Pairaudeau - Vietnamese Engagement With Tamil Migrants in Colonial Cochinchina - Extracts

r e s e a r c h e s s ay
N ata s h a Pa i r au d e au
Vietnamese Engagement with Tamil Migrants

Vietnamese Engagement with Tamil Migrants in Colonial Cochinchina in Colonial Cochinchina
Author(s): Natasha Pairaudeau
Source: Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Fall 2010), pp. 1-71
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/vs.2010.5.3.1 .
I
Accessed: 21/08/2015 19:17
ndian migration to the southern part of Vietnam during the period of
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . French rule receives but passing mention in scholarly literature. Detailed
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp evidence of an Indian presence in Cochinchina, and more widely in the pro-
. tectorates that constituted the rest of French Indochina, is confined to a cat-
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of egory of short introductory articles whose main purpose is to describe the
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. composition of the Indian migrant populations.1 Although these articles
rightly strive to correct a dearth of knowledge in the more mainstream his-
.
torical literature, the Indian presence in Cochinchina remains sorely misun-
derstood. If an Indian presence is mentioned at all, it is generally accepted
to have been mainly commercial and to have consisted almost exclusively of
Chettiar moneylenders. While commentators have often referred to an antago-
nistic relationship between migrant Indians and the local populations, the
nature of these antagonisms and the existence of any other possible terms
upon which those involved might have engaged have been barely explored.2
The rare historical accounts that exist depict Indian migrants as a presence
that did not stir much reaction from the native populations of Cochinchina,
other than disgust at the “money-grubbing Chetty.” Neither are Indians cred-
ited with having been of any real consequence to the colonial project.
Recent research into the Indian presence in colonial Indochina, using
primary sources and oral histories, displaces these misconceptions and
opens up a rich field of study that brings into focus much more than the
Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 5, Issue 3, pps. 1–71. ISSN 1559-372x, electronic ISSN 1559-3738.
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2 PA I R A U D E A U TA M I L M I G R A N T S I N C O LO N I A L C O C H I N C H I N A 3
blurry and often stereotyped figure of the miserly Chetty.3 This research and laborers in areas that came under British influence.4 Indian traders, too,
shows that there were several groups of Indian migrants, predominantly seized new opportunities brought by European expansion in Asia.5
ethnic Tamils from the south of India. Their presence extended to Indochi- The experiences of overseas Indians in places such as Malaya, Burma, and
na’s protectorates (Annam, Tonkin, Laos, and Cambodia), but the colony of South and East Africa, to name but a few, demonstrate clearly that hostility
Cochinchina was the center of Tamil in-migration and their population between local people and overseas Indians under colonial conditions was a
there was by far the largest of all the territories [pays] of French Indochina. more widespread phenomenon. Antagonisms toward Tamils in colonial
There were distinct Tamil migrant flows, distinguished by their economic or Cochinchina were similar in several respects to the adverse reactions gener-
other work specializations, their religion, in some cases their caste, and their ated by Indians who took up opportunities in other places within the vast
legal status. Yet these different flows of migrants were also discreetly inter- Indian Ocean arena. Indian dominance in business irked the local popula-
connected through the interactions of their daily lives and on the basis of tion in many of the places where Indian traders established themselves over-
their shared Tamil language and cultural references. seas. The humiliation local people felt at being governed by “subimperial”
The Indian community as a whole was involved in a wide range of eco- systems, with Indians acting as “both colonizer and colonized,” has been
nomic activities in Cochinchina, and the economic power it held was much recorded in many places.6 The rise of tensions shares a common chronology,
larger than the modest size of the community might suggest. Its influence too. In all of these places, hostilities escalated with the onset of the Great
and interactions with local people, however, went far beyond commercial Depression and the growth of nationalisms.7
contacts. Resentment of Chettiar usury was only one time-specific aspect of The hostilities noted in Cochinchina against Indians by no means rivaled
Vietnamese antagonism toward Indian migrants. The contexts within which the scale or severity of violence found elsewhere. If these hostilities do not
everyday contacts took place were tied to the economic and social roles of begin to compare to the violence, for example, directed at Indians in Burma
the participants, both Indian and Vietnamese. In turn, Vietnamese responses in the early 1930s, this is in part due to the absence in Cochinchina of any
to the Indian presence were specific to the ways in which they encountered large-scale influx of Indian laborers.8 Cochinchina’s overseas Indians and
Indians, their own notions of a rightful social or political order, and the types their relations with indigenous Vietnamese can nonetheless serve to greatly
of Indians they encountered. Notably, the role played by Indian French citi- enrich both the understanding of Vietnam’s colonial history and the study
zens in the administration and their political privileges became problematic of Indian diasporas across the colonial world. The Tamil presence in
for those Vietnamese seeking reform and advancement within the French Cochinchina is interesting not merely because it has been until now largely
system. The powers enjoyed by dark-skinned Tamils to exact charges from overlooked. The diverse roles that overseas Indians took on in Cochinchina
the working peoples of the Mekong Delta also created resentments, aggra- were closely tied to the French presence in the colony. Vietnamese reactions
vated by a Vietnamese sense that a “proper” racial hierarchy was being to the Indian presence shed new light on the complexity of the lived experi-
upturned. The full picture, moreover, cannot be described as one made ence of colonialism for Vietnamese in Cochinchina. Further, the Tamil
entirely of conflict. A lively religious syncretism developed, and kinship ties presence in Cochinchina played an important role, which has up until now
were forged, primarily through mixed unions between Tamil men and local gone unrecognized, in shaping Vietnamese calls for reform in the southern
women. part of Vietnam.
Movements of Indians in the same time period to other parts of Southeast The broader comparative relevance of this study comes in the rare glimpse
Asia and to other areas under British influence have been extensively studied. it offers of the migration of Indians from parts of the subcontinent under
As the British Empire expanded in the latter half of the nineteenth century, French rule. The engagement of local Vietnamese with Tamil migrants in
Indians were systematically engaged as administrators, soldiers, policemen, Cochinchina reveals fundamental differences in how France, as opposed to
JVS0503_01.indd 2 12/3/10 2:39:20 PM JVS0503_01.indd 3 12/3/10 2:39:20 PM
Britain, sought to influence the Indian social order, and how these nations Annamite population shortly after World War I. In contrast, the number of
more broadly sought to both appease and control the people they dominated migrants of Indian origin in Cochinchina never stood at more than 0.2 per-
in their overseas empires. In British India, the “knowing and ordering” of cent of the colony’s total population. At the peak of Indian migration, in the
ethnic and racial types through the census and colonial ethnography had real 1920s, there were an estimated seven thousand Indian migrants against a
implications, affecting decisions to grant Indians political franchise, as well total population of nearly four million.12 The figure was significantly lower in
as their potential recruitment into privileged positions both in India and the other territories of the Indochinese Union.13 Thus it was not by its sheer
abroad.9 Caste, creed, and ethnicity were less salient features in French Indian size that the Indian migrant community made its presence felt in Cochinchi-
society.10 However, the arrival of Indians in Cochinchina from Pondicherry nese society. Tamils were connected in numerous distinct and potent ways
revealed yawning gaps in the way the French doctrine of assimilation was with France’s attempts to impose its authority. In the contexts of workaday
put into practice in its colonies. There were few places in the French Empire life, Tamil migrants were routinely positioned at the forefront of local peo-
where these gaps were more starkly exposed.11 ple’s experience of French colonialism. The concentration of Tamils in cer-
This study is an attempt to understand the nature of the relationship tain administrative roles and in particular sectors of the economy meant
between Vietnamese in colonial Cochinchina and a numerically modest, there were specific contexts for Vietnamese-Tamil (as well as Khmer-Tamil
diverse, but powerful group of Indian migrants. The contexts in which the and Cham-Tamil) interactions. In all cases, these forms of contact marked
two peoples interacted on the basis of mutual understanding are acknowl- the ways in which French colonization had altered Cochinchinese society.
edged here, but they are balanced by a fair description of the notable ani-
Ag e n t s at t h e I n t e rfac e o f F re n c h Au t h o ri t y
mosities that existed and the dynamics driving those antagonisms. I lay the
groundwork for the main analysis by first describing the several different Of all Tamil migrants to Cochinchina, those employed within the colonial
Indian migrant groups present in Vietnam, the types of work that character- administration were positioned most prominently as agents within a subim-
istically engaged them, and how this work positioned them in relation to the perial system. From the beginnings of the French conquest of Cochinchina,
local population. I examine the legal privileges enjoyed by Indians in and throughout the period of French rule, the demand for French-speaking
Cochinchina and how these privileges disrupted both French colonial and subordinates in Cochinchina’s colonial administration was met in part by
Vietnamese notions of a proper social and racial order. I then turn to analyze Tamils from Pondicherry and Karikal, France’s two modest outposts on the
Vietnamese responses to the Indian presence as they emerged through sev- Coromandel Coast of India that were the main territories comprising the
eral avenues: in the journalism of the “bourgeois” and “proto-communist” French Establishments in India [Etablissements français dans l’Inde].14 Tamil
elite in the south up to the 1930s, through descriptions of tensions and spon- functionaries were typically Catholic, although there were some Hindus and
taneous conflicts that occurred at a grassroots level over the same period, Muslims in their ranks. They had been educated in French; some possessed
and by studying examples of religious accommodation and Vietnamese no more than a rudimentary French education while others were high school
responses to mixed unions and other relationships of kinship forged between [lycée] or even university graduates. In varying degrees, they held assimila-
Tamils and local people. tionist attitudes toward French metropolitan culture and values. In social
background they hailed from two extremes: either from Pondicherry and
Tamil Roles in Cochinchinese Society Karikal’s ambitious pro-French elite, or from the lower-ranking social orders
Even in Cochinchina where they were concentrated, Indian migrants were seeking upward mobility.
not present in large enough numbers for local people to encounter them at By the end of the 1880s many of these Tamil functionaries held French citi-
every turn. Chinese migrants in Chợ Lớn came to outnumber that city’s zenship, or at least a contested form of it. They had acted upon an 1881 decree
passed in French India that gave them the legal right to “renounce” their indig-
enous personal status and become subject to the French civil code.15 This
effectively gave them the same legal rights as French citizens. By the turn of the
twentieth century Tamil functionaries in Cochinchina were required to show
proof of their “renunciation” in order to hold posts within the Cochinchinese
administration.16 In the interwar years, some two thousand “renouncers,”
French citizens of Indian origin, resided in Cochinchina.17
Tamil functionaries tended to be employed in mid-range and subordinate
posts within the administration, in positions classed as “European.”18 Many
were “writers,” in the literal sense, prior to the advent of the typewriter.19
They continued to serve as clerks and accountants within many branches of
the service right up until the French departure from the colony.20 In such
posts within the colonial administration, Tamils from the French possessions
were often at the frontline of Vietnamese contact with French bureaucracy.
Tamil functionaries were concentrated in specific parts of the Cochin-
chinese administration. The Customs and Excise Department [Bureau des FIGURE 1: A magistrate and his wife in Cochinchina, passport photograph circa
douanes et régies], the Office of Land Registration and Stamp Duty [Service 1925. SOURCE: National Archives of Cambodia.
de l’enregistrement des domaines et du timbre], the Judiciary, and the Treas-

ury were all areas in which Indians from the French possessions established were commonly employed as overseers supervising “Annamite” laborers dur-
firm niches of employment. Tamils as well as créoles from French India were ing the construction of Indochina’s railway networks.28
regularly employed in the customs service.21 In the registration office Tamils Indians from the French Establishments also played prominent roles as
served as registrars, clerks, and bailiffs.22 From the 1880s Cochinchina’s treas- policemen, prison guards, and other agents of security and surveillance. In
ury habitually hired Indians as tax inspectors [porteurs de contraintes].23 1908, half the agents in the Sài Gòn municipal police force were Tamils.29 Of
Within the justice system one Vennamani Canoussamy served as an appeal the seventeen principal prisons guards serving in Poulo Condore in 1917,
judge in Mỹ Tho from 1883.24 By the 1920s, it was commonplace for magis- nine bore names typical of Indians who had renounced their personal sta-
trates, lawyers, and lawyers’ clerks to be of Tamil origin.25 In these roles in tus.30 Indians who originated from Pondicherry and Karikal counted too
which they managed French rules and regulations, Tamil functionaries among the agents engaged by Cochinchina’s Security Service [Sûreté].31 Indi-
became, in Vietnamese eyes, enforcers of French authority. ans in the urban police forces, the penitentiary system, and the security
Indians with a more rudimentary education in French were employed as services were most literally engaged in the business of colonial dominance.
both the postmen and the guardians of public services, and they were the In these positions they were both symbolically and effectively among those at
protectors of (French) privacy and public goods. “Indian postman” was a the forefront of surveillance and control of the local population. It would not
recognized administrative category in Cochinchina for most of the first half have been unthinkable for a local Cochinchinese in trouble with the law to
of the twentieth century.26 In 1897, nine out of a total of sixteen men assigned have been arrested and tried by Indians, and imprisoned under the watch of
to Cochinchina’s lighthouses had Tamil names.27 Tamils staffed the railways Indian guards. Even their food, as we shall see later, may have been supplied
and tramways as conductors, guards, and other general employees, and they by an Indian contractor.
