Abstract
The account of the introduction and development of anthropology in Vietnam crosses and embodies the events of the twentieth century in a surprising way. Starting from a colonial history in which Southeast Asia, a much larger region that does not coincide but rather includes the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and passing through the World Wars, decolonisation and the Cold War, Vietnam is at the centre of a complex trajectory of cultural narratives, policies and ethnographic self-representations difficult to trace back to a single and linear story. In this chapter, the work on the sources includes archives of the various cultural institutions founded in colonial times by France in Indochina, a period in which anthropology overlaps and joins archaeology; it then collects the testimonies of the first Vietnamese anthropologists who, although trained at the French school, distinguished themselves in nationalist roles during the times of the Indochina War; they include the divergent and highly politicised narratives of the two decades of the division of the country (1955–1975), a complex phase to be reconstructed due to the objective decrease in anthropological research and the scarcity of digital sources relating to the ethnography of the Soviet period.
In all these phases, anthropology struggles to assume a status independent from history, at least at the institutional level, and rarely it evolves from an ethnographic-descriptive phase. Finally, the contemporary scenario is introduced, a context that sees a real boom in Vietnamese anthropology thanks to the opening of degree courses, research doctorates, dedicated departments and new ethnographic museums, which indicate altogether the acknowledgement of anthropology as a discipline not only useful for the investigation of the (very many) ethnic and linguistic diversities, but also as necessary knowledge for environmental protection, for tourism enhancement and for the reconstruction of an articulated history of the self and the nation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Having gained control of Cochinchina in 1867, in 1872 the French initiated military campaigns towards the rest of the country. In 1883 France concluded the Tonkin campaign, with the treaty of Huế, which required the Vietnamese court to set up protectorates over Annam and Tonkin (Protectorat d’Annam and Protectorat du Tonkin). The Franco-Chinese war (1884–1885) ensued, and the victory the French marked at the beginning of a period of extensive rule over Vietnam.
- 2.
The Geneva Conference of 1954 put an end to the Indochina War and marked the demise of the French Protectorate. Four independent nations were established: Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam of the North and Viet Nam of the South, separated by a formal boundary along the seventeenth parallel. The partition imposed on Viet Nam was de facto endorsed for opposing reasons by all the political actors involved in the Conference: the United States, China, the Soviet Union and France itself. The partition marked the onset of a phase of internal migration and anticipated intense emigration of Vietnamese people from both halves of the country. The Vietnamese general elections planned in the Geneva treaties for 1956, and meant to end the temporary partition set up by the Conference, never took place. On the contrary, from 1959 the Ho Chi Minh government in the North began to officially support Viet Minh guerrillas in the South.
- 3.
In the texts of many American authors, the Viet Nam War is called the Second Indochina War, whereas history texts of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam do not refer to the country’s partition but rather mention the “occupation of southern regions by American military forces”.
- 4.
Most sources attest that the extent of administrative and fiscal control over the five regional units of French Indochina continued to change and featured quite different profiles even after Paul Doumer set up authorised agencies in all five areas of the protectorate. Cochinchina was administered directly by France, while the four protectorates were to a certain extent ruled by their respective monarchs: in Annam and Tonkin the Vietnamese emperor had to accept French civilian personnel into his central and regional government, which effectively created a parallel administration; the monarchies of Cambodia and Laos remained in power symbolically with very limited roles, while officials occupied the highest posts and reported to the French Résident supérieur (Devillers, 1952; Lam, 2000; Cooper, 2001).
- 5.
From the name of the official who authorised its establishment, Governor General of Cochinchina from 1926 to 1929, Paul-Marie Blanchard de la Brosse signed the decree for the opening of the Musée de Saigon; later Musée Blanchard de la Brosse; from 1953 to 1975 National Museum of Vietnam; finally, after the unification, Vietnam History Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, under the direction of the Vietnam History Museum in Hanoi.
- 6.
In 1954, Võ Nguyên Giáp became known beyond the anthropological sphere as General Giáp in the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, which put an end to the Indochina War.
- 7.
It should be noted that EFEO embraced this new course of scientific research in an exceptionally contentious political climate around French colonial management. In Paris, disputes emerged on the opening of the Colonial Exhibition of 1931. Many Vietnamese were arrested, most of whom were students attending a meeting with Nguyen Van Tao, a newly formed Central Committee member of the Indochinese Communist Party (Lebovics, 1992, p. 98).
- 8.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/42927609.pdf, Communication from THE FAR-EASTERN PREHISTORY ASSOCIATION In Asian Perspectives, Vol. 1, No. 1–2, 1957, pp. 6–11.
