygone era). I say this
NOT to cast any particularly negative aura over anyone's use of Stalin
or "Stalinist/ism" in the current conversation, but simply
for an historical note as a first-hand witness; to say that the kinds
of theories that were seminal both in academic work and in policy formation
in the DRV/early SRV regarding "dan toc" did, in the words
of the very authors of those policies themselves, owe something to Stalin's
pronouncements on the subject, whether or not one is inclined to approve
of what Uncle Joe had to say about the subject.
Aloha,
Steve O'Harrow
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 13:02:29 1999
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 22:04:08 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
Dear Frank and All,
1) Prior to the Meiji period, the Japanese used "min" (this
is a Sino-Japanese pronunciation, the Japanese pronunciation for this
Chinese character is "tami") with the same meaning as in Chinese.
To be a bit precise, the principal meanings used in "old"
Chinese and Japanese are: (1) people, common people; (2) those who are
ruled/governed by a monarch (kunshu=qua^n-chu?); (3) those who do not
occupy official ranks (kan'i=quan-vi.;[as shown in the dichotomy betwen
"quan" (mandarins/officials) and "da^n"].
2) With regard to nineteenth-century Vietnamese, I have thus far only
consulted Huinh-Tinh Paulus Cu?a's Viet-Nam Quac-Am Tu-vi. Its entry
for "da^n" says: "Tieng goi chung nhung nguoi o trong
mot nuoc, mot lang. Thuong hieu ve bac nguoi tam thuong" (People
who live in the same country or same village; often implying the common/ordinary
people".
3) "To^.c": This term was not included in Huinh Tinh Cua's
Dictionary either. "Toc" has been used in Vietnamese, however,
prior to the introduction of the term "dan toc". Examples:
"dong-toc" (of the same clan, or class); "toc-pha/toc-pho"
(clan register, or geneological table); "toc-truong" (an elder
of a clan), etc.
4) "Toc" in Japanese means: (1) an arrowhead [in this case
pronounced "yajiri", irrelevant to our discussion]; (2) a
clan [pronounced "yakara"] tribe, a class, a family, relatives;
(3) to collect together [pronounced "atsumaru"]. In Japanese,
"zoku" also means "to execute the families of a criminal's
father, mother, wife, and children" (in Sino- Vietnamese, this
punishment is called "toc-chu" ("chu" has no accents).
In relation to compound words of "dan", it is interested to
see that the Vietnamese do not use the term "da^n tu.c ho.c"
to render "folklore" as in Chinese and Japanese. They prefer
to use the term "khoa nghien cuu truyen thong nhan gian/van hoc
nhan gian" (I should note that Tran Quoc Vuong prefers not to translate
it but calls it "folklore"). Why dan tuc hoc was not adopted
to be used in Vietnamese? Was it because "tu.c" has too bad
a connotation in Vietnamese (an noi tu.c ti~u/tu.c tan= pull a raw one/use
foil language)? I really do not know.
The Vietnamese also recreated/coined some terms that do not exist in
Japanese and Chinese for their own use. A typical example is "sa('c
to^c" which means ethic groups. In the 1997 Tu dien tieng Viet
(compiled by Hoang Phe with the collaboration of those in the Vien Ngon
ngu hoc (Institute of Linguistics), however, "sac toc" is
explained as follows: "Nhu toc nguoi (thuong ham y miet thi..."
(similar to "toc nguoi", often has a pejorative nuance). Is
it because "sa('c", apart from its meaning "colour/colourful",
also imlies "visible"? This reminds me of the term "visible
minority" which is popularly used in Canada, but without any pejorative
connotations.
I hope I have answered parts of your queries.
VSinh
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Wed Nov 17 13:02:54 1999
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 08:47:40 -0500
From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: dan toc
Dear Vinh Sinh, Frank et al:
A couple of observations: 1. The Institute of Folklore Studies in Vietnamese
is called Vien Nghien Cuu Van Hoa Dan Gian (not "nhan gian'").