The role of Tamils in securing the colony through force, or at least the protectors of French authority, but they too were nonetheless visibly posi-
threat of force, extended to Tamil service in the military, and Indian soldiers tioned as cogs in the colonial machine.
serving in Cochinchina may be added to the list of Indian French citizens It was commonplace by as early as the 1870s for Indian women to accom-
who personified French control in the colony. With the Second Treaty of pany their functionary husbands to posts in Cochinchina.37 Indian wives
Paris in 1815, Britain had forbidden France from keeping troops on its soil in were rarely employed in Cochinchina, but a handful of Tamil language
India. Once it became obligatory for French citizens in the colonies to fulfill schools established in the first half of the twentieth century were founded by
military service (a regulation applicable in French India from 1908), France women from French India, both renouncers and French Indian créoles.38
circumvented the British restriction by recruiting men from French India to
Su ppl i e r s to t h e C o l on ia l F ro n t i e r
the nearest recruitment center in the French overseas empire. This was
located in Sài Gòn.32 Sài Gòn proved a popular locale for renouncers under- A large proportion of Indian trade in Cochinchina was Tamil trade, and in
going their military service. They actively sought to secure places in the the hands of South Indian Muslims.39 Tamil traders and shopkeepers played
Eleventh Colonial Infantry Regiment, stationed near the Botanical Gardens important roles in support of the colonial endeavor by bringing supplies to
in the center of the city.33 the expanding agricultural frontier in the Mekong Delta, as well as providing
The positioning of Indians as intermediaries to French colonialism was goods and services to growing towns and cities.40 From an early date, “Indian
nowhere more evident than in the roles of Indian French citizens in the shops” could be found in the large urban centers of Sài Gòn and Chợ Lớn.
administration and the military. The face of French authority for the indige- These shops were spread too through the rice-growing regions and their
nous residents of Cochinchina would not always have been that of a white- transport hubs in the Mekong Delta.41 Imported cloth was the mainstay of
skinned Frenchman. Frequently, it was that of a Tamil from Pondicherry or these shops, but they also stocked garments, as well as fancy and general
Karikal. These concentrations of Indian French citizens in key sections of the goods.42 The business interests of Tamil traders in Cochinchina extended
colonial administration had a cumulative effect. When the local people were to landowning and property development, jewelry and diamond dealing,
obliged to deal with authority, they frequently found that the men entrusted and financial services.43 South Indian Muslims’ money-changing counters
with their fate were colonized like themselves but otherwise far more privi- would have been a familiar sight to Saigonese descending Catinat Street in
leged than they were. the 1900s.44
Indian French citizens who were not directly employed by the French French records show that in 1926 the total number of South Indian Mus-
state in Cochinchina often worked as employees of French and other Euro- lims residing in the colony was 1,270 and note that most were there expressly
pean firms and organizations, from banks, oil companies, and department to engage in trade.45 These merchants came from both British and French
stores to printing presses, newspapers, and professional associations. Here parts of India, but British Muslims by the 1920s far outnumbered their French
they were frequently accountants, although they were also engaged in other peers.46 Generally British Indians were the more successful businessmen and
subordinate positions.34 Cochinchinese regulations prevented Indians were better-off. The largest firm in Cochinchina in the 1920s, the Koothanal-
trained in law or medicine from undertaking their chosen professions in the lur firm of J.M.M. Ishmael Brothers, generated employment for lower classes
colony unless they had trained in France.35 While a professional class of Indi- of overseas Tamils who served as shopkeepers, cashiers, and servants.47 Larger
ans existed in Sài Gòn, comprised exclusively of Indians who had taken firms also supplied merchandise to smaller Indian businesses, tailors, and
French citizenship, it was very limited.36 Those Indian French citizens who petty traders. Indian tailors were regularly listed in the colonial yearbook
worked not for the administration but for French and other European firms, from the 1890s, and their shops in Sài Gòn were routinely located in streets
and occasionally for themselves, may have acted to a lesser extent as the adjacent to areas where the cloth merchants conducted their trade.48
the involvement of other, non-Muslim Tamils in the same businesses. A handful

of Indian French citizens became powerful tax farmers, businessmen, and land-
owners between the two world wars.56)
Tamil tax farming put Vietnamese market vendors in towns and smaller
rural outposts in daily contact with South Indian Muslims. Most Indian tax
farmers relied on a network of poorer Tamils, long-established in Cochin-
china, to collect the taxes for them. Similarly, itinerant traders and common
people had contact with this same group of Tamils, to whom they paid taxes
for ferry and mooring services, on their journeys throughout the waterways
of the south. These forms of contact between the two peoples were double-
edged. As we shall see, there is evidence of Indian abuses of their tax farming
powers, and their ability to exact charges from the local people was a source
of great resentment. However, contacts between poor (female) Vietnamese
FIGURE 2: “Indian shop,” Cap St. Jacques, circa 1900. SOURCE: Editions Mlle Cauvin. market vendors and (relatively) better-off Tamil men also engendered mixed
unions between Vietnamese and Tamils in the south of Vietnam.
South Indian Muslims from the French possessions made up a dispropor-
tionate number of employees, petty traders, and small-scale agents in Sài F i na n c i e r s o f C o l o n ia l E x pa n si o n
Gòn.49 They were valued as employees by British Muslims for their skills in Tamil moneylenders played an important role in financing rice production
French and their knowledge of the French system.50 Unlike their Catholic in the Mekong Delta. Landowners relied on Tamil moneylenders to finance
counterparts in the administration, however, very few French Indian Mus- their agricultural expansion, often on-lending to poor tenant farmers.57 The
lims took French citizenship through “renunciation.”51 modest salaries of indigenous public servants and other colonial minor offi-
Although it may be soundly argued that in their trade activities South Indian cials [petits fonctionnaires] obliged them to rely on loans from Tamil money-
Muslims were helping to extend and nurture French colonial power, this created lenders to make ends meet. They frequently entrusted their savings, too, to
less of a daily imposition upon the local peoples of Cochinchina than Indian the Tamil bankers.58 Tamil moneylenders temporarily acquired vast tracts of
involvement in tax farming. Tax or revenue farms were arrangements whereby agricultural land through loan foreclosure during the economic crisis, begin-
private bidders won the right to collect taxes from the public for specific serv- ning in the late 1920s. They were known well before the economic crash,
ices in return for a lump sum payment to the government.52 From the 1870s and however, as landowners of urban properties in Sài Gòn and Chợ Lớn.59
right up until the end of colonial rule, Tamils were active in Cochinchina in the The best-known of these Tamil bankers were members of the Nattukottai
management of market taxes.53 They carved out similar niches in the tendering Chettiar banking caste, who began to arrive in Cochinchina in the 1870s.60
of charges for ferry services and for mooring and loading along quays. With Of Hindu faith, they originated from the Chettinad district in the Tamil
their business bases already located in the Mekong Delta, South Indian Muslims region of South India, an area under British influence. Their enterprises
came to dominate the farming of taxes along the waterways.54 Other areas of flourished in Cochinchina: the total Chettiar credit in the colony amounted
revenue farming in which Tamils, but not necessarily Muslims, became involved to fifty million piastres in the 1920s.61 One hundred and ten Chettiar banks
were tax farms on slaughterhouses and taxes on rubbish collection in towns and were registered in Cochinchina by 1930, with an estimated 340 Chettiars resi-
cities.55 (The dominance of Muslim trading networks did not entirely preclude dent in the colony, including bank owners, agents, and employees. Conversely,
charges of usury, it was only the economic crisis of the 1930s, as I will demon-
strate later, that definitively tipped the balance out of their favor.65
Local clients of the Chettiars who were unable to repay their loans could
well have experienced French law filtered through not one but several Tamil
lenses. The Chettiar bankers, as I explain later, enjoyed the legal right to pur-
sue debtors through the French legal system. Clients who were taken to court
by Chettiars could find in the courtroom that French justice was served
almost entirely by Tamils, acting as magistrates, legal clerks, or bailiffs. As
Chettiars did not generally speak either French or Vietnamese, a Tamil inter-
preter was also likely to be present.
P u rv eyo r s to G ov e rn m e n t a n d to S à i G òn ’ s E x pat riat e s

Aside from the Indian French citizens employed largely in the administra-
tion, the South Asian Muslims in trade, and the Chettiars in finance, several
other smaller Indian migrant groups were present in Cochinchina. They too
were marked clearly as helpmates to French colonialism in that they made
their living, initially at least, by providing services either to French authori-
ties or to Sài Gòn’s growing population of Europeans.
In late nineteenth-century Cochinchina a number of livestock-related
services were run by Tamils. They operated bullock carts for transporting
goods, coaches for the transport of people and mail over longer distances,
and small horse or pony-drawn carriages for short journeys within urban
areas.66
FIGURE 3: Procession of the Chettiar car festival. SOURCE: Editions Poujade de Tamils also raised cattle and sold milk door-to-door, in response to a
Ladevèze. demand for dairy products created by the European presence.67 The Tamils
who really prospered in these livestock-related services were those who won
their losses during the Depression were acute: the financial crisis abruptly government contracts to regularly supply such services—for example to pro-
halved the number of banks, to fifty-five in 1937.62 vide milk to military hospitals, or to run public transport on a regular route.
The picture the Chettiars presented to the Cochinchinese public was contra- The purview of the government contracts extended beyond milk and trans-
dictory. As residents of Sài Gòn they were at once austere and lavish. They lived port to providing animal feed, supplying wood for heating to local adminis-
and worked communally in sparse quarters in central Sài Gòn, and they favored trations, and feeding prisoners and college students.68
an apparently humble mode of dress.63 Yet their annual car festival featured a Tamil carters and carriage drivers disappeared from the historical record
jewel-encrusted chariot that was taken in procession through the city.64 As busi- around the turn of the twentieth century, however—perhaps the victims of
nessmen, they were appreciated for their willingness to lend on low security. But Chinese or European competition. Although Tamils continued to produce
while the high interest rates they charged stirred resentment and prompted and sell milk in Cochinchina throughout the French colonial period, by the
It is not the fact of their connections with the Chettiars, however, but the
depth and nature of this relationship that may explain why the elite of
Cochinchina reserved comment on the Chettiars while speaking out against
other forms of Tamil domination in Cochinchina. The Chettiar’s rural clients
at that time were primarily the better-off, land-owning class who benefited
from the Chettiar credit to finance agricultural and extra-agricultural activi-
ties, as well as to on-lend to landless peasants.151 As long as the Mekong Delta
economy was buoyant and the frontier expanding, the Chettiars’ wealthy,
landowning clients had little objection to make. Sơn Nam has commented on
the tendency of Minh Tân supporters to collaborate with colonial capitalism
where it suited them; the observation is equally relevant to the intellectual
elite of the 1920s.152
G r as sro ot s Re ac t i o n s a n d I n c re asi n g ly
FIGURE 4: Bullock cart with Tamil carters. SOURCE: Editions Mottet et Cie. T rou b l e d Re l at i o n s
While the educated elite of Cochinchina engaged in debates over the undue
early twentieth century they had lost much of their metropolitan clientele privileges and power of some Tamil residents of the colony, more fundamen-
to European competition and a preference for hygienic packaging and tal tensions existed between local people at the grassroots level and the Tamil
pasteurization.69 migrants with whom they came into contact. There is a record of scattered
confrontations and conflicts that took place between Tamil (as well as some
A N ot e o n N o n - Ta m i l M i g r a n t s
other Indian) migrants and local people in the first decades of the twentieth
France’s possessions outside of the Tamil country, as I have said, drew negli- century. These incidents overwhelmingly involved common people—those
gible numbers of people to Indochina. Several trading networks from other selling their produce in rural markets, mooring their boats at landings,
parts of British India had interests in Cochinchina, however. These included frequenting Indian shops, or worshipping at their temples—and Indians
Bhora, Parsi, and Sindhi merchants, known collectively throughout Indo- engaged in Indochina as shopkeepers or tax farmers. They reveal more raw,
china as “Bombay.” Similarly misnamed were the so-called “Bengalis” who and in many ways, more troubled engagements than the relatively measured
worked as night watchmen, guards, and petty traders, and were primarily analysis found in the responses of the intellectual elite.
Pathans and Punjabis Sikhs.70 Vietnamese animosity toward Indian shopkeepers and tax farmers appears
to have been particularly strong. One source of this hostility can be traced to
Indian Legal Privileges and the Social Order claims of physical abuses by Indian tax farmers of local people. Those resent-
The considerable legal rights granted to overseas Indians in Cochinchina, and ments voiced in the article discussed previously about Chà tax farmers’
especially to those with French citizenship, allowed them to claim relatively behavior in Thủ Dầu Một are one example.153 Brocheux’s work on the
high places within the colonial social structure. This was thought to be “unnat- Mekong Delta, although it does not specifically refer to violence, also men-
ural” because the social structure was otherwise constructed, in the minds not tions that Indian tax collectors hounded itinerant peddlers and traders at
only of many Frenchmen but also many Vietnamese, as a racial hierarchy. markets and ferry crossings.154
There is evidence of several occasions on which villagers refused to recog- how the taunting of Indian merchants featured in childhood games. One
nize the legality of an Indian tax farm. This created a problem for the tax explanation for this is that the bravado of Hà Nội’s restless youth was height-
farmer, but as two detailed cases show, the tax farmer generally responded by ened by the meager size of the foreign population able to give chase. One Hà
taking legal action against the villagers and refusing to pay his own tax, Nội author admits playing a game that was specifically devised to anger
thereby undermining colonial authority more seriously. In this equation, the Indian Muslims engaged as merchants in the city. As a child growing up in
most troubling effects the tax farmer finally had to endure were the villagers’ Hà Nội’s old quarter, he and his friends found endless amusement in a prank
ongoing campaigns to insult him. In 1918, the tax farmer So Mouttayah based on the Muslim prohibition on eating pork. “Showing the pig’s ears”
brought a case against the notables of the village of Phước Tân in Biên Hòa consisted of young boys grasping two handfuls of the cloth from their shirts
Province for refusing to recognize the jurisdiction of his farm. Central and waving them at Muslims gathered at the Tamil mosque. The merchants
among So Mouttayah’s complaints to the provincial administration was that would run after them, incensed, in hot pursuit.158 A poem recalled by another
the villagers “incite the boatmen and carters to direct indecent gestures to Hanoian is widely remembered by people of his generation who grew up in
me.”155 In 1925, a tax farmer of markets in the vicinity of Cần Thơ by the the city in the 1930s and 1940s. It is infused with disrespect for Indian
name of Yaccoumsah (Yakum Sahib) was jailed for withholding his revenues migrants, whose activities in that city included selling cakes:
from the French authorities—revenues he had been unable to collect in the
Ông tây đen
markets. As a British subject, the Native Laws [Code de l’indigénat] had been
Nằm trong cái bồ
incorrectly applied to his sentence. In Yacoumsah’s appeal for his release, Đánh cái rắm
one of his most pressing concerns was that he had to suffer the taunts of Thành bánh ga tô
Vietnamese prisoners employed in forced labor [corvée] working along-
Mr. Black Westerner
side him.156
Sat in a basket
If shows of organized resistance to tax farms remained limited, the pour- Let out a fart
ing forth of verbal abuse appears to have been a widespread Vietnamese And out came a cake159
response to the presence of Tamil tradesmen and tax collectors. These
migrants had close, market-level contact with local people, but nevertheless, The term tây đen, or “Black Westerner,” was applied to Indian migrants, as
many did not readily speak Vietnamese. Even one of Vietnam’s former prime well as the small number of Africans who found their way to Indochina
ministers, who grew up in Vĩnh Long before World War II, remembers through engagement in the French army. Tây đen conveyed the gap, in some
female market traders hurling insults at Tamil tax farmers. Satisfied at Vietnamese perceptions, between the privileges these foreigners enjoyed and
being able to vent their frustrations, they were secure in the knowledge that the low place they should have “rightfully” occupied in a racially ordered
the Tamil tax collectors did not really understand the full extent of their social hierarchy.
