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Imperial Interdependence on Indochina’s Maritime Periphery: France and Coal in Ceylon, Singapore, and Hong Kong, 1859–1895

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British and French Colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ((CIPCSS))

Abstract

The maritime periphery of French Indochina needed British coal and ports. The French navy and the Messageries Maritimes coaled in Singapore, Hong Kong, Ceylon, and Aden, relying on Britain’s carbon empire for fuel (the coal came from Britain or Australia) and fueling stations east of Suez. Coaling in these ports was vital to French shipping routes, packet services, naval vessels, and troop transports traveling between France and Indochina and carrying Indochinese exports to market. This had significant geopolitical consequences. Britain closed its ports (and the bought-and-paid-for French coal in them) to French naval use in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and the Sino-French War (1885). Escaping the British carbon system was an important motive in the French conquest of Tonkin (1885), known for coal. But exploiting the Hongay mines did not make Indochina carbon independent. Instead Indochina developed a new interdependency within an international carbon market that drew Vietnamese coal to Hong Kong—redefining, but not severing the Anglo-French relationship.

Thanks to François Dremeaux and Bert Becker for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Some French naval ships were built in British shipyards; shipbuilding was transnational in the 1860s.

  2. 2.

    James R. Fichter, “British Infrastructure and French Empire: Anglo-French Steam Interdependency in Asian Waters, c. 1852–1870” Britain and the World 5, no. 2 (2012): 183–203.

  3. 3.

    Etienne Denis, Bordeaux et la Cochinchine sous la Restauration et le Second Empire (Bordeaux: Delmas, 1965), 323.

  4. 4.

    Chambre de Commerce (Saigon), Compte Rendu des Travaux de la Chambre depuis sa Création. Situation Commerciale Pendant l’Année 1879 (Saigon, 1880), 10–11.

  5. 5.

    Cochinchine, État de la Cochinchine pendant l’année 1880 (Saigon: Imprimerie Nationale, 1881), 26.

  6. 6.

    Denis, Bordeaux et la Cochinchine, 323–324. Paul Bois, Le Grand Siècle Des Messageries Maritimes (Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie Marseille-Provence, 1991), 59.

  7. 7.

    Cochinchine, État 1884, 38.

  8. 8.

    On exports to Hong Kong: Cochinchine, État 1882, 31. On flags of carriers see: Cochinchine, État 1881, 34–35. By 1888 the situation was only more severe: 90 percent of Indochina’s imports came from Hong Kong and Singapore. Indochine Française, Administration des Douanes et Régis, Rapport sur les Statistiques des Douanes pour 1888 (Saigon, 1889), 12–13.

  9. 9.

    The Chamber’s argument was not so much that Saigon did not benefit from links to Singapore and Hong Kong but that the French state’s subsidy of the Messageries should redound to more directly benefit French business in Saigon. It was an argument about benefits—the chamber wanted the MM to do more for them without the chamber having to pay for it—not an argument about economic utility.

  10. 10.

    Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 130. Saigon was declared a free port on 2 Februrary 1860. There was probably a preexisting junk trade in rice to build off of here as well. By its nature, the free port declaration invited contemporary comparison with Singapore and Hong Kong.

  11. 11.

    Bois, Le Grand Siècle, 55.

  12. 12.

    Chambre de Commerce (Saigon), Situation Commerciale: Statistiques Importations et Exportations (Saigon, 1897), 77.

  13. 13.

    Raoul Postel, De Marseille à Saïgon: Notes et journal de voyage. (Caen: Imprimerie de F. le Blanc-Hardel, 1874), 10. British passengers may have outnumbered French ones, if only because there were so many more Britons in Asia. Galle linked passengers on the Aden-Singapore route to a spur line coming down from Calcutta. Even after the opening of the Bombay-Calcutta rail link in 1867, Galle was an important stopover for British passengers traveling to Calcutta and, therefore, an important source of revenue for the Messageries.

  14. 14.

    Cochinchine, État 1878.

  15. 15.

    Chambre de Commerce (Saigon), Compte Rendu 1879, 13, 49.

  16. 16.

    Cochinchine, État 1880, 26.

  17. 17.

    Cochinchine, État 1879, 3. There was a second steam sawmill in Phnom Penh. Chambre de Commerce (Saigon), Compte Rendu 1879, 49.

  18. 18.

    Chambre de Commerce (Saigon), Compte Rendu 1879, 52.

  19. 19.

    Cochinchine, État 1900 et 1901, 24.

  20. 20.

    Cochinchine, État 1883, 6.

  21. 21.

    Cochinchine, État 1882, 131.

  22. 22.

    Cochinchine, État 1890, 20.

  23. 23.

    Cochinchine, État 1900 et 1901, 24.

  24. 24.

    This is not meant to imply dependency on the part of some actors on others (i.e., whether steamers needed the rice as cargo more or less than the rice sellers needed the steamers to reach their market) but simply to indicate the reliance on a stable coal supply became increasingly economically important in general.

  25. 25.

