Civil status in French colonies vc. protectorates
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Date: Feb 6, 2006 4:33 AM
Subject: [Vsg] civil status in Fr. colonies vs. protectorates
Hi all,
I have heard several lecturers remark on the different status an
individual writer or revolutionary enjoyed under French rule, depending
on whether he or she came from the colony of Cochinchine or the
protectorate of Tonkin.
The idea is that a ward in a protectorate enjoyed certain rights and
privileges that a dependent in a colony didn't. The point often seems
to me more like a useful turn of phrase than a substantial insight,
since it sounds reversible. I always seem to have heard the opposite
claim made to a similar point, for instance about whether someone could
travel to France, claim education, enforce a contract or gain standing
in a court.
Are there real distinctions between the civil status under France of a
Tonkinese , Annamite or a Cochinchinese? Were they broad, holding
across travel and education and trade and civil and criminal law? Or
were they a hodge-podge? Did they hold across the colonial period or
were they all always in flux? Were there specific statutes and
administrative tradition on these issues or is it something that never
really got worked out?
I expect that these questions apply as well to Laotians, Cambodians,
ethnic Chinese and highlanders. I'm asking about Ha Noi, Hue and Saigon
to try keep it simple if that's possible, and because most writers are
from those places.
Dan
From: Christina Firpo <christina.firpo@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 6, 2006 8:05 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] civil status in Fr. colonies vs. protectorates
Hi Dan and List,
The legal status of the subjects and proteges, as the inhabitants were referred to during the colonial period, is extremely complicated. In fact, I hope that someone will chime in and correct the following. Also ask Nola Cooke, I think she wrote something about the legal status of the three Ky. I know she and I have had this very same conversation.
Up until 1946, Cochinchina was a colony so it's inhabitants were 'subjects.' It was headed by the Governor of Cochinchina (GouCoch), whereas Tonkin, Annam, Laos and Cambodia had Resident Superiors as heads. The GouCoch was responsible to the GGI but he had more power than the Resident superiors. This meant that the subjects had MORE rights and access to other privileges compared to the proteges. Within the French Empire, the colonies were given more privileges in comparison to the protectorates or territories. For example, the subjects (including inhabitants of Cochinchina) could ask for French citizenship, whereas the proteges could not. At one point the subjects could travel throughout Indochina without dealing with the administrative permission system. In my research I found that Eurasians who were not recognized by their French fathers had a much easier time getting French status than those in the protectorates. Cochinchina was also the testing ground for many legal, administrative, and social-welfare programs. In other words, the subjects reaped the benefits/suffered the consequences of many government programs before the proteges could.
Tonkin, Annam, Laos and Cambodia were protectorates and had Resident superiors. The inhabitants were called proteges and they did not enjoy some of the privileges to which the subjects had access. When the colonial government sent Tonkinese workers to Cochinchina (until the 1940s) the government kept watch on the workers to make sure they would eventually return to Tonkin.
BUT, the cities of Hanoi, Tourrane (present Da Nang), Saigon, and Hai Phong and possibly Dalat (would be after 1937) were considered French administrative circles (the formal name has escaped me). I don't completely understand what that meant for the inhabitants but I do know that the government's power increased exponentially inside the city limits. Though I'm not sure if it was completely legal, some government agencies and non-governmental agencies used the city status as justification to apply Metropolitan laws that had not yet been applied to the colonies and protectorates (this occurred throughout the colonial period).
As for the Minh Huong and highland inhabitants check Oscar Salmink's 2003 book, I'm sure he covers the legal status of the highland inhabitants. And Chris Goscha is currently sorting out the Minh Huong question. I ran across a few French studies of the period that questioned the Minh Huong status, as well as that of "other Asians." The question of Minh Huong and 'Other Asians' was complicated by intermarriage, the fact that some were residents of other French territories and by French perceptions of Asian racial hierarchies. I know that Minh Huong status deeply bothered French natalists in the 1920s.
Sorry for such a long response!
Best,
Christina Firpo
From: Christina Firpo <christina.firpo@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 6, 2006 9:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] civil status in Fr. colonies vs. protectorates
Hi Dan,
Let me add one more thing: I think it's important to think of the colony/protectorate not merely in terms of the rights of the inhabitants but the relationship between the local government and its inhabitants. So in the colony of Cochinchina there is a closer relationship between the government and subjects. This means that the government has more power but the inhabitants have access to this power too. This explains why some could ask for French citizenship. But it also explains why the government had more power to, for example, enter into the family sphere.
This model also explains the French municipal units of Hanoi, Saigon, Tourrane, Hai Phong, and potentially Da Lat. While the individual inhabitants of those cities (Saigon being the exception) did not have as much power, the Indochina Government (not merely the city or Ky government) could exercise a power analogous to that which the French central government had over its citizens. In my research I found that the GGI could claim the right to enter into the family sphere in the way that the metropolitan government did in France. The excuse was that these cities were considered French, though the residents were not French.
I think the relative power model explains why people in the protectorates appear to have greater rights-- the government did not get as involved in their lives as it did in the lives of the subjects. But on the other hand the subjects had access to citizenship rights and government programs, and the proteges did not.
Best,
Christina
From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Date: Feb 6, 2006 12:51 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] civil status in Fr. colonies vs. protectorates
Dear list,
Let me just add a few words to what Christina Firpo has correctly stated. Scholars have tended to ignore the distinction between protectorates and colonies, assuming that it was a distinction without a difference. Much of the time, these scholars are correct, but sometimes they are not.