invective—the tax collectors just put out their hands and asked for their It might be delving too far, for present purposes, into questions of psy-
money.157 chology to try to establish whether the children who deployed these taunts
While shouting abuse at Tamil tax farmers might be explained as a way and poems with such delight drew their inspiration in any way from the atti-
of indirectly venting one’s frustrations about French colonial rule, other tudes of their parents. An advertisement that appeared in Sài Gòn’s Lục Tỉnh
rumors, taunts, and forms of verbal abuse were more specifically directed at Tân Văn in 1914, however, demonstrates that adults in the south displayed the
the Indian migrants. Although Hà Nội’s Indian population was much smaller sentiments they held for Indian milk sellers far more consciously. These bad
than Sài Gòn’s, the northern city is more rife than Sài Gòn with memories of feelings could even be turned to commercial purposes. The advertisement,
By the 1920s, the animosity between Vietnamese and Indian traders began
to express itself in physical violence. Some of these incidents took place in
Indochinese territories outside of Cochinchina, but news reached Cochin-
china. By the 1920s, anti-Indian incidents across Indochina were reported and
analyzed both in newspapers with Vietnamese readerships and in the small
but active Franco-Tamil press.162 Often they debated with the Vietnamese
and metropolitan French-run presses over the facts and the meaning of these
incidents. Although it is difficult to establish what really took place in each
case, a pattern repeats itself through conflicting versions of the incidents: an
accusation of Indian brutality against a Vietnamese served as the pretext for
a Vietnamese boycott or attacks against Indian shops or interests. The Viet-
namese person said to have been subject to the initial Indian attack was
invariably either female or in some other way considered to be a particularly
vulnerable member of Vietnamese society, and thus in need of the wider
society’s protection. The reports of these incidents provide a further context
in which to understand the responses of Vietnamese to Tamil and other
Indian migrants in their midst.
The first of these incidents took place in Sài Gòn in 1925. Labeled the
“Bombay boycott,” it began as a protest against Bombay shopkeepers on
Catinat Street (most probably a row of Sindhi traders established there) but
FIGURE 7: Vietnamese woman admonishing a Tamil milk vendor. SOURCE: Lục extended to Indian shopkeepers generally. In September of that year, an inci-
Tỉnh Tân Văn, no. 314, February 26, 1914. dent occurred in which a Vietnamese woman, the wife of a functionary, was
accused at one Sindhi shop of stealing an umbrella, which she claimed she
which promoted a French brand of milk, depicts a female Vietnamese serv- had just purchased at a neighboring shop. An Indian employee of the shop
ant at the gate of a wealthy villa (see Figure 7). She shouts at a man dressed then hit the woman with the purportedly stolen item, breaking it in two. In
humbly in a dhoti who is holding two milk bottles. The caption reads: “You the spirit of the short-lived anti-Chinese boycott of 1919, the same papers
little Chà Và, where have you come from? Why don’t you go away? Your milk that took up that cause (the Trung Lập Báo [the Impartial] and the Lục Tỉnh
smells like old goat. Our household only buys La Petite Fermière milk. Run Tân Văn) now exhorted Vietnamese women to stay away from the Indian
away quickly, or you’re dead!”160 shops. The boycott does not appear to have lasted more than two weeks. The
Thus we find Vietnamese antagonism toward Indian emigrants deployed Trung Lập Báo backed down, “with pity for the compatriots of Gandhi” and
by a French company to sell tinned milk to the Vietnamese. Vietnamese dis- “with respect for French merchants” who protested that as suppliers to the
dain for the humble Tamil milkman continued into the 1930s. In 1931, the Sindhis, they too were being affected by the boycott. Posters continued to be
Franco-Tamil Saigon-Dimanche [Sài Gòn-Sunday] printed a refutation of the displayed, however, urging people to continue the protest. And the Echo
“idiotic rumor” prevalent in Cochinchina that Indian milkmen “milked their Annamite, although it refrained from real participation itself, claimed that
cows and goats with their mouths.”161 the Trung Lập Báo had given in too soon to the “foreigners who have forgotten
the pure and simple civility which they owe to us and to our women in young children they were carrying into the shrine, they yelled abuses at him.
exchange for the generous hospitality which is given to them.”163 He threw them out of the temple, whereupon they continued to cause a scan-
In June 1928 two similar incidents took place within days of each other in dal and invent stories.167
the town of Vinh in Annam and on Viénot Street in Sài Gòn. As the Franco- Yet another incident with a similar narrative occurred in the imperial city
Tamil Reveil Saigonnais recounted the story, an Indian shop in Vinh was of Huế, in Annam, in 1937. According to Security Service reports, a Vietnam-
crowded on market day in early June when a young man was caught stealing ese woman caught stealing from a “Bombay” shop in that city shouted to
cloth. An Indian employee caught the thief and slapped him. The thief (who attract passersby with claims that she had been abused by the shop’s manager.
happened to be clubfooted) fell and hit his head. This action so outraged the Demonstrations were mounted immediately, with stones being thrown at the
crowd that they began to throw bricks and stones at the shop, and at two shop. In the days that followed a more organized group of some two thou-
other Indian shops in the street. The gendarmes, unable to control the situa- sand students gathered to shout “Expel the Bombay, useless to society!” The
tion, called in the militia, who cleared the street and remained to guard the students also addressed a telegram to the governor-general pleading: “Please
Indian shops. When the Indian shops opened again after three days of closure, intervene immediately, huge demonstration amassed Huế against Hindou
they were menaced by some of the perpetrators of the violence: “They . . . came brutalities towards Annamite women.” Posters appeared inciting the popula-
into the shops demanding to be sold ‘black khaki’ and if that was not pro- tion to boycott the “Bombay” stores: “We must end all our relations with the
duced they would have ‘red khaki.’” The newspaper reported that such was Bombay store. They come here only to beg in an indirect way and to live off
the tension that Indian merchants packed up their shops and left the town the blood of the people of Annam. Despite this, they dare to look for trouble.
shortly afterward.164 For our honor and for that of future generations we must expel them from
The incident that took place a few weeks later on Viénot Street in Sài Gòn the territory of Huế, cutting all relations with them.” French security agents,
was remarkably similar. Viénot Street was known at the time for the pres- who followed the trouble closely, claimed that the group of Vietnamese com-
ence of Tamil cloth merchants. When a man by the name of Pham Van Hai munists related to the Sài Gòn newspaper La Lutte [The Struggle] were
attempted to steal bobbins from the shop of Abdoulakdare and Company, behind the demonstrations.168
an Indian employee threw a shoe to stop the man. The shoe hit the thief in All of these incidents taken together reveal how tensions present between
the eye and seriously injured him. An attack on the shop, described as a Indians and the local community could so quickly turn to open conflict. Yet,
“veritable battle,” was organized some days later to avenge Pham Van Hai’s although it appears as a tale of accusation and bitter counter-accusation, the
injuries.165 undeniable animosity that is present in the stories recounted above must be
In August 1936 a confrontation took place at the Amiral Roze Street tempered by evidence, as we shall see in the next section, of peaceful reli-
Temple in Sài Gòn, dedicated to the Hindu goddess Mariamman, between gious accommodation.
the “Bengali” guard stationed to guard the temple and two young Vietnam-
Re l i g i ou s Ac c o m mo dat i o n
ese girls.166 The Vietnamese newspapers, according to the Indochine-Inde
[Indochina-India], ran a series of hysterical, but conflicting, headlines: “An There are several examples of Vietnamese accommodation of Indian religious
Indian after having stroked a young Annamite girl hit her violently”; “At the practices, and of Indian expressions of interest in indigenous local religious
Bà Đen Pagoda in Sài Gòn an Indian tried to rape a young girl of 13 years practices. Whatever the truth of events that spurred the confrontation between
old”; “The Indians of the pagoda in Amiral Roze street hit two young girls”; local Vietnamese and overseas Indians at Sài Gòn’s Amiral Roze Street Temple
“A young girl was brutalized by the Indians.” In the version of events reported in 1936, the conflict must be viewed within the context of religious syncretism.
by Indochine-Inde itself, when the guard asked the girls not to bring the It is significant that when the altercation between two Vietnamese girls and a
“Bengali” guard occurred, the girls were not passing by a place marked off as Finally, works chronicling “miracles” witnessed at the Catholic pilgrimage
“foreign” to them. Rather, they were about to enter the temple, most probably site of La Vang in Annam include mention of Indian Catholics upon whom
with the intention of praying to the overseas Indians’ Hindu goddess. the Virgin was said to have bestowed favors in the 1920s. The names of the
It was at this temple in central Sài Gòn, dedicated to Mariamman that the Indians who travelled to La Vang (“Lesage” and “Sandjivy”) suggest that they
most lively interactions between local Cochinchinese and overseas Indians were renouncers.173
occurred. The temple became increasingly popular in the first half of the
Re ac t i on s to t h e Pro spe c t o f K i n sh i p
twentieth century with both Vietnamese and Khmer. Vietnamese in Cochin-
china considered Mariamman, a “dark” and powerful goddess credited in If the above-described incidents demonstrate that there were high levels of
southern India with powers over the spread of smallpox, to be the Indian animosity between Indian merchants and the Vietnamese who came regu-
embodiment of a local deity, the “Black Lady” [Bà Đen] of their own popular larly in contact with them, it is in stories that suggest the prospect of kinship
religious belief.169 The Mariamman temple also attracted worshippers from that racial reactions emerge most strongly. Despite ideas that were apparently
the city’s Khmer population. Indeed, the Vietnamese absorption of Khmer prevalent among Vietnamese at the time about their racial superiority over
practices of Hinduism provided the link between Bà Đen and the Indian the (darker-skinned) Tamils, these attitudes did not prevent mixed unions
Hindu deity.170 This attachment to the worship of Mariamman as Bà Đen from taking place, in certain social contexts, between Tamil men and local
survived and is being vigorously revived in the present day. women.174 These unions were a means for petty traders, itinerant vendors, or
The local Cochinchinese were also attracted to the practices of Indians of women in other modest positions to advance themselves. It is clear in the
other faiths. Muslim Cham and Vietnamese of the Mekong Delta both Vietnamese response to such relationships that they aggravated, rather than
adopted the worship of the Muslim “saint” Bava Bilal, who is buried in Cần offset, Vietnamese antagonisms toward Tamils in Cochinchina, particularly
Thơ’s Tamil Muslim cemetery. Although there exists little historical docu- when Tamils attempted to go outside of the tolerable norms established for
mentation about Bava Bilal, descendents of Indo-Vietnamese families claim such unions.
he was an Arab or Indian merchant who gained extraordinary powers upon A civil case conducted in the courts of Tourane in 1905 provides a good
his death. The practice of invoking his assistance included, up until the 1970s, measure of the behavioral boundaries and the appropriate social contexts for
an annual festival that attracted followers from across the Mekong Delta. The unions between Tamil men and Vietnamese women. The case does so by
festival survives in the present, albeit in more limited form.171 recounting what happened when one Tamil trader, apparently obsessed with
Indications that Indians, for their part, could participate in local forms of a young Vietnamese woman, went utterly against these norms. In 1904,
devotion are evident in the generous donations given by Chettiar and other Aboubakare, a Tamil merchant based in Tourane, attempted to press adultery
Tamil businessmen to the renovation of the mausoleum of General Lê Văn charges against his “wife,” claiming she had taken up with another man. His
Duyệt in the late 1930s. Lê Văn Duyệt (1764–1832) served as Emperor Gia ostensible wife was a young woman of 18, Nguyen Thi Den, a tobacco seller
Long’s viceroy in the south, before the region came under centralized con- and the daughter of a relatively wealthy man who held the tax farm for the
trol. His mausoleum stands near the Bà Chiểu market on the outskirts of Hồ city’s slaughterhouse. Aboubakare claimed to have married her in July 1904.
