From Indochine to Indochic: The Lang Bian/Dalat Palace Hotel and French Colonial Leisure, Power and Culture

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 159-194

  Jennings, Eric T ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 29144486625     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: 14698099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X03001057     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Robert Reed, ‘From Highland Hamlet to Regional Capital: Reflections on the Colonial Origins, Urban Transformation and Environmental Impact of Dalat’ in Terry Rambo, Robert Reed, Le Trong Cuc et al., The Challenges of Highland Development in Vietnam (Hawaii: East-West Center Program on Environment, 1995), p. 51.
2. See Thomas Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) and Giles Tillotson, The Tradition of Indian Architecture. Continuity, Controversy and Change since 1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). On hybridity, modernism, and appropriations of indigenous elements in colonial architecture, see Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), and Krystyna Von Henneberg, ‘Imperial Uncertainties: Architectural Syncretism and Improvisation in Fascist Colonial Libya’, Journal of Contemporary History 31:2 (1996): 373-95.
3. Thomas Metcalf, for example, explicitly sets out to examine ‘how political authority took shape in stone, and how, in turn, these colonial buildings helped shape the discourse on empire of the later nineteenth century.’ Metcalf, An Imperial Vision, p. xi.
4. Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Thomas himself prefers the plural ‘colonialisms’, thereby stressing the locational specifics of colonialism. He pleads for a ‘plural rather than a unitary construction of colonial discourse.’ Thomas, pp. 9; 51. In 1989, Ann Stoler explicitly leveled the critique that much existing literature over-homogenized and reified a single ‘colonial project’: ‘The terms colonial state, colonial policy, foreign capital, and the white enclave are often used interchangeably, as if they captured one and the same thing… The makers of metropole policy become conflated with its local practioners. Company executives and their clerks appear as a seamless community of class and colonial interests whose internal discrepencies are seen as relatively inconsequential, whose divisions are blurred.’ Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 135.
5. Robert Reed, City of Pines; The Origins of Baguio as a Colonial Hill Station and Regional Capital (Center for Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, 1976).
6. Statistics from circa 1900, drawn from Lam Dong Provincial Library, Dalat, DC 067, p. 313.
7. Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical world in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 28.
8. Archives Nationales, Centre des Archives d'outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, France (hereafter CAOM), GGI 5967, rapports du Dr Yersin, 1898-9. Yersin report entitled: ‘Le sanatorium du Lang Bian.’.
9. CAOM, GGI 66188, Pennequin reports, 1903-4.
10. Anthropologist Libby Vann has argued that these purported fears were used by the French to claim the Lang Bian for themselves. She writes: ‘Th[e] notion that Lang Bian was a European environment appears to have been strengthened by the notion that lowland Vietnamese and the montagnards considered it a dangerous region. The name given to Lang Bian by the highland peoples, French colonials pointed out, meant: ‘disinherited or cursed. The Annamites of the shore are in fact afraid of ascending mountainous countries. ‘. Libby Vann, ‘Discovering the Alps in Indochina: European Nature and the French Colonial Sanatorium of Dalat, 1893-1927.’ Paper kindly made available to me by its author.
11. Anthropologist Libby Vann has argued that these purported fears were used by the French to claim the Lang Bian for themselves.
12. On some of the strategies involved in this complex game, see the following article, which focuses on the highland minorities of Northern Vietnam (Tonkin in colonial times): Jean Michaud, ‘The Montagnards and the State in Northern Vietnam from 1802 to 1975: a historical overview’, Ethnohistory 47:2 (Spring 2000): 345-9.
13. For general histories of Dalat in the colonial era, see Wright, The Politics of Design, pp. 230-3, and Robert Reed, ‘From Highland Hamlet to Regional Capital’. Also see Truong Tro (ed.), Dalat, ville d'altitude (Ho Chi Minh City: People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, 1993); Arnauld Le Brusq, Le Vietnam a’ travers l'architecture coloniale (Paris: Editions de l'Amateur, 1999), pp. 98-108; and Crossette, The Great Hill Stations of Asia, pp. 207-19.
14. Dane Kennedy, The Magic Mountains, p. 147.
15. CAOM GGI 5969, Governor Doumer to Minister of the Colonies, April 18, 1898.
16. Erica Peters, ‘Negotiating Power through Everyday Practices in French Vietnam, 1880-1924’ Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 2000, p. 140.
