Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-94d59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T09:04:47.825Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Widening the Colonial Encounter: Asian Connections Inside French Indochina During the Interwar Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

CHRISTOPHER E. GOSCHA*
Affiliation:
History Department, Université du Québec à Montréal, 4283 rue Saint Hubert, Montréal, Québec, H2J 2W6Canada Email: christopher.goscha@sympatico.ca

Abstract

Relying on three inter-Asian colonial debates from French Indochina, this paper attempts to widen our analytical approach to the study of colonialism in Indochina beyond the ‘colonizer’–‘colonized’ opposition by factoring in the relationships among the diverse Asian colonized living within the colonial state without downplaying the important role Western colonialism played in transforming those very relationships or being affected by them. The French Indochinese case is helpful, for it suggests that inter-Asian connections did anything vanish, but rather intensified because of the colonial experience. Numerous Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese and Chinese subject elites continued to engage each other and the French in fascinating and sometimes heated debates about the political, legal, cultural and economic place each group held in French Indochina – or did not want to hold. This directly affected how they came to interact with one another in new ways, essential to understanding the complexity of the colonial encounter at the time and can provide new insights into post-colonial and international history. Lastly, this wider approach to studying the colonial encounter allows us to view the French side of the colonial equation from a new vantage point.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Nasir Abdoul-Carime, ‘Les communautés indiennes en Indochine française’, in Siksacakr, No. 7 (2005), pp. 19–24.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World (London: Verso, 1998), p. 13.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Careghi, Jean-Christophe, ‘Le statut personnel des Vietnamiens en Indochine de 1887 à 1954’, Aix-en-Provence, Université d'Aix-Marseille, 2002.Google Scholar
Cheung, Gordon C.K., ‘Involuntary migrants, political revolutionaries and economic energisers: A history of the image of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia’ in Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 42, No. 14 (February 2005), pp. 5566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheung, Melissa, ‘The legal position of ethnic Chinese in Indochina under French rule’ in Hooker, Barry, Law and Chinese in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002), pp. 3234.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coppel, Charles, ‘The Indonesian Chinese. Foreign orientals, Netherlands subjects, and Indonesian citizen’ in Hooker, Barry (ed.), Law and the Chinese in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian studies, 2002), pp. 131149.Google Scholar
Engelbert, Thomas, Die chinesische Minderheit im Süden Vietnams (Hoa) als Paradigma des kolonialen und nationalistischen Nationalitatenpolitik (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002).Google Scholar
Fasseur, C., ‘Cornerstone and stumbling block. Racial classification and the late colonial state in Indonesia’ in Cribb, Robert (ed.), The Late Colonial State in Indonesia: Political and Economic Foundations of the Netherlands Indies. 1880–1942 (Leiden: KITLV, 1994), pp. 3155.Google Scholar
Forest, Alain, Le Cambodge et la colonisation française: Histoire d'une colonisation sans heurts (1897–1920) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1980), pp. 445448.Google Scholar
Forest, Alain, ‘Cambodgiens et Vietnamiens au Cambodge pendant le protectorat français (1863–1920)’ in Pluriel, No. 4 (1975), pp. 3–24.Google Scholar
Forest, Alain, ‘Les portraits du Cambodgien’ in ASEMI, Vol. IV, No. 2 (1973), pp. 81107.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Charles, ‘The making of race in colonial Malaya: Political economy and racial ideology’ in Sociological Forum, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 1986), pp. 330361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschman, Charles, ‘The meaning and measurement of ethnicty in Malaysia: An analysis of census classifications’ in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3 (August 1987), pp. 555582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoeffel, Ernest, De la condition juridique des étrangers au Cambodge (Strasbourg: Imprimerie Centrale, Ch. Hiller, 1932), p. 7.Google Scholar