Chí Minh City. Tamil reverence for Lê Văn Duyệt was in keeping with that of In their testimonies as they appear in the court transcripts, Nguyen Thi
Chinese migrants who propitiated the spirit of the general in the belief that Den and her family insisted that she had never been married to Aboubakare.
in his death, as in his life, he continued to support their enterprises. One of They made it clear that they would be opposed to such a union on racial
the most generous donations, inscribed on a tablet in the mausoleum, came grounds. The father told the court how Aboubakare, having trouble with his
from the Tamil landowner and banker Appapoullé.172 associates, had come to him to ask for help. The father had allowed him stay
in a building adjacent to the family house for two months. But then, “Having country, the judge resolved, and should have known of the prevailing norms,
learned that Aboubakare was telling everyone (Chinese and Annamite) that of “the racial antagonism existing between his race and the Annamite race,
I had given him my daughter in marriage, I chased him from my premises, and that a native who is better-off would never consent to give his daughter’s
not wanting this rumor, which I considered to be scandalous, to last any hand in marriage to a Malabar.”175
longer.” He added, “I would anyway be opposed to such a union because I An article that appeared in Trần Chánh Chiếu’s Lục Tỉnh Tân Văn is an
consider this Indian to be a savage.” In her testimony his daughter spoke in exception to the otherwise tempered responses to Indian economic domi-
similar terms, “I would never consent to take Aboubakare for a husband nance found in that newspaper. It is another example of the racially based
because I find him too black.” horror embedded in the popular imagination of the period at the prospect of
Aboubakare’s claim failed to hold up in court: he had no marriage papers a Chà son-in-law.176 It described the author’s visit to an acquaintance in a
to prove it, and Nguyen Thi Den maintained she had married someone else rural town. Upon his arrival, the acquaintance announced that he had
in May, a young Vietnamese man by the name of Le Van Thai. Aboubakare arranged for his daughter to be married and encouraged the author to stay
changed tack, accusing Nguyen Thi Den and her mother of defamation. The the night in order to meet the prospective son-in-law. Greeted in the morn-
mother, Lam Thi Hue, was charged with having appeared in May outside the ing by the sight of what he referred to as a thằng Chà Và seated in a chair, he
plaintiff ’s door, a dog in hand, yelling: “I brought this dog for Aboubakare to took him for a trader come to sell cloth. The use of thằng, the classifier for
f… because he doesn’t have a wife!” “This scandalous scene,” it was noted in boys, was demeaning in this context.177 The author described the Indian as
the court records, “drew a considerable crowd in front of the shop.” The fol- “the devil of thunder manifest on earth” [thiên lôi giáng thế ]. Discovering the
lowing day, Aboubakare claimed, Nguyen Thi Den herself appeared outside Indian was the prospective son-in-law, he exhorted readers not to follow this
his house, screaming: “F… your father, your mother, your family!” model. “It is better to marry [your daughter] to a poor Annamese,” the article
Whether these scenes of obscenity and pure rage actually occurred is not concluded, “rather than to a Chà Và with wealth.”178
firmly established by the court records. The family’s fury at Aboubakare’s This type of resistance to the greater integration of Tamils into Indochi-
advances on their daughter, however, is well evidenced elsewhere. Nguyen nese society persisted through the 1920s and up to living memory. It weighed
Thi Den’s father related how, sometime after Aboubakare had been chased in the February 1923 murder of Francisque, a renounced Indian soldier of the
from the house, he appeared with four Vietnamese women carrying a plate 11th Infantry stationed in Sài Gòn. He was attacked and killed following an
of betel nut: “Asking them what this visit signified, they said they had come argument between his neighbor and his concubine [con gái; congaie], with
to ask, on behalf of Aboubakare, for my daughter’s hand in marriage.” The whom he lived in the quarter of Dakao.179 An editorial that ran in the Fran-
father’s testimony was corroborated by two of the women commissioned to co-Tamil Réveil Saigonnais maintained, typical for the republican stance of
enact Aboubakare’s version of a Vietnamese matrimonial rite. Nguyen Thi the newspaper, that color should not enter into the question of the murder of
Den’s mother, according to one of the betel-carriers, “flew into a violent a French soldier: “Indochina is French territory. In the shadow of its flag,
rage, took a broom and chased Aboubakare away.” She continued, “Feeling men of all colors stand guard.” Nonetheless the paper acknowledged: “It
ashamed, I left Lam Thi Hue’s property immediately along with the three occurs to us that this attack can be explained by the hatred that Annamites
other women.” hold for black and brown soldiers.”180
In his conclusion, the judge reasoned that Aboubakare, obsessed with the If this example demonstrates how prejudices played out in the poorer
young woman, had tried in his own way to charm her and her family into an classes of society, the more privileged were not unaffected by such attitudes.
agreement of marriage. When his charms did not persuade them, he tried by A historian who grew up in Huế in the 1940s described how his mother’s
intimidation to prove she was his wife. Aboubakare had stayed long in the maid, from a very poor background, received an offer of marriage from
Issoup, a Tamil cloth trader. His mother, considering this an excellent pros- adoption was at times similarly misused. The potential for Indians from the
pect for a simple girl, encouraged the maid and went so far as to organize French possessions to manipulate French law, if they so chose, was consider-
the wedding. The maid, whose economic condition improved considerably able, first by voluntarily taking on French citizenship though renunciation,
through the match, kept in contact with her former employers. Occasionally and then by engineering “false recognitions.” We can assume that Amaladas-
her husband, Issoup, extended them invitations to dinner. My informant’s sou Mariapragassam was not the only one so tempted. This offsets the picture
mother would attend, taking him as a young boy in tow, where he claimed to of racial prejudice described so far, as it demonstrates that Tamils and Viet-
have developed a taste for curry. His father, however, would never demean namese were able to collaborate in some contexts to their mutual benefit.
himself to accept the Tamil’s invitation: “Indians were badly regarded, and he Paul Louis’ file states: “In his physical aspect he has all the traits common
was an intellectual. The Vietnamese looked down on the Indians [at that to the Annamite race.” It also contains the detail that he was rejected by his
time], considering them to be black.”181 family because he had taken steps to be “recognized as French by a Malabar.”
I have spoken so far of the prejudices provoked by relationships created He should have taken over the care of his family altar, it was noted, but was
through marriage. But kinship between Tamils and Vietnamese was not gen- chased out by the family, who would not accept that someone recognized as
erated only through conjugal ties. In 1935, a former soldier living in Hà Nội French by an Indian could carry on the role.
who went by the name of Paul Louis Mariapragassam applied for French A short note at the bottom of Paul Louis Mariapragassam’s application for
naturalization. Investigating his application, French authorities concluded naturalization, which reads “Noted, Ratinassamy,” brings us back full circle
that he was in fact Nguyen Dinh Luy, a soldier who in the army had had him- to the point of this article. It was an Indian renouncer, in his role as the head
self “recognized by a Malabar.” Paul Louis, or Luy, was said to have paid two of the Hà Nội registration office, who reviewed Paul Louis Mariapragassam’s
hundred piastres in 1921 to Amaladassou Mariapragassam, originally from application. Any lengthier views Ratinassamy may have held on the tangled
Karikal, who then officially recorded his birth with the Civil Registration web of relationships between his countrymen and the Vietnamese have
Office [Etat civil], claiming to be his father. One hundred piastres was paid unfortunately gone unrecorded. His signature on this document, however,
up front, but the remainder was never collected, as “the Indian died that shows that Indians were engaged in serving French interests in Indochina to
November.” As a French citizen, Paul Louis then earned four times his previ- the very extent that they were part of the bureaucracy monitoring Vietnam-
ous salary. ese applications for naturalization.
Paul Louis’ application for naturalization was prompted by his loss of
French citizenship; he had been stripped of his citizenship when he had Conclusion
fraudulently adopted two “children” who had already reached their age of Brocheux’s comparison of Chinese and Indian relations with the Vietnamese
majority. A full five children were mentioned in his file; named Jeanne, Anne, is one of very few extended comments on the Indian presence in Cochin-
Jules, Valle, and Lanne, they all used the surname Mariapragassam. While china that may be found in historical scholarship. He maintains that “the
French authorities called into question Paul Louis’ identity, it was equally Chinese were not imbued with notions of racial superiority and most
uncertain who his children really were. The process of “recognition” [recon- found wives among the Vietnamese or Khmers. . . . Conflicts between the
naissance] was the faculty in French law allowing men to declare their pater- Vietnamese and the Chinese were not racial but economic in character.” In
nity over children born out of wedlock. It was used in Indochina primarily contrast, Indian migrants “did not appear to the Vietnamese in the same light
by French men wishing to confer on their métis offspring the status of French as the Chinese [because] they lacked the kinship relations that might have
citizens.182 Occasionally this was subject to abuse as Europeans sometimes offset the indignities suffered by the Vietnamese as a result of the Chetty’s
sold their “recognition” to Vietnamese desiring citizenship.183 The process of moneylending activities and economic exploitation.”184
It cannot be denied that the meeting of Tamil and Vietnamese people and The doctrine of assimilation in French colonialism controlled, to some
cultures on Vietnamese soil was a troubled encounter. This did not com- extent, a more general, late nineteenth-century European tendency to order
pletely rule out forms of integration, however, and it did not by any means colonial societies along racial lines. Yet in purely pragmatic terms, “assimila-
imply that relationships of kinship did not exist. Moreover, Tamil migrants tion” did not completely serve the interests of French colonialism. Citizen-
fulfilled a multitude of roles in Cochinchina other than that of the usurious ship and electoral rights were only granted in France’s overseas empire when
foreign moneylender. Indeed, when we examine the “indignities” Vietnam- they favored sustained French control. This was the case in late nineteenth-
ese felt themselves to have suffered as a result of the Tamil presence, it is in century Pondicherry, but the picture was very different in Cochinchina,
these Vietnamese responses to other Tamils—from the Indian French citizen where the conditions of French control required that enfranchisement and
to the Muslim trader to the struggling milkman—that we find the most per- citizenship be granted to only a select group. The resulting unevenness in the
suasive arguments for a revision of notions of how everyday life was lived rights held by people colonized by France meant that mobility within the
under French colonialism. Vietnamese reactions to the Tamil presence sup- empire, creating the opportunity for the vastly different rights of different
port a more complex view, too, of how the political consciousness of Viet- peoples colonized by France to be compared to each other, made a mockery
namese in the south was shaped in the first half of the twentieth century. It of the idea of the mission civilisatrice. This was the message stated clearly by
was not only through direct contact with white French men that the indige- Cochinchinese intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century.
nous peoples of Cochinchina experienced and assessed French colonialism. The racial element in Vietnamese reactions to the Indian presence is
In Cochinchina, overseas Indian business practices and the rights of Indians intriguing precisely because French policy was, relatively speaking, less fixated
from the French possessions formed important catalysts for the thinking of on race. European race theory was readily, indeed eagerly, adopted and adapted
reform-minded Vietnamese intellectuals. And the more racially charged by Vietnamese and other non-European commentators in the first half of the
conflicts that arose out of contacts between Tamils and local Cochinchinese twentieth century to project ideas of themselves as dynamic and forward-
at the grassroots level reveal that a colonial racial hierarchy as defined by looking peoples.186 The racial prejudice expressed against Indians in Cochin-
those in power was not the only such hierarchy in use. china was not like this, however. It was a grassroots phenomenon, grounded in
It is generally claimed that the rise of hostilities against overseas Indians notions held by a largely uneducated, mainly rural population of a proper
within the British Empire was accentuated by a British tendency to institu- racial order and what ran against it. Racially based prejudice was not a constant
tionalize racial differences. Political and social preferment was extended source of tension in relations between Vietnamese and Tamils in Cochinchina.
along ethnic and racial lines, and indigenous peoples were “protected” by Prejudice heightened at particular moments in time, the most notable being
decrees that inscribed these same racial divisions into law.185 The import of the economic crisis of the 1930s. While members of the intellectual elite were
European racial theory to its colonial empire was by no means the sole not completely immune to prejudice against Tamils, their criticisms adopted
reserve of the British. Yet in French India, racial theory was not always racial overtones most markedly when they sought a broader base of support.
deployed quite so baldly, with a different set of rules for each “race.” The Vietnamese racial reactions to the Indian presence are but a small part of much
republican doctrine of equality and of “assimilation” for colonial peoples larger questions about indigenous ideas of racial difference and racial preju-
held this tendency in check. While a social hierarchy existed in colonial dice, which remain unexplored. These should not be shied away from but
Cochinchina, it was not constructed entirely on the principle of race. The deserve further study as they promise to greatly increase understandings of the
racial preconceptions that the social hierarchy might have otherwise fed on specific ways in which racism sustained colonial societies.
were disrupted by the rights and privileges that had been given to some peo- The broader outcome of this study, I hope, has been to put overseas Tamils
ple and not others. back on the map of colonial Cochinchina. Although Cochinchina’s population
of Indians was modest numerically, it cannot be dismissed merely on the dissertation and began as a contribution to the Graduate Student Confer-
basis of its size. The Tamil presence in colonial Cochinchina and the role it ence on Vietnamese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in
played in shaping Vietnamese attitudes to colonialism in the south has long February 2007.
been overlooked but must at last be taken seriously.
