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A view from the mountains: a critical history of Lowlander-Highlander

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 A View from the Mountains 25

The Historical
Constitution
of the Uplands

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 26 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

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 A View from the Mountains 27

1
A View from the Mountains:
A Critical History of Lowlander-
Highlander Relations in Vietnam 1

Oscar Salemink

Introduction
In the summer of 1996, when I worked as programme officer for the Ford
Foundation in Vietnam, I met with Dr Hoàng Xuân Tý, who wanted to
discuss a project proposal about “indigenous technical knowledge” among
upland minorities in Vietnam. A soil scientist working for the Forest
Science Institute of Vietnam in Từ Liêm, Hanoi, Dr Tý explained why he
had become interested in the concept of “indigenous knowledge”. Up until
that point, (highland) ethnic minorities were generally seen as backward
(lạc hậu), primitive (nguyên thủy) and steeped in superstitious beliefs (mê
tín dị đoan), and their “slash-and-burn” agricultural practices (phá rừng
làm rẫy) were regarded as the main cause of deforestation (Jamieson et
al. 1998). From that perspective—widely shared by Vietnamese scientists,
government officials and media—development consisted of bringing
science, technology and the superior civilization of the lowlander Việt
to the highlands. Dr Tý recalled his years fighting for his country, when
he and his fellow soldiers could survive in the mountainous jungles only
because local people taught them how to. After his studies in Hanoi he
went back to the mountain areas and was involved in dozens of projects
with the aim of lifting local ethnic groups out of their backwardness and
poverty. But, Dr Tý insisted: “All of our beautiful science and technology
projects failed, while local people were successful in what they did. The
trees that we brought died within one year, but the trees that local people
planted still stand. Their local knowledge is much better than our so-called

27

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 28 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

scientific knowledge; it is time that we come to the Highlands to learn

instead of to teach.” In the face of suspicion from scientists and other
experts, the project was implemented with funding from the International
Development Research Centre (Canada) and the Ford Foundation, and
it resulted in a number of publications and other projects in “indigenous
knowledge” in Vietnam (see Hoàng Xuân Tý and Lê Trọng Cúc 1998).
This anecdote serves to illustrate the complex and contradictory
relationships between Highlands and Lowlands, between upland ethnic
minorities and the majority Việt, through history. Much international
colonial and postcolonial scholarship on highland ethnic minorities
in Vietnam emphasizes a fundamental cultural difference between
Kinh or Việt Lowlanders and minority Highlanders. According to this
view, in precolonial times Highlanders were politically, culturally and
economically largely autonomous and lived undisturbed lives until they
were “pacified” by the colonial state. The fundamental divide, then,
runs along ethnic and geographic (Highlands-Lowlands) lines. Eager to
deny the cultural divide-and-rule implications of colonial scholarship,
Vietnamese historiography and ethnology tend to emphasize perennial
political solidarity and unity between lowland and upland ethnic groups
within the frame of the Vietnamese nation, while acknowledging and
celebrating cultural diversity. In this view, the state border is the most
relevant dividing line. That said, efforts to stress national solidarity
and other connections between ethnic groups are predicated on prior
distinctions between Highlands and Lowlands, between ethnic minorities
and ethnic majority, between ethnic(s) and nation.
However, the relations between Lowlander Việt—who affixed their
ethnonym to the country’s name—and ethnic minority Highlanders
within the national borders are in both discourses also classified along
a temporal axis (of advanced and backward, civilized and primitive,
centre and periphery), thus connoting a denial of coevalness to minorities
(Fabian 1983). Remote areas are discursively conceived as the “natural”
abode of ethnic minorities, despite a historical reality of travel, mobility,
migration and resettlement, including migration of Việt people into upland
areas. Although recent critical scholarship has tended to debunk cultural
essentialism by looking at the role of the (post)colonial state in ethnic
classification (Keyes 2002; Koh 2004; Pelley 1998, 2003; Salemink
2003a; Taylor 2001), the net effect of the action of the state—as a vehicle
of the Việt-dominated nation—is to stress the essential difference between
Lowlanders and Highlanders. In present-day “development-speak”, this
notion of a cultural and geographic gulf to be bridged is brought out in

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 A View from the Mountains 29

expressions such as “remote areas” or vùng sâu, vùng xa and underlies

much of the current thinking and policy regarding uplands and minorities,
resembling a benevolent, postcolonial mission civilisatrice.2
In this chapter, however, I would like to zoom in on historical relations
between Lowlanders and Highlanders in the literal sense, meaning the
relations connecting rather than dividing ethnic groups, population groups
and geographic areas. Assuming that formal ethnic identities were weak
where local identities were strong in fluid situations, I shall argue that
local identities were profiled as a result of religious, political, economic
and cultural exchanges during the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial
eras. I shall especially focus on the effects of these exchanges in terms
of leadership. Contrary to the view that local or ethnic leadership closed
off “ethnic boundaries”, I shall argue that local leadership was actually
produced through economic, political and ritual exchanges, akin to
Arjun Appadurai’s notion of the “production of locality” (1996) against
the backdrop of constant change, transformations, threats—in brief:
globalization avant la lettre. Only with the colonial and postcolonial eras
did the governmentalization of exchanges and the territorialization of
governance “produce” not just the “hard” ethnic boundaries through the
classification processes that Charles Keyes (2002) speaks about, but also
the impermeable borders that James Scott (1998) speaks of. By debunking
both the nationalist historiography and culturalizing discourse in this
manner, I hope to open up space for new, critical insights into assumptions
concerning Lowlander-Highlander relations in the present age.
The main body of this chapter is devoted to the argument that the
historical relations between lowland polities and various upland groups in
precolonial times and at the time of the French conquest have been more
substantial for the economic and political situation of these lowlands than
is usually acknowledged. The second section is devoted to the lowland-
upland dynamics and international maritime trade in Đàng Trong (southern
Vietnam, seventeenth to eighteenth centuries) and Đàng Ngoài (Tonkin,
seventeenth to eighteenth centuries), in which I argue that successful
maritime trade in Đàng Trong was linked with riverine and overland
trade with the mountainous hinterland. This insight about the mountains
as a trade and contact zone leads me to draw an analogy with the South
China Sea, which has often been seen as a bridging rather than dividing
water—a sea of commerce (Reid 1988a, 1988b); as a cultural crossroads
(Lombard 1990); as an Asian Mediterranean (Lombard 1998, Sutherland
2003); or as a porous border (Tagliacozzo 2007). The third section looks
at the relations between Lowlands and Uplands during the nineteenth

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 30 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

century under the Nguyễn Dynasty. In this section I argue that political
and ritual leadership in the Highlands of what is now Vietnam was very
much connected with the position of such leaders in long-distance trade
networks. The fourth section zooms in on the Northern Highlands and the
role of the Đèo lineage during the early and latter days of French rule and
their interest in the opium trade. In the fifth section I offer some more
general reflections on the nature of Highlander leadership in precolonial
times, arguing for a realization that Highlander leadership was largely
based on connections with the Lowlands; and that Lowland polities were
also dependent on trade and alliances with highland leaders. Finally, I
shall conclude that—akin to the “view from the sea” proposed by Li Tana,
John Whitmore and Charles Wheeler—the historiography and ethnography
of Vietnam require a “view from the mountains” in order to redress the
nationalist and developmental notions about backwardness, remoteness
and isolation produced by the modern state and eagerly supported by
NGOs and other development donors.

