Problematic progress: Reading environmental and social change in the Mekong Delta

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 77-96

  Biggs, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COLONIALISM; DELTA; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; LANDSCAPE HISTORY; SOCIAL CHANGE;

ASIA; EURASIA; MEKONG DELTA; SOUTHEAST ASIA; VIET NAM;

EID: 24944511950     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463403000055     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Inspection Générale des Travaux Publics, Dragages de Cochinchine: Canal Rachgia-Hatien (Saigon: n.p., 1930), pp. 6-7; translation by the author.
2. Dragages de Cochinchine: Canal Rachgia-Hatien Ibid., p. 20.
3. Dragages de Cochinchine: Canal Rachgia-Hatien Ibid., p. 25;
4. Development of farming systems in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, ed. Võ Tòng Xuân and Shigeo Matsui (Hồ Chí Minh City: Hồ Chí Minh City Publishing House, 1998), p. 18. The total area of the Mekong Delta extending from Kompong Cham in Cambodia to the South China Sea is 5.9 million hectares, of which roughly 4 million are located in present-day Vietnam. The present-day boundaries almost exactly match those in the colonial and pre-colonial periods after 1800.
5. Perhaps still the most complete - though dated - discussion of the earliest inhabitants of the Delta is Louis Malleret, L'Archéologie du delta du Mékong (Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1959). See vol. 1, pp. 27-33, for an excellent discussion of the evidence for ancient hydraulic infrastructure and pre-Angkorian settlements dating to 604 CE in the same area as present-day Châu Dốc and the Vĩnh Tế Canal. The archaeological and historical records do not yet offer much detail about the period between the eighth and roughly seventeenth centuries. The 'Óc-Eo Culture' is linked to an archaeological site located in the Mekong Delta along the important trading route between India and China. Ba Tĥ and other sites in the Delta include remains of stone foundations, Hindu statuary and traces of ancient canals that date from roughly the second to seventh centuries.
6. The kingdom of Champa occupied what is today the central and southern coast of Vietnam; it was gradually conquered and absorbed by successive Vietnamese rulers. Champa was an Indianised state with extensive trading and political relationships to the Malay world.
7. Another more technical problem in studying historical waterways in such a densely settled place is that often new canals are dug along the traces of historic ones, thus making it very difficult to determine the extent of a pre-colonial, pre-Vietnamese, or pre-Angkor canal network.
8. Võ Tòng Xuân et al., 'History and future of farming systems in the Mekong Delta', in Xûn and Matsui ed., Development of farming systems, pp. 16-80, provides an overview of the Delta's environment and agriculture. For listings of flora and fauna as well as good explanations of processes such as salinisation and acidification,
9. see Birdlife International Vietnam Programme and Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, The conservation of key wetland sites in the Mekong Delta: Conservation report number 12 (Hanoi, 1999).
10. The older monograph series entitled Géographie physique, économique et historique de la Cochinchine gives excellent introductions to general geographical and historical features for each province in French Cochinchina.
11. For this article see in particular Société des Études Indochinoises, Monographie de la province de Châu-Dôc (Saigon: Imprimerie L. Ménard, 1902)
12. and Võ Tòng Xuân et al., idem., Monographie de la province d'Ha-Tiên (Saigon: Imprimerie L. Ménard, 1901).
13. Pha̧m-Hoàng Hồ, Cây cò Viȩ̂t Nain: An illustrated flora of Vietnam (Hồ Chí Minh City: NXB Trè, 1999), vol. 3, p. 467.
14. With regard to environmental conditions before 1900, acid levels may have been much lower due to the significantly lower population density. If land is inundated with water and covered in vegetation for the entire year, then the soil does not oxidise and sulphuric acid is not created. The scant evidence available suggests that before dense settlement in the twentieth century, much of the underlying soil in the Quadrangle would have been peat 1-3 metres thick caused by almost 2,000 years of intensive organic production and limited bacterial decomposition because of relatively constant inundation throughout the year. Without adequate drainage, however, early farmers would have also encountered acidification problems as newly formed dikes would leach acid upon contact with the air.
