The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt

In the late nineteenth century, most of southeast Asia came under either British, French, or Dutch control. This imperialism disrupted existing lives and societies affecting both empires and their subjects. It got very messy! Colonizers controlled wealth, status, and survival, so people had to be careful and strategic about how they engaged with imperial power. But the people of the colonies—the "colonial subjects"—had some ability to shape their own lives. More than individual survival, they also wanted to maintain their dignity and culture. 

French Indochina was the colonial name for French-occupied areas in Southeast Asia. In the late nineteenth century, the French invaded the places now called Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. European missionaries and merchants had already established some presence there. But colonial maps can be misleading; conquering a territory is not the same as truly controlling it. Although the local royal families technically accepted colonial rule, the French were met with constant mutinies and peasant uprisings, which are easily recognizable as resistance. Others—and that was most people—just tried to survive and thrive within a difficult system.

For instance, many Laotian villagers pretended to collaborate with the French while resisting at the same time. The French believed they were using local leaders to control villages, a key strategy in colonial empire-building. But the villages often put fake notables forward, who had no real power. Meanwhile, the real leaders secretly ran villages according Laotian interests, rather than what the empire wanted. The French had no clue.

Colonial states relied on income from fixed farming areas—that is, the farm and its workers stayed in one place. The imperial powers wanted to maximize farming output and export crops to make profits. By using the forced labor of indigenous people that stayed in one place, production costs stayed low. But that all unravels when those local populations don't stay put. After all, they weren't getting any of the profits and only needed enough food for themselves. Crops like corn and cassava grow in a way that allowed growers to move around. Indigenous people sometimes migrated and changed their farming patterns to evade colonial oppression. Cassava, in particular, made this easier because it required relatively little labor for a pretty big return. Mobile groups could plant cassava and pretty much just walk away. A couple of years later, a community could come back and dig up the high- calorie tubers (it's kind of like a potato). They could also eat the leaves in the meantime. Cassava gave indigenous people a cheap, easy way to feed themselves while resisting colonial systems of forced labor. Colonizers tried to brand cassava and corn as "lazy" crops for natives who wanted to avoid work—but these crops helped them resist empire.

Another example comes from the city of Hanoi, where French construction projects like sewers brought in large numbers of rats. Along with the rats came the deadly plague which plagued the French Quarter of the city. The French decided to pay the locals to kill the rats, and give them a small amount of money per rat that they killed. They just had to bring the tail in as proof. People in Hanoi started clipping live rats' tails and releasing them back into the sewers to breed. The rat population grew, and the high number of tails coming in broke the colony's treasury, leaving the French with an even worse rat problem!

Historian Michael G. Vann teamed up with artist Liz Clarke to write a graphic novel about the Great Rat Hunt of Hanoi. 

Hoping to increase trade in Asia, the French expanded their empire into Vietnam. They started a massive building project to change the Vietnamese town of Hanoi into a more European style city. To do this they needed a massive amount of cheap labor. These mostly male immigrant laborers from rural Vietnam and Southern China, called “coolies,” frequently met racist opposition to their presence from white workers who resented their reputation of working for much lower wages. Employers used them for the most dangerous jobs, including handling unstable explosives. 

The French colonizers needed more money to continue building. To achieve this, they increased taxes for rural land ownership in Vietnam. This drove many farmers to the city to find better paying work. Alternatively, some farmers refused to work for the French and turned instead to piracy. However, any pirate who was caught was condemned to work for the French to help build Hanoi. 

With the population of Hanoi exploding, the sanitation system became a breeding ground for pests, including rats. These rats or, more accurately, the fleas that lived on them, carried the Bubonic Plague. The speed of the plague’s onset and its high mortality rate are frightening. The symptoms, which include the swelling of lymph nodes in the groin, armpits, and neck (known as “buboes”), and a blackish skin discoloration from gangrene, are repulsive. Without modern medical treatment victims will likely die within two weeks. 

When an outbreak of the plague was noted in Hanoi, it was quickly recognized that the rats were helping to spread the disease. French administrators came up with several plans to eradicate the rats.

Last night at the Hanoi Hotel in Hanoi, I was quietly sipping my drink, when an explosion shook the air, projecting debris into my glass and releasing a cloud of smoke. A bomb had been thrown onto the terrace. Two old friends from the regiment, Commanders Chapuis and Montgrand, were covered in a sea of blood which flowed onto the sidewalk.

[...]

One curious reaction of a young woman seated near the table of Commanders Thery and Montgrand,  and whose drink had been contaminated by debris from the walls and other debris:

“Damn country! One can’t even drink an absinthe in peace. Boy! Give me another absinthe.”

And very calmly she continued.

Alas! Our people have used up their sweat and blood to provide the Frenchmen, their women, their horses and their dogs each year with so many hundreds, thousands, millsions, billions...And yet taxes are levied on everything: on things essential to our survival, on places necessary to our production. Even our bodies, which are created by Heaven and Earth and raised up by our parents with so much pain and care, they also have to be taxed by the French enemy four or five piasters every year. What is the meaning of that? Alas, our bodies are worth less than a buffalo, a horse, or a chicken. How pitiful that is!...Mistreated in that fashion by the French, how come we have not risen up yet?... An animal that is cornered knows how to attack and bite in order to escape; we are human beings, and yet we do not know how to get out of our quandaries...When shall we be able to be proud of ourselves?