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The Vietnamese Élite of French Cochinchina, 1943

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

R. B. Smith
R. B. Smith
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Extract

It is well-known that the French colonial theory of assimilation, even though it could never be carried out completely in practice, implied the development in French colonies of an indigenous élite of people prepared to accept both French culture and a (subordinate) role in the running of the colony. In French Cochinchina, this élite was especially important owing to the circumstances of the conquest, between 1860 and 1867, when most of the Vietnamese scholar-officials who had ruled the area previously, withdrew and refused to co-operate with the Europeans. The French had no choice but to create an élite of their own, and begin to educate it in French ways. The process has been discussed in detail in a recent study by Dr Milton E. Osborne, which takes the story of colonial rule in southern Viet-Nam down to about 1905.1 During the first four decades of the twentieth century, this élite continued to grow and develop, so that by the 1940s it had become the key element in Cochinchinese society so long as colonial rule might last. The purpose of the present article is to examine the composition and role of this elite about the end of the period in which France could take its presence in Indochina for granted.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , July 1972 , pp. 459 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

1 Osborne, Milton E., The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia. Rule and Response (1859–1905), Ithaca, 1969.Google Scholar

2 Hanoi, 1943; the work is very rare, the copy used for the present article being that on microfilm at the East–West Centre, Honolulu. The work is arranged alphabetically and page numbers will not be cited.

3 On this and other early educational institutions, see Osborne, op. cit., pp. 105, 160.Google Scholar

4 Osborne, op. cit., p. 4.Google Scholar

5 Lancaster, D., The Emancipation of French IndoChina, London, 1961, pp. 209, 283, 431.Google Scholar

6 Annuaire Administratif d'Indochine 1938–9, pp. 544 ff. Of the 159, however, only about twenty were of the highest grade, doc-phu-su.

7 Cf. Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viet-Nam de 1940 à 1952, Paris, 1952, pp. 66, 173, 270.

8 For a fuller account of his career, see Smith, R. B., ‘Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitutionalist Party in French Cochinchina’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 3:2, 04 1969, pp. 131–50.Google Scholar

9 Bui Quang Dai, of Mo-Cay (d. 1930), La Tribune Indochinoise, 25 April 1930.

10 Van, Anh and Roussel, J., Mouvements Nationaux et Lutte de Classes au Viet-Nam (Publications de la IVe Internationale), Paris, 1947?, p. 66;Google Scholar citing a speech by Governor-General Pasquier on 25 Nov. 1931. The same source says that Bui Quang Chieu had 1,500 ha.; and Nguyen Van Kien (referred to below, p. 475), 5,500 ha.

11 Henry, Y., Économie Agricole de l'Indochine (Hanoi, 1932).Google Scholar

12 Sansom, Robert L., The Economics of Insurgency in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, Cambridge, Mass., 1970, p. 24;Google Scholar information based on interviews in the province of Bac-Lieu.

13 On the history of Caodaism, see Smith, R. B.. ‘An Introduction to Caodaism; i, Origins and Early History’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (London), xxxiii, 1969–1970, pp. 336Google Scholar ff. It includes biographical details of Nguyen Ngoc Tuong Pham Cong Tac and other leading Caodaists.

14 For details of his career, see Avenir du Tonkin, 5 May 1926; and the Saigon newspaper, Dan-Quyen, 15–16 August, 1964.

15 Cf. Durand, M. and Huan, Nguyen Tran, Introduction à la Littérature Vietnamienne, Paris 1969, pp. 125, 211–12;Google Scholar and Sacks, I. M., ‘Marxism in Viet-Nam’ in Trager, F. N., Marxism in South-east Asia, Stanford, 1960, pp. 127 ff.Google Scholar

16 La Tribune Indigène (Saigon), 5, 29 July 1919.

17 Ibid., 27 June 1918; 5 March 1928, etc.

18 B.S.E.I., n.s., xiii, no. 2, 1938, pp. 253–63.

19 Trib. Indigène, 15 Feb. 1921, 19 Sept. 1922, and 27 Aug. 1928.

20 Ibid., 5 Sept. 1919, etc.

21 La Tribune Indochinoise, 11 Jan. 1932.

22 Pinto, Roger, Aspects de l'Évolution Gouvernementale de l'Indochine Française, Saigon and Paris, 1946, pp. 54 ff.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., pp. 43 ff.

24 Ibid. and ‘Rapport du Gouverneur de la Cochinchine, 4e trim. 1922’, National Archives, Saigon, S.L. 366.

25 Counted from Muc-Luc Bao-Chi Viet-Ngu 1865–1965, Saigon, 1966.