Indeed, I have encountered "dan gian" (min jian in Chinese)
to mean "popular," "folk," rather than "nhan
gian (ren jian in Chinese) ; 2. in reference to punishment, it's "tru"
not "chu" as in "tru di tam toc" or "tru di
cuu toc" (exterminating 3 generations or exterminating 9 generations);
In this sense, then, "toc" was used to mean "generation"
within a lineage. In the 1927 colonial reform of northern village councils,
lineage representatives were to be selected to serve on the councils.
They were called "toc bieu." thus, as Vinh Sinh points out,
toc meant both generation and lineage (or clan).
A useful little book is Li Yu-ning"The Introduction of Socialism
into China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) which includes
a (partial) list of modern Chinese terms of Japanese origins. It includes
minzu (minzoku) as well as a huge number of terms that are part of everyday
language in Vietnam today. That list draws on Kao Ming-k'ai & Liu
Cheng-tan, Hsien-tai Han-yu wai-lai tz'u yen-chiu (a Study of Terms
of Foreign Origin in the Modern Chinese Language (Beijing, 1958).
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From proschan@indiana.edu Wed Nov 17 13:03:13 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 10:32:56 -0500
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese - "folklore"
Many thanks to Vinh Sinh for his information. There is a compendium
of definitions of "folklore" in the 1990 volume, "Quan
niem ve folklore" (ed. Ngo Duc Thinh), Hanoi: Nxb Khoa hoc Xa hoi,
but it doesn't seem to include discussions specifically of the best
Vietnamese terminology (this was, I believe, discussed at length in
the folklore journal previously). Authors in the collection use "van
hoa dan gian," "van hoc dan gian", and "van nghe
dan gian" as glosses for "folklore" (the former now taking
precedence, the latter two focusing more on "folk literature").
"Tu.c" has been used in the (recently coined?) term "luat
tuc" for customary law, the topic of the coming conference mentioned
in other recent messages.
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073
NEW fax number: 1-812-855-4008 (do not use 855-5584)
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 13:03:23 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 08:51:13 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: dan toc
Dear Hue-Tam, Frank, and All:
Hue-Tam, thanks for your remarks, of course it must be "dan-gian"
and not "nhan-gian", "toc tru" and not "toc
chu". I must have had a beautiful dream (or "mo^.ng-du perhaps)
while typing last night! Lydia H. Liu's Translingual Practice: Literature,
National Culture, and Translated Modernity, 1900-1937 (Stanford Univ.
Press, 1995) might be some interest
to some of you. The Japanese origin of the Chinese minzu (J: minzoku;
S-V: dan toc) is confirmed in this book (see p. 292 in the Appendix
B "Sino-Japanese-European
Loanwords in Modern Chinese").
VSinh
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Wed Nov 17 13:03:39 1999
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 11:33:48 -0500
From: hue-tam ho tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
To add to the discussion of "dan toc." The entry for toc
in Genibrel's 1898 Dictionnaire annamite-francais (which appeared three
years after Huynh Tinh Cua), reads:
TOC (chinese character) 1. famille, parente. f. Parents en ligne droite.
The---Souche, f. famille. Tong---posterite, lignee, f. descendants,
mpl. Than---famille, parente, race. f. ---noi, de la meme race. Truong---,
le chef d'une famille. Cuu----les neuf parentes: le trisaieul, the bisaieul,
l'aieul, le pere, soi-meme, le fils, le petit-fils, l'arriere petit-fils
et le fils de ce dernier. Cuu---do, arbre geneaologique. Tam---les trios
familles: celle du pere, du fils et celle du petit-fils. Cong---, la
famille royale. Ceux qui descendent d'une souche commune et portent
le meme nom de famille. Branche de famille. lu---, gens du meme village.
Tru di tam----, faire perir le coupable, son pere et ses fils. e---,
(mui ten) pointe d'une fleche.
As can be seen, the primary meaning is lineage and kinship. Interestingly,
this dictionary was published the same year as the 100 Day Reforms in
China. According to Frank Dikotter (The Discourse of Race in Modern
China:1992), who bases his discussion on Pamela Crossley (1990),the
Manchus in the 18th Century did have a concept of "identity through
racial
descent... By the Qianlong period (1736-1795), the Manchu court was
progressively turning toward a rigid taxonomy of culturally-distinct
races (zu) within China," (Dikotter: 34). As for the lineage"
zu" (Vn: toc), this was introduced during the Song But it was Yan
Fu and Liang Qichao who were the main theorizers of racial typology.