Historical Trade Relations between Tây Nguyên (Central Highlands)

and Đàng Trong (Southern Vietnam)
Many authors insist that the Vietnamese Highlands, surrounded by
“Indianized” and “Sinicized” states on all sides (Coedès 1948), constitute
one “culture area”, contiguous with and similar to the uplands stretching
to Northeast India, Bangladesh and Burma on the west; Yunnan on the
north; and Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia on the south and east
(Kirsch 1973; Wijeyewardene 1990; Michaud 2000b, 2007; Jonsson 2005).
In order to move the focus away from area studies specialisms that tend
to project present-day subcontinental boundaries into the past, Willem
van Schendel (2002) gave this region a proper name—“Zomia”—in order
to denote an area stretching across three subcontinents (South Asia, East
Asia and Southeast Asia). James Scott (2009) recast this Zomia region as
a zone of refuge from state impositions. Other authors were more modest
in their geographical ambitions, just arguing against nationalist narratives
in historiography and ethnography by speaking of “hill tribes society”
(Kirsch 1973), the South-East Asian Massif (Michaud 2000b) or Montane
Mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA; see the series of international con-
ferences taking place in Chiang Mai and elsewhere since the 1990s).
While these authors convincingly debunk the nationalist narratives that
lock up ethnic groups within national states by pointing at cross-border
connections and commonalities, the emphasis on a common cross-border

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 A View from the Mountains 31

geographic and culture area has the unintended side effect of emphasizing
difference and distance from lowland states and civilizations, thereby
exoticizing Uplanders as ethnic “others” vis-à-vis Lowlanders.
In earlier work I showed that historical cultural differences between
and among Lowlanders and Highlanders and misperceptions of Highlander
culture do not mean that this difference is absolute, nor that Lowlanders
and Highlanders are naturally antagonistic, as was and is often assumed
by outsiders (Salemink 2003a). It does not mean that there was no contact
or commerce, as trade has linked Highlands and Lowlands alike with
international trade networks. Long-distance trade connected lowland and
highland places and populations, with important political and cultural
effects in both the Highlands and Lowlands. This is evident from the
lists of (upland) forest products exported by lowland states—elephant
tusks, rhinoceros horns, beeswax, aloe, eaglewood and cinnamon—as
recorded, for instance, in old reports and records of the Dutch East Indies
about mainland Southeast Asia (Muller 1917, Buch 1929, Van Wuysthoff
1987). It is equally evident from the range of “imported” prestige items
such as bronze gongs from Burma and jars from China, which played
a critical role in denoting political and ritual prestige in upland areas
all over mainland (Maitre 1912a; Bourotte 1955; Dournes 1970, 1977;
Condominas 1980; Hickey 1982a) and insular Southeast Asia (Harrisson
1986, Li Zhi-Yan et al. 1993), but especially (sea)salt, a necessity for
survival in the highlands (Salemink 2003a).
Despite the perception of perennial antagonism between Lowlanders,
who were organized in states, and Highlanders, who remained marginal
to lowland state centres, there has been a rich history of political contacts,
especially between Cham and Central Highlanders (Po Dharma 1987).
Until its defeat by the Vietnamese in 1471, Champa was a powerful “Indo-
nesian” Hindu state on the coast of Central Vietnam, and it maintained
well into the eighteenth century a reduced presence in the principalities
of Panduranga (Phan Rang) and Kauthara, located in the present-day
provinces of Ninh Thuận/Bình Thuận and Khánh Hòa. However, before
its incorporation into the expanding Vietnamese state and later the French
colonial empire, Champa consisted not only of the coastal Lowlands, but
also parts of the Central Highlands area as well—what Jacques Dournes
has called “Haut-Champa” (1970). Around the turn of the nineteenth
century many ruins, statues and other vestiges of this Cham presence
still existed in sites such as Kon Klor and Kodo/Bomong Yang (near
Kontum); Yang Mum (near Ayun Pa, in present-day Gialai province);
Yang Prong, north of Buôn Đôn in Dak Lak, close to the Cambodian

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 32 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

border; and in the form of “treasures” of Cham princes among Churu and
Roglai groups in present-day Lâm Đồng (Dournes 1970; Hickey 1982a:
91–107). Étienne Aymonier (1890), Adhémar Leclère (1904), Henri Maitre
(1912a), Bernard Bourotte (1955), Jean Boulbet (1967) and Gerald Hickey
(1982a) all recorded legends among Highlanders about the Cham and their
overlordship. In a recent article Andrew Hardy (2009) draws attention to
the “political economy of eaglewood” in Champa and Vietnam and the
importance of trade between Highlands and Lowlands for the lowland
polities. Two decades ago Po Dharma surmised that the Nguyễn lords
and emperors kept an autonomous Cham polity alive in order to use the
Cham cultural and trade networks for the extraction of precious forest
products through trade (1987-I: 174; 1987-II: 64 ff., 181), and pointed to
the interdependence and mutual influence—economic, political, military,
ritualistic—of lowland Cham and (Roglai, Churu, Koho) Highlanders
(1987-I: 181).
When the Việt replaced the Cham as overlords in the Lowlands
(1832), they soon became the dominant population through a process of
systematic colonization by the establishment of military colonies, đồn điền.
However, they usually did not venture as deep into the Central Highlands
as did the Cham, and hardly attempted to settle in the Highlands. When
the first Europeans arrived in Asia, they were not very interested in the
peoples living in the mountainous areas of mainland Southeast Asia.
Commerce and conversion being the main motivations for their ventures,
the Europeans contacted the better-accessible lowland states, where the
political forms of principalities and kingdoms and civilizations based on
wet-rice cultivation in a way mirrored the European state of affairs. If the
populations living in the mountainous areas bordering Laos, Cambodia,
Vietnam (Cochinchina) and, still, Champa were mentioned at all, it was
in passing only.3 When, for instance, the Portuguese Jesuit missionary
Christoforo Borri in his “Cochin-China in Two Parts” spoke of “a ridge
of mountains inhabited by the Kemois”, it was only in order to describe
the borders of Cochinchina (Borri 1811: 773).
Similarly, when the Dutch East India Company merchant Gerard van
Wuysthoff reported on his voyage in 1641–42 to the kingdom of Lauwen
(Laos), he mentioned a place called Phonongh, to the east of Sambor and
Sambock on the Mekong River in Cambodia. Chinese merchants would
venture there in order to acquire gold, elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns
(Muller 1917: 157).4 Borri described the Highlanders as a “savage people,
for though they are Cochin-Chinese, yet they in no way acknowledge or
submit to the King, keeping in the fastnesses of the uncouth mountains,