- 9.
Among the key events contributing to the end of the Indochina War was the defeat of France by the Viet Minh led by General Võ Nguyên Giáp in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Võ Nguyên Giáp had been a student at the French university of Indochina in the 1930s, and he must have known Phan Bội Châu (see note 22).
- 10.
A wide and discontinuous range of sources, often at odds with each other, have gone into the writing of this section: rare articles on Viet Nam issued in the leading Soviet ethnographic journal (called Sovyetskaya Etnografia between 1931 and 1991, the years I focus on) available in translation only with regard to some years; Soviet studies journals (Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology, renamed Anthropology and Archaeology of Eurasia in 1992); the institutional websites of the Vietnam Academy of Sciences and the National University of Vietnam in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh (in Vietnamese and English) and related historical archives only for sections available in electronic format (some of which I have translated); records of a historical-ethnographic nature, de-classified in 2005, and for use by the American Defense Department during the Vietnam War (1968–1975, or the Second Indochina War, according to the most frequent wording in the American literature).
- 11.
In 1976 the Workers’ Party (Đảng công nhân Việt Nam) merged with the National Liberation Front, and with the People’s Revolutionary Party of Vietnam (South, Đảng Nhân dân Cách mạng Việt Nam, established in 1962 in support of the Viet Minh) and joined the Communist Party of Vietnam (Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam).
- 12.
Institutional website in English of the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences. Last accessed 04/2022. http://en.vass.gov.vn/noidung/gioithieu/pages/lich-su-phat-trien.aspx?ItemID=3.
- 13.
- 14.
Ngô Đình Diệm was the self-appointed president of the Republic of South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963. A former official of the French administration, in 1954 he opposed the Geneva conference’s decision to launch a referendum aimed at the reunification of the country. With the support of a Catholic minority, Diệm established a pro-US government in southern Vietnam, supported especially by the million Catholics who had left the Democratic Republic of Vietnam after the establishment of the Communist government in Ho Chi Minh.
- 15.
The Department of History was inaugurated at the National University of Hanoi in 1956 and remained the leading Humanities department until reunification.
- 16.
The author dwells rather critically on the academic training provided to students in the Soviet orbit during their three-year stay in the USSR: the first year was devoted to learning Russian, the second to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, and only the third engaged the study of the discipline itself (Nguyen Van Chinh, 2019, p. 91).
- 17.
In the institutional narrative, the Vietnam War (War of Resistance Against America) is said to take place from 1955 to 1975.
- 18.
https://vass.gov.vn/Pages/Index.aspx Last accessed 04/2022.
- 19.
The denomination of Indochina War of 1945–1954 was adopted throughout the DRV.
- 20.
What needs to be looked into is the possible reason for the importance attributed to ethnolinguistic mapping of the mountain areas of Tonkin, that is the North of Vietnam. Squeezed between the expansions of the Chinese empire from the North and Thai incursions from the West, this mountain region featured a heterogeneous ethnic makeup, layered over time on account of the flights or migrations to the highlands by successive waves of populations who had different languages, ethnicities, and histories. Trade between these groups over such rough terrain was difficult or non-existent, and both in colonial and in Soviet times, the kingdoms and empires of the plains found it hard to oversee or tax the whole region. Missions to impose control via mapping were attempted repeatedly throughout the twentieth century. A rich selection of ethnolinguistic maps documenting all this may be found in Michaud et al., 2002.
- 21.
Military aid that played a decisive anti-colonial role came from the Khmer and Laotians, while the territory of the South was ravaged by both regular guerrillas, the Viet Minh of North Vietnam and irregular bands. Each militia had its own dominant ethnic group, in a context of increasing fragmentation of social as well as the political conflict.
- 22.
Phan Bội Châu (1867–1940), patriot and nationalist, turned to Japan for anti-French support; Phan Châu Trinh (1872–1926), nationalist and revolutionary, anti-monarchist and anti-militarist, opposed the Japanese intervention in Vietnam.
- 23.
First secretary of the PCV, author in 1953–1956 of a major agrarian reform designed for the benefit of rural ethnic groups, with a view to overhauling the still feudal setup of the land. The reform was in fact disastrous and caused hunger and famine. It was one of the publicly acknowledged failures of PCV policies.
- 24.
According to the official historical page of the VASS, http://en.vass.gov.vn/noidung/gioithieu/pages/lich-su-phat-trien.aspx?ItemID=3. (Last accessed 04/2022).
- 25.