Yan Fu introduced Darwin
and Herbert Spencer to Chinese audiencees in 1895, along with the idea
of "yellow race" Liang Qichao, however, was the main contributor
to the discourse on race. It is instructive to re-read his preface to
Phan Boi Chau's Viet Nam Vong Quoc Su in light on his own concern about
racial extinction. As Dikotter points out, extinction of the lineage
(miezu) became extinction of the race (miezhong). Equally interesting,
given the discourse on Vietnamese as "people of yellow race"
is Dikotter's point that "racial frontiers could easily be reassigned.
The Vietnamese and Filipinos... were usually classified as "brown,"
but during the struggle against the French, the Vietnamese suddenly
found themselves described as "real yellows" who would "never
allow themselves to become meat on the white man's chopping block."
(Dikotter: 84, quoting Liang) As for minzu (dan toc), Liang Qichao first
"conceptualized minzu in 1903 in an attempt to dind a political
rationale for the state." (Dikotter:97) ""Nation"
meant a lineage that shared a territory and an ancestor." "The
myth of blood was sealed by elevating the figure of the Yellow Emperor
to a national symbol. Liu Shipei [whom Phan Boi Chau encountered in
Japan] first published article advocated the introduction of a calendar
in which the foundaiton year corresponded to the birth of the Yellow
Emperor. While this takes us away from the original starting point ("montagnard")
it
does point to issues associated with the myth of genesis (dong giong
Lac Hong, con Rong chau Tien, and the Hong Bang dynasty) and the prominence
of references to "yellow skin, yellow race" in the Vietnamese
nationalist discourse.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 13:03:58 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 12:58:03 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
Hello,
Just two queries:
I.) One is rather curious how the definition of "tam toc"
below ("les trois familles: celle du pere, du fils et celle du
petit- fils.") fits in with the punishment (such as that meted
out to Nguyen Trai et Cie. by the Le Sat faction in 1442 upon the death
of Le Loi's son, supposedly at the hands [fangs] of his concubine, Nguyen
thi Lo) of the eradication of the "tam toc," which I had always
understood to mean the killing of all known members of the "bad
guy's" progeny (+wife/wives), his father's family, and his mother's
family. (in Nguyen Trai's case, it was said that one of his concubines
was pregnant and was, thus, spared - an odd sort of immunity in such
a vicious system, wot?)
2.) Am I right in thinking that Liang Ch'i-ch'ao was rather well-read
in German (as, I believe, was K'ang Yu-wei)? His views on "tsu"
["toc"] as, indeed, much of the discussion of "nationalities"
in Stalin and other Marxists, seems redolent of German romantic notions
of "volk." And one presumes Marx was rather well-read in German,
naturlich...
Aloha, Steve O'H.
From johnev@netspace.net.au Wed Nov 17 13:04:11 1999
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 10:08:02 +1100
From: johnev <johnev@netspace.net.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Dan Toc
Steve,
Many thanks for your reply, on a subject we have discussed before. I
agree with your characterisation of the two mnagazines. Interestingly,
Cong Giap ca Dan Toc published several articles in 187 and 1988 contradicting
the government line that the canonisation of the 117 martyrs should
not then proceed. It also carried the 1992 communique of the Episcopal
Conference calling for greater religious freedom. Sadly, I can't find
any holdings of Cong Giao va Dan Toc here in Australia, so I going to
try to arrange to have it sent out. For some
reason, the National Library here carries Nguoi Cong Giao only, which
I agree is the less interesting magazine.
Regards,
Peter Hansen
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 13:04:32 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 13:43:59 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: terminology about ethnicity in Viet Nam and environs/now
& then
Hello,
I have always been uncomfortable with the attempt to connect modern
social & political units with the "gloroius past" in SE
Asia and everywhere else -- I fear more mischief in it than good.