Ab st rac t
There is plentiful scope too to extend this revision of cartography. Singa-
This article seeks to understand how Vietnamese in colonial Cochinchina
pore, Penang, Batavia, and other port cities of Southeast Asia were places
engaged with Tamil migrants in their midst. By shedding light on little-
that came to be “defined by mobility” in the first half of the twentieth century.
known aspects of the Indian role in Cochinchina, it offers a new perspective
There is enough persuasive evidence from Cochinchina’s Tamil diaspora—
on the complexities of the lived experience of colonialism for Vietnamese in
and the addition of the Chinese would only confirm it—to comfortably place
the colony. It reveals the important role, until now unrecognized, of the Tamil
Sài Gòn alongside those cities. By the 1920s and 1930s in Southeast Asia’s port
presence in shaping Vietnamese calls for reform in the southern part of Viet-
cities, the place of diasporic communities had emerged among indigenous
locals as “a political project” and a crucial subject of debate.187 These inter- nam. The rare glimpse offered of Indian migration under French (rather than
regional networks may be extended by examining the Tamil debate, which British) imperial conditions is of important comparative relevance to scholars
of Indian diasporas across the colonial world.
grew in tandem with the Vietnamese one. Through the channels of Tamil
associations and Franco-Tamil newspapers based in Sài Gòn, and partly in
Key words: transnational studies, overseas Indians, Tamil diaspora,
response to Vietnamese criticism, Cochinchinese Tamils vigorously sought
subimperial systems, interethnic conflict, citizenship, race and status
to assert their place in the Indochinese peninsula in the 1920s and 1930s.188 In
ways which have yet to be fully explored, this Tamil debate was connected Notes
with similar attempts to develop a “diasporic consciousness” among migrant 1. G. Vidy, “La communauté indienne en Indochine” [The Indian Community
Tamils in Southeast Asia.189 in Indochina], Sud-Est [South-East] no. 6 (November 1949): 1–8; V.M. Reddi,
Vietnamese debates over the presence of Tamils in colonial Cochinchina “Indians in the Indochina States and Their Problems,” in Indians in South East
rightly deserve to be viewed not only as a window onto the birth of Vietnam- Asia, ed. I.J. Bahadur Singh (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1982), 155–158;
ese nationalism in the south but also as one among several wider debates Nayan Chanda, “Indians in Indochina,” in Indian Communities in Southeast
Asia, eds. K.S. Sandhu and A. Mani (Singapore: Times Academic Press, ISEAS,
within the region. Tamils may have triggered Vietnamese resentments in
1993), 31–45; Claude Marius, “Les Pondichériens dans l’administration coloni-
ways shaped by the characteristics of the French colonial context, but these ale de l’Indochine” [Pondicherrians in the Colonial Administration of Indo-
differences only serve to enhance the argument. This study of Vietnamese china], in Les relations entre la France et l’Inde de 1673 à nos jours [Relations
responses to the Tamil presence in Cochinchina has provided some of the between France and India from 1673 to the Present Time], ed. J. Weber (Paris:
evidence needed to restore colonial Sài Gòn to its place alongside other port Les Indes Savantes, 2002), 391–398; Claude Marius, “La migration des Pon-
cities of Southeast Asia, as a diverse, cosmopolitan, and in many ways, dichériens vers l’Indochine” [The Migration of Pondicherrians to Indochina],
Revue Historique de Pondichéry [Pondicherry Historical Review] vols. 22 and
diasporic city. ■
23 (2007 and 2009): 101–106 and 3–37, respectively; J.B.P. More, “Indians in
French Indochina,” in French in India and Indian Nationalism (1700 A.D.–1963
Natasha Pai r aude au was recently awarded her PhD in History from
A.D.), ed. K.S. Mathew (Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1999), 447–460; J.B.P. More,
the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She is currently “Pathan and Tamil Muslim Migrants in French Indochina,” Pondicherry Uni-
revising her dissertation, “Indians as French Citizens in Colonial Indo- versity Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, nos. 1 and 2 (2000): 113–128;
china, 1858–1940,” for publication. This article is based on chapter 6 of that Nasir Abdoule-Carime, “Note introductive” [Introductory Note], published
online (2003) as a preface to an online reprint of the Vidy article at http://aefek. 4. Examples are too numerous to mention, but an important recent analysis,
free.fr/bibliothequeDocuments00010583.html (accessed September 7, 2010). which places British India at the center of British influence in the Indian
My own contribution counts among these overviews. See Natasha Pairaudeau, Ocean, is found in Thomas R. Metcalf, Imperial Connections: Indians in the
“Indo-china: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia,” in The Encyclopedia of the Indian Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
Diaspora, ed. Brij V. Lal (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet and National Uni- 2007). French India’s outward ambitions were, I argue, more accidental. See
versity of Singapore, 2006), 200–203. For two valuable attempts to begin tap- Natasha Pairaudeau, “Indians as French Citizens in Colonial Indochina, 1858–
ping the French colonial archive in Aix-en-Provence for what it can reveal of 1940” (PhD dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2009), 299–
the Indian presence in Indochina, see Nadia Leconte, “La migration des Pon- 300.
dichériens et des Karikalais en Indochine ou le combat des Indiens-renonçants 5. For a seminal work on the subject, see Rajat Kanta Ray, “Asian Capital in the
en Cochinchine pour la reconnaissance de leur statut (1865–1954)” [The Migra- Age of European Domination: The Rise of the Bazaar, 1800–1914,” Modern
tion of Pondicherrians and Karikalais to Indochina or the Fight of the Indian Asian Studies 29, no. 3 (July 1995): 449–554; and more recently, Claude Marko-
Renouncers in Cochinchina for Recognition of Their Status (1865–1954)] (mas- vits, The Global World of Indian Merchants 1750–1947, Traders of Sind from
ter’s thesis [maîtrise], Université de Haute-Bretagne Rennes, 2001); Christelle Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Brun, “Chettys, prêteurs d’argent indiens et l’économie indochinoise (1880- 6. Metcalf, Imperial Connections, 204.
1940)” [Chettys, Indian Moneylenders and the Indochinese Economy (1880– 7. Ibid., 220; see also Sunil S. Amrith, “Tamil Diasporas across the Bay of Bengal,”
1940)] (DEA thesis, Aix-en-Provence [?], 2003). The American Historical Review 114 (June 2009): 547–572.
2. References to the Indian presence in contemporary works of Vietnamese history 8. Burmese violence was directed at striking Telegu laborers in May and July of
are brief and scattered. They include Pierre Brocheux, The Mekong Delta: Ecol- 1930, and the Saya San Rebellion from late 1930 included large-scale attacks
ogy, Economy and Revolution, 1860–1960 (Madison: University of Wisconsin- against Indians. See Michael Peter Adas, The Burma Delta: Economic Develop-
Madison Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1995), 70, 72–74, 77, 80, 87–88, 103, ment and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1852–1941 (Madison: Univer-
104, 114, 156–157, 210; Ngô Vĩnh Long, Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese sity of Wisconsin Press, 1974): 197–199, 207–208.
Peasants under the French (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 88–89; 9. Caste as a colonial invention and related topics remain sources of vigorous
Martin Murray, The Development of Capitalism in Colonial Indochina (1870– debate in scholarship on colonial India. The central arguments may be found
1940) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 454–455; Hue-Tam Ho Tai, in Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India
“The Politics of Compromise: The Constitutionalist Party and the Electoral (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); and Nicholas B. Dirks,
Reforms of 1922 in French Cochinchina,” Modern Asian Studies 18, no. 3 (1984): Castes of Mind, Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Delhi: Perma-
371–391 (387–388); Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnam- nent Black, 2003). Works that challenge some of these claims include Sumit
ese Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 123. Guha, “The Politics of Identity and Enumeration in India, c. 1600–1990,” Soci-
3. My research relies on findings from archives in five countries: the Indian ety for Comparative Study of Society and History 45, no. 1 (January 2003): 148–
National Archive, Pondicherry Branch; the India Office Library, London; the 167; and Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth
Archives nationales d’outre mer, Aix-en-Provence, France; the Archives de la Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
ligue des droits de l’homme, Nanterre, France; The Cambodian National 10. N. Gupta, “The Citizens of French India: The Issue of Cultural Identity in Pon-
Archives; and the Vietnam National Archives I, in Hà Nội [Trung Tâm Lưu dicherry in the XIXth Century” (paper presented at meeting of the Association
Trữ Quốc Gia I] and II, in Hồ Chí Minh City [Trung Tâm Lưu Trữ Quốc Gia historique internationale de l’Océan Indien [International History Association
II]. I also consulted newspaper collections held in the Hà Nội National Library of the Indian Ocean], “Les relations historiques et culturelles entre la France et
[Thư Viện Quốc Gia Việt Nam] and the General Sciences Library, Hồ Chí l’Inde XVIIe-XXe siècles” [Historical and Cultural Relations between France
Minh City [Thư Viện Khoa Học Tổng Hợp]. Findings from these sources are and India 17th–20th centuries], St. Clothilde, Réunion, July 21–28, 1986): 161–
supplemented by interviews conducted in Vietnam, India, and France with 173 (161).
people recalling childhood memories or recounting family histories related to 11. On the principle of “assimilation” and its close cousin “association,” see Martin
the Indian presence in Indochina. Deming Lewis, “One Hundred Million Frenchmen: The Assimilation Theory
in French Colonial Policy,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 4 (Janu- castes [Pondicherry and the Comptoirs after Dupleix: Democracy in the Land
ary 1962): 129–153. of Caste] (Paris: Denoel, 1996), especially 227–236. Chapter 2 of my disserta-
12. The Chinese population of Chợ Lớn in 1921 numbered 48,890, against 40,400 tion analyzes the many ways in which renunciation and renouncers were con-
inhabitants of that city described as “Annamites.” Even in Sài Gòn in the same nected to Indochina. See Pairaudeau, “Indians as French Citizens,” 51–76.
year, the Chinese population (at 23,100) was just under half that of the “Anna- 17. P. Huard, “Chinois, Japonais et Hindous en Indochine” [Chinese, Japanese and
mites” (46,100). My estimate of Indian migrant numbers is derived from sev- Hindus in Indochina], Bulletin Economique Indochinois [Indochinese Economic
eral sources: Gouvernement général de l’Indochine, Annuaire statistique de Bulletin] 3 (1939): 484–485.
l’Indochine: Recueil de statistiques relatives aux années 1913–1922 [Statistical 18. There were exceptions, created primarily by the unwillingness of French
Yearbook of Indochina: Summary of Statistics for the Years 1913–1922] (Hà administrators in Cochinchina to equate “renouncer” status with French
Nội: Direction des affaires économiques, 1923): 33, 36–37; “Le cahier des vœux citizenship. See chapter 5 in Pairaudeau, “Indians as French Citizens,”
annamites: Naturalisation française” [The Wish List of the Vietnamese People: 178–218.
French Naturalization], Echo Annamite, December 1, 1925; “État numérique 19. The Archives nationales d’outre mer in Aix-en-Provence (hereafter ANOM)
des Indiens sujets français non-renonçants établis en Cochinchine, 1936,” File holds early requests from Admiral Ohier to the governor of Pondicherry to
no. L11, Non-reconnaissance du droit de l’éligibilité des indiens sujets français send young Indian “writers” to Sài Gòn. See File no. GGI 10410, Personnel
aux chambres de commerce, 1938, Vietnam National Archive I, Hà Nội (here- recruté aux Indes françaises, 1868, ANOM.
after VNA-I). 20. Numerous examples can be found in the files of service personnel in both the
13. In the period between the wars, the population of Indians in each of the ANOM and VNA-II archives.
French protectorates of Indochina is estimated to have numbered in the low 21. The ambiguity in French India in the use of the term “créole“ was carried over
hundreds. In the colonial yearbook, Indians are embedded in the category to Indochina with the créoles who went there. By the late 1800s the term in use
autres races [other races]. Gouvernement général de l’Indochine, Annuaire in French India could refer to either mixed-blood Indo-Europeans (who were
statistique 1913–1922, 35–42. usually Indo-Portuguese) or long-time settlers of French origin. Yet included
14. The French Establishments in India comprised five trading posts, or comptoirs. in the latter group were people of mixed stock who simply aimed to pass as
The other three were Mahé on the west coast, Chandernagore within Bengal, European and deny their Indian heritage. Evidence of such attitudes can be
and Yanaon on the central east coast. I have found evidence, at most, of only found in Denise Affonço’s account of her Indo-European father in Cambodia,
two or three individuals from these other three territories in Indochina over a See Affonço, To the End of Hell: One Woman’s Struggle to Survive the Khmer
full century of migration. This may be explained by the fact that Tamils living Rouge (London: Reportage Press, 2009), 1. French Indian créoles migrated to
in Pondicherry were at the political and administrative hub of French India, Cochinchina but were present in much smaller numbers than their Tamil com-
and nearby Karikal was closely connected. patriots. See Governor of French Establishments (GEFI) to Governor General
15. “Decree relative to personal status,” September 21, 1881, in Gouvernement des Indochina (GGI), September 21, 1937, File no. GD1812, Listes des fonction-
Etablissements français dans l’Inde, Annuaire des Etablissements français dans naires originaires de l’Inde française 1938, VNA-I.
l’Inde pour 1881 [Yearbook of the French Establishments in India for 1881] 22. Respectively commis, greffiers, and huissiers. See, for example, the Tamil names
(Pondicherry: Imprimerie du Gouvernment, 1882), 472–473. listed under this heading in Gouvernement Général de l’Indochine, Annuaire
16. See T.P. Appavou, Absurde renonciation de Indous chrétiens [The Absurd générale de l’Indochine 1908 (Hà Nội: IDEO, 1909), 186–187.
Renunciation of Christian Hindus] (Sài Gòn: Imprimerie Aug. Boch, 1890), 7. 23. The role of a porteur de contraintes was to carry executive mandates to those who
For analyses of renunciation as a social movement and the social origins of had not paid their taxes, to press them to pay up. See Leconte, “La migration
renouncers, see Paul Michalon, “Des Indes françaises aux Indiens français ou des Pondichériens,” 95; Gouvernment de la Cochinchine, Annuaire de la
Comment peut-on être franco-pondichérien?” [From the French Indies to Cochinchine française (Sài Gòn: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1885): 176.
French Indians; or, How Can One be Franco-Pondicherrian?] (DEA thesis, 24. See Minister of Navy and Colonies to GEFI, May 12, 1883, Dépêches ministeri-
University of Aix-Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, 1990). See also Jacques Weber, elles 1883 [Ministerial Dispatches 1883], Indian National Archives, Pondicherry
Pondichéry et les comptoirs de l’Inde après Dupleix: La démocratie au pays des Branch.
25. By 1938, one-third of the clerks of court [commis-greffier and greffier-notaire] in 107–108; William F.S. Miles, Imperial Burdens: Countercolonialism in Former
Sài Gòn’s Court of Appeal and another third employed by the Sài Gòn Tribunal French India (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 5.
were renouncers. So too were three out of eleven judges [juges suppléants] 33. See Minister for the Navy and Colonies to GEFI, March 8, 1913, Dépêches min-
within the Court of Appeal. In the provinces, nine out of thirteen provincial isterielles 1913; Minister of Defense to Commander of the Indian Sepoy Corps,
tribunals had either Indian clerks of court or appeal judges. See Gouvernement May 7, 1926, Dépêches ministerielles 1926, Indian National Archives, Pondi-
générale de l’Indochine, Annuaire générale de l’Indochine 1938–1939 (Hà Nội: cherry Branch; also numerous requests of this nature from the 1910s through
IDEO, 1939): 62–67. the 1930s. A Franco-Tamil newspaper ran a column in the early 1930s reflect-
26. Twelve Tamils were listed under the heading “Indian postmen” in the colonial ing the popularity of this regiment with Indian soldiers. See “Cancans du
yearbook of 1938. See Gouvernment générale de lÌndochine, Annuaire 11ième R.I.C.” [Gossip from the 11th Colonial Infantry Regiment], Saigon-
générale de l’Indochine 1938–1939, 858. Dimanche, June 7, 1931.
