Rethinking the Boundaries of "Colonial" in Vietnamese History

• In Event: 99. Periods and Patterns in the Vietnamese Past

Abstract

In the writing of Vietnamese history, “the colonial period” almost invariably signifies a period of time from 1858 (the beginning of France’s war against the Nguyễn dynasty) until either 1945 (Vietnam’s August Revolution) or 1954 (the end of French involvement in Vietnam’s war of decolonization). The claim of this paper is that such a periodization rests on, and perpetuates, a vague, Europe-centric understanding of colonial that ignores continuities between Vietnamese and French empire-building projects as well as analytically critical distinctions within “French colonial rule.” The paper is in two parts. The first argues that enough of the principal evolutions of “modern” state making in Vietnam had roots in the “pre-colonial” Nguyễn dynasty to warrant a broader periodization of “colonial” in Vietnamese history writing. The paper’s second, slightly contrasting claim is that “French colonialism” in Vietnam took varied enough forms (naval rule, military administration, colony, and protectorate, etc.), and at such disparate moments in modern French history (Second Empire, moderate Republicanism, Popular Front, Vichy, etc.) to render “French colonial” essentially useless as a temporally continuous claim. The paper will conclude with some preliminary thoughts about the relationship between temporal and spatial claims in modern Vietnamese history writing.

Author

• Charles P. Keith, Michigan State University