Dong Duong Tap Chi Query

Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 16:49:09 -0700

From: Liam Kelley <liam@hawaii.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

Dear list,

I was just noticing that the common translation in English scholarship for the periodical that Nguyen Van Vinh published in the early 20th century, Dong Duong Tap Chi, is the "Indochina Journal" (at least Marr, Duiker and Jamieson all have it as such). Now my problem is that around that time "Dong Duong" was used in Chinese (Dongyang) and Japanese (Toyo) to indicate Japan (i.e. the place in the "Eastern Ocean"). In which case, why does it supposedly mean "Indochina" in the context of this journal, and how does this make sense? It literally appears to be the "Japan Journal," but obviously in the context that doesn't make much sense either.

Perhaps someone on the list knows the logic behind this name? Somehow I feel like I am missing something very obvious here. Anyway, thanks in advance for any help.

Liam Kelley

U. of Hawai'i

Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 16:59:53 -0700

From: Liam Kelley <liam@hawaii.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

To reply to my own message (and on further thought), perhaps it is just referring to East Asia as a whole? In which case it is the "East Asia Journal"? Again, perhaps someone has read the first edition and has seen how Nguyen Van Vinh explained this name?

Liam Kelley

U. of Hawai'I

Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 14:14:51 +0800

From: Greg Pringle <pengrui@163bj.com>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

Dear Liam,

I've checked two dictionaries, Bui Phung's Vietnamese-English Dictionary (1996) and the Tu Dien Viet-Han (1996). Both indicate that Dong Duong refers to Indochina.

Toyo in Japanese refers to the Orient in general. It is opposed to Seiyo (Western or Occidental culture.)

According to dictionaries again, Dongyang in Chinese is a pejorative term referring to Japan. The normal form for Eastern or Occidental is Dongfang.

I don't know the reason for this divergence in meaning. It may be due to each country thinking of itself quite ethnocentrically as 'the Orient' as opposed to the West, but this is nothing more than surmise.

As for the Chinese meaning, could it be possible that the Chinese noted the Japanese usage of the word Toyo (Dongyang) and turned it against the Japanese as a term of abuse?

Greg Pringle

Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 07:51:35 -0400

From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

Dong Duong was used in Indochina to mean Indochina. Just as Dong Kinh was used in Vietnam to mean first Thang Long (as opposed to Lam Son, the Western capital) and later Tonkin , i.e. northern Vietnam, and not Tokyo.

You can be assured that when you see references to Chinh Phu Dong Duong, it does not mean the government of the Eastern Ocean, Japan, or anywhere else than Indochina.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 07:09:29 -1000 (HST)

From: Liam C Kelley <liam@hawaii.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

This is interesting, but it still leaves be confused. "Dong Kinh" is a relational term, so anyone could use it and it would make sense. Plus, if I remember correctly, "Tokyo" only became the "Eastern Capital" in the Meiji period. Before that it had been Edo. It

seems to me though that "Dong Duong" is a bit more semantically specific.

Plus, unlike "Dong Kinh" the term was already in use in the region before the Vietnamese started to use it, i.e. before the advent of Indochina. So, while I now believe that it was used to indicate Indochina, I still don't understand how that makes sense or why people started to use it in that way. Does anyone have any ideas/answers?

Thanks in advance.

Liam Kelley

Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 17:01:49 -0700

From: Chung Nguyen <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

A very interesting question. I think this is a case where a dictionary of etymology could help but unfortunately there isn't one at the moment.

"Indochina" is a Western term whose Vietnamese equivalent (not translation) is "Dong Duong," indicating Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as in "Ba'n dda?o DDo^ng Du+o+ng," the Indochinese peninsula. A literal rendering of IndoChina would be "A^'n Trung," but

the Vietnamese rarely uses that term.

"Du+o+ng", a SinoChinese word, could have several meanings. Without seeing how it's written in Chinese, it's difficult to pin it down. My guess is that it means "ocean," "sea", as in "DDa.i Du+o+ng," the great ocean.