Cited documents are available in the archive of the Institute of Anthropology and may be consulted on the website upon request. Consultation was made possible via digital translations. Even though we are dealing with a rough translation, it is reasonably certain that relations were of technique-based rather than ethnographic, provided ethnography is understood as resulting from an immersive or prolonged presence in the field. Descriptions dwell on work tools used in the fields, on the surge in agricultural productivity thanks to the introduction of machinery and on the increased quantity of rice available to each family. Interactions with rural populations are undocumented, and no quantitative distinctions emerge, either of thought or of beliefs. Distinctions and classification operate on a purely linguistic basis (Last accessed 04/2022).
- 26.
Interestingly, the Vietnamese Revolution History Museum was to be absorbed by the National History Museum in 2011.
- 27.
In any case, it is unrealistic to imagine Vietnam as uniformly represented by any of its museums, not even with regard to museums that are meant as unmediated expressions of the socialist period. The meaning that the term socialist has taken on in Vietnam must be understood “situationally”, as placed within a context and at a particular juncture that intersects an anti-colonial and anti-French thrust later rephrased as anti-American.
Debate on the socialist past in Vietnam, or rather on the failed experiment of socialist society that lasted only three decades (1954–1986), seems ultimately much more nuanced and far reaching inside a museum than in the static pages of a history book. Objects on display are selected together with citizens. Each window or caption is the result of a negotiation. And the power of public negotiation remains strong because it is also exerted in the act of not stopping to look or read. This experience of collective representation has made it possible to develop only a small part of that nostalgia for the Socialist Past: Ostalgie, a well-known leitmotiv in the history and memory of unified Germany against the decades of the German Democratic Republic.
References
Arutiunov, S. A. (1959). Poezda vo V’etnam (Trip to Vietnam). Sovietskaya Etnografia, 3.
Arutiunov, S. A., & Cheboksarov, N. N. (1972). Peredacha informatsii как mekhanizm sushchestvovaniia emosotsial’nykh i biologicheskikh grupp chelovechestva [Transfer of information as a mechanism for the existence of emo social and biological human groups]. Nauka.
Betts, R. F. (1961). Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914. Columbia University Press.
Bonifacy, A. (1919). Gouvernement General de l’Indochine, and Enseignement Superieur d’Indochine. Cours D’ethnographie Indochinoise. Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient.
Cadière, L. (1958). Croyances et Pratiques Religieuses des Vietnamiens [Beliefs and Religious Practices of the Vietnamese] (Vol. 1). Publications De L’École Française D’extrême-Orient, Nouvelle d’Extrême-Orient.
Clementin-Ojha, C. (2000). Les ethnologies de l’école francaise d’extrême-orient. Comptes rendus de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres IV, pp. 1507–1513.
Clémentin-Ojha, C., & Manguin, P.-Y. (2001). Un siècle pour l’Asie. L’École Française d’Extrême Orient. Les Éditions du Pacifique.
Condominas, G. (1954). Nous avons mangé la forêt de la Pierre-Génie Gôo. Mercure de France.
Conklin, A. (1997). A Mission to Civilize. The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930. Stanford University Press.
Cooper, N. (2001). France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters Oxford-New. Berg.
Cooper, N. (2005). Disturbing the Colonial Order: Dystopia and Disillusionment in Indochina. In K. Robson & J. Yee (Eds.), France and «Indochina»: Cultural Representations (pp. 79–94). Lexington.
Dang Nguyen Anh. (2019). Assessing Doi Moi (Renovation) Anthropology in Vietnam. In E. C. Thompson & V. Sinha (Eds.), Southeast Asian Anthropologies. National Traditions and Transnational Practices (pp. 276–291). National University of Singapore Press.
ĐÀO Duy Anh. (1938). Việt Nam văn hóa sử cương [Histoire culturelle du Vietnam]. Quan Hải tùng thư.
ĐÀO Duy Anh. (1989). Nhớ nghĩ chiều hôm [Souvenirs et réflexions au crépuscule. Mémoires]. Ed. Tre.
Davis, B. C. (2017). Between Ethnos and Nation: Genealogies of Dân Tộc in Vietnamese Contexts. In R. Darnell & F. W. Gleach (Eds.), Historicizing Theories, Identities, and Nations. Histories of Anthropology Annual (Vol. 11). University of Nebraska Press.
De L’Estoile, B. (2010). Les goût des Autres. De l’Exposition coloniale aux Arts Premiers. Flammarion.