In the next number of Asian Perspectives, we are doing a small festschrift
for Hawaii's Archaeologist Emeritus In Perpetuam, Bill Solheim, and
most of the articles are inspired by UH's recent digs at Angkor Borei,
a "Fu Nan (???)" site on the Cambodian side of the modern
border with Viet Nam, just a stone's throw from (and quite possibly
directly linked to) Oc Eo on the Vietnamese side. Obviously, questions
of whose ancestors built what (and who "owns" the past) have
loomed sadly wraithlike over the enterprise.
In a short introductory article I wrote, I tried to come up with some
better way to approach talking about the thorny question of which "ethnic
group[s]" were responsible for Angkor Borei. I benefitted greatly
from discussing my ideas with Keith Taylor and Tam Tai, but I take all
blame for what I wrote. In sum, I think the best thing to do is simply
to
eliminate the question by definition. Herewith a brief excerpt:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
- DELETION -
I am interested in the explanation of early historical or semihistorical
sites and their eventual place in the initial formation of important
political entites in later Southeast Asia, some of which either subsist
or are said to subsist today (if one can, indeed, detect some kind of
linear development fixed by a point of origin).
- DELETION -
To start, I would like to suggest that if we can imagine ourselves travelling
through space and time to Angkor Borei, in the third century C.E., we
might first wish to ask ourselves how to go about documenting the people
we are going to find there. We may or may not find various groups of
people which, as modern anthropologists, we would wish to call "ethnicities,"
but we would nevertheless most likely find many different groups of
people. Each of these goups would recognize within themselves some significant
commonalities, perhaps kinship and geneology, or mode of dress, or diet,
or ritual, or occupation, or language or some combination of these or
other factors. Inside these groupings there would exist a sense of "us-ness"
and a sense of boundaries, a sense that other groups of people were
"outside" or would have a "them-ness" about them.
But we would be wisest if we decided NOT to call them "ethnic"
groups, lest we superimpose a modern concept that is generated from
conditions which might not yet have applied at ancient Angkor Borei.
Another very good reason for wanting to use a new term and to avoid
the term "ethnic group" when applied to the ancient world
is that we cannot be sure if our modern definition of "ethnicity"
would properly describe qualities of human social organization that
would be meaningful at such a remote period in time -- of course, "ethnic
groups" in the modern sense may well have existed, but to use the
term as we do today is to beg the question.1
(1. All the more would we wish to avoid any use, in our discussion of
these sites, of the largely discredited term "race." I firmly
believe it has no valid place in serious archaeological enquiry (as
opposed to questions of predominant tendencies in physiological appearance
within a group under scrutiny, discussion of which can, I believe, be
considered valid). "Race" is a good example of a construct
which can be distorting, destructive and misleading and its earlier
mis-use should be cautionary to us here with regard to other terms.)
However, there is a third, even better reason for preferring some other
term to "ethnic group." Spokesmen for modern ethnicities around
the world, especially those playing leading political roles in modern
nation states, are wont to caste back into their own versions of "history"
for rhetorical tools to address painful modern concerns. They all too
frequently rely on what they claim are direct linneages to demonstrate
identities between their modern ethnic groups and what they believe
to have been essentially same ethnic groups in the past. This linneage,
real, partial, or imagined, this so-called "ethnic identity,"
allows particularist politicians to validate exclusive claims to cultural
heritages and territory, and to prevent members of other modern ethnic
groups from having access to the same.
Unfortunately the words "tradition," "purity," and
"blood" often accompany modern excess and, for archaeologists
to fuel this fire, as they are often under pressure to do, not only
muddies scholarly discourse, but can render a dis-service to the rest
of the inhabitants of the modern world.
If we return in our minds from ancient Angkor Borei to the late 20th
century and muse upon our discoveries, we see that we will need to coin
a general term to designate each of the groups found at Angkor Borei
in the third century, groups whose members recognize a commonality among
themselves and some difference between themselves and other groups.