If so, this raises an interesting question. The Vietnamese refers to the part of the ocean along its shore and along South China as "Bie^?n DDo^ng" or the East Sea. China refers to it as the "South China Sea." The East Sea, in SinoChinese term, is, literally, "DDo^ng Du+o+ng," or "DDo^ng Ha?i." Could "Dong Duong, then, reaffirms the Vietnamese sense of their geography ?

Dong Duong, as far as I know, never has the sense of East Asia. The Vietnamese term for that is always DDo^ng A'.

Nguyen Ba Chung

Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 17:25:20 -0700

From: Chung Nguyen <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

It's always dangerous to type directly onto the screen. The word SinoChinese should be SinoVietnamese. My apology.

Nguyen Ba Chung

Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 09:04:53 -0700

From: Liam Kelley <liam@hawaii.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

Ah, but if we only had an etymological dictionary!!

"Dong A" is a more recent term than "Dong Duong." However, I don't know if the Vietnamese elite ever used the term Dong Duong to indicate "Asia" or "East Asia" as the Japanese and Chinese were starting to do around the turn of the 20th century. The Chinese originally used it to indicate Japan, but then starting during the Meiji period the Japanese began to use this term to indicate East Asia or sometimes Asia as a whole (i.e. including India), as they came to see themselves as "Asian" in opposition to the West. This usage apparently became even more prominent starting around the 1890s. Tokyo U., for instance, established a field of "Dong Duong/Toyo" history in 1894. So Vietnamese who could and were reading texts in classical Chinese at that time certainly would have been exposed to this usage, as it started to appear in Chinese writings in this sense around this time as well too.

And certainly the people who went to Japan in the Dong Du movement would have picked this up. But I guess it was already too late by then as Indochina had already become "Dong Duong"? So was it the French who came up with this name? The Vietnamese? I see that there are official documents (law codes, etc.) that were written in classical Chinese early in the 20th century that used this term. Did it continue all throughout the colonial period?

Liam Kelley

U. of Hawai'i

Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 08:37:03 +0800

From: Greg Pringle <pengrui@163bj.com>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

I've had a look at my limited reference resources concerning the terms Dongyang and Toyo:

Dongyang (Chinese).

>From Cihai (1999):

1. During the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Dongyang referred to the eastern part (roughly east of 110 degrees E) of the present Nanhai and its neighbouring islands (such as Kalimantan and the Philippines). See Wang Da-yuan's 'Daoyi Zhilue', Ming Zhang-xie's 'Dongxi Yangkao'.

2. After the Qing dynasty, it became customary to refer to Japan as Dongyang, owing to the fact that Japan lies to the east of China. Qing-era Wang Zhi-chun's 'Dongyang Suoshi' is concerned with Japan.

Note that by drawing the line at 110 degrees E, the Yuan-Ming era definition excludes Indochina. (Not that I place much store by Cihai. Come to think of it what exactly does 'Nanhai and its neighbouring islands' mean? Without Indochina, the Nanhai doesn't have anything _but_ 'neighbouring islands'.)

The Chunichi Dai Jiten (Taishukan), a Chinese-Japanese dictionary has the following entry for Dongyang (items in [ ] are my translations of the terms shown):

Dongyang: (colloquial) Japan. Compared to Riben [Japan], Dongyang carries overtones of contempt and dislike. Dongyangren: Japanese.

Dongyang wugui [Dongyang turtle], Dongyang aizi [Dongyang dwarf], Dongyang chilao [Dongyang soldier - pejorative], Dongyang chuluo

[Dongyang pig]: (dialect) Pejorative terms for Japanese..... Dongyang guizi [Dongyang demon]: Nihonjin-me [Jap]. Term for Japanese troops etc. who invaded China.

Toyo (Japanese):

A 70s edition of Gakken's Kokugo Daijiten gives the following:

1. General term for countries east of (and including) Turkey. Asia.

2. In particular, the areas in the east and south of Asia. Japan, China, India, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines etc. Opposite of Seiyo.

