Mobility and Immobility in Vietnam's Southern Uplands

• In Event: Invisible Actors and Factors of Infrastructure: Ethnicity, Gender, and Work across Mainland Southeast Asia

Abstract

My paper examines the travel routes in southern Vietnam which connect lowland urban centers with the border region and the central highlands and their socio-environmental consequences. While Montagnards, or upland peoples, had long traded forest products for coastal goods, human migration remained restrained after initial movement into the region. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the French colonial government created a road network largely aimed at developing industrial agriculture. According to government reports, this network allowed Montagnards to help construct and maintain plantations. It also enabled Vietnamese colonization of the uplands. In other words, these routes seemed to increase the mobility of both locals and outsiders. Yet, other factors hindered mobility to the benefit of locals. For example, fears of malaria and various biomedical interventions limited population contact. In addition, collapsed bridges and missing connections restricted these roads' invasive effects, leaving Montagnards freer to adapt the roads to their own needs. From 1945 to 1975, by contrast, wartime conditions and state integration efforts increased population movements. South Vietnamese officials sought to introduce Vietnamese settlers to the uplands and to assimilate the highland peoples to mainstream society. Montagnard testimony from the time also reveals extreme hardship and social dislocation due to herbicide sprayings and aerial bombings. This paper argues that before 1945 Montagnards were able to exploit tensions between mobility and immobility. Once mobility greatly increased before and during the Vietnam War, Montagnards lost the ability to retain their environmental and social practices as more mobile populations settled on newly disturbed lands.

Author

• Michitake Aso, University of Albany, SUNY