I should like to suggest the term "hemeterodeme," derived
from the Greek "hemetero-" (pertaining to "us,"
"ours") and "demos" ("people") -- hemeterodeme
means "our people," the "us-folks." And I believe
that what one could have observed at Angkor Borei, seperate groups that
cooperated in important ways, would have constituted a "poly-hemeterodemic"
(PH) social unit. But what function did that social unit perform?
Now I think that it is plainly evident that the level of organization
of early historical or semi-historical archaeological sites in Mainland
Southeast Asia such as Angkor Borei indicates that some arranging intelligence
was active during their creation and that they did not spring to life
as the spontaneous fruit of accidental social happenstance. There must
have been some kind of organizational "polity" at work. I
should like to suggest that the polities involved in the creation of
these sites recognized the organizationally valid participation of more
than one "hemeterodeme" and that we may call them "poly-hemeterodemic
polities." (PHPs)
- DELETION -
Stephen O'Harrow
Univ. of Hawaii
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 13:04:50 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 22:33:10 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
1) With respect to Steve's queries, I would agree with Steve's interpretation
of "tam toc"; i.e. "tru di tam toc" (tru=execute;
di=same Chinese character for "barbarians", but in this case
means "all", or "leaving no one left") is to execute
a criminal's father family, mother family, and wife family. Genibrel
might have mistaken "tam toc" for "tam dda.i" (ba
doi=three generations).
2) Liang Ch'i-ch'ao main access to Western intellectual discourses was
through Japanese translations (as the late Joseph Levenson has observed),
and through the writings by Meiji intellectuals such as Fukuzawa Yukichi,
Kato Hiroyuki, Tokutomi Soho, who had gone through the process of "inventing/coining"
new terms (i.e. compound words in Chinese characters) in their rendition
of Western ideas into the Japanese language. It seems unlikely that
Liang was well-read in either German or English, and it this case it
was not to Liang's disadvantage, owing to the reason mentioned above.
In this sense, Liang was different from Yen Fu, who translated works
by Mill, Huxley, and other Western thinkers directly from English.
One might point out that Liang's first translation of a Japanese work
into Chinese was Tokai Sanshi's political novel Kajin no kigu; and Phan
Chau Trinh's Giai nhan ky ngo dien ca was based on Liang's Chinese translation.
(This was the topic of my article "'Elegant Females' Re-encountered:
From Tokai Sanshi's Kajin no kigu to Phan Chau Trinh's
Giai nhan ky ngo dien ca" in K. W. Taylor and John K. Whitmore,
eds. Essays into Vietnamese Pasts published by the Southeast Asian Program,
Cornell, in 1994).
VSinh
From j.michaud@pol-as.hull.ac.uk Wed Nov 17 13:08:30 1999
Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 13:16:45 +0000
From: Jean Michaud <j.michaud@pol-as.hull.ac.uk>
To: judithh@u.washington.edu
Subject: Montagnard debate
Dear All,
I personally consider there is ground for using the word montagnard,
certainly in French, and also in English.. Here are my arguments.
1) Peoples living in the South-East Asia Massif have a number of endonyms
to call themselves, and a number of exonyms to call their various neighbours.
But to my knowledge, there is no global endonym produced by any of them
to refer to them altogether.
2) Therefore, as this discussion group indicates, we have to conclude
that the urge to have an all-encompassing term stems from an academic
need to refer to all these populations as en ensemble, for essentially
theoretical/teaching purposes.
3) National terms exist to designate peoples living in the mountainous
areas within the national borders of Vietnam, such terms also exist
in Laos, Thailand, Burma and China. Several among the more ancient of
these terms are prejudiced, while a few more recent ones are perfectly
acceptable in their given national context. But the mountain peoples,
and I stress this, are for most not nationally based and the transnational
nature of their geographical setting should lead us to refrain from
using any of these particular country-based terms when talking about
them as a whole.
4) To my knowledge, the first ever non-prejudiced term, in any language,
used to designate the societies living in the Vietnam sections of the
South-East Asia Massif (and maybe in the Massif as a whole, although
this still requires verification), was the French language term "montagnard".