The 1995 edition of Daijisen gives the following:

1. General name for the countries of Asia. Especially refers to the eastern and southern parts of Asia, such as Japan, China, India, etc.

2. In China, a word referring to Japan.

It seems clear that the Chinese and Japanese meanings of Dongyang/Toyo have similar derivations ('Eastern ocean') but different frames of reference and thus different origins. Toyo relates to the global East-West dichotomy, Dongyang relates to local geography ('East of China').

It would be _very_ interesting to know how the Vietnamese usage came about. The only clue I have is a book called Tieng Noi Nom Na, which notes:

Dong Duong: Name of a peninsula adjacent to the East Sea (bien Dong) including three countries, Viet, Mien, and Lao. The word 'duong' means 'open sea'.

(Could Dong Duong be derived from bien Dong? Or is this a rationalisation after the event? I'm also not sure of the three countries that are mentioned. Mien is Mie^n, no tone marking i.e. khong dau)

Greg Pringle

Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 20:53:59 -0400

From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

Mien (no tone) is short for Cao Mien (Cambodia).

The Dao Duy Anh Han Viet tu Dien (originally published in 1932, my edition, 1957) has this entry:

Dong Duong: Dong bo A Chau--Nhat Ban--Xu An-do chi-na cung thuong goi la Dong Duong.

If anybody has the Huynh Tinh Cua dictionary, the shift from Dong Duong =Japan to Dong Duong =Indochina might become clearer.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 09:01:48 +0800

From: Greg Pringle <pengrui@163bj.com>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

The Chinese name for the South China Sea is Nanhai ('Southern Sea'), not South China Sea. As indicated in my earlier posting, the term Dongyang used to refer to the Nanhai (South China Sea) and adjacent islands during the Yuan and Ming eras.

The character for Du+o+ng is indeed 'ocean', 'sea'. Just in case anyone wishes to confirm the characters for Dongyang/Toyo/Dong Duong, I've attached a GIF file (278 bytes).

Greg Pringle

Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 09:04:31 +0800

From: Greg Pringle <pengrui@163bj.com>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

Sorry for wasting bandwith. The attached gif shows the characters for Dong Duong (omitted from previous posting).

Greg Pringle

Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 13:13:36 +1000

From: Tana Li <tana@uow.edu.au>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

This is a stupid question but might be relevant to the interesting one that Liam asked: When did the French first use the term "Indochina" for their colonies in Southeast Asia? Surely "Indochina" had been sometimes used for mainland Southeast Asia (not including Burma but sometimes Yunnan), in wanting a better term, till late (or the end of the?) 19th century ? In other words, the term "Indochina" became a French monopoly was perhaps quite recent.

Perhaps just as the French adapted "Indochina", Nguyen Van Vinh or his contemporaries adapted "Dong Duong", for the new collective term for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (the latter did not join the Indochinese Union until 1893)?

But "Dong Duong" here was perhaps both an adaptation of a convenient existing term from Japan and China, and carrying a Vietnamese meaning, Bien Dong (Eastern Sea)?

By adopting "Dong Duong" for "Indochina", did they also imply "dong van dong chung" (common culture and same race), as discussed in David Marr's books?

LI Tana

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 08:28:21 -0700

From: Nguyen Hong Thach <thdn.thachnh@mofa.gov.vn>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

As I know Hanoi, Thang Long never was called "Dong Kinh", but "Dong Do". Lan Son was called "Lam Kinh", not Tay Kinh I think. Thanh Hoa was in the South of Dong Do-Hanoi, so could not be called Tay Do (Western Capital).

For Vietnamese the name Tay Do reminds "Can Tho", West to HCMCity. As for the term Dong Duong, I have not traced down its origin, but I have a feeling that term was first used by the French. Indochina was a French colony in the "East sea" (East not only to Indochina, but also to France). The term could be coined to defer Indochina with other French colonies. The term "Xu+' Dong Duong thuoc Phap" is very common in the old time.