27. Gouvernement générale de lÌndochine, Annuaire générale de l’Indochine 1897 34. See Gouvernment générale de l’Indochine, Les addresses de l’annuaire de
(Hà Nội: IDEO, 1898): 42. l’Indochine, édition du 2ième sem. 1913 [Addresses of the Indochina Yearbook,
28. See, for example, “Ville de Saigon: Elections coloniales et Législatives Années Edition for the Second Half of 1913] (Hà Nội: IDEO, 1913), 250–253; “Ville de
1887–1888,” File no. Goucoch IB29/233, Elections coloniales Inscription des Sài Gòn, Elections coloniales et Législatives années 1887–1888,” File no.
natifs de l’Inde 1887, Vietnam National Archives II, Hồ Chí Minh City (hereafter Goucoch IB29/233, Elections coloniales Inscription des natifs de l’Inde 1887,
VNA-II); Gouvernement générale de l’Indochine, Annuaire générale 1908, 306. VNA-II; “Liste nominative des sociétaires de la mutuelle Hindoue de Cochinchine
29. Gouvernement générale de l’Indochine, Annuaire générale 1908, 336–337. It 1935,” File no. GD 2997, Mutuelle Hindoue 1935, VNA-II.
may be noted that virtually all other names were those of Corsicans, another 35. See File no. GGI2786, Les médecins de l’école de Pondichéry ne peuvent exer-
group that played a subimperial role within the Cochinchinese administration. cer la médecine en Indochine (requête Mariadassou) 1907, ANOM.
30. Gouvernement générale de l’Indochine, Annuaire générale de l’Indochine 1917 36. Joseph Xavier is the only Indian lawyer known to have run a private practice in
(Hà Nội: IDEO, 1918): 157. Newspaper articles published at the time reveal that Sài Gòn (in the 1920s). Likewise, Dr. Tirouvanziam, who worked in both
the “French” guard killed at the time of the Poulo Condore rebellion of 1918 Phnom Penh and Sài Gòn in the 1920s and 1930s, was probably the only prac-
was in fact a French Indian (Simon Jean), and of the four medals of honor ticing doctor of Indian origin in Indochina. Interview with Anna Xavier,
awarded to guards for good conduct during the uprising, two recipients, Samy November 17, 2004, Pondicherry; Interview with Mrs. Lourdes Louis,
Beaumont and Saverinaden Dupas, were also French Indians. See “Rébellion à November 22, 2004, Pondicherry.
Poulo-Condore: Un bagnard d’un coup de massette tua raide le gardien Simon 37. The arrival of “bourgeois” French Indian women in Cochinchina predated that
Jean” [Rebellion at Poulo Condore: A Prisoner Kills the Guard Simon Jean of European women in any significant number by a full three decades. The
with the Stroke of a Machete], Tribune Indigène, March 25, 1918; “Echus de la subject, if adequate data could be found, is worthy of further research. See
révolte de Poulo Condore” [Outcome of the Poulo Condore Revolt], Tribune Conjondessamy to Treasurer Paymaster (Tresorier Payeur), December 14, 1875,
Indigène, June 6, 1918. File no. SL4269, Dossier individuel de M. Conjondessamy, (Savere) Porteur de
31. “Dans les polices” [In the Police Forces], Indochine-Inde, February 16, 1936; contraintes du trésor 1873–1882, VNA-II; Apparayen to Director of Interior,
Interviews with Dr. Claude Marius, Pondicherry, September 23, 2004, and with March 9, 1871, File no. SL2110, Dossier individuel de Apparayen, Pierre,
Alfred Sinnas, Pondicherry, October 10, 2004. sécrétaire à la direction de 2e classe attachés au Haras du 21 nov 1871, VNA-II.
32. French Indian créoles were also obliged to undergo their military service in 38. See File no. IA.6/244(4), Instruction publique: Demande de Mlle Isidore,
Indochina. On renouncers and military service, see M. Clairon, La renoncia- Marie, d’ouvrir une école, 1900, VNA-II; File no. IA.6/244(6), Instruction pub-
tion au statut personnel dans l’Inde française [The Renunciation of Personal liques: Demande de création d’une école indienne à Sài Gòn présénté par Mme
Status in French India] (Montpellier: Causse, Graille et Castelnau, 1926), 100; Vve Pochont, 1907, VNA-II; File no. IIA.8/111(21), Subventions accordées à
Michalon, “Des Indes françaises,” 39; Arthur Annasse, Les comptoirs français Mme Simon-Jean (ex-veuve MANNAPIN) pour le fonctionnement de son
dans l’Inde (Trois siècles de présence française) [The French Comptoirs in India école libre franco-indienne 1910–1932, VNA-II; and interviews in Pondicherry
(Three Centuries of French Presence)] (Paris: La pensée universelle, 1975), with Ms. Lefort, November 19, 2004, Dr. Claude Marius, November 25, 2004,
Mrs. Amélie Marius Le Prince, November 11, 2004, and in Chennai with Mr. 46. Ibid.
Henri Isidore and family, October 17, 2004. 47. Interviews with Mrs. Mumtaz Alam, Hồ Chí Minh City (HCMC), January 18,
39. Security Service reports from the 1920s on Indian activities in Cochinchina 20, and 27, 1997; see File no. RST02104, Expulsion des étrangers (Indiens etc)
routinely named Muslim merchants from the Tamil regions of South India as 1938, ANOM. J.M.M. Ishmael’s counterpart in the north was the powerful
the wealthiest Indian traders in the colony. See “Action indienne,” 1927, File no. Pondicherry firm of G.M. Said, with interests in Hà Nội and across Tonkin.
GGI65476, Service de la Surêté, Rapport annuel de Commisariat spécial pour Interviews with Mr. Abdoul-Gaffour, January 9, 2002, and September 2, 2004,
la port de Sài Gòn-Cholon (1927–1928), ANOM . and with members of the Said family, November 20, 2004.
40. For an analysis of South Asian migration across the colonial world that pro- 48. Gouvernment générale de l’Indochine, Les adresses 1913, 270.
vides a fitting description of the role of migrant entrepreneurs in colonial 49. “Note sur l’Affaire de la mosquée de Sài Gòn,” August 1933, File no. GD2995,
expansion, see C.J. Baker, “Economic Reorganization and the Slump in South Plainte au sujet de l’administration de la mosquée musulmane rue Amiral
and Southeast Asia,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 3 (July Dupré, 1933, VNA-II.
1981): 325–349. 50. Interview with Hajee Abdoul Hameed Maricar, Regional Kazi, September 19,
41. These included Mỹ Tho, Trà Vinh, Cần Thơ, Sa Đéc, and Rạch Giá, as well as 2004, Karikal; Interview with S.M. Basheer Marécar, Deputy Regional Kazi,
Thủ Dầu Một, the center of rubber production. Although Châu Đốc remains September 19, 2004, Karikal.
the center of Cham Islam in the south of Vietnam, South Indian Muslim 51. See “South Indian Muslim population, Cochinchina 1926,” in “Action indi-
trade there was surprisingly limited. See “South Indian Muslim population, enne,” File no. GGI65476, Service de la Surêté, Rapport annuel de Commisariat
Cochinchina 1926,” in “Action indienne,” File no. GGI65476, Service de la spécial pour la port de Sài Gòn-Cholon (1927–1928), ANOM; Gouvernment
Surêté, Rapport annuel de Commisariat spécial pour la port de Sài Gòn- générale de l’Indochine, Annuaire générale de l’Indochine 1926 (Hà Nội: IDEO,
Cholon (1927–1928), ANOM. 1927): 37; Interview with Said family, November 20, 2004, Pondicherry; Inter-
42. See “Marchandises etrangères 1886,” File no. Goucoch IA.7/175 (9), Musée view with Maurice Sinnas, October 7, 2004, Pondicherry.
Commerciale, VNA-II. 52. Unlike in French Indochina, tax farms elsewhere in Southeast Asia did not last
43. See File no. GGI60909, Renseignements fournis au Département au sujet pro- much beyond the end of the nineteenth century. See John Butcher and Howard
priété foncière: Droit des étrangers 1921, ANOM; “Action indienne,” 1927, File Dick, eds., The Rise and Fall of Revenue Farming (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
no. GGI65476, Service de la Surêté, Rapport annuel de Commisariat spécial 1993), 3.
pour la port de Sài Gòn-Cholon (1927–1928), ANOM; “Hột Xoàn!” [Diamond], 53. For the earliest Tamil market tax farmers, the Hindu Souprayapoullé, and
Saigon-Dimanche, August 28, 1927. Catholic renouncer Samy Appassamy, see Gouvernment de la Cochinchine,
44. Gouvernment générale de l’Indochine, Les addresses 1913, 278–279. Muslim Annuaire de la Cochinchine française 1876 (Sài Gòn: Imprimerie du gouverne-
involvement in money lending was more hidden, probably due to the illegality ment, 1877): 137; and “Depart de M Samy Appassamy” [The Departure of Mr.
under Islamic law of lending or borrowing with interest. It was mainly in the Samy], Saigon-Dimanche, July 13–16, 1933.
form of purchases advanced on credit, evident in an advertisement for Globe 54. See Gouvernement générale de lÌndochine, Annuaire générale 1908, 342–345.
cigarettes in Lục Tỉnh Tân Văn, March 12, 1914. On money lending as a con- 55. See File no. IA.9/243(9), Trésor: Demande de main-levée d’opposition sur les
tentious topic in Cochinchina’s expatriate Muslim community, see “Rapport mandates des paiements de patents de M. Madjagabalanchetty, fermier des
annuel 1er juillet 1926 à 1er juillet 1927, Les Indiens,” File no. GGI65475, Service abattoirs de Sài Gòn, fournisseur de bois de chauffage du Service locale et
de la Sûreté, Cochinchine Rapport annuel 1924–1926, ANOM. fermier des marchés de Dakao et de Nam Chon, 1895, VNA-II; “Notice sur le
45. “South Indian Muslim population, Cochinchina 1926,” in “Action indienne,” sieur Mouhammed Aboubakare,” 1933, File no. GD2995, Plainte au sujet de
File no. GGI65476, Service de la Surêté, Rapport annuel de Commisariat spé- l’administration de la mosquée musulmane rue Amiral Dupré, 1933, VNA-II.
cial pour la port de Sài Gòn-Cholon (1927–1928), ANOM. The second largest 56. See, for example, the Hindu and Christian “retail merchants” and money-
center in Indochina for South Indian Muslim trade was Hà Nội, where 280 changers listed as occupants of premises alongside South Indian Muslim com-
South Indian Muslim men resided in 1926, but they were also present in petitors in Gouvernment de la Cochinchine, Annuaire de la Cochinchine
Annam and to a lesser extent in Cambodia and Laos. française pour l’année 1887 (Sài Gòn: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1888),
106; Gouvernment générale de l’Indochine, Annuaire de l’Indochine pour September 3, 1933; also S. Muthiah, Meenakshi Meyappan, and Visalakshi
l’année 1889, I partie, Cochinchine et Cambodge (Hà Nội: IDEO, 1890), 68; Gou- Ramasawamy, The Chettiar Heritage (Chennai: Madras Editorial Services,
vernement générale de lÌndochine, Annuaire générale 1908, 390. 2002), 263–281.
57. See E. Mathieu, Les prêts usuaires et le crédit agricole en Cochinchine [Usurious 64. Several series of postcards featuring Sài Gòn’s “exotic” Chettiars were printed
Loans and Agricultural Credit in Cochinchina] (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1912), 90; in the first half of the twentieth century.
Phan Trung Nghĩa, Công tử Bạc Liêu Sự thật và giai thoại [Bạc Liêu Playboy: 65. Report GCCH to GGI, December 9, 1937, File no. GD2992, Situation et rôle des
Truth and Myth] (HCMC: Trẻ, 2006), 27. chettys en Indochine, 1937, VNA-II; Interview with R.M. Krishnanchettiar,
58. “La situation des fonctionnaires et employés indigènes” [The Situation of September 27, 2004, Tiruchchirapalli, Tamil Nadu.
Native Functionaries and Employees], Echo Annamite, January 17, 1920; Report 66. See File no. SL3940, Transaction dans l’affaire PAJANIAPPATEVANE, adjudi-
Governor General Cochinchina (GGCCH) to GGI, December 9, 1937, File no. catiare du service des voitures publiques entre Saigon et Tay Ninh, contre
GD2992, Situation et rôle des chettys en Indochine, 1937, VNA-II. l’administration pour paiement de diverses sommes 1898–1899, VNA-II;
59. “Droit des étrangers 1921,” File no. GGI60909, Renseignements fournis au Dépar- Gabrielle M. Vassal, Three Years in Vietnam (1907–1910) (Bangkok: White
tement au sujet propriété foncière, ANOM; Lists of “properties held by Chettys,” Lotus, 1999 [1910]), 19; Dr. A. Morice, People and Wildlife in and around
1937, File no. GD2992, Situation et rôle des chettys en Indochine, 1937, VNA-II; Saigon, 1872–1873 (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1997 [1875]), 6, 8.
Interview with A.M.A. Meyapachettiar, September 28, 2004, Karaikudi, Chettinad. 67. In 1884, when a list of “merchants of milk” [marchands de lait] began to be
60. Gouvernement de la Cochinchine, Annuaire de la Cochinchine française pour included in the commercial section of the colonial yearbook, it consisted of no
l’année 1877 (Sài Gòn: Imprimerie du Gouvernment, 1878), 134. less than twenty-six Tamil names in Sài Gòn, and seven in Chợ Lớn. See Gou-
61. Report GGCCH to GGI, December 9, 1937, File no. GD2992, Situation et rôle vernment de la Cochinchine, Annuaire de la Cochinchine française pour l’année
des chettys en Indochine, 1937, VNA-II; see also “Rapport annuel 1er juillet 1884 (Sài Gòn: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1885), 386, 392.