17. CAOM GGI 5966, ‘Situation agricole du Lang-Bian; Rapport, Dangkia, le 24 juillet 1903, signed Roux.
18. CAOM GGI 66188, Report by Capitaine Bigaud.
19. CAOM GGI 66188., Rapport du Dr Haueur, Saigon June 4, 1903.
20. On the importance of ‘eating French’ to the French colonial identity in Indochina, see Peters, ‘Negotiating Power’, pp. 138-206.
21. ‘Visite de M. Long a’ Dalat’, L'Echo annamite, July 24, 1920, p. 2.
22. Cornell University Library, Wason Pamphlets (Indochina 51) Les Hôtels en Indochine.
23. NA, Petit guide illustré de Dalat (1930), p. 13.
24. Bruno Duron, ‘The Dalat Palace: A Hotel of the Past, Today,’ p. 47. In this unpublished manuscript Bruno Duron, commissioned to trace the history of the Palace Hotel by American tycoon Larry Hillblom, provides a compendium of useful sources relating to the history of the hotel.
25. Petit guide illustré de Dalat., p. 48.
26. National Archives of Vietnam, Archives #1, Hanoi (hereafter VNNA), GGI 5034 ‘Cahier des charges pour l'exploitation des hôtels du groupe de Dalat,’ p. 14.
27. National Archives of Vietnam., p. 9.
28. Morgan Sporte's, Tonkinoise (Paris: Le Seuil, 1995), p. 197.
29. Wright, The Politics of Design, p. 231.
30. On the Vichy period in Indochina, see Eric Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe and Indochina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 130-98.
31. These renovations are shown in Indochine, hebdomadaire illustré, February 11, 1943.
32. See Le Brusq, Le Vietnam, pp. 101-10.
33. On the changes to the Saigon theatre, see Indochine, hebdomadaire illustré, September 23, 1943; on the alterations to the Palace of the Governor General of Cochinchina, see Indochine, hebdomadaire illustré, January 27, 1944.
34. This argument is presented by Roussel, amongst others. Roussel, La chasse en Indochine, p. 62.
35. De Tessan, ‘Une station d'altitude en Indochine’, p. 158.
36. ‘Une station d'altitude en Indochine’.
37. The boredom of French women in Indochina was recounted in-amongst other sources-George Groslier's colonial novel, Le retour a’ l'argile, in which one of the main characters, Raymonde, complains constantly of boredom while her husband cheats on her with a Cambodian mistress. See George Groslier, Le retour a’ l'argile (Pondichéry: Kailash Editions, original edition 1928, republished 1996), p. 102.
38. Postcard purchased by the author.
39. ‘Humour dalatois: inversions vestimentaires ou du danger de la baignade aux environs de Dalat (histoire vécue)’ Indochine, hebdomadaire illustré, July 13, 1944.
40. In the words of Michael Vann, ‘The existence of the Other in the home put the colonial on edge.’ Michael Vann, ‘White City on the Red River: Race, Power and Culture in French Colonial Hanoi, 1872-1954’, Ph.D. thesis, University of California Santa Cruz, 1999, p. 553.
41. the words of Michael Vann., p. 550.
42. NA Le Guide du Routard, Vietnam (Paris: Hachette, 1999), p. 309.
43. The most reliable confirmation came from Mrs Huynh Thi Thanh Xuyen who works at the hotel, and whose father did as well.
44. Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
45. Duron, ‘The Dalat Palace’, p. 105.
46. Bruce Lockhart, ‘Monarchy and Decolonization in Indochina,’ paper delivered at the International Workshop on ‘Decolonization and Transformation in Southeast Asia,’ Singapore, February 19, 2001, p. 17.
47. CAOM, Résidence Supérieure d'Annam, L5, dossier entitled ‘articles de presse concernant le tourisme.’
48. Les Hôtels en Indochine
49. On these villas, see Truong Tro, Dalat, ville d'altitude, 112-16.
50. COAM, Résidence Supérieure d'Annam, L4 Governor General to Governor of Cochinchina, June 29, 1929.
51. Résidence Supérieure d'Annam.
52. CAOM, GGI 46407, Governor of Indochina to Minister of the Colonies, August 8, 1923.
53. ‘Le tourisme en Indochine’, Le Moniteur d'Indochine, February 24, 1923.