    Marie-François Berneron-Couvenhes, Les Messageries Maritimes: L’essor d’une grande compagnie de navigation française, 1851–1894 (Paris: PUPS, DL 2007): 170–177.

  26. 26.

    Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France. Archives Centrales de l’Indochine. Gouvernement Général de l’Indochine (henceforth, INDO). 12,441 Charbon consommé par les Cannonieres de guerre pendant le 2e trimestre 1871.

  27. 27.

    National Archives, Kew, Britain. ADM 12/850 51. Neutrals and Contraband of War. War between France & Prussia. Queen’s Proclamation of Neutrality. Hereafter, ADM.

  28. 28.

    SMS Medusa and SMS Hertha. Additionally, Prussia had two gunboats for use on Chinese rivers. Together these comprised Prussia’s “East Asian Station.” Helmut Stoeker, Deutschland und China im 19: Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1958), 66–67. Thanks to Bert Becker for this reference.

  29. 29.

    P. Pollacchi, ed., Atlas Colonial Français: Colonies, Protectorats et Pays Sous Mandat (I’Illustration, 1929), 196.

  30. 30.

    INDO 14310.

  31. 31.

    INDO 10757, “Lettres du Gouverneur des Etablissements français dans l’Inde au sujet des dépôts de charbon à Mahé.” Emphasis original. INDO 14310. NB: French coal records are in metric tonnes, British coal data in imperial tons, specified as tonnes and tons, respectively, in the text.

  32. 32.

    Pollacchi, ed., Atlas Colonial Français, 201.

  33. 33.

    INDO 14161, Colonial Secretary, Singapore, 29 Sept. 1870.

  34. 34.

    INDO 14162. As the Dutch East Indies was unable to produce enough coal for its own use, it could not supply France sufficiently to give her independence from British coal or coaling stations. Mike C. Friederich and Theo van Leeuwen, “A Review of the History of Coal Exploration, Discovery and Production in Indonesia: The Interplay of Legal Framework, Coal Geology and Exploration Strategy,” International Journal of Coal Geology 178 (2017): 56–73. Pierre van der Eng, “Mining and Indonesia’s Economy: Institutions and Value Adding, 1870–2010,” PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series, no. 57 (2014), 7.

  35. 35.

    INDO 14161, Singapore. French Consul to Governor Saigon, 27 Sept. 1870.

  36. 36.

    INDO 14162.

  37. 37.

    INDO 14164, French Consul, Singapore to Governor Saigon, 17 Oct. 1870. INDO 14168, French Consul, Singapore to Governor Saigon, 20 Oct. 1870. INDO 14263, Gérant du Consulat, Singapore to Gov Saigon, 6 Nov. 1870.

  38. 38.

    ADM 12/850 51. Neutrals and Contraband of War. War between France & Prussia. Coals.

  39. 39.

    ADM 12/850 51. Neutrals and Contraband of War. War between France & Prussia. Purchase of Coals at Malta.

  40. 40.

    ADM 12/873 51. Neutrals and Contraband of War. War between France & Prussia. Coaling of belligerent Vessels on the Coast of Ireland.

  41. 41.

    Bois, Le Grand Siècle, 22, 34.

  42. 42.

    Industrial mining techniques could mine deeper quicker than purely manual methods, and superior coal was often found buried under a layer of inferior coal (which had endured less geological pressure).

  43. 43.

    Fichter, “British Infrastructure and French Empire.”

  44. 44.

    INDO 12441, Saigon 12 July 1871, M. Larrieu to M. Bigrel, Capt of Frigate, Chef d’État-Major.

  45. 45.

    Chambre de Commerce (Saigon), Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce de Saïgon (Saigon: 20 June 1881).

  46. 46.

    Cochinchine, État 1881, 26.

  47. 47.

    Chambre de Commerce (Saigon), Compte Rendu 1879, 52.

  48. 48.

    Much of the “Singaporean” coal imported in 1883 came from Antwerp. Coal mined in Southern Belgium was exported via Antwerp. It is unclear how much Antwerp coal was mined in Belgium and how much was transshipped from elsewhere. Cochinchine, État 1883, 32.

  49. 49.

    Eighty-four percent of the coal imported “from” France was for state use. In 1880 and 1884, the other years when we can make such comparisons, the figures were 99 and 96 percent, respectively. The comparison is made in piasters (rather than tonnes).

  50. 50.

    Unfortunately, the blue books cover only this decade, and since British authorities did not maintain a customs house there in the nineteenth century, this data is not terribly exact, nevertheless it can be used to suggest relative proportions of imports.

  51. 51.

    Blue Book (Hong Kong Government Printer, 1844–1859), Hong Kong University Library. Also cited as National Archives, Kew, Britain. CO 133/1–16. NB: These are British imperial tons, not French metric tonnes.

  52. 52.

    Straits Settlements Blue Books (1870–1909) (Government Printing Office, Singapore. NAS).

  53. 53.

    Ellsworth C. Carlson, The Kaiping Mines, 1887–1912 (Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 1971), 26. Tim Wright, Coal Mining in China’s Economy and Society, 1895–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

  54. 54.