De L’Estoile, B. (2012). Internationalization and «Scientific Nationalism»: The International Institute of African Languages and Cultures Between the Wars. In H. Tilley & R. J. Gordon (Eds.), Ordering Africa. Anthropology, European Imperialism and the Politics of Knowledge (pp. 95–116). Manchester University Press.
Del Testa, D. W. (2002). Workers, Culture, and the Railroads in French Colonial Indochina, 1905–1936. French Colonial History, 2, 181–198.
Devillers, P. (1952). Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952. Seuil.
Dias, N. (2014). Rivet’s Mission in Colonial Indochina (1931–1932) or the Failure to Create an Ethnographic Museum. History and Anthropology, 25(2), 189–207.
Dragazde, T. (1978). Anthropological fieldwork in the USSR 61–70. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 9(1), 61–70.
Embree, J. F. (1948). Anthropology During the War: X. Anthropology in Indochina Since 1940. American Anthropologist, 50, 4, 714–716.
Gaudio, A. (2019). A Translation of the Linguae Annamiticae seu Tunchinensis brevis declaratio: The First Grammar of Quốc Ngữ. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 14(3), 79–114.
Harris, I. (2008). Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice. University of Hawaii Press.
Hoàng Lương (Ed.). (2007). Đề Án Đào Tạo Thạc Sĩ, Tiến Sĩ Ngành Nhân Học—Xã Hội Đạt Trình Độ Quốc Tế. Hà Nội.
Hobbs, C. (1952). An Account of an Acquisition Trip in the Countries of Southeast Asia. Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program.
Khong Dien. (2002). Population and Ethnodemography in Vietnam. Silkworm.
Kleinen, J. (1996). Ethnographic Praxis and the Colonial State in Vietnam [Thuc Tien Dan Toc Hoc Duoi Che Do Thouc Dia O Viet Nam]. In P. Le Failler & J. M. Mancini (Eds.), Viet Nam: Sources Et Approaches (pp. 15–48). Publications de l’Université de Provence.
Kratoska, P. (1999). Nationalism and Modernist Reform. In I. N. Tarling (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (pp. 245–320). Cambridge University Press.
Kriukov, M. V. (1976). Evoliutsiia etnicheskogo samosoznaniia i problema etnogeneza, «Rasy i národy», 6, 42–63.
Lam, T. B. (2000). Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900–1931. University of Michigan Press.
Lebovics, H. (1992). True France. The Wars over Cultural Identity 1900–1945. Cornell University Press.
LeFailler, P. (2000). L’école Française d’Extrême-Orient à Hanoi, 1900–2000: Regards Croisés Sur Un Siècle De Recherches / Viện Viễn Đông Bác Cổ Pháp Tại Việt Nam, 1900–2000: Nhìn Lại Một Thế Kỷ Nghiên Cứu Khoa Học. Nhà xuất bản Văn hóa thong tin.
Lévy, P. (1939). Préhistoire et Ethnologie en Indochine. Cahiers de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 18, 47–52.
Lương Đức Thiệp. (1944). Xã hôi Việt Nam. Liên-hiệp.
Mac-Duong. (1977). The Principal Stages of the Development of Ethnographic Knowledge in Vietnam. Soviet Anthropology and Archeology, 15(4), 74–89. (or. ed. Soviet Ethnography, 2, 1970, pp. 91–99).
Michaud, J., et al. (2002). Mapping Ethnic Diversity in Northern Vietnam. GeoJournal, 57, 305–323.
Mukhlinov, A. I. (1964). A Trip to Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1962. Soviet Anthropology and Archeology, 3(2), 51–60.
Mukhlinov, A. I. (1965). Material on the Ethnography of the Highland Peoples in Nghe An Province (Democratic Republic of Vietnam). Sovietskaya Etnografia, 5, 45–56.
Mukhlinov, A. I. (1977). Proiskhozhdeniye iranniye etapy etnicheskoy istoriyi vietnamskogo naroda [The Origin and Early Stages of the Ethnic History of the Vietnamese People]. Nauka.
Mukhlinov, A. I. (1983). Avstroaziatskie narody V’etnama. Etnicheskaya obshchnost’ Khamu [Austro-Asiatic ethnic groups of Vietnam, Ethnic community Khamu]. In Malye narody Indokitaja [Small ethnic groups of Indo-China] (pp. 123–136). Nauka Publishing House.
Ngô Tất Tố. (1941). Lều chõng. Mai Linh.
Nguyễn Hương Thị Thu. (2002). Redefining the Museum in Modern Vietnam: A Case Study of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology. Columbia University Press.