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 A View from the Mountains 33

bordering on the kingdom of Lais [Laos]” (1811: 773). Van Wuysthoff,

on the other hand, maintained that the Phonong were dominated by the
Cambodians and the Cham (Muller 1917: 157). This difference of opinion
may reflect the divergent goals of missionaries and traders: while the
former tended to emphasize the Highlanders’ political autonomy from
the courts in order to claim political space for missionary work, the latter
would simply observe that they were part and parcel of the trade networks
that connected the interior with the coastal ports.
Nevertheless, European observers were hardly interested in the moun-
tain peoples of Indochina, for although the Highlands procured many
of the trade items for the Asian commercial networks at the time, their
produce was collected by the several courts and pedlars in the region,
and shipped from ports in the Lowlands. Thus, until the middle of the
nineteenth century, there were hardly any first-hand accounts by Europeans
of the people inhabiting the mountainous parts of mainland Southeast
Asia. Thus, Jérome Richard, in his “History of Tonquin”, could write in
1778 that “travellers have never penetrated into the interior of the country
[of Champa]” (Richard 1811: 768); and John Crawfurd, relating of his
embassy to the courts of Siam and Cochinchina in 1823, would mention
the Moi in Cochinchina, “of whom little is known but their name, and that
they are an uncivilized but inoffensive people” (Crawfurd 1967: 468).
At this point it is interesting to focus on the new historiography about
the two Vietnamese polities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
that fought each other while formally recognizing the authority of the
Lê emperors. The northern part, known as Đàng Ngoài or Đông Kinh
(Tonkin), was dominated by the Trịnh lords.5 The southern part, known
as Đàng Trong or Cochinchina, was ruled by the Nguyễn lords, and it
gradually expanded southwards from the former Cham lands of Thuận
Quảng into the Mekong Delta. Inspirations for the new historiography
can be found in the synthesizing work by Anthony Reid (1988a, 1988b,
1999) and Heather Sutherland (2003, 2004), who look at Southeast Asia
as a trading zone in which polities and economies are connected through
maritime trade; in Victor Lieberman’s work (1993, 1997, 2003) on
structural parallels in trade and state formation in (mainland) Southeast
Asia and Europe, which looks at mutual connections between states; and
in Eric Tagliacozzo’s (2002, 2004, 2007) and Willem van Schendel’s
(2002) work on border areas as zones of contact, trade and smuggling.
These scholars move away from the “statist” perspective adopted
by nationalist historiographers or historians, who almost exclusively
focus on one country. Instead, they emphasize how political centres can

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 34 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

become centres in a wider field of contact. Rather than zooming in on

the political centres, they bring the “margins” into starker relief to the
point that these do not seem to be so marginal after all. In his article
“Surface Orientations”, Keith Taylor (1998) argues for the recognition of
the geographic, cultural and political diversity of historical Vietnam and
interprets key events in Vietnam’s history in terms of regional competition.
With these insights about political fragmentation, cultural diversity and
trade as unifying factors at the back of our minds, recent work on the role
of maritime trade in Vietnam’s history acquires new relevance for the
argument in this chapter.
A thematic section in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37, 1
(2006) highlights the role of the sea and the coast in various episodes
and various places in Vietnam’s history, in articles by Li Tana, John
Whitmore and Charles Wheeler. In various ways, all three articles show
how maritime trade influenced political and military balances. Whitmore
(2006: 121) shows how by 1400 “the old core of Đại Việt in the mid-
river zone became integrated with the downriver coastal zone, and the
cultural forces of each merged”, underpinned economically by trade and
culturally by the well-known myth of the “upland fairy” Âu Cơ and the
water dragon Lạc Long Quân. Wheeler draws attention to the littoral
character of Thuận Quảng beyond the lowland “bamboo pole” connecting
two baskets (agricultural deltas). It was trade that sustained Đàng Trong
against the odds when fighting a much more fertile and populous Đàng
Ngoài. Wheeler (2006: 137) suggests that seaports such as Hội An
connected the maritime trade—of European powers as well as other Asian
lands—with the inlands through a river-based transportation system that
linked downriver commercial centres with the uplands (see also Woodside
1995). In their contributions to the 1990 International Symposium on the
Ancient Town of Hoi An, the Vietnamese historians Đỗ Bang (2006) and
Phan Đại Doãn (2006) described how the maritime trade from Hội An was
connected with riverine and eventually overland trade with the hinterland
(read: the highlands), listing products such as sandalwood, eaglewood,
cassia, ivory and gold, which were procured in the mountains.
In other words, many of the goods that were exported from centres
such as Hội An were products of highland regions—usually forest
products. In her contribution to the thematic section, Li Tana builds
on her monograph Nguyễn Cochinchina (1998) in order to present “a
view from the sea” that emphasizes trade between and within riverine
polities consisting of a religious centre in the mountains, a political
centre in the alluvial plain, and a port city, all linked by waterways (Li

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 A View from the Mountains 35

2006: 99).6 Contrary to “the simple black-and-white story of nationalist

historiography” (2006: 102), Li sketches “a different map of ethnicity”
(2006: 100):

Situated among the different peoples along the Sino-Viet border areas, the
Việt must have experienced both intensive and extensive ethnic mixing.
These relations and interactions cannot be summarized in the simplistic
nationalist paradigm of “Việt” or “Han” versus mountain peoples, but
must have resulted from a long process of intensive interpenetration and
absorption, after which more solid and rigid identities took shape in the
modern period.

In her earlier monograph, Li also paid attention to the exchange

of goods taking place between Việt and uplanders (1998: 119–38),
sometimes assuming the form of regular trade, sometimes assuming the
form of tributes, tax collection or raids and piracy. The trade objects
that Việt traders brought to the uplands included ceramics, metalware
and fabrics, but also (sea)salt (a much-needed commodity for survival
in the highlands), fish sauce and dried fish, while forest products (rattan,
precious woods, wax, honey, cotton cloth), animals (oxen, buffaloes,
horses, elephants), animal products (elephant tusks, rhino horns, hides)
and spices (cassia and cardamom) were traded downstream. Much of the
trade in forest products was taxed, constituting almost 50 per cent of the
tax receipt for Đàng Trong in 1768 (Li 1998: 136). Another lively trade
was the slave trade—usually associated with the slave markets in Phnom
Penh and Bangkok, but according to Li equally important in Đàng Trong.7
Much of the forest produce was traded overseas, generating profits that
could buy military hardware and technology for the struggle against the
Trịnh lords of Đàng Ngoài. Thus, mutual dependence not only produced
rituals among the Việt of Đàng Trong that referred to the various ethnic
groups that made claims to particular places, but it also produced shared
experiences that led Li to argue that the origins of the Tây Sơn rebellion
up in the mountains near An Khê lay among a coalition of Việt, Cham,
Bahnar and other groups who resisted the tax increases as a result of the
failing trade in the second half of the eighteenth century.
In the meantime, the situation in Đàng Ngoài was vastly different. In
his recent study Silk for Silver, about the trade between Đàng Ngoài and
the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) between 1637 and 1700, Hoàng
Anh Tuấn (2007) shows how the Trịnh tried to emulate the commercial
successes of the Nguyễn in Cochinchina by inviting the then dominant
trading power to open up trade lodges (“factories”) in Phố Hiến and