In a competent major ethnographic effort by the French in Tonkin conducted
between 1890 and 1925 (not to be confused with biased travelogues or
missionnary accounts from the same period), the term occurs hundreds
of times, and not once did I find it to be in any way associable with
the prejudiced "sauvage" or "moi". It invariably
bears the simple meaning of "mountain peoples". Some of these
ethnographies have been published although several are in the form of
restricted reports, including:
Abadie, Maurice 1924 Les races du Haut Tonkin de Phong Tho à
Lang-Son. Paris: Société d'éditions géographiques,
maritimes et coloniales.
Bonifacy, Auguste Louis-M. 1904 Les groupes ethniques de la Rivière
Claire, Revue Indochinoise, 30 Juin.
Bonifacy, Auguste Louis-M. 1919 Cours d'ethnographie indochinoise.
Hanoi-Haiphong: Imprimerie d'Extrême Orient.
Diguet, Edouard 1908 Les Montagnards du Tonkin, Paris: Librairie Maritime
et Coloniale, Augustin Challamel.
Lefèvre-Pontalis, Pierre 1892 Notes sur quelques populations
du nord de
l'Indo-Chine, 1ère série, Journal asiatique, Paris: Ernest
Leroux.
Lunet de Lajonquière, Emile 1904 Ethnographie des territoires
militaires.Hanoi: F.H. Schneider.
Lunet de Lajonquière, Emile 1906 Ethnographie du Tonkin septentrional.
Hanoi and Paris: F.H. Schneider.
Pavie, Auguste 1947 (1891) A la conquête des coeurs. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France.
5) The drifting and narrowing of that original meaning of the term "montagnard"
in English in the later period, essentially due to the American involvement
in the Central Highlands, which made it a heavily connotated term in
English is sad, unjustified, and needs to be rectified (note that the
drifting did not take place in French). I beleive the rectification
is possible by giving back the term its original meaning.
6) Terms in English like "highlanders" or "mountain peoples",
to my knowledge, came to Vietnam (and Mainland SEA?) after the French
term and while being able to convey a competent meaning for the multi-ethnic
highlands societies in the Massif, they are still foreign words. I take
them as being, at least, as prejudiced or "neo-colonial" in
their own way
as the French "montagnard".
7) If we, in academia and for academic purposes, are to chose between
several foreign language terms to designate the trans-national highland
societies in the SEA Massif, this in the (temporary?) lack of an acceptable
endogenous word, my preference goes to the more ancient and more deeply
rooted one. A proof of its original appropriateness is that
montagnard is still widely used in French academia and no one there
seriously questions this use. In English, I decided to use it myself
in my edited book "Turbulent Time and Enduring People. The Mountain
Minorities in the South-East Asia Massif", Curzon Press, London,
1999. (needless to say, the publisher had a say in the phrasing of the
title).
8) I am certainly not trying to push anyone into using montagnard. I
am simply explaining why I use it myself. Maybe also I would like to
contribute to stopping its unnecessary and sometimes ill-based straightforward
dismissal.
Does this help at all?
Best,
Dr Jean Michaud
Lecturer
Centre for South-East Asian Studies
Department of Politics and Asian Studies
University of Hull, Hull, HU6-7RX, UK
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 13:09:34 1999
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 10:21:48 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: 'Montagnard' debate
RE: communcation from Dr. Michaud / U. of Hull / U.K.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
For what it's worth...
There seem to be three issues (in academic English usage) that might
be usefully separated here:
-- what is to be the preferred term one uses when referring as a whole
to those groups of people, other than those who now call themselves
"kinh" in Vietnamese, who now live inside the borders of the
Socialist Republic of Viet Nam? E.g., "National minorities, non-Vietnamese
citizens of Viet Nam"??? -- what are to be the preferred terms
one uses when referring to the various groups of people who lived in
the historic past inside the territory that has now become the Socialist
Republic of Viet Nam? E.g., "Vietnamese and ethnic minorities,
urban and rural folks, proto- and non- proto-Vietamese, hemeterodeme
X, Y, & Z" ???
-- should there be (do we need) a preferred term to refer to those groups
of people, other than those who now call themselves "kinh"
in Vietnamese, who have traditionally lived in the uplands of the territory
that has now become the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam (many of whom
continu