Ivarsson, Soren, ‘Making Laos our space: Thai discourses on history and race, 1900–1941’ and Iijima, Akiko, ‘The Nyuan in Xaignaboury and Cross-border Links to Nan’, in Goscha, Christopher E. and Ivarsson, Soren (eds.), At the Crossroads: Contesting Lao Pasts (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2004), pp. 239264 and 165180, respectively.Google Scholar
Larcher-Goscha, Agathe, La légitimation française en Indochine: Mythes et réalités de la collaboration franco-vietnamienne et du réformisme colonial (1905–1945) (Paris: Université de Paris VII, 2000).Google Scholar
Lessard, Micheline, ‘Organisons-nous! Racial antagonism and Vietnamese economic nationalism in the early twentieth century’ in French Colonial History, Vol. 7 (2007), pp. 171201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manela, Erez, The Wilsonian Moment: Self Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maw-Kuey, Tsai, Les Chinois au Sud-Vietnam (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1968), p. 38.Google Scholar
Motoo, Furuta, Viet Nam trong Lich Su The Gioi (sach tham khao) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri, 1998).Google Scholar
Nicolas, Louis, Les étrangers et le domaine cambodgien (Paris: Éditions Domat, Montchrestien, 1934), p. 149.Google Scholar
Pairaudeau, Natasha, ‘Other Frenchmen, Indian Renonçants in the Colonial Service in Cochinchina’, paper presented at the Euro-Viet Conference, Saint-Petersburg, May 2002.Google Scholar
Patterson, Lorraine, Tenacious Texts: Vietnam, China, and Radical Cultural Intersections, 1890–1930, PhD Dissertation (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2006).Google Scholar
Peycam, Philippe, Les Intellectuels Sud-Vietnamiens, Essai d'un phénomène émergent, 1917–23 (Paris: Diplôme d'études approfondies, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (IVe section), 1996).Google Scholar
Peyronnet, Albert, ‘La rénovation du Cambodge’ in Les Annales Coloniales (31 March 1914).Google Scholar
Phanra, Khy, La communauté vietnamienne au Cambodge à l'époque du protectorat français (1863–1953) (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1974), pp. 211219.Google Scholar
Quynh, Pham, ‘Phap-du hanh-trinh nhat-ky’ in Nam Phong, No. 58 (April 1922), pp. 253–257.Google Scholar
Saada, Emmanuelle, Les enfants de la colonie: Les métis de l'Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté (Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saada, Emmanuelle, ‘Paternité et citoyenneté en situation coloniale: Le débat sur les “reconnaissances frauduleuses” et la construction d'un droit imperial’ in Politix, Vol. 17, No. 66 (2004), pp. 107136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saada, Emmanuelle, ‘Volontés de savoir coloniales: les enquêtes sur les métis, 1908–1937’ in Grunberg, Gérard and Lakroum, Monique (eds.), Histoire des métissages hors d'Europe: nouveaux mondes, nouveaux peuples (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999), pp. 6585.Google Scholar
Shiraishi, Masaya, Phong trao dan toc Viet Nam va Quan he cua no voi Nhat Ban va Chau A: Tu tuong cua Phan Boi Chau ve cach mang va the gioi, 2 volumes (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 1999).Google Scholar
Solus, Henry, Traité de la condition des indigènes en droit privés: Colonies et pays de protectorat (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1927), pp. 1112, 3545, 55.Google Scholar
Streckfuss, David, ‘The mixed colonial legacy in Siam: Origins of Thai racialist thought, 1890–1910’ in Sears, Laurie, Autonomous Histories, Particular Truths: Essays in Honor of John Smail (Madison: University of Wisconsin Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), Monograph No. 11, pp. 123143.Google Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘Connected histories: Notes towards a reconfiguration of early modern Eurasia’ in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (July 1997), pp. 735762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nguyen The Anh, ‘L'immigration chinoise et la colonisation du delta du Mékong’ in The Vietnam Review, No. 1 (Autumn–Winter 1996), pp. 158–163.Google Scholar
Kim, Tran Trong, ‘Su du lich dat Hai Ninh’ in Nam Phong, No. 71 (May 1923), pp. 383–394.Google Scholar
Winichakul, Thongchai, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1994).Google Scholar