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 36 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

Hanoi in the Red River Delta in order to acquire military hardware and
know-how, and silver and copper in exchange for silk and ceramics. In
contrast with Đàng Trong, then, the maritime trade with Đàng Ngoài did
not involve highland products but commodities produced in the delta. For
a few decades the VOC was Đàng Ngoài’s major trading partner, until the
VOC factories closed down by the end of the seventeenth century. Trade
was no longer profitable for the VOC, who turned to competing regions,
but Đàng Ngoài had also become less hospitable to trade because of the
attitude of the Trịnh lords who tended to close Đàng Ngoài off from
international maritime trade.
In conclusion I would suggest that it was the demise of trade—not just
maritime trade but also inland trade via riverine and overland routes—in
both Đàng Trong and Đàng Ngoài that weakened both Việt states to a
point that they could surprisingly easily be overrun by a rebel army. In
other words, it was maritime trade—and by implication the connections
of the Lowland polities with the Highlands—that determined the fate of
Lowland Vietnam.

The Nguyễn Dynasty and the Hinterland of “Annam”

Vietnam was reunited by the Tây Sơn rebellion (1771–1802), and once
again it successfully pushed back a Chinese intervention. The Tây Sơn
regime, however, was eventually defeated by a surviving member of
the southern Nguyễn clan, Nguyễn Ánh. Nguyễn Ánh sought Siamese
and French support against the Tây Sơn brothers, and he was successful
because of his clever coalitions. After his final victory in 1802 he changed
his name to Gia Long, crowned himself emperor and founded the Nguyễn
Dynasty. His attempt to regularize and systematize his governance
according to neo-Confucian doctrine was followed rigorously and rigidly
by his successors Minh Mạng (1820–41), Thiệu Trị (1841–47) and Tự
Đức (1848–83), who began to make attempts to “pacify” the highlands
by incorporating them into the Vietnamese polity. One example of
such “pacification” policies was the Sơn Phòng or “mountain defense”
programme in Quảng Ngãi and Bình Định provinces, which was started
in 1863 under Emperor Tự Đức by the mandarin Nguyễn Tấn. The latter
recorded his strategy in 1871 under his title, le Tiễu-Phủ-Sứ (Officer
in Charge of Pacification of Minorities), and published it in French as
“Phủ man tạp lục, la pacification de la région des Moï” (1905). The Sơn
Phòng—which continued an eighteenth century Vietnamese mountain
pacification scheme—combined the establishment of a strong military

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 A View from the Mountains 37

presence in strategic locations with the political incorporation of local

chiefs in the Vietnamese administration, with the establishment of trade
monopolies, and with tax collection by các lại or thuộc lại (subordinate
officials assisting higher-ranked mandarins in the execution of their
tasks). Local chiefs were respected and often given a formal role in
the administration of a territory as lower-rank mandarins. The state
supervised, monopolized and taxed trade, including items that highland
populations needed (salt) as well as highly lucrative highland forest
products such as cassia (Nguyễn Xuân Linh 1973; le Tiễu-Phủ-Sứ 1905;
Hickey 1982a: 182–4). After the establishment of their “protectorate” in
Annam, the French started to dismantle the Sơn Phòng in 1898 (Brière
1904, Durand 1907). According to French sources, in the latter part of the
nineteenth century the Sơn Phòng degenerated into a system of corruption
and legalized swindling, creating unrest among highland populations
(Aymonier 1885). But a more likely reason for the dismantling was the
use that the fugitive king Hàm Nghi made of the Sơn Phòng infrastructure
to hide and resist during the Cần Vương (Save the King) movement in the
early years of French colonization. In years to come, any unrest among
ethnic groups in the hinterland was conveniently attributed to the Việt các
lại, who were depicted as unreliable and cruel swindlers.
Another example of incorporation was the tributary relationships
that the Huế court established with various groups in border areas,
mirroring its own tributary relationship with China’s suzerain authority.
For instance, the Jarai Patao Apui (King of Fire) and Patao Ia (King of
Water) offered triennial tribute to the courts of Phnom Penh and Huế.
These two “kings” were powerful shamans with a religious and ritual
status that was recognized by surrounding populations (Dournes 1977).
As their authority was recognized by more distant Lowland courts, the
Patao acquired a political importance there that they did not possess
within their own societies. They are mentioned as two “kings” in various
Vietnamese annals and manuscripts as the Hỏa Xá and Thủy Xá, rulers of
the small “kingdom of fire” and “kingdom of water”, who exchanged gifts
with the Nguyễn lords of southern Vietnam before the Tây Sơn Rebellion
(1771–1802), which occasioned the reunification of the country (Lê Quý
Đôn 1977). For our purpose it is interesting to note that around 1820,
under the second Nguyễn emperor, Minh Mạng, “diplomatic relations”
between the King of Water and the court of Vietnam were re-established
with a tribute and gifts of elephant tusks, perfumed wood and other forest
products. In 1831, a triennial tribute by the two Jarai “vassal kings”
was institutionalized in Phủ Yên province, with the Emperor returning

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 38 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

gifts of cloth and other valuable or ceremonial items. The exchange of

gifts continued through the reigns of Thiệu Trị and Tự Đức, until the
French took over the management of relations with Highlanders from
the Court of Huế (Nghiêm Thẩm and Voth 1972; Dournes 1977: 109–22;
Hickey 1982a: 121–89). This exchange of gifts institutionalized in the
tribute not only had a political character—as the two Patao were given
the title of mandarin—but carried an economic aspect as well, given the
economic and ritual value of the objects for the receiver. In other words,
the exchange shored up prestige within their own contexts for both the
Emperor and the two Patao.
How the political relations between the Patao and the court in Huế
worked out in practice became apparent in the attempts by Mgr. Cuénot,
bishop of Qui-Nhơn in Annam, to establish a mission station in the
Central Highlands, out of reach of the lowland mandarins, at a time when
Christianity was persecuted. In 1841 he gave a short description of the
Cham, the Rhadé and the Jarai, which focused on the Patao Apui (Master
of Fire), who reportedly enjoyed unlimited prestige among the Jarai and
entertained tributary and commercial relations with the Court of Annam
in Huế. The Vietnamese traders, whose rights were acknowledged by both
the Jarai Patao and the court, were thought to be the main obstacle for
missionary activity among Highlanders (Cuénot 1841: 139–45). Cuénot’s
analysis turned out to be correct, as the first attempt in 1842 to establish a
mission station in Jarai territory failed when Vietnamese traders arrested
the priests Duclos and Miche while their host, the Patao Apui, did not
intervene. Those Highlanders who had let them pass, reportedly Êđê, were
rebuked by the Vietnamese authorities. The missionaries were brought to
Huế, where they were held in prison, accused of rebellion with the help of
Laotian soldiers. Sentenced to death along with three other French priests,
they were released in 1843 because of the military action of the French
Navy. Duclos and Miche’s report reached Mgr. Cuénot, who published
it in the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi (Duclos and Miche 1844).
This example (there are many more) tells us that there were extensive
economic, political and cultural contacts between Highlanders and the
Vietnamese state in precolonial times, and that Việt officials and traders
exerted a distinct level of authority in the Highlands.
When Annam (Trung Bộ) and Tonkin (Bắc Bộ) were turned into
French protectorates in 1883, the Vietnamese administrative system had
already been crumbling in many regions, first of all in those Highland
areas where the court only had tenuous authority. This is clear from the
reports based on a number of expeditions by military officers and others