15. The Cham settlement at Châu Giang across the river from Châu Dốc became a key trading post for Malay merchants. As a result of contacts with Malays and Javanese, Cham in Cambodia converted to Islam, and the communities straddling the border remain orthodox Muslims, while some of the coastal Cham on the original territory of their former kingdom follow a more syncretic version of Islam.
16. See Nicholas Sellers, The princes of Hà-tiên (1682-1867) (Brussels: Thanh-Long, 1983) for an English-language study.
17. Son Nam, Li̧ch sù An Giang [History of An Giang] (Long Xuyên: NXB An Giang, 1986), pp. 3-5.
18. On the cession of territory, see Quốc su'̀ quán Triều Nguyễn, Dai Nam nhất thông chí [Gazetteer of imperial Vietnam] (Huế: NXB Thuâ̧n Hoá, 1992), vol. 5, p. 158.
19. See also Nguyễn Vǎn Hâu, Tho̧ai Ngo̧c Hâu và nhũng cuô̧c khai phá miên Hâ̧u Giang [Thoa̧i Ngo̧c Hâu and the settlements of the Hâ̧u Giang region] (Saigon: Hurong Sen, 1972), pp. 229-33.
20. Nguyễn Vǎn Hâu, Tho̧ai Ngo̧c Hâu và nhũng cuô̧c khai phá miên Hâ̧u Giang [Thoa̧i Ngo̧c Hâu and the settlements of the Hâ̧u Giang region] Ibid., p. 143.
21. Nguyễn Vǎn Hâu, Tho̧ai Ngo̧c Hâu và nhũng cuô̧c khai phá miên Hâ̧u Giang [Thoa̧i Ngo̧c Hâu and the settlements of the Hâ̧u Giang region] Ibid., pp. 167-79,
22. and Trân Ban Ha̧nh, 'Les inscriptions de Thoaï Sôn et de Vĩnh Tế', paper presented at the Premier Congrès International des Études Extrêmes-Orientales, Hà Nô̧i, 1903; consulted in the Library of the Institute of Social Sciences, Hồ Chí Minh City. Given the extremely short time required to dredge this long and wide canal, it is possible that it had originally been dug much earlier, perhaps even as far back as the 'Funan' period. Because of the effects of dredging the bottom of the channel and the fairly dense settlement along the canal, it is difficult to determine whether it pre-dated the 1816 project.
23. David P. Chandler, A history of Cambodia, 2nd edn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 118-23, gives a more detailed account of the increasing Vietnamese influence over Phnom Penh in the early 1800s.
24. Société des Études Indo-Chinoises, Monographie de la province d'Ha-Tiên, pp. 10-11.
25. Nguyễn Vǎn Hâu, Thoai Ngo̧c Hấu remains one of the best accounts of the construction, drawing on Nguyễn dynastic sources, inscriptions and several unpublished manuscripts; see pp. 181-211 for these events.
26. Nguyễn Vǎn Hâu, Thoai Ngo̧c Hấu Ibid.
27. An excellent historical study of Lê Vǎn Duyȩ̂t's life in Gia Dinh and the events following his death can be found in Hoàng Lai Giang's retelling of popular stories in Lê Vǎn Duyȩ̂t: tìe nấm mố oan khuất Dên Lǎng Ông: truyȩ̂n danh nhân [Lê Vǎn Duyȩ̂t: from an unjustly scorned grave to an honoured tomb, the story of a famous person] (Hà Nô̧i: NXB Vǎn hoá và Thông tin, 1999).
28. Son Nam, Lich sù' An Giang, p. 9.
29. See also Minh Mȩ̂nh chình yến [Essential policies of Minh Ma̧ng] (Huế: Thuâ̧n Hoá, 1994), vol. 3, pp. 149-200, for an account of these events.
30. Trán Thi Thu Luong and Võ Thành Phuong, Khòi nghīa Bày Thù'a (1867-1873) [The Bày Thùa Uprising] (Hồ Chí Minh City: NXB Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh, 1991), p. 72.