Nguyễn Phuong Ngoc. (2012). À l’origine de l’anthropologie au Viet-Nam: Recherche sur les auteurs de la première moitié du XXe siècle. Aix-en-Provence Presse Universitaire de Provence.
Nguyễn Phuong Ngoc. (2017). Adopting Western Methods to Understand One’s Own Culture: Social and Cultural Studies by Vietnamese Scholars of the French Colonial Era. In R. Darnell & F. W. Gleach (Eds.), Historicizing Theories, Identities, and Nations. Histories of Anthropology Annual (Vol. 11, pp. 199–218). University of Nebraska Press.
Nguyễn Phuong Ngoc. (1928). Tục-ngữ phong-dao (Dictons et chansons populaires), 2 volumes, 360 p. + 274 p., Hanoi.
Nguyen Van Chinh. (2019). Vietnamese Anthropology at the Crossroads of Change. In E. C. Thompson & V. Sinha Vineeta (Eds.), Southeast Asian Anthropologies. National Traditions and Transnational Practices (pp. 83–107). National University of Singapore Press.
Nguyen Van Huy. (2017). Life in Hanoi in the State Subsidy Period: Questions Raised in Social Criticism and Social Reminiscences. In R. Darnell & F. W. Gleach (Eds.), Historicizing Theories, Identities, and Nations. Histories of Anthropology Annual (Vol. 11, pp. 219–251). University of Nebraska Press.
Nguyễn Văn Huyên. (1944). La civilisation annamite. Direction de l’Instruction publique de l’Indochine.
Pairaudeau, N., et al. (Eds.). (1998). Saïgon 1698–1998 Kiến Trúc/Architectures Quy Hoạch/Urbanisme. Nhà Xuất Bản Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh.
Pels P., & Salemink O. (1999). Introduction: Locating the Colonial Subject of Anthropology. In Colonial Subjects: Essays on the Practical History of Anthropology (pp. 1–52). The University of Michigan Press.
Pinna, G. (2017). Musée de L’Homme, un dramma in tre atti. Museologia Scientifica, 11, 125–137.
Rivet, P. (1933). Les Océaniens. Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, 33, 492–496.
Rivet, P. (1936). Ce qu’est l’ethnologie. In L. Febvre & A. de Monzie (Eds.), L’Encyclopédie française (Vol. 7). Comité de l’Encyclopédie française, Librairie Larousse.
Russian Academy of Sciences. (2014). Russian Scholars on Vietnam. Selected Papers, Forum Publishing House, Moscow.
Salemink, O. (2003). The Ethnography of Vietnam’s Central Highlanders: A Historical Contextualization 1850–1990. University of Hawaii Press.
Sarraut, A. (1923). La mise en valeur des colonies françaises. Payot et Cie.
Sarraut, A. (1929). Préface. In G. Maspéro (Ed.), Un Empire colonial français. Indochine (pp. XI–XXII). Les Éditions G. Van Oest.
Sasagawa, H. (2015). The Establishment of the National Language in Twentieth-Century Cambodia: Debates on Orthography and Coinage. Southeast Asian Studies, 4(1).
Sherman, D. J. (2004). «Peoples Ethnographic»: Objects, Museums, and the Colonial Inheritance of French Ethnology. French Historical Studies, 27(3), 669–703.
Trần Văn Giáp. (1936). Cổ tích của người Việt Nam ở Huế: Chua Thien Mụ [Contes de fées vietnamiens à Hue: Chua Thien Mu]. BSEM, January–June, pp. 97–109.
Trần Văn Giáp. (1940–1941). Lược khảo về khoa cử Việt Nam từ khởi thủy đến khóa Mậu Ngọ (1918). Bulletin de la Association pour la Formation Intellectuelle et Morale des Annamites, pp. 41–92.
Trinh Van Thao. (1990). Vietnam du confucianisme au communisme. Harmattan.
Trinh Van Thao. (1995). L’école française en Indochine. Éd Karthala.
Trinh Van Thao. (1997). Hoàng Xuân Hãn: Essai d’un itinéraire intellectual. Approche Asie, 15, 105–111.
Trocki, C. A. (1999). Political Structures in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. In N. Tarling (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (pp. 75–126). Cambridge University Press.
Truong Huyen Chi. (2014). The Margin Contextualized: Nguyễn Từ Chi (1925–1995) and an Alternative Ethnography in the Socialist Vietnam. Moussons, Les “passeurs”, 44.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bougleux, E. (2023). The Diverse Accounts of Anthropology in Viet Nam. In: D'Agostino, G., Matera, V. (eds) Histories of Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21258-1_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21258-1_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-21257-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-21258-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)