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 A View from the Mountains 39

mounted from the colony of Cochinchina, beginning with the great

expedition of the Commission d’Exploration du Mekong of 1866–68,
headed by Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier (De Villemereuil 1883,
Taboulet 1970, Valette 1969). From the 1880s until the killing of Henri
Maître in 1914, a series of expeditions into the “hinterland moï” region
were mounted from Saigon, under the leadership of military officers
such as Lieutenant Septans, Lieutenant Amédée Gautier, Captains Cupet
and De Malglaive (who were members of the famous Mission Pavie,
which followed the Mekong upstream in search of a navigable route to
southern China and managed to secure Laos as a French protectorate), and
Henri Maître, or medical doctors such as Paul Néis, Jules Harmand and
Alexandre Yersin.8
These explorers usually hired local guides who took the footpaths
that were used for long-distance trade by both highland traders and Kinh
pedlars, the thuộc lại or các lại. In many upland areas they found Kinh
and/or Cham influence in the remains of a rudimentary administrative
system or of the Sơn Phòng “mountain defense cum trade system”, e.g.,
among the Cau Maa, who used to pay tribute to the Emperor in Huế via
the Cham but shifted allegiance to the colonial administration (Gautier
1882, 1884, 1902–3). These footpaths also led them to the most successful
traders, who coupled economic success with political and ritual prestige.
One example is the person known as Patao, whose fame as “king of the
Cau Maa” had reached Saigon by way of các lại.9 Patao turned out to be
a trader of Lao descent who had settled down and gained influence in the
area, and who was interested in trade with the French (Néis 1880: 22, 28).
This Patao dominated the surrounding area and sought French protection
against villages under Vietnamese rule. Later explorers described the same
person—alternatively known as Mesao—as a slave trader; the protection
he sought against other villages turned out to be a scam to use French
force against competitors as well as against relatives of slavery victims
(Gautier 1882: 48–50; Cupet 1893; Yersin 1893; Pavie 1900, 1902; Maitre
1909: 56–61).
During the confused and effervescent times marked by the collapse
of Vietnamese rule; the contraction of Cambodia; the incursions by Lao
and Thai traders, slavers and soldiers; and the incursions by French
missionaries and explorers, French observers noted the existence of
influential traders who acquired high status by virtue of their economic
success in the long-distance trade and their—related—military prowess,
especially in the capture and trade of slaves and elephants. In my 2003
monograph on the Central Highlands of Vietnam I called such local

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 40 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

leaders “big men”, who were often in-migrants from Laos or lowland
Vietnam (Salemink 2003a). For instance, Gautier interacted with local
leaders of Lao, Vietnamese, Chinese and mixed descent living with
Highlanders but still maintaining a rudimentary Vietnamese administrative
infrastructure that had been more elaborate in the past (Gautier 1882,
1884, 1935; Maitre 1912a: 463–4; Dubourg 1950). Usually, such “big
men” were very influential in one or even several villages by virtue of
their position in the trade networks that linked Uplands with Lowlands
and Highlanders with Vietnamese, Laotian, Siamese and Chinese traders
and polities. Their political and ritual status depended on their wealth,
their military prowess, and their capacity for organizing feasts, which
would ensure their ritual primacy within their village. Their status was not
hereditary, and hence it was temporary—limited to one lifetime—and did
not evolve into a formal ruling class, thus effectively creating the system
of social oscillation and feasting that Thomas Kirsch described (Kirsch
1973, Hickey 1982b).
Thus, contrary to the French view of the Montagnards, the latter had
not been “isolated” before European contact. Rather, it was the French
themselves who isolated the Central Highlands in order to establish their
own influence in the area. In this respect, it is significant that the French
forbade the—very rapid—transmission of messages through fire or sound
signals (drums), with the suppression of the Sơn Phòng, thus effectively
cutting off communication (Salemink 2003a). This had to do with the fact
that a number of the “big men” had been the most outspoken opponents
of French colonial penetration, as their political power was threatened or
destroyed by the French. The same happened with their economic power
as a consequence of French efforts at controlling the long-distance trade
in the region (Maitre 1909: 161–2).
The career of Khun Jonob, aka Ma Krong, is illustrative in this regard.
Of mixed Lao-Mnong descent, Ma Krong controlled the capture and trade
of elephants in the region surrounding the local centre of Buôn Đôn (Bản
Đôn), which is still a centre of elephant domestication. At the time of the
Mission Pavie, Ma Krong served as an officer in the Siamese army, which
penetrated east of the Mekong River into the Central Highlands, earning
him the Siamese title (not name) of Khun Jonob. Ma Krong initially
opposed French penetration, because of his Siamese connections. French
colonial administrators such as Léopold Sabatier tended to suppress local
“big men” as rival contenders for power and as obstacles to colonial rule,
but Sabatier made an exception for Ma Krong, who became his ally as
Sabatier eventually became Ma Krong’s son-in-law when Ma Krong’s

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 A View from the Mountains 41

daughter gave birth to their daughter H’Ni (Annie) in 1923. Sabatier used
Ma Krong’s influence over the Mnong and Rhadé (Êđê) to improve the
collection of head tax. This tax, together with the considerable tax levied
on the elephant trade, enabled Sabatier to establish an administrative
infrastructure in the highland province of Darlac, financially independent
from the colonial centre. As the drawing and closing of the colonial
border effectively diminished the international trade in elephants and other
upland “products”, Ma Krong changed his career. In a twist of irony, as
an ethnic Lao in-migrant in a Mnong village, he became the head of the
(Êđê) customary law tribunal in Buôn Ma Thuột and thus became a French
official, dependent on a salary for his income.