54. VNNA, GGI 5034, Cahier des Charges pour l'exploitation des hôtels du groupe de Dalat, p. 9.
55. See CAOM GGI 38218 for all information regarding Passiot and his lawsuit.
56. All information in this paragraph comes from CAOM GGI, 46407, Garnier to Inspecteur des Travaux Publics Hanoi, March 12, 1923.
57. Pierre Brocheux, Daniel Hémery, Indochine, la colonisation ambiguë (Paris: la Découverte, 1995), pp. 260-3.
58. Duron, ‘The Dalat Palace’, p. 97.
59. VNNA, GGI 5014, Résident Supérieur d'Annam to Gouverneur Général d'Indochine, May 14, 1928.
60. CAOM, GGI 59875, Inspecteur des finances to Gouverneur Général, December 8, 1931.
61. CAOM, GGI 59875, Feraudy to Mayor of Dalat, August 2, 1931.
62. On the extension of the rail line to Dalat, see David Del Testa, ‘Imperial Corridor: Association, Transportation and Power in French Colonial Indochina’, Science, Technology and Society 4:2 (1999): 344.
63. CAOM, GGI 59875, Résident Mayor, letter of September 6, 1931.
64. Duron, ‘The Dalat Palace’, p. 105.
65. ‘The Lang-Bian Hotel was reserved for our big-wigs’ recalls Gilbert David in Chroniques secre'tes de l'Indochine (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994), p. 149. Note that serious doubts have emerged about this book's claims regarding political events and conspiracies in particular; but there is little reason to doubt the authenticity of its descriptions of Dalat in colonial times.
66. Lam Dong Provincial Library, Dalat (DC 253) ‘Dalat, Le nouveau plan: dispositions générales’, L'Eveil économique, no date.
67. Duron, ‘The Dalat Palace’, p. 126.
68. Lam Dong Provincial Library.
69. Peters, ‘Negotiating Power’, pp. 207-64.
70. Duron, ‘The Dalat Palace’, p. 128.
71. Lam Dong Provincial Library., p. 130.
72. CAOM, GGI 59875, Feraudy to Governor General, July 4, 1931.
73. CAOM, GGI 59873, Mr Courtinat to the mayor of Dalat, January 21, 1932.
74. VNNA, GGI 5034, ‘Cahier des charges pour l'exploitation des hôtels du groupe de Dalat’, p. 1.
75. Duron, ‘The Dalat Palace’, p. 6.
76. Mr Courtinat to the mayor of Dalat., p. 67.
77. All of the information in this paragraph comes from the report by Paul Veysseyre, architect: ‘Effondrement de la descent a’ couvert du Lang Bian Palace, le samedi 6 mars 1943; rapport d'expert.’ Paul Veysseyre papers (generously made available to me by his son Jacques Veysseyre).
78. On the topic of the Japanese coup de force, see David Marr, Vietnam 1945 (Berkeley: University of California, Press, 1995).
79. These figures and dates are drawn from the unpublished memoirs of Louis Salles, former principal of the Lycée Yersin in Dalat (Found in Mr Veysseyre's papers).
80. Marius Borel, Souvenirs d'un vieux colonialiste (Borel, Rodez, 1963), p. 282.
81. Souvenirs d'un vieux colonialiste., pp. 292-5.
82. See Adam Schwarz, ‘Beaches and Sand Traps’, Far-Eastern Economic Review, 159 (February 29, 1996), p. 41.
83. Robert Templer, Shadows and Wind: a View of Modern Vietnam (London: Penguin, 1998), p. 9. A much harsher criticism has been articulated by Penny Edwards on colonial nostalgia surrounding the hotel at Dalat's ‘sister hill station’ of Bokor, in Cambodia. Edwards argues: ‘In eclipsing the carnage of Bokor's construction with the glitter of hotel ballrooms, Muller falls prey to the “Indo-Chic” syndrome recently identified by the literary critic Panivong Norindr…. Excised from their historical context, these totems of lost empire invent new memories. Colonialism is remade as a romantic interlude where a happy time was had by all-except, of course, for the victims of bad service at the Bokor Palace Hotel.’ Penny Edwards, ‘Tango Dancing in the Blood of Bokor’, Phnom Penh Post, March 27/April 9, 1998. My thanks to David Del Testa for drawing this article to my attention.
84. On the Indochic phenomenon, see Panivong Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film and Literature (Raleigh: Duke University Press, 1996).
85. Derek Maitland and Jill Goeler (eds), Traveler's Companion: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (Connecticut: the Globe Pequot Press, 1999), p. 40.