    China, Trade Statistics of the Treaty Ports, for the Period 1863–1872 (Shanghai: Inspectorate General of Customs, 1873).

  55. 55.

    China, the Maritime Customs: Decennial Report, 1882–1891 (Shanghai: Inspectorate General of Customs), xxv.

  56. 56.

    INDO 12530, 10382, 10388.

  57. 57.

    INDO 12440.

  58. 58.

    INDO 12528.

  59. 59.

    INDO 12121, 12122.

  60. 60.

    INDO 12712, 12714, 12788 (which last concerns coal in Annam).

  61. 61.

    INDO 12713, Marseilles 16 Sept. 1882, J. Talon to Gov Cochinchina.

  62. 62.

    Eugène Germain Garnot, L’ expédition française de Formose, 1884–1885 (1894). M. Loir, L’escadre de l’amiral Courbet (Paris: 1886). L. Eastman, Throne and Mandarins: China’s Search for a Policy during the Sino-French Controversy (Harvard University Press, 1984). A. Thomazi, La conquête de l’Indochine (Paris: 1934). A. Thomazi, Histoire militaire de l’Indochine français (Hanoi: 1931).

  63. 63.

    Again, French coal could be transshipped from Britain or mined from French soil, and European coal could come from neutral states that would either transship or sell their own coal to Indochina. Source: Cochinchine, État 1885.

  64. 64.

    Saigon’s place twelve hours upriver deterred naval ships from coaling there as well. Likewise, in 1894 French engineers were still designing a canal to allow large ships to come in close at Haiphong, making that port still far from ideal, unlike Hong Kong. INDO 14326.

  65. 65.

    INDO 24734.

  66. 66.

    Pierre Brocheux, Une histoire économique du Viet Nam 1850–2007 (Paris: les Indes savants, 2009), 93.

  67. 67.

    Indochine Française, Rapport sur les Statistiques des Douanes pour 1892, 86.

  68. 68.

    INDO 6289.

  69. 69.

    http://entreprises-coloniales.fr/inde-indochine/Charbon._Tonkin_1899-2015.pdf. Letter of Gougal to Foreign Ministry, 28 Oct. 1922, French Foreign Ministry, la Courneuve, Affaires politiques, Série E, Possessions Britanniques. Chater would join the Hong Kong legislative and executive councils, and Mody was a major philanthropist in the city. Thanks to François Drémeaux for this reference. British interest in investing in French Cochinchina was longstanding. Denis, Bordeaux et la Cochinchine, 322. However, the implication that Chater and Mody founded the Société on their own (as opposed to being among the founders) and that because of their involvement it was “the only successful business ever to be established in French Indo-China” is an Anglocentric overstatement of their roles in the Société and Britain’s. May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn, eds., Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 80, 322–323. The Kowloon property was sold in 1901. Indochine Française, Bulletin économique de l’Indo-Chine 39 (Sept. 1901), 820–821. Thanks to Bert Becker for this reference. On the role of CIC see Pierre Brocheux, Une histoire économique du Viet Nam 1850–2007 (Paris: les Indes savants, 2009), 93.

  70. 70.

    Cf. Indochine Française, Rapport sur les Statistiques des Douanes pour 1894, which sees exports of coal from Tonkin of roughly 100,000 tonnes in 1894 and local usage of 10 to 13,700 tonnes.

  71. 71.

    Compare the Hongay mine, which produced 112,574 tonnes in 1894 and exported 97,247 tonnes. INDO 22961. This data varies slightly from that in Indochine Française, Rapport sur les Statistiques des Douanes pour 1893, (1894).

  72. 72.

    Pierre Cordemoy, Les Anthracites Français du Tonkin (Paris: Agence Économique de l’Indochine, 1933), 10.

  73. 73.

    It is unclear when the factory was built. The land it was on was bought in 1895 and sold in 1901; the factory relocated to Hongay. Indochine Française. Bulletin économique de l’Indo-Chine 39 (Sept. 1901), 821.

  74. 74.

    Brocheux, Une histoire économique du Viet Nam 90.

  75. 75.

    Of the 74,166 tonnes of coal exported from Tonkin in 1895, only 5 tonnes were exported to France. Indochine Française Rapport sur les Statistiques des Douanes pour 1895.

  76. 76.

    Henri Brenier. Gouvernement Général de l’Indochine. Essai d’Atlas Statistique de l’Indochine Française (1914: Hanoi and Haiphong, Imprinerie d’Extrême-Orient) 183.

  77. 77.

    Fernand Blondel et al., Les Ressources minérales de la France d’outre-Mer I (Paris, Société d’éditions géographiques, maritimes et colonials, 1934) I 57, 95–97, 127, 174, 225. Brian C. Black, Crude Reality: Petroleum in World History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012) 60, 93.

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      James R. Fichter

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    Fichter, J.R. (2019). Imperial Interdependence on Indochina’s Maritime Periphery: France and Coal in Ceylon, Singapore, and Hong Kong, 1859–1895. In: Fichter, J.R. (eds) British and French Colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97964-9_8

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