31. For a detailed study of the Bù'u Son Kỳ Huong, see Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Millenarianism and peasant politics in Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
32. Inspection Générale des Travaux Publics, Dragages de Cochinchine, pp. 12-14.
33. J. Rénaud, 'Étude sur l'approfondissement du canal de Vinh-té et l'amélioration du port d'Hatien', Excursions et Reconnaissances, 1 (1879): 66.
34. The Combier Mission and subsequent debates in the Paris newspapers are discussed in John Bassford, 'Land development policy in Cochinchina under the French" (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawai'i, 1984), p. 30.
35. Ch. Combier, 'Rapports présentés à S.E. le Ministre de la Marine et des Colonies sur les grands travaux projetés en Cochinchine' (1881), Folio 4-904(3), pp. 16-19; this document is in the Social Science Library, Hồ Chí Minh City. These three reports summarise Combier's position and describe in ascerbic detail his views on technical and policy issues in the development of new public works in the early years of the colony.
36. Inspection Générale des Travaux Publics, Dragages de Cochinchine, p. 16.
37. Dragages de Cochinchine, Ibid., p. 18.
38. Yves Henry and Maurice de Visme, Documents de démographie & riziculture en Indochine (Hanoi: Bulletin Économique de l'Indochine, 1929), pp. 10, 18.
39. Société des Études Indochinoises, Monographie de la province de Châu-Dôc, p. 46.
40. Monographie de la Province de Châu-Dôc Ibid., pp. 25-34.
41. An interesting side topic worthy of further consideration would be the French attitude towards ancient monuments, especially Angkor Wat. They spent considerable resources to rehabilitate these monuments and various colonial sources speak about 'restoring Cambodia'. It can be argued that a more detailed analysis of colonial restoration of monuments at Angkor would show that it was the present-day context of the site as a tourist attraction that convinced colonial administrators to invest in its preservation, rather than a desire for continuity with earlier Khmer uses of Angkor as a religious and political city centre.
42. Letter from Georges Lamarre, Châu Dốc Administrator, to the Lieutenant-Governor of Cochinchina, 18 July 1903, National Archives of Vietnam No. 2, Fonds Goucoch, folio IA 19/244(4). All subsequent references to archival documents are from this collection.
43. Lamarre to Lieutenant-Governor of Cochinchina (Cabinet), 8 Aug. 1903, IA 19/244(4).
44. 'Rapport par l'Ingénieur en Chef au Lt. Gouverneur relatif à l'achat d'un drague à vapeur pour la province de Chau Doc', 25 June 1904, IA 19/244(4).
45. 'Rapport de l'Ingènieur en Chef sur les travaux de dragage du Canal de Chaudoc à Hatien', 22 Sept. 1915, IA 5/023(1).
46. Charousset, secretary of Thioller (lawyer in Sài Gòn) to Governor General, 22 May 1912, IA 19/244(4).
47. This conclusion is based mainly on reports of the situation after French dredging in the Phung Hiȩ̂p and Ô Môn areas. New canals linking the Hâ̧u Giang River with the Gulf destroyed the existing tidal pulsing of water through natural creeks and rivers, thus swamping traditional rice lands and reducing productivity from roughly 3000 kg/ha to 800 kg/ha, a drop of roughly 70 per cent. Evidence of these miscalculations in French projects can be found in the letters and reports of the Travaux Publics in the Vietnam National Archives; for the case of Phu̧ng Hiȩ̂p, see complaints by villagers and colons in IA13/236(3).
48. Keith W. Taylor, 'Surface orientations in Vietnam: Beyond histories of nation and region', Journal of Asian Studies, 57, 4 (1998): 949-78. Taylor suggests that we consider historical surfaces as bounded historical experiences limited to place and time that often conflict with more epic narratives. Such surfaces, he argues, give a pluralistic voice to those experiences that have differed (and perhaps did not survive) the present nationalist views of the past. The resulting history takes a less linear shape but is more accurate in its inclusiveness of the various connected and disjunct local stories. This essay borrows his idea and applies it to environmental history, looking at an actual surface of land in Vietnam and examining the contours of its history.