1926 à 1er juillet 1927, Les Indiens,” File no. GGI65475, Service de la Sûreté 68. To cite a few among many examples in VNA-II, see File no. CP8042, Construc-
Cochinchine, Rapport annuel 1924–1926, ANOM. tions navales: Marché pour l’entreprise générale des charrois et transports . . .
62. By 1937, the total Chettiar credit had diminished to twenty million piastres. soumission de POUNOUSSAMY . . . 15 mai et 12 juin 1869, VNA-II; File no.
Chettiars nonetheless still held one-third (over six million piastres) of the CP8005, Pont et Chausée, marché de gré à gré avec l’entrepreneur NAGALIN-
twenty million piastre total rice credit in Cochinchina in 1937. See Report GAPOULLÉE pour l’achèvement des remblais du Blvd Bonnard, 15 avril 1874,
GGCCH to GGI, December 9, 1937, and Report of Police Service, Second Sec- VNA-II; File no. IA 20/186 (10), Voitures publics Sai Gon-Thu Dau Mot-
tion, August 30, 1937, both in file no. GD2992, Situation et rôle des Chettys en Resiliation du marché Mou-Moussat, 1885–1891, VNA-II; File no. IA.20/224(4),
Indochine, 1937, VNA-II. Approximately ten Tamil bankers operating in Voitures Publics Biên Hoà -Bà Rịa. Service journalier de voitures publics (cor-
Cochinchina by the 1930s were not part of the Nattukottai Chettiar network. respondence-colis postaux-voyageurs). Marché de gré à gré. (adjudication: un
Their businesses were modeled along similar lines, though, and they too tended indien) 1898–1899, VNA-II; File no. IA.20/244(3), Voitures publics Sai Gon-Tay
to be referred to as “Chettys.” See “Banquet donné par M. Ra-Soccalingam en Ninh, Sai Gon-Trang Bang. Service correspondance et voyageurs. Marché de
l’honneur de M. François Deloncle” [Banquet Given by M. Ra-Soccalingam in gré à gré avec M. Fabule et sieur Pajaniappatevane en vue d’assurer le même
the Honor of M. François Deloncle], Réveil Saigonnais, April 16, 1910; Gou- service. 1890–1897, VNA-II; File no. IA.9/292(12), Marchés et adjudications-
vernment générale de l’Indochine, Annuaire générale 1908, 68; Gouvernment Fournitures des ratios de mires nécessaires à la nourriture des élèves du Collège
générale de l’Indochine, Annuaire générale de l’Indochine 1912 (Hà Nội: IDEO, de Mỹ Tho. Marché Oussanessaheb, 1905, VNA-II; “Notice sur le sieur Mou-
1912), 182; “La Crise et les prêteurs d’argent,” Saigon-Dimanche, December 18, hammed Aboubakare,” 1937, File no. GD2995, Plainte au sujet de
1932; Report GGCCH to GGI, December 9, 1937, File no. GD2992, Situation et l’administration de la mosquée musulmane rue Amiral Dupré, 1933, VNA-II.
rôle des Chettys en Indochine, 1937, VNA-II. 69. Interview with Mrs. Julienne Paul Ambroise, October 31, 2004, Pondicherry;
63. Until the 1930s, Chettiars in Cochinchina went shaved-headed and bare-chested, “Taper sur les pauvres hindous est si facile!” [Attacking the Poor Indians Is Too
their foreheads, chests, and arms smeared with temple ash. See Raoul Vernier, Easy!], Saigon-Dimanche, December 6, 1931; File no. L.413423, Renseignements
“Une croisade vestimentaire” [A Clothing Crusade], Saigon-Dimanche, sur l’importation et la production du lait en Indochine, 1902–1906, VNA-I.
70. “Action indienne,” 1927, File no. GGI65476, Service de la Surêté, Rapport les indiens sujet anglais doivent-ils purger leur peine 1930, ANOM; see also
annuel de Commisariat spécial pour la port de Sài Gòn-Cholon (1927–1928), File no. IA.2/015(3), Affaire Chavanne-Leidou-Mogamadou 1874 Dossier Cha-
ANOM; On “Bengalis” in Southeast Asia, see Metcalf, Imperial Connections, vanne 1877, VNA-II.
52, 128. 82. Quote from Legislative Council of Madras, quoted in John D. Kelly, “Fear of
71. A comparison of the naturalization law applicable to natives of Cochinchina Culture: British Regulation of Indian Marriage in Post-Indenture Fiji,” Ethno-
with the right to renunciation in French India can be found in M. Clairon, La history 35, no. 4 (Autumn 1989): 372–391 (374).
renonciation au statut personnel, 52–54. 83. See “Pathmabivy versus Ka-Abdul Radjah 1902” and “Tran Thi Bu versus Aiss-
72. Tamil names or short forms of Tamil names were sometimes adopted as sur- ouamalle and Others,” in Recueil de législation et jurisprudence coloniale [Com-
names. However, the frequent adoption of French surnames can mask the pendium of Colonial Legislation and Jurisprudence], eds. Dareste, Appert, and
presence of Tamils in the historical record in Indochina. I am grateful to sev- Legendre (Paris: A. Challamel, 1903), 32–34 and 58–70, respectively. Note the
eral informants in Pondicherry, in particular Claude Marius and Atmanadene stark contrast with Fiji under British rule. For example, see Kelly, “Fear of Cul-
Audemar, who, in the course of recounting interconnected Pondicherry family ture,” 372.
histories, described many of the patterns and conventions of renonçant sur- 84. File no. CP8768(1), Séance 2-12-1872 Réclamation Sieur Rangassamy quant à
name formation. l’impôt de capitation, VNA-II; Deliberations of Colonial Council, November 11,
73. See chapters 4 and 5 in Pairaudeau, “Indians as French Citizens,” 141–218. 1914, File no. GGI42279, Charges fiscales des Indiens sujets français non-
74. For a succinct description of French Indian electoral rights in Cochinchina, renonçants établis en Cochinchine 1915, VNA-II.
see Pierre Mille, “Elections coloniales” in La France d’Outre Mer, May 14, 1914. 85. File no. SL1825, Arrêté soumettant les Indiens et malais non-sujets français au
75. Service local personal files [dossiers ìndividuels] of renounced Indians regime de la congregation 1874, VNA-II.
employed by the Cochinchinese administration, VNA-II; GGI to Minister of 86. See chapter 2 in Pairaudeau, “Indians as French Citizens,” 51–84.
Navy and Colonies, January 21, 1915, File no. GGI 42279, Charges fiscales des 87. Interview with Mr. Gabriel Pakiam, October 15, 2004, Pondicherry.
Indiens sujets français non-renonçants établis en Cochinchine 1915, VNA-II; 88. Conversation with Dr. Nguyễn Đức Nhuận, May 24, 2004, Paris.
File no. 1A.6/244(6), Instruction publiques . . . Demande de création d’une 89. Director of the Interior to President and councillors of the Civil Chamber of
école indienne à Saigon présénté par Mme Vve Pochont, 1907, VNA-II. the Court of Appeal, July 9, 1887, File no. Goucoch IB29/233, Elections colonia-
76. File no. 1A.2/065(1), Prison centrale . . . régime alimentaire des détenus indiens les, Inscription des natifs de l’Inde 1887, VNA-II.
1906, VNA-II. 90. Paul Doumer, quoted in Bertrand Camilli, La représentation des indigènes en
77. M. Samy to Lieutenant Minister of the Navy and Colonies, March 28, 1938, Indochine [Native Representation in Indochina] (Toulouse: Imprimerie
Box 85, Archives de la Ligue des droits de l’homme [Archives of the League J. Fournier, 1914), 116.
of Human Rights], Nanterre, France. 91. Thompson uses “Hindu” to refer not to the religious grouping but to Indians
78. Passages from the decree quoted in Letter from GGI to Minister of the Navy generally. This usage, and its French equivalents “Hindou” and “Indou,” were
and Colonies, February 21, 1908, File no. FM (B05) NF164, Relations extérieures: common in the early twentieth century. See Virginia Thompson, French Indo-
Statut des etrangers, Rapport du GGI sur le statut personnel des étrangers en China (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937), 84.
Indochine 1908, ANOM. 92. Jean Suignard, Les services civils de l’Indochine [The Civil Service of Indochina]
79. File no. FM (B05) NF164, Relations extérieures: Statut des etrangers, Rapport (Paris: Larose, 1931), 29.
du GGI sur le statut personnel des étrangers en Indochine 1908, ANOM. 93. Sơn Nam, Đất Gia Định - Bến Nghé Xưa và Người Sài Gòn [Gia Định Soil, Old
80. “Les voeux du peuple annamite” [The Wish List of the Vietnamese People], Bến Nghé, People of Sài Gòn] (HCMC: Trẻ, 2004 [three titles reprinted in a
Echo Annamite, serialized December 1–4, 1925. single volume, first published in 1984, 1992, and 1992, respectively]), 392–393.
81. File no. IA.2/065(1), Prison centrale . . . régime alimentaire des détenus indiens Hereafter, my short reference indicates the original title of the work in ques-
1906, VNA-II; File no. GD445, Peine administrative infligée par le chef de la tion.
province de Cantho contre M. Yaccoumsah, indien sujet anglais, 1925, VNA-II; 94. Sơn Nam, Phong Trào Duy Tân ở Bắc Trung Nam, Miền Nam Đầu Thế Kỷ
File no. GGI42329, Etrangers en Indochine. Dans quel établissement pénitencier XX—Thiên Địa Hội và Cuộc Minh Tân [The Duy Tân Movement in the North,
Center, and South; The South in the Twentieth Century; The Heaven and Earth 108. Sơn Nam, Bến Nghé Xưa, 401.
Society; The Minh Tân Organization] (HCMC: Trẻ, 2003 [originally two titles, 109. See for example, “Chà-Và ăn cướp” [Chà Và Robber], LTTV, November 6, 1913;
reprinted in one volume, 1975 and 1971, respectively]), 39. “Bịnh Mao-Éch” [An Epidemic Disease], LTTV, November 13, 1913; “Một vụ ăn
95. This description is compiled from various sources, including David Marr, Viet- cướp to” [A Big Robbery], LTTV, November 1, 1917; “Chà-và Làm Ngan” [Chà
namese Anti-colonialism, 1885–1925 (Berkeley: University of California Press, Và Misdeeds], LTTV, August 25, 1913.
1971), 144; Philippe Peycam, “Intellectuals and Political Commitment in Viet- 110. On Indian electoral franchise in Cochinchina, see chapter 4 in Natasha Pairau-
nam: The Emergence of a Public Sphere in Colonial Saigon (1926–1933)” (PhD deau, “Indians as French Citizens in Colonial Indochina, 1858–1940” (PhD dis-
dissertation, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, sertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2009), 141–177.
1999), 60–62; Sơn Nam, Miền Nam Đầu Thế Kỷ XX: 35–39, 220–224; Sơn Nam, 111. Ibid., 197–211.
Bến Nghé Xưa: 391–407; R.B. Smith, “The Development of Opposition to French 112. On early Vietnamese attitudes toward naturalization, see Milton E. Osborne,
Rule in Southern Vietnam 1880–1940,” Past and Present 54 (February 1972): The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia (Bangkok: White Lotus
94–129 (102–104); Pierre Brocheux, “Note sur Gilbert Chiêu (1867–1919), Citoyen Press, 1997 [1969]), 126–129. On “native” representation, see Hue-Tam Ho Tai,
français et patriote vietnamien” [Note on Gilbert Chiêu (1867–1919), French Citi- “The Politics of Compromise: The Constitutionalist Party and the Electoral
zen and Vietnamese Patriot], Approches Asie [Asian Approaches] 11 (1991): 72–81. Reforms of 1922 in French Cochinchina,” Modern Asian Studies 18, no. 3 (1984):
96. Brocheux, “Note sur Gilbert Chiêu,” 72. 371–391 (373).
97. Sơn Nam, Phong Trào; Sơn Nam, Miền Nam. 113. Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution
98. Sơn Nam, Cuộc Minh Tân, 225–226. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 40–41.
99. Slogans as quoted in Sơn Nam, Bến Nghé Xưa, 396. General Quan Công (Guan 114. R.B. Smith, “Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitutionalist Party in French
Yu) was a third-century Chinese military hero, brought in to the Taoist pan- Cochinchina, 1917–1930,” Modern Asian Studies 3, no. 2 (1969): 131–150 (135);
theon of tutelary gods. See Philip Taylor, Goddess on the Rise: Pilgrimage and Ralph Smith, Vietnam and the West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), 93.
Popular Religion in Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004), 3. 115. Peycam, “Intellectuals and Political Commitment,” 70–71.
100. On Bawean in southern Vietnam see Malte Stokhof, “Javanese in Hô Chí Minh 116. Hue-Tam Ho Tai, “Politics of Compromise,” 379–380.
City Today: An Aftermath of Coolie Migration in French Colonial Vietnam” 117. Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism, 45.
(master’s thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2002). See also Malte Stokhof and 118. Smith, “Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitutionalist Party,” 133.
Oscar Salemink, “State Classification and Its Discontents: The Struggle Over 119. Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism, 45.
Bawean Ethnic Identity in Vietnam,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 4, no. 2 120. Smith, “Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitutionalist Party,” 142.
