THREATENING HISTORIES

Abstract

This article contributes to recent scholarship on modern Vietnamese historiography by examining the ways in which twentieth-century historians have manipulated their representations of collective actions during the French colonial period. Following studies by Patricia Pelley, Christoph Giebel, Peter Zinoman, and others, the author offers a critical reading of narrative accounts of the period between the late nineteenth century and the late 1930s. The article is inspired by Prasenjit Duara's work on modern Chinese historiography, in which he showed how early twentieth-century Chinese historians viewed their history through the simplifying lens of the nation-state. Here the author argues that most post–1954 communist historians in Viet Nam were influenced by similar impulses, leading them to construct a highly teleological account of this period, obscuring its true complexity. The author uses case studies of the representations of secret societies, ethnic minority groups, and new religious movements to demonstrate how this obscuring has worked, while suggesting alternate readings of the collective actions by these groups that place them outside of a convenient teleology leading directly to the triumph of the Communist Party. The author argues that the complex histories of these groups were a challenge to the Marxist dialectic and were thus regarded as a threat to the narrative. As such, modern historians had to reimagine or even erase these complexities for political purposes. The author concludes by suggesting that historians must continue to probe these types of collectivities as complex actors in a complicated historical landscape, rather than accepting them as part of a linear narrative.

Notes

1. Pelley 2002, 40ff.

2. Ibid., 22.

3. Ibid., 45.

4. An excellent, detailed illustration of this same process in China is found in Dirlik 1978.

5. Giebel 2004.

6. Zinoman 2001.

7. Duara 1995.

8. Giebel 2004, 195–96.

10. Duara 1995, 231.

9. Toan 2004, 191; Brocheux and Hémery 2009, 290.

11. Ibid., 27–28.

12. Tai 1983.

13. For this article I examined numerous Vietnamese texts, as well as a variety of texts by Vietnamese authors in French and English, and by non-Vietnamese authors as well. Details regarding these texts can be found in the bibliography. The texts I selected include both multi-author and single-author works, and most were written as university textbooks.

14. Thai and Mung 1958.

15. Tran van Giau 2001, 759–60.

16. Ibid., 762.

17. Smith 2008, 91.

18. While the Hoa Hao emerged beyond the temporal framework of this article, I note them here because of their regional and structural affinities for the Cao Dai and other religiously inflected groups of the 1910s and 1920s.

19. See, for example, Ban Nghien Cuu Lich Su Dang TP Ho Chi Minh 1990, 16.

20. Indeed, how to label such collective political actions is something I wrestled with myself during my research on the Tay Son period. What does one call what the Tay Son brothers started: a revolt, an uprising, a revolution, or simply a “movement”? Each of these terms and others have been used.

21. Luong Ninh 2000, 395.

22. Marr 1972, 211. Marr does note, “On the crucial subject of patriotism, for example, the century had begun with the basic imperative still being fidelity (trung) — that is, personal loyalty to one's king, one's family, and one's comrades. The term “love country’ (yeu nuoc; Sino-Vietnamese ai-quoc) certainly existed, but it was generally subsumed under fidelity. However, during the period of the Dong Du movement and the Dong Kinh Nghia Thuc, love of country achieved a new status of its own, relating to the land and the people as a whole. This concept quickly took precedence over traditional fidelity, and by the 1920s the latter term had been altered until it could effectively by subsumed by the former.”

24. Vien Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi Viet Nam 2004, 159, 203, 206.

23. Uy Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi Viet Nam. Lich Su Viet Nam [History of Viet Nam] (1971) Vien Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi Viet Nam Lich Su Viet Nam [History of Viet Nam] (2004).

26. Huynh Cong Ba 2004, 294. Note: all translations are by the author unless otherwise stated.

25. Huynh Cong Ba's 2002 Lich Su Viet Nam [History of Vietnam].

27. Vien Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi Viet Nam 2004, 191.

28. Brocheux and Hémery 2009, 290. The Brocheux and Hémery map is based on a map in J.M. Pluvier's Historical Atlas of South-East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1995), p. 45.

29. Dinh Xuan Lam 2000, 92.

30. Duara 1995, 118–19.

31. Nguyen Khac Vien 1987, 186–87.

32. Uy Ban Nghien Cuu Lich Su Dang TP Ho Chi Minh 1990, 16.

33. Dinh Xuan Lam 2000, 202–3.

34. Ibid., 202.

35. Smith 2008, 99.

36. Tai 1992, 67.

37. Coulet 1971, 174.

39. Coulet 1971, 35.

38. Woodside 1976, 33–34.

41. Nguyen Khac Vien 1987, 184.

40. Uy Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi 2004, 173; Luong Ninh 2000, 406–07, uses almost precisely the same language.

42. Dinh Xuan Lam 2000, 208.

43. Ibid., 90–91.

44. Duong Kinh Quoc 1999, 320–21; 328; such language is quite common in describing those carrying out collective actions among the ethnically diverse upland peoples. See, also Huynh Cong Ba 2002, 294; Luong Ninh 2000, 396–97.

45. Marr 1972, 230.

46. Hickey 1982, 265, 272ff; Salemink 2003, 102–13.

47. Hickey 1982, 279, 281.

48. Salemink 2003, 102–13.

49. Uy Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 174; another reference to an ethnic group uprising in the early 1900s can be found on p. 162.

50. Salemink 2003, chaps. 6–8; Condominas 1977, xiii–xv.

51. This exhibitionary structure was still in effect in May 2010; the National Museum of Vietnamese History in Ho Chi Minh City offers much the same narrative, with the Trinh–Nguyen divide acknowledged only in the form of a wall chart listing the two separate lineages of seigneurs.

52. Tran Hong Duc 2009, 534–55.

53. Vien 1987; Toan 2004; Ba 2002; Duc 2009; Ninh 2000.

54. Reports of such crackdowns are common in the international press. Details can be found in country reports from Human Rights Watch Asia (www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/countrychapters/ vietnam?page=1) and Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org/en/region/viet-nam/ report-2013). Both accessed 22 June 2013.