The Northern Uplands

In a recent article Emmanuel Poisson (2009) shows that in the northern
part of Vietnam the Vietnamese emperors from the fifteenth century
onwards were obliged to rely on local, ethnic minority chiefs because
of the lack of suitable Kinh mandarins willing to live in the “unhealthy”
mountains. Over time, these chiefs assumed hereditary positions within the
bureaucratic hierarchy of the Việt state and later—in an ironic historical
continuity—in the colonial state (Poisson 2004). After taking possession
of the Red River Delta in the 1880s, French colonial officers tried to
pacify the Highlands of Tonkin as well. These areas were in great turmoil
because of invasions by Chinese bands such as the “Black Flags” and to
a lesser extent by in-migration of Hmong settlers (McAleavy 1968; Culas
2000; Culas and Michaud 2004; Michaud 2000a, 2007). It is useful to take
a closer look at the policy that Galliéni and Pennequin developed in the
territoires militaires of Tonkin, a very heterogeneous area from an ethnic
point of view. Their “oil spot method” (tâche d’huile)—presently a widely
used tactic by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan10
—combined military repression of the rebellion with the political and
social organization of the region. First a fort would be constructed in
a strategic site in the refractory region, from which the surrounding
population would be militarily pacified. Then the infrastructure would
be developed—roads, military posts and supervised markets would be
constructed. When this area was entirely controlled, a neighbouring area
would be pacified. Thus, this “structural pacification” would spread like
an oil spot. The political leadership in the area would be more or less
respected if the local leaders formally submitted to French authority. Local
potentates would be left in power if they agreed to submit nominally and

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 42 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

not bother the French. Colonel Pennequin defined the role of the French
authorities as a restricted one, granting each race its autonomy and keeping
a balance between the different interests of each race (De Lanessan 1895:
56–112; Galliéni 1941; Boudarel 1976: 137–40).
Let us take a closer look at two such local power wielders: Đề
Thám (aka Hoàng Hoa Thám) and Ðèo Văn Trí. In Vietnam’s nationalist
historiography Đề Thám was an anti-colonial hero who resisted and
outwitted the French in his home base of Yên Thế (Bắc Giang province)
until his assassination in 1913. This account fails to mention that for most
of the time after the French conquest of lowland and upland Tonkin, Đề
Thám had an agreement with the French that he would leave them alone
if they left him alone. Đề Thám was a Vietnamese general who in 1883
heeded King Hàm Nghi’s call to “save the king” and resist the French. In
1894, and again in 1898, Đề Thám struck an agreement with the French,
who ceded him an area that he could rule as a feudal lord. When he broke
that agreement in 1908, the French army went after him in Yên Thế and
finally killed him in 1913. Đề Thám may have been a patriot and an anti-
colonial resistance leader, but he was also a feudal leader who ruled over
an area of 22 villages populated by different ethnic groups. In other words,
political mobilization did not follow ethnic boundaries, and political
leadership was not linked to national affiliation but to feudal conceptions
of vassalage,11 which sooner or later had to clash with modern colonial
forms of statecraft.
The case of Ðèo Văn Trí is still more instructive. Ðèo Văn Trí was a
Thái feudal lord who—in the words of Charles Fourniau—“extended his
domination over a vast zone around Lai-châu largely flowing over into
the traditional border between China and the empire of Annam” (Fourniau
1989: 87). It was, after all, a normal practice under the Nguyễn Dynasty
that “marginal groups [were subjected] to tribute while the control by
the mandarinal administration was exercised via the intermediary of
customary chiefs” (Nguyễn Thế Anh 1989: 186). The prelude to Ðèo Văn
Trí’s rise to power was the incursion of the “Black Flags”, remnants of the
Taiping rebels in China who crossed into Tonkin in the 1860s and doubled
as “pirates” and as mercenaries for the Vietnamese court in their dealings
with refractory ethnic groups in the mountains (McAleavy 1968). This
cemented Ðèo Văn Trí’s position as vassal ruler of Mường Lai (the Lai
fief), with his seat in Lai Châu. After the French imposed their protectorate
over the remainder of Vietnam (Annam and Tonkin) in 1883, the regents
of the Huế Court revolted against them in 1885 but were defeated. The
young Emperor Hàm Nghi sought refuge in Cam Lộ and other mountain

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 A View from the Mountains 43

districts in central Vietnam until he was betrayed by his bodyguard and

exiled to Algeria in 1888. Regent Tôn Thất Thuyết went to Tonkin and
sought refuge with Ðèo Văn Trí in Lai Châu, but after he tried to poison
Ðèo Văn Trí he had to flee to China while the Lai Châu ruler shifted
allegiance to the French. The French colonial regime continued the system
that they had inherited from imperial Vietnam, and shored up the political
power of Ðèo Văn Trí, who was left free to rule a vast, multi-ethnic area
that included Lai Châu, Điện Biên Phủ and Phong Thổ.
Although beyond the direct control of the Vietnamese or French
authorities, this area was not beyond trade—and a lucrative trade at
that. Since the Chinese empire had legalized opium trade under British
pressure, large portions of the “Golden Triangle” region had been planted
with poppy (McCoy 1972: 64–5). This highly lucrative crop connected
this part of the uplands of Tonkin with the rest of mainland Southeast
Asia, with the Ðèo Văn Trí family reaping much of the profits. In his
reinterpretation of the battle of Điện Biên Phủ (1954), John McAlister
argues that the stakes were not just territory and population, but the
profits of the opium trade (1967). The French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ
in 1954 was tantamount to the toppling of the feudal grasp by Ðèo Văn
Long—Ðèo Văn Trí’s son and successor—in a new form of politics that
pitted ethnic groups rather than feudal masters against each other. In their
respective articles on Thai/Tai feudalism, Georges Condominas (1976)
and Jacques Lemoine (1997) analyze the development of rigid political
hierarchies—based on surplus extraction of labour through taxation,
corvée labour and exclusive usufruct rights for the Thái chiefs—also vis-
à-vis other ethnic groups that were subjected to the overlordship of the
Thái chiefs. After a new chief had been named, a delegation was sent to
the Lowlands to seek approval from the Vietnamese court, which usually
bestowed the chief the mandarinal title of chi châu (Lemoine 1997:
205–7; see also Ngô Đức Thọ, Nguyễn Văn Nguyên and Philippe Papin
2003). Within the châu or mường fief, the chief’s paramount position as
guardian of the land on behalf of the tutelary spirit of the land and as an
intermediary with the spirits and (clan) ancestors was regularly buttressed
in rituals and feasts.
The hierarchical, quasi-feudal system of the Thái/Tai (Condominas
1976, Lemoine 1997) bore a resemblance with the hierarchical, autocratic
gumsa pole of Kachin society as described by Sir Edmund Leach (1954),
which inspired such lively debate about the political and economic
characterization of upland societies and about the nature of ethnicity.
The oscillation of Kachin society between hierarchical gumsa and more

