Corsicans in Indochina, and the pousse pousse (rickshaw) system under the French

From: Melissa Louise Anderson

Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 3:04 PM

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

Dear List,

First, many thanks for the past helpful responses. VSG is such a great resource.

What I am wondering is, does anyone knows of work done (or being done) on Corsicans in the colonial administration in Indochina? Natasha Pairaudeau mentions their high numbers alongside French Indians in her dissertation on Indians in the colony, and in my research on the police in Saigon I have found more French agents born in Corsica than anywhere else. I am aware of William Cohen's work on the French colonial service in the African colonies, and I think the general explanation is that the poorer regions of France supplied most of the colonial functionaries. Has anyone looked into this particular trend in Vietnam?

I am also curious if any work has been done on the pousse pousse system in Saigon. From my documents I am struck by how closely regulated this system was by the early 1900s. The police, my focus, enforced pre-set prices, had some hand in routine rickshaw inspections, and enforced licensing. While this was clearly meant to serve the French, it gave the pousse pousse drivers, in at least some cases, legal recourse (albeit small and biased against them) in seeking compensation against unruly and empty-pocketed passengers. When did this start? Was there a similar system in Hanoi?

Thanks again, and I hope everyone has a great break.

All the best,

Melissa

Melissa Louise Anderson

PhD Candidate

History Department

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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From: Daniel C. Tsang

Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 3:31 PM

To: vsg@u.washington.edu

The Vietnamese were sent by the French to patrol the International Settlement in Shanghai and many died there.

Here's an intriguing reference to their burials. dan

http://www.virtualshanghai.net/Texts/Articles?ID=80

The Colonial Space of Death in Shanghai (1844-1949)

Author Christian Henriot

Date 2007

...

Colonial subjects

With the French came colonial troops, mostly from Indochina. Vietnamese (‘Annamites’) were assigned to Shanghai in times of crisis as part of the colonial contingents that were sent to protect the settlement. They were also recruited as permanent officers in the Garde Municipale (French police), playing somehow the same role as the Sikhs in the SMP. Many of these transient or temporary Vietnamese residents, as well as members of their families, died in Shanghai. I do not know when and where the first Vietnamese were buried in Shanghai. A municipal report indicates that a separate section of 424 graves was reserved since 1905 in the Lokawei Cemetery. By 1939, there were 206 bodies in that section.⁵³ The number of annual burials reflects the progressive increase in the Vietnamese population in the French police, with the doubling of burials after 1925 (from an average of 32 to more than 65).⁵⁴

The policy toward the burial of colonial subjects in the French Concession followed the principle of inclusion with all other foreign residents in the settlement, but with different rights. The main colonial population was made up of Vietnamese troops and policemen. They were interred in a separate section of the Lokawei cemetery where 424 graves were reserved to them. After a period of 20 years, however, their remains were excavated and placed in an ossuary. During the war, however, the cemetery filed in more quickly due to the considerable increase of the “foreign element” in the settlement. The authorities realized that without making room, the cemetery would have to be closed in 1940. They had to balance the number of burials of Vietnamese with the applications for perpetual concessions by French or other Western nationals. To meet these demands, a new program of removal was designed so as to make room for the perpetual concessions, a right that, even during the war, the authorities never challenged.⁵⁵

Daniel C. Tsang, Distinguished Librarian

Data Librarian and Bibliographer for Asian American Studies,

Economics, Political Science, Film Studies (interim),

California and Orange County documents (interim).

468 Langson Library, University of California, Irvine

PO Box 19557, Irvine CA 92623-9557, USA

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From: Tai, Hue-Tam

Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 3:39 PM

To: "<mlanderson6@wisc.edu>" <mlanderson6@wisc.edu>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

I have been interested in the role of Corsicans in Vietnam, though I have not done a systematic study. Leon Werth in Cochinchine evinces the low regard in which Frenchmen from the mainland held Corsicans (I allude to one episode in my Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution). In turn, they banded together. The trial oh Phan Boi Chau was delayed not just to embarrass the new Governor-General Alexandre Varenne but also to avenge some slight incurred by by some fellow Corsican.

Corsicans played a major role in the French empire, not just in Indochina. (Scots played a similar role in the British empire).

Hue Tam Ho Tai

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

Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 3:44 PM

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

Regarding pousse pousses: they were introduced in Hanoi before Saigon, where horse drawn carriages ("boites d'allumettes") were more popular. Haydon Cherry and Daniel Hemery have done some research on pousse pousses and boites d'allumettes, but not from the perspective of regulations.

Hue Tam Ho Tai

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From: Hiep Duc

Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 5:21 PM

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

Although a lot of Corsicans were in police force, civil administration but there are also some noted Corsicans in Cochinchina:

- Roche Carabelli, maire (mayor) of Saigon from 1884 to 1890, author of "Unité de l'Indochine" on his view of politics in Indochina. Later a street in Saigon was named after him (off rue Catinat, now Ð?ng Kh?i), this street is now called Nguy?n Thi?p. On this street was located the Corsican club "Amicale Corse" (1 rue Carabelli). Opposite this club was "Amicale Bretonne" which was later became Brodard coffee house, then Gloria Jeans.

- J. Cardi, mayor of Saigon 1883-1884

- Paul Canavaggio, a Corsican entrepreneur and planteur who had rice fields, salt business in Bac Lieu, and