(Summer 2009): 154–195. 121. Notably, R.B. Smith, “The Development of Opposition to French Rule in
101. Interview with Dr. Lý Tùng Hiếu, Southern Institute of Social Sciences, March Southern Vietnam 1880–1940,” Past and Present 54 (February 1972): 94–129;
2, 2005, HCMC. R.B. Smith, “The Vietnamese Elite of French Cochinchina,” Modern Asian
102. Interviews with linguist Dr. Lý Tùng Hiếu, March 2, 2005, HCMC; Interview Studies 6, no. 4 (1972): 459–482; Smith, “Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitu-
with Dr. Nguyễn Đình Đầu, February 25, 2005, HCMC; Conversation with Mr. tionalist Party”; Hue-Tam Ho Tai, “Politics of Compromise”; Hue-Tam Ho Tai,
Nguyễn Tạo Ngô, February 2, 2005, Hà Nội. Radicalism; and Peycam, “Intellectuals and Political Commitment.”
103. Conversations with Mr. Atmanadene Audemar, March 6 and 8, 2005, HCMC. 122. Smith, “Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitutionalist Party,” 137.
104. Cang, [no title given], Lục Tỉnh Tân Văn (LTTV), no. 44, September 1908, 123. “La question indienne” [The Indian Question], Tribune Indigène, December 30,
reprinted in Sơn Nam, Miền Nam, 265. 1922.
105. Nguyễn Thị Phải, [no title given], LTTV, no. 11, January 1908, reprinted in Sơn 124. “La naturalisation française” [French Naturalization], Echo Annamite, April 24,
Nam, Miền Nam, 248. 1920.
106. Sơn Nam, Miền Nam, 226. 125. The “Wish List” was serialized in the Echo Annamite from November 28 to
107. I am grateful to Nguyễn Tạo Ngô for this translation. Ng. H.H., [no title given], December 4, 1925. I use English translations as published in Truong Buu Lam,
LTTV, February 14, 1908, reprinted in Sơn Nam, Miền Nam, 254. ed., Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism 1900–1931
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 208–227. Quotes in this 148. See Brocheux, “Note sur Gilbert Chiêu,” 73.
paragraph can be found on pages 218–220. 149. Cartoon in La Presse Indochinoise, September 20, 1929, reprinted in Nasir
126. Ibid., 220. Abdoule-Carime, “Note introductive” (see note 1), 8.
127. Ibid. 150. See File no. Goucoch Divers 2990, Chettys: Dossier de principe 1937, VNA-II.
128. Ibid., 221. 151. Accounts of credit relationships between Chettiars, landowners, and tenant
129. Nguyễn Phan Long, “La France laissera-a-t-elle les Indiens faire de la farmers can be found in Ngô Vĩnh Long, Before the Revolution, 84–97; Phan
Cochinchine ce qu’ils ont fait de l’Inde française?” [Will France Allow the Trung Nghĩa, Công tử Bạc Liêu, 27; P. de Feyssal, L’endettement agraire en
Indians to Treat Cochinchina as They Treated French India?], Echo Annamite, Cochinchine: Rapport d’ensemble au gouverneur général de l’Indochine [Agrar-
March 25, 1927, clipping in File no. FM/5 SLOTFOM 14, Revue de la Presse ian Debt in Cochinchina: Summary Report to the Governor General of Indo-
indochinoise 1927, ANOM. china] (Hà Nội: Imprimerie d’extrême-orient, 1933).
130. The phrase is Virginia Thompson’s. See Thompson, French Indo-China, 311. Her 152. Sơn Nam, Cuộc Minh Tân, 230.
indictment of Outrey’s politics and his manipulation of the Indian vote is scathing. 153. Sơn Nam, Miền Nam, 248.
131. “Le sens de l’election de M. Outrey” [The Meaning of Mr. Outrey’s Election], 154. Pierre Brocheux, The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy and Revolution, 1860–
La Cloche Fêlée, May 19, 1924. 1960 (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Southeast Asian
132. “La solde des fonctionnaires européens d’Indochine” [The Salary of European Studies, 1995), 87–88.
Functionaries in Indochina], La Cloche Fêlée, December 24, 1925. 155. So Mouttayah to Administrator Biên Hòa, January 3, 1918, File no. Goucoch
133. Le-Lac-Tho, “La quatrième couleur” [The Fourth Color], Echo Annamite, Divers 3397, Plainte de M. So Mouttayah contre les exigences des notables du
April 5, 1927. village de Phuoc Tan (Biên Hòa) 1918, VNA-II.
134. “Le Conseil colonial” [The Colonial Council], Tribune Indochinoise, August 23, 156. See File no. Goucoch Divers 445, Peine administrative infligée par le Chef de la
1926. province de Cantho contre M. Yaccoumsah, indien sujet anglais, 1925, VNA-II.
135. “Ça promet pour 1928” [It Looks Promising for 1928], Tribune Indochinoise, 157. Conversation with Võ Văn Kiệt, September 8, 2005, Hà Nội.
October 20, 1926. 158. Nguyễn Mạnh Cường and Nguyễn Minh Ngọc, Người Chăm (Những nghiên
136. This view is voiced in Smith, “Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitutionalist Party,” cứu bước đầu) [The Cham (Initial Studies)] (Hà Nội: Khoa Học Xã Hội, 2003),
as well as in Hue-Tam Ho Tai, “Politics of Compromise” and Radicalism. 5–6. I am grateful to Andrew Hardy for bringing this reference to my attention.
137. “Le Conseil Colonial,” Tribune Indochinoise, August 23, 1926. Also, conversation with Professors Lê Thi and Đặng Phong, Tam Đảo, Septem-
138. “Propos d’un Annamite au sujet d’un motion” [Suggestions from an Annamite ber 2, 2008, Hà Nội.
Concerning a Motion], Tribune Indochinoise, September 10, 1926. 159. Conversation with Professor Đặng Phong, Spring 2002, Hà Nội; Conversation
139. Smith, “Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitutionalist Party,” 148. with Professors Lê Thi and Đặng Phong, Tam Đảo, September 2, 2008, Hà Nội.
140. Peycam, “Intellectuals and Political Commitment,” 123. 160. LTTV, February 26, 1914. I am grateful to Erica Peters for drawing this adver-
141. “Milieux Indiens,” 1923–1924, File no. GGI65474, Rapport annuel, Contrôle des tisement to my attention.
immigrants asiatiques 1923–1924, ANOM. 161. “Taper sur les pauvres hindoues est si facile!” [Attacking the Poor Indians is Too
142. Smith, “Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitutionalist Party,” 148. Easy], Saigon-Dimanche, December 6, 1931.
143. Smith, Vietnam and the West, 94–95. 162. The main Franco-Tamil titles, published in French, were the Reveil Saigonnais
144. “Résultats élections municipales” [Results of the Municipal Election], Réveil (1907–1929) and Saigon-Dimanche (1927–1935). The latter was renamed Indo-
Saigonnais, December 31, 1919. chine-Inde (1935–1937) and reappeared as a Tamil language publication from
145. “Le sens de l’election de M. Outrey,” La Cloche Fêlée, May 19, 1924. 1939 to 1941.
146. “Les Chinois en Cochinchine” [The Chinese in Indochina], Tribune Indigène, 163. “Boycottage” [Boycott], Echo Annamite, September 22, 1925.
May 29, 1918. 164. “Une curieuse coincidence: L’affaire de la rue Vienot” [A Curious Coincidence:
147. “La Situation des Fonctionnaires et Employés Indigènes,” Echo Annamite, Jan- The Viénot Street Affair], Reveil Saigonnais, June 27, 1928.
uary 17, 1920. 165. “Des Annamites agressent un marchand musulman” [Annamites Attack a
Muslim Merchant], Saigon-Dimanche, June 29, 1928, and “Antagonisme de
races? Des annamites agressent un marchand musulman pour se venger de la 176. LTTV, no. 34, p. 9, reprinted in Sơn Nam, Miền Nam, 287–288.
brutalité commise par celui et contre l’un d’eux” [Racial Antagonism? Anna- 177. Interview with linguist Dr. Lý Tùng Hiếu, March 2, 2005, HCMC.
mites Attack a Muslim Merchant to Avenge the Brutality Committed by Him 178. Thiên-hồ, “Chàng Rể Chà,” LTTV, no. 34, p. 9, reprinted in Sơn Nam, Miền
on One of Their Own], Reveil Saigonnais, June 25, 1928. Nam, 287–288.
166. “Bengali” was sometimes used to refer to people from Chandernagore, the 179. “Un crime à Sài Gòn: Le soldat Francisque tombe sous les coups d’une ven-
French port not far from Calcutta in Bengal. In this context it was most likely geance” [A Crime in Sài Gòn: The Soldier Francisque Felled by Revenge],
used in its broader sense, to refer to any Indian employed as a guard. These Réveil Saigonnais, February 6, 1923.
jobs were dominated by Sikhs and Pathans, but some Tamils were also so 180. “Le crime de Dakao” [The Crime of Dakao], Réveil Saigonnais, March 26, 1923.
employed as guards. 181. Conversation with historian Dr. Đào Hùng, July 10, 2006, Hà Nội.
167. “A propos d’un incident qui se serait produit à la pagoda de la rue Amiral 182. See Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Inti-
Roze” [About an Incident that Took Place at the Amiral Roze Street Temple], mate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 91–96.
Indochine-Inde, August 30, 1937. 183. See Raoul Abor, Des reconnaissances frauduleuses d’enfants naturels en Indo-
168. See File no. GGI65457, Notes mensuelles Surêté Annam, 1937, ANOM; On La chine [Fraudulent Recognitions of Illegitimate Children in Indochina] (Hà
Lutte see Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viêtnam de 1940 à 1952 [History of Nội: Imprimerie Tonkinoise, 1917).
Vietnam from 1940 to 1952] (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952), 67–69. 184. Brocheux, Mekong Delta, 102–103.
169. Nguyễn Phương Thảo, “Văn hóa dân gian miền Nam Việt Nam” [The Culture 185. The apartheid system in South Africa is the boldest instance. For other clear-
of Worship in the South of Vietnam] ([no publisher or place of publication cut examples, see Bose on the Zanzibar clove trade, Kelly on the protection of
given] 1997), 214. native Fijians and the overseas Indian workforce, and Hirschman on inter-
170. On Vietnamese absorption and adaptation of Khmer deities, see L. Malleret, ethnic relations in Malaya: Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean
“Cochinchine, terre inconnue” [Cochinchina, Unknown Land], Bulletin de la in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006),
Societé des Etudes Indochinoises [Bulletin of the Society of Indochinese Studies] 104–105; John D. Kelly, “Fear of Culture,” 372–391; Charles Hirschman, “The
3, no. 18 (1943): 9–26; L. Malleret, L’archéologie du delta du Mékong [The Arche- Making of Race in Colonial Malaya: Political Economy and Racial Ideology,”
ology of the Mekong Delta] (Paris: Ecole française d’extrême orient, 1959). See Sociological Forum 1 (Spring 1986): 330–361.
also Nguyễn Phương Thảo, “Văn hóa dân gian,” 185, 214; and Taylor, Goddess 186. See Peter Zinoman, “Vũ Trọng Phụng’s Dumb Luck and the Nature of Viet-
on the Rise, 3, 82. namese Modernism,” introduction to Vũ Trọng Phụng, Dumb Luck, trans.
171. Interviews with Mr. Nhi, caretaker of Cần Thơ cemetery, and descendants of Peter Zinoman and Nguyễn Nguyệt Cầm (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Meydine family, Cần Thơ and HCMC, April 2005. Press, 2002 [1936]), 1–30. Expatriate Tamil sporting achievements were rou-
172. See Taylor, Goddess on the Rise, 77–78. I am grateful to Philip Taylor for drawing tinely voiced in racial tones by the 1920s. See “Pourquoi ne fonderiez-vous pas
my attention to the names of Tamil benefactors inscribed in the mausoleum. See une ‘Union sportive hindoue” [Why Don’t You Establish an “Indian Sport
also Bùi Thị Ngọc Trang, Lăng Tả Quân Lê Văn Duyệt [The Mausoleum of Gen- Union”], Saigon-Dimanche, October 18, 1931.
eral Lê Văn Duyệt] (HCMC: Tổng Hợp, 2004). 187. Amrith, “Tamil Diasporas,” 545.
173. “Mẹ Maria Lệnh Cho Ta Dùng Phương Pháp Cứu Rỗi Là Lần Hạt Mân Côi,” 188. Space has prevented me from exploring this aspect here, but it may be found in
dongcong.net, www.dongcong.net/MeMaria/ThangManCoi/12.htm (accessed chapter 7 of my dissertation. See Pairaudeau, “Indians as French Citizens,” 255–295.
September 7, 2010). 189. The expression is Amrith’s. See Amrith, “Tamil Diasporas,” 547. The debates of
174. Although Tamil women were present in Indochina, I have not seen any refer- Indian transnational communities in Southeast Asia, including their deployed
ence to unions between Tamil women and local men. notions of “Greater India,” is the topic of engaging new research on overseas
175. File no. G.5 No 81, Plainte civile entre Lam Thi Hue, Nguyen Thi Den et Abou- Indian communities. See Susan Bayly, “Imagining ‘Greater India’: French and
bakare au sujet de diffamation à Tourane 1905, Tribunal de Paix de Tourane, Indian Visions of Colonialism in the Indic Mode,” Modern Asian Studies 38,
VNA-I. All quotes in the section above are from transcripts in this file. “Mala- no. 3 (July 2004): 703–744; Bose, A Hundred Horizons; Amrith, “Tamil Diasp-
bar” was in current use in the early days of French occupation in Cochinchina oras”; also Pairaudeau, “Indians as French Citizens,” 255–295.
to refer to Tamil and other Indian migrants.

Pairaudeau - Vietnamese Engagement With Tamil Migrants in Colonial Cochinchina - Extracts

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Pairaudeau - Vietnamese Engagement With Tamil Migrants in Colonial Cochinchina - Extracts

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r e s e a r c h e s s ay

Vietnamese Engagement with Tamil Migrants

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de l’enregistrement des domaines et du timbre], the Judiciary, and the Treas-

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the involvement of other, non-Muslim Tamils in the same businesses. A handful

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P u rv eyo r s to G ov e rn m e n t a n d to S à i G òn ’ s E x pat riat e s

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