Cheers,

Thach Hong Nguyen

Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 22:11:42 -0400

From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

I've never heard Tay Do used to refer to Can Tho, and I'm from Saigon.

>From the Viet Nam Tu Dien of the Viet Nam Van Hoa Hiep Hoi of 1954:

Dong Do: Ten thanh Ha Noi ve doi nha Ho; dong kinh, tuc la Dong Do.

>From Dao Duy Anh, Han Viet Tu Dien:

Dong Do: --tuc thanh Ha Noi, khi Quy Ly xay thanh Tay Giai goi la Tay

Do thi Thang Long goi la Dong Do.

Further down:

Dong Kinh--Thanh Lac Duong (i.e. Loyang) doi Han--kinh do Nhat Ban (Tokio).

DDA does not link dong kinh to Thang Long.

Tunquin, however, was used extensively by westerners in the 17th and 18th century to refer to the region under Trinh rule.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 10:39:51 +0800

From: Adam Fforde <msefaj@nus.edu.sg>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: Tay Do

I am surprised by Tam-Tai's response.

I thought Tay Do was as common as referring to the East and West Ends are for Londoners, relating to the 'Mien Tay' reference for the delta proper.

Interesting.

Adam

Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 23:07:57 -0400

From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: Tay Do

I may have to eat my words after I get back to my office and look up my stack of books published in the south. Can Tho was indeed referred to very great frequency as Thu do mien Tay, but I do not recall hearing it referred to as Tay Do. At any rate, Can Tho is of relatively recent origin (possibly no earlier than the 19th Century), whereas Ho Quy Ly's

capital dates from the later14th century and was destroyed by the Ming. The idea of mien tay itself is also recent and probably does not precede the annexation of the three provinces of the east in 1862 (hence the division into mien dong and mien tay. Before that, the South was just "luc tinh". The term "luc tinh" itself, I think dates from the 1830s.

When Le van Duyet died, Minh Mang carved the south into six provinces).

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 11:13:09 +0800

From: Adam Fforde <msefaj@nus.edu.sg>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: Tay Do

Re Tam-Tai and the auto-consumption of verbal produce.

Ain't much to do with them there books, it's just wot us foreigners hear about the tracks ... ('native usage'). To mix my demotics.

Adam

Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 22:31:58 -0700 (PDT)

From: joseph j hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: Tay Do

Another foreigner's experience of popular usage:

I visited Can Tho in August, and the term Tay Do is splashed everywhere in the names of commercial establishments, such as restaurants, hotels, tour agencies. I was veery curious about this, since i had never heard the term nor heard of Can Tho as any kind of political capital on the order of Tokyo, Biejing, Dong Kinh or like terms.

Joe Hannah

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 01:51:15 -0700

From: Chung Nguyen <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

Thank you Greg Pringle for displaying the Chinese graph: a picture is worth a

thousand words.

Tani Li's question is insightful: it helps us to pinpoint the timeframe when the term "l'Indochine" became common currency in Vietnam, and hence the need for a Vietnamese equivalent/translation (before the arrival of the French, there was no notion in Vietnamese history of any such Geographical or political entity).

A quick look into a few history texts yields the following:

1. May 1886: "xe DDo^ng Du+o+ng" (Indochinese cart): a kind of 2-wheeled pulling cart brought over from China for mandarins to use in preference over the palanquin. It was known as "Xe (cart) DDo^ng Du+o+ng."

(Duong Kinh Quoc, "VN, Nhung Su Kien Lich Su", nxb Giao Duc, 1999, p. 167)

2. 17 Oct 1887: France issued an official degree to establish "Union Indochinoise" comprising the three Ky (States) of VN and Campuchia (Laos was incorporated on 19 April 1899).

(Luong Ninh, "Lich Su VN Gian Yeu," nxb CTQG, 2000, p. 360)

Some others: Societe Medico-Chirurgiale de l'Indochine (founded 1904)

Ecole de Medicine de l'Indochine (founded 1905) (Ibid., p. 365)

All these predate the Dong Du movement (1905-1908).

