Colonial Ghosts, the French Cemetery and Urban Renewal in Hanoi

Abstract

After the end of the colonial regime in Vietnam, the French Cemetery in Hanoi was levelled to make way for newly planned collective apartment blocks. Due to rural migration to the city and the subsequent housing shortage in the 1960s, people settled there, some occupying the lower rooms of the mortuary as accommodation. Humans were not the only residents; they cohabited with wandering ghosts of tirailleurs Sénégalais, French colonial soldiers from Africa. This article traces the building of socialism after the First Indochina War by investigating the implications of urban planning and construction work on the territory of the former French graveyard. As this urban area is conceived of as being animated by spirits, I argue that it emerges as a potent site where colonial ghosts appear protesting against their displacement. Over the last ten years, however, human residents are also threatened by eviction due to urban redevelopment.

Keywords:

• Colonial Ghosts
• Cemetery
• Tirailleurs Sénégalais
• Collective Housing
• khu tập thể
• Urban Renewal
• Vietnam

Acknowledgement:

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in urban Hanoi over the past 15 years, and in particular on research I have conducted as part of my ongoing research project on ‘Urban Ecologies in Southeast Asia. Humans, Environment and Ghosts in the City’, funded by the German Research Foundation (1019/5-1). I would like to thank reviewers for helpful suggestions and comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In 2012, I started a research project on markets in Hanoi, financed by the German Research Foundation. Among other places, I carried out fieldwork in the trời market (Hüwelmeier 2018) and the adjacent KTT Nguyễn Công Trứ in the Hai Bà Trưng district, and came to know a number of residents, among them Mrs Chung. From this time onwards, I visited her each time I conducted ethnographic research in the city. I am grateful to my Vietnamese research assistant Mrs Hà, as well as to my friend and interlocutor Mrs Lan, a trader in the trời market, who introduced me to Mrs Chung. All personal names are pseudonyms.

2 To this day, Africans are referred to as tây đen (black Westerners) by many Vietnamese—a term which is considered derogatory.

3 During the American Vietnam war, a number of children were born due to relationships between Vietnamese women and Black American soldiers. These children were labelled con lai Mỹ (see Wölck and Rogers 2015), a derogatory term comparable to tây đen.

4 It is not clear to which place the bodily remains which were buried in the French Cemetery between the1880s and the 1950s had been brought. And it is even unclear ‘whether any of France’s dead from the Điện Biên Phủ battlefield (…) have been repatriated’ (Logan and Nguyễn 2012, 50).

5 A map dated 1881 indicates that the European Cemetery in Saigon was located close to the citadel and close to ‘its later neighbour the Annamite [Vietnamese] Cemetery (c 1870)’ (Doling 2016).

6 https://saigoneer.com/vietnam-heritage/13406-maps-a-brief-cartographical-history-of-hanoi-in-1873-1936 (accessed 5 January 2021).

7 A map of Hanoi designed in 1925 shows the European graveyard situated southwest of the French Military Hospital, close to the French Cemetery. https://saigoneer.com/vietnam-heritage/13406-maps-a-brief-cartographical-history-of-hanoi-in-1873-1936 (accessed 5 January 2021).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [Grant Number HU 1019/5-1].