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 44 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

egalitarian gumlao poles had an equivalent in Thái society. The rise of

the Ðèo family during the effervescence in the Northern Highlands at
the time of the Black Flags and the extension of their power during the
early decades of the French protectorate (read: colonial rule) could be
seen as a swing to the gumsa pole, while the rise of the Việt Minh in the
1940s culminating in the French defeat in Điện Biên Phủ (1954) can be
cautiously interpreted as a swing to the gumlao pole of a more egalitarian
ideology. A. Thomas Kirsch (1973) extended Leach’s theory of social
oscillation to what he called “hilltribe society” in upland Southeast Asia,
linking it up with the notion that the authority of chiefs was accepted as
legitimate through ritual feasts. In an article commenting on Leach and on
Jonathan Friedman’s System, Structure and Contradiction in the Evolution
of “Asiatic” Social Formations (1979)—but ignoring Kirsch—David
Nugent (1982) drew attention to the economic underpinnings of such
feasts in the long-distance trade that linked the economies of upland
societies with lowland states and markets. The “oscillation” between
gumsa and gumlao poles in upland society can then be reinterpreted as
a political struggle over economic resources and their redistribution. It
is precisely such a struggle that John McAlister (1967) describes in his
analysis of the ethnic dynamics leading up to the battle of Điện Biên Phủ
(see also Culas 2000). According to McAlister, it was the competition over
opium, as a valuable commodity economically linking upland Vietnam
with the Lowlands and the rest of the world, that financed not only the
upland feudal class but part of the war effort on both French and Việt
Minh sides—an analysis that was expanded chronologically as well as
geographically by Alfred McCoy in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast
Asia (1972).
The lessons that I would like to draw from these brief vignettes
are four-fold. First of all, in precolonial times ethnic identities did
not naturally translate into political allegiances, and conflict did not
necessarily follow ethnic lines. Second, the areas that were often
portrayed as remote, uncouth, barbarous, etc., were in fact connected
with the lowland courts and ports through numerous overland and riverine
trade routes. Such connections were often vehicles for the exercise of
political, ritual and sometimes religious authority. Third, where Li Tana,
John Whitmore and Charles Wheeler propose to adopt a “view from
the sea” when looking at Vietnam’s history, I suggest that it would be
equally rewarding to adopt a view from the mountains. The comparison
of the trade histories of Đàng Trong and Đàng Ngoài would suggest that
maritime trade—and its relevance for the military and political success of

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 A View from the Mountains 45

these polities—can work well only if the seaport connects the maritime
trade with a hinterland that must be largely upland. Finally, then, it may
be interesting to speculate about the importance of such trade connections
both with overseas lands and with the mountainous hinterland for the
enduring viability of the lowland states. In the next section I would like to
sketch a picture of political, military and ritual leadership in upland areas
in connection with economic exchanges.

Reflections on Highlander Leadership

A common assumption on the part of outsiders regarding the political
organization of the Central Highlands holds that the local populations
are made up of clearly distinct tribes, distinguishable by their language,
traditional costume, architecture, and—more in general— “manners and
customs” (moeurs et coutumes, phong tục tạp quán) (Keyes 2002, Khổng
Diễn 2002a, Salemink 2003a, Scott 1998). In precolonial times, such tribes
usually lacked central institutions of political authority. It is often assumed
that daily life among Central Highlanders was ruled almost absolutely by
old men, be it in the guise of village chiefs, shamans or village elders.
At the time of the early French explorations, however, explorers into the
Central Highlands often complained about the absence of supra-village
political organizations that could give them a key to this politically frag-
mented society. In fact, political life in the Central Highlands was pretty
much “decentralized”, if not fragmented, except in those places where a
Vietnamese mandarinal administration still existed (Maitre 1912b).
However, there were supra-village institutions that did not have a
political character. Some villages shared a common territory for shifting
cultivation, requiring common ritual guardians of the land. Some religious
institutions commanded respect in a wide area, such as the Jarai Patao,
shamans who held a privileged position with regard to the elements of
fire, water and wind. The word Patao (also P’tau or Pötao) is of Cham
origin and is employed to designate politically and/or religiously superior
persons, such as kings, princes and local leaders, but also influential
priests or shamans. Other local leaders who rose to positions of affluence
and influence adopted the title of Patao or Mesao. Commonly, the word
was translated as “king”, hence the confusion among Western observers,
who searched for kings with the habitual pomp and regalia but found
minor chiefs or ritual leaders instead.
Most important, however, were the “big men” who rose to positions
of prominence because of their descent, their military prowess, their

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 46 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

economic success and their ritual prestige, which was associated with their
(economic) capacity for feasting. Such big men often had many slaves,
either captured or from households that were indebted. Captured slaves
were mostly sold to the slave traders from Laos, Cambodia and as far as
Thailand, while indebted slaves were added to their household and were
practically indistinguishable from other household members. The big
men usually were cunning in their dealings with outsiders, which gave
them leverage over their fellow villagers, but they were never absolute
masters—not even within their own village or family. During their early
explorations, the French often dealt with such big men by either making
allies or making enemies out of them.
The political and ritual position of the big men required enormous
investments in the form of “feasting” (Kirsch 1973), the staging of ritual
feasts during which buffalo and other livestock had to be sacrificed, other
food consumed and rice wine drunk. Most of these resources had to be
invested by the big man, who then enjoyed the ritual and political prestige
associated with the feast. In other words, in order to be recognized as a
big man one had to have access to considerable economic resources. In an
economy that was mostly subsistence as far as staple and other everyday
foodstuffs (except salt) were concerned, wealth did not come from internal
exchange or appropriation of surplus, but from external trade. Such big
men enjoyed high status because of the trade in forest products, livestock
and—sometimes—slaves or opium. The forest products could include
precious wood (eaglewood, scenting wood, hardwoods), rattan, wax,
honey, spices such as cassia or cardamom, elephant tusks, rhino horns,
etc. Their commercial acumen tended to be personal rather than hereditary,
the reason why it was difficult to institutionalize such high status. One
often saw that such individuals possessing an extraordinary trade network
were recent in-migrants (often Lao or Việt) or people of mixed descent
who came to live among a particular local community, for instance, Khun
Jonob or Patao, “the king of the Cau Maa”.
In the Northern Highlands the example of the Ðèo Văn Trí lineage
shows that the valley-based small-scale hydraulic societies of the Thái
were more suited for hereditary, feudal systems of overlordship. This
example also shows that this brand of feudalism was not an exclusively
Thái affair, but that the overlordship extended over a territory where
various “ethnic” groups lived side by side. Moreover, it had to be backed
up by support from an outside military power (Lao, Chinese, Vietnamese,
French). Most important, it had to be sustained economically by long-
distance trade, in this case opium. In other words, local forms of political

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 A View from the Mountains 47

domination were related to the location of the area in the economic and
political geography of the region, and the positioning of the elite in larger
networks of economic and political influence. As Arjun Appadurai (1996)
reinterprets the existing ethnographic record in terms of the production
of localities through ritual, notions of belonging, and what he calls
“neighbourhood” against the backdrop of continuous change, of flux and
flow, so can we reinterpret the ethnographic and historical record of places
such as Lai Châu or Điện Biên Phủ as particular forms of localization that
are necessarily linked to the wider environment—Vietnam, Southeast Asia,
the world.
In this context it is interesting to note that in the past, all over upland
Southeast Asia wealth was not only linked to political and ritual status,
but to the possession of particular objects as well. Such objects were
usually believed to have ritual significance. Sometimes such objects
were manufactured locally, but some kinds of objects were traded from
afar. As an example I would like to mention the Chinese ceramic jars
that one finds in upland societies all over Southeast Asia, and which had
to be transported over great distances to reach their destinations. Early
visitors to the Central Highlands of Vietnam or the uplands of Borneo or
the Philippines often marvelled at the size, beauty and antiquity of such
jars (Harrisson 1986, Li Zhi-Yan et al. 1993). Other precious objects
were often made of metal, e.g., the sets of bronze drums—resembling
gamelan—that one finds in upland Southeast Asia. In the area that Jean
Michaud calls the Southeast Asian Massif (which includes the Central
Highlands of present-day Vietnam and adjacent areas in Cambodia,
Laos, Thailand, Burma and Yunnan) the bossed gong sets that used to be
manufactured in Burma were the most prized ones. These objects, which
had ritual qualities and could be used to indicate wealth and status locally,
could be acquired only through long-distance trade. In other words, local
discourses on wealth and political/ritual status and related practices were
tied up with economic exchanges over long distances. In such a world,
there were no remote, isolated places.