Interestingly, according to the O.E.D., the term "Indo-Chinese" was first used in "Q. Rev." in 1886. Some similar forrms might appear as early as 1842 (Prichard, "Nat. Hist. of Man) (O.E.D., p. 226).

We already know that the Vietnamese term "bie^?n DDo^ng" (vernacular) or "DDo^ng Ha?i" (SinoVietnamese, meaning identical with "DDo^ng Du+o+ng") had already appeared, at least a few centuries earlier.

When the French term "Indochinoise, l'Indochine" became common currency in VN, most likely around 1880-1890, we could infer the need for a Vietnamese equivalent.

Royal records, newspapers, and other writings in this period could establish instances of initial usages. But we can be certain that for whatever reasons the term was created, its reference to "DDo^ng Ha?i" had to be one of them. Vietnamese always enjoy word puns and especially multi-layered references. Ambiguity in Vietnamese literature is a virtue, not a sin.

Definitions im Vietnamese dictionaries', and the Daijisen's (as quoted by G P in the 1995 edition), point to that connection:

"Dong Duong: Name of a peninsula adjacent to the East Sea (bien Dong)."

Nguyen Ba Chung

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:33:21 +1000

From: David Marr <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: Tay Do

My hunch is that `Tay Do' grew up among turn-of-the-century Vietnamese plantation owners eager to differentiate themselves from the Saigon crowd. Someone should check `Luc Tinh Tan Van' around 1905.

As for `Dong Duong', I want to put in plug for the contribution of Vietnamese Catholics to word coinage from way back, although in this case we may be talking about Truong Vinh Ky or Huynh Tinh Cua in the late 19th century. Unfortunately, my HTC dictionary is at home... Probably they would have been familiar with the Yuan and Ming use of `Dong Duong' and considered that a plus. While we're at it, don't forget the term `Dong Phap' (Eastern France), which was also being used to translate `Indochina' in the 1920s, if not earlier.

When is someone going to invest ten years in producing a Vietnamese etymological dictionary?

David Marr

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 9:44:41 +0100

From: Oscar Salemink <OJHM.Salemink@scw.vu.nl>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: Tay Do

I don't think we should always take the use of the word "capital" so seriously. Towns are often called "capital" of this or that, and there tends to be a lot of wordplay around that. Buon Ma Thuot, for instance, is a very recent town, and sometimes called "thu do Tay Nguyen" which simpy refers to its status as "first among equals" of provincial capitals in the Central Highlands. It does not refer to any formal political status of BMT as capital of Tay Nguyen.

Oscar Salemink

Department of Cultural Anthropology & Sociology of Development

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

De Boelelaan 1081c

1081 HV Amsterdam

The Netherlands

Phone: (+31)(0)20-444 6712 / 6704

Fax: (+31)(0)20-444 6722

E-mail: O.Salemink@scw.vu.nl

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 01:29:47 -0700 (PDT)

From: joseph j hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: Tay Do

I hadn't heard "Dong Phap" before -- I suppose the colloquial would be "Dong Tay"??

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 09:35:02 -0400

From: mchale <mchale@gwu.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Can Tho as the Western capital

List:

I have found this discussion of "Dong Duong" quite interesting. During the course of the discussion, one person noted that Can Tho was called the Western Capital, and another raised a question about that.

Can Tho is indeed sometimes referred to as the Western capital -- there is a book I once used called XUAN TAY DO. TAP KY YEU KHUYEN HOC CAN THO (1944). Of course, the question remains *why* it has been called this: I think it is because Can Tho likes to think of itself as the major city in the Western Mekong delta. . . .

Shawn McHale

Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs

The George Washington University

e-mail address: mchale@gwu.edu

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 07:12:18 -0700 (PDT)

From: dieuhien@u.washington.edu

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Can Tho as the Western capital

I agree with Shawn. In my non-scholarly opinion as a Southerner, Tay Do here indicates Can Tho as a major city of "mie^`n Ta^y," the Vietnamese term for the Vietnamese part of the "Mekong Delta."