The distinction between protectorate and colony is fundamentally a legal one. Legally, one could not issue a decree in a colony that contradicted French law in effect in metropolitan France. In a protectorate, in contrast, the French authorities could *choose* whether or not to implement or ignore a French law.
In many realms of law, this distinction made no difference. But it did make a difference in press law -- after all, the famous 1881 law on the press in France enshrined freedom of the press in that country. For that reason, the public realm in Conchinchina was, legally speaking, relatively free. Given that the French authorities could not contradict French laws on freedom of the press, they thus attempted to narrow the scope of the law -- for example, they stated that materials in French could circulate freely, but NOT materials in other languages (like Vietnamese). And, of course, they devised extra-judicial ways of trying to make sure that material couldn't circulate freely --e.g. harassment of printers. When all was said and done, however, the press still had greater freedom in the South than in the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin.
While I do not know about other realms of the law, I suspect that in family law, the South had a different character than in the protectorates. For example, I would assume that in Cochinchina, a man could not, theoretically, have more than one wife. It would be interesting to know if such theoretical protections had any practical relevance.
Shawn
From: Gilbert <mgilbert@ngcsu.edu>
Date: Feb 6, 2006 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] civil status in Fr. colonies vs. protectorates
Colonial India was neither a crown colony or nor a protectorate, but
faced the same problem and devised a similar solution: Indian Penal
Code 124A was devised to criminalize seditious writings in the
vernacular press, while English language papers, even when owned by
Indians, were spared due to British constitutional protections.
Professor Marc Jason Gilbert
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Date: Feb 7, 2006 2:54 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] civil status in Fr. colonies vs. protectorates
Thanks very much.
What I take away from this discussion is that there was a difference,
but you would have to be a lawyer on the spot to make a guess what the
consequences were for any particular situation. I will have to go back
to Shawn's book and look forward to Christina's dissertation.
I use the distinction at moments throughout my dissertation, written for
non-experts, to de-familiarize the reader with what he or she might
already think about empires, as in the following passage (before
re-write after your replies):
America is in the heart, Carlos Bulosan wrote, about the relations he
forged working this country as a Filipino fruit tramp. I told you all
that stuff about France and Viet Nam so we would be on the same page, in
case you had the wrong idea about what Europe and Asia are. Now I have
been telling you about my country, mon pays, que huong toi.
Nhat Linh was not actually born in a colony, but in the protectorate of
Tonkin. There was still a king and court at Hue in the protectorate of
Annam. Nhat Linh was born into the Vietnamese civil service that
administered Ha Noi and the Red River valley and the mountains into what
is now Laos.
In Saigon all Vietnamese were colonials, dependents subject to rule as
were the rice farmers of the delta throughout Cochinchine and Cambodge,
but in Ha Noi as a matter of law they were still running their own
country. On any given day an individual might be better off as a
Tonkinese ward, or as a colonized Cochinchinese.
Would you rather own a house in West Virginia and vote for your Senators
and Congressman or live right in Washington, DC? At our nation’s
capital you wouldn’t have representation in the Federal government but
they would in the end have to take care of you, while in West Virginia
everything under all the houses is owned by someone or other in New York
and no one cares what happens to the people on top.
West Virginia is our obvious colony and the District of Columbia the
declared protectorate, and then there are the Indian reservations and
the distant tiny islands, the bases and proving grounds, the regions
taken from Mexico and for heavens’ sake Alaska and Hawaii. The United
States itself is an empire, never mind what we do overseas, but most of
us get by.
We could do with more empires. The former Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian
ones look good compared with what goes on now in those parts of the
world, and sometimes even the Soviet Union does for a moment.
It was because of the empire that is China, what it had done in Korea,
that the government of the United States did not use the atom bomb in
Viet Nam. If there was an Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian or Soviet empire
now the American one would not be in Iraq.
In the great day of many empires Nhat Linh was born a second-class
citizen of the world, in peace and security, able to take a steamer to
Paris. We no longer enjoy the civilizing influence of the empires of
Britain and France and the Netherlands because Germany wanted one too,
and Japan.
The reason London and Paris and the Hague did not rally enough effective
supporters against this challenge in time to keep their empires, while
Washington expanded ours, was race. My orphan grandfather, the boy
poling the boat, was a white man, and Nhat Linh the son of a mandarin
was not.
From: Hoang t. Dieu-Hien <dieuhien@u.washington.edu>
Date: Feb 8, 2006 12:33 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] civil status in Fr. colonies vs. protectorates
Dan,
Here are some anecdotal stories that may shed light to what you have heard. In pre-1945 Tonkin, the language of instruction for Vietnamese school children was Vietnamese. The study of the French language was added in higher grades as a subject of study a few hours a week. During the same period, in Cochinchina, the language of instruction for Vietnamese school children, even grades 1 or 2, was French. That changed after 1945. I would like to hear more from scholars who study this topic on the documentations they found on primary and secondary education in the 3 regions during this period.
Also, if I was to put myself in the mindset of a contemporary Vietnamese, the people from Cochinchina "bi. ddo^ ho^. hoa`n toa`n" and, therefore, it logically follows that they were more "ke^`m ke.p" than people from Annam or Tonkin. If I see it from the point of view that a French citizen would enjoy more protection and privilege under French law than a non-citizen, then the opposite rings true. Of course, the underlying assumption of the former notion is that being a colonial subject means being exploited, unfairly treated, and tightly controlled. Whereas, the assumption for the latter would be that Vietnamese subjects under French rule were treated somewhat as equals to French citizens in mother country.
Intriguing discussion.
Hien