Conclusion: Remote Areas

Just like religion as a category emerged along with notions of the secular
(Asad 2003), the notion of “primitives” appeared along with notions of
civilization and evolution. “Backwardness” and “remoteness” are tropes
that are used to shore up discourses of development, usually mingling
spatial (centre-periphery) and temporal (modern-traditional) axes for

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 48 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

denoting difference. In this chapter I have argued that Highlanders played

an important role in the history of the Vietnamese Lowlands—a historical
role that reached its apotheosis with the battles of Điện Biên Phủ (1954),
An Khê (1954) and Buôn Ma Thuột (1975). The main body of this chapter
was devoted to the argument that the historical relations between lowland
polities and various uplands in precolonial times and at the time of the
French conquest were more substantial for the economic and political
situation of these Lowlands than is usually acknowledged. This had
historical and cultural effects for the political and ritual leadership in the
Highlands of what is now Vietnam, which was very much connected with
the position of such leaders in long-distance trade networks.
Rather than postulating a radical difference and separation between
Highlands and Lowlands, Highlanders and Lowlanders, it is instructive to
look at the exchanges connecting the two cultural and geographic zones.
In Vietnam as elsewhere, such physical and classificatory separations were
in fact products of the modern colonial and postcolonial states. The French
enacted policies of dismantling Vietnamese governmental structures in
the Highlands, and zoned the land so as to keep populations apart. The
consequences of such forms of governmentalization and territorialization
are still with us today. In a recent issue of the Journal of Southeast
Asian Studies (2006), Li, Whitmore and Wheeler proposed a new vista
on the history and historiography of Vietnam dubbed “a view from the
sea”. I suggest that the historiography and ethnography of Vietnam also
require a view from the mountains in order to redress the nationalist and
developmental notions about backwardness, remoteness and isolation
produced by the modern state and eagerly supported by NGOs and other
development donors.

Notes
1. Research for this paper was made possible by grants from WOTRO Science
for Global Development of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific
Research. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the workshop on
Montane Choices and Outcomes: Contemporary Transformations of Vietnam’s
Uplands, held in Hanoi on 4–6 Jan. 2007; and at the workshop on “Revisiting
the ‘Frontier’ in the Southeast Asian Massif”, held in Singapore on 12–13
Dec. 2007. I would like to thank the discussants Janet Sturgeon and Craig
Reynolds, as well as Peter Boomgaard, Thomas Sikor, Cao Xuân Tứ, and the
organizers and participants of both conferences for their insightful feedback.
A greatly truncated version of this chapter was published as “Trading Goods,
Prestige and Power: A Revisionist History of Lowlander-Highlander Relations

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 A View from the Mountains 49

in Vietnam”, in Linking Destinies: Trade, Towns and Kin in Asian History, ed.
Peter Boomgaard, Dick Kooiman and Henk Schulte Nordholt (Leiden: KITLV
Press, 2008, pp. 51–69). The Vietnamese translation of an earlier version was
published as “Một góc nhìn từ vùng cao: Phần lịch sử quan trọng về mối quan
hệ giữa đồng bằng và miền núi ở Việt Nam”, in Thời kỳ mở cửa: Những chuyển
đổi kinh tế: xã hội vùng cao Việt nam [Era of Opening Up: Socioeconomic
Changes in Vietnam’s Uplands], ed. Thomas Sikor, Jenny Sowerwine, Jeff
Romm and Nghiêm Phương Tuyến (Hanoi: Science and Technology Publishing
House, 2008, pp. 11–36). Although I have benefited from comments, all
mistakes are my sole responsibility.
2. For comparative work on China, see Harrell (1995) and Gladney (2004).
3. The official chronicler of the Société des Missions Étrangères, Adrien Launay,
mentions an attempt by P. Vachet to baptize Montagnards inland of Faifo
(present-day Hoi An), but fever forced him to go back to the plains (Launay
1894-I: 199). Jean-Dominique Lajoux (1977: 124) mentions an unpublished
manuscript by the Portuguese Jesuit priest João Loureira, De nigris Moï et
Champanensibus (1790), which is preserved in Lisbon. No published accounts,
however, exist of these ventures.
4. Van Wuysthoff probably referred here to the Phnong, as the Highlanders were
generically known by the Khmer, bearing connotations of “slave” and “savage”.
It is possible, but not necessary, that he was referring to the Mnong groups.
5. For the purpose of this paper it would be interesting to elaborate on the presence
of the Mạc pretenders in their Northern Mountains base of Cao Bằng, but this
is not possible here due to space constraints.
6. Li Tana was not the first scholar to propose looking at mainland Southeast Asian
history from the vantage point of the sea; in 1999 Alain Forest’s introductory
essay “L’Asie du Sud-Est continentale vue de la mer” appeared in Commerce
et navigation en Asie du Sud-Est (XIV e–XIX e siècle) [Trade and Navigation in
Southeast Asia (Fourteenth–Nineteenth Centuries)], ed. Nguyễn Thế Anh and
Yoshiaki Ishizawa (Paris: l’Harmattan, pp. 7–29).
7. This is also noted by Ursula Willenberg (1972) in her study of inter-ethnic
economic relations in southern Vietnam (in German), based mostly on French
sources.
8. For a more in-depth account of these expeditions and references to documentary
and published sources, see Hickey (1982a) and Salemink (2003a).
9. This person is not related to the three Patao/P’tau of the Jarai, who entertained
tributary relations with the courts of Cambodia and Vietnam. The word Patao
is of Cham origin, employed to designate politically and/or religiously superior
persons, such as kings, princes, local leaders, but also influential priests or
shamans. The Patao referred to here used this “title” with the connotation of
“king” in order to impress both his subjects and interested outsiders (see Yersin
1893).
10. See Salemink (2008).
11. The geographic situation of Đề Thám might be compared with the position
of the Mạc throne pretenders in their struggle against the Lê Dynasty in the

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 50 Upland Transformations in Vietnam

seventeenth century, as analyzed by Keith Taylor in his seminal article “Surface

Orientations in Vietnam” (1998), in which he reinterprets parts of Vietnam’s
history in the light of regional affiliations and competition. Both Đề Thám
and the Mạc had strongholds in the Northern Mountains, in a “multi-ethnic”
environment, and staked claims to political authority over the Red River Delta
as well. In different parts of what is now Vietnam and in different historical
eras, Lê Lợi and the Tây Sơn brothers started their successful campaigns against
lowland rulers from multi-ethnic strongholds in mountainous areas.

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