Hien

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 10:10:25 -0400

From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Can Tho as the Western capital

I obviously seem to have to eat my earlier words about Can Tho being called Tay Do. I'll try to find out more on the founding of Can Tho and the origins of its being called Tay Do.

As for Dong Duong and Dong Kinh:

The Genibrel Dictionary of 1898 (which refers in its preface to Indo-Chine (hyphenated) contains an entry for Dong (east) which refers to Dong kinh--Tonkin, but makes no reference to Dong Duong.

The 1988 Tu Dien Tieng Viet of the Vien Ngon Ngu Hoc makes no reference to Dong Duong or Dong Kinh or even to Dong Kinh Nghia Thuc, but does have an entry for Dong Du.

The reprint of A. de Rhodes Dictionary (1991), contains an entry for Do:

Dong Do, vide Ke Cho for kinh: kinh do, kinh ky, carte do Tonquim: Tunchinensisregia, bac kinh: carte da China Regia Sinensis.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 09:06:05 -0700

From: Liam Kelley <liam@hawaii.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Thanks for help on Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

If anyone has anything further to say on the "Dong Duong" issue, by all means do so. I just wanted to express my thanks for the information that people have provided so far.

From the helpful quotes that Nguyen Ba Chung provided in the post below we can see 2 meanings of this term being used simultaneously [the 3rd, meaning "(East) Asia," apparently came into use a bit later]. The "xe Dong Duong" was an early name that the Chinese gave to the ricksha, because it came from Japan. Hence, it was originally the "Eastern Sea/Japanese vehicle." Presumably the Vietnamese elite already knew that the Chinese referred to Japan by the name "Dong Duong" by this time, but if they didn't, the arrival of rickshas would have made this clear.

Then we have "Dong Duong" meaning "Indochina" apparently appearing around this time too. I guess we still don't know who decided that this term was a good equivalent. Somehow I find myself siding with explanations that see this term coming from people who were not fully part of the premodern Sinitic/East Asian world (i.e. the French or perhaps Vietnamese Catholics, both of whom have been suggested), as this term was already being used in that tradition, and it seems odd that people within that tradition would alter/stretch it to fit such a novel concept. Indeed, would the traditional elite really have wanted to have anything to do with the "barbarian lands" of Laos and Cambodia? I guess I am coming to suspect that this is something that the French worked out with some of their early (Catholic) Vietnamese supporters.

Thanks again to everyone for all of the info.

Liam Kelley

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:38:34 -0700

From: C. Michele Thompson <thompson_mc@scsu.ctstateu.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Dong Duong Tap Chi query

Dear All,

Europeans used the term Indochina first to refer to what is pretty much all of Southeast Asia. In other words the lands between India and China. The area controlled by the French became known as French Indochina and the larger use of the term Indochina gradually fell by the wayside.

I can dig up citations to early use of Indochina to refer to most if not all of Southeast Asia if anyone wants them.

cheers

Michele

Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 07:39:55 +1000

From: thiendo <thiendo@midcoast.com.au>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Can Tho as the Western capital

Dear List

I feel somewhat duty bound as a Can Tho-born, to put in my two-bobs worth.

According to Son Nam (Lich Su Khan Hoang DBSCL), Can Tho was established as an Inspection by the French on 23-Feb-1876, with Can Tho market area as the city, following the dissolution of Tra On inspection just a few km downstream.

Do Thai Dong in an article of Tap Chi KHXH, no.10 (IV/1991) says the French had at one time called Can Tho Tay Do (Capitale de L'Ouest). He gives no source for this. I guess it must have come around if not soon after the time Baurac's big volumes (La Cochinchine et Ses Habitants:

Provinces de l'Est, ...de l'Ouest) were published in 1899?

Since my childhood, Tay Do has been people's fancy name for our town, with the best movie house bearing that name . I still remember the grenade explosion in front of Tay Do theater on a Tet evening of the early 1950s when we were in it. We did not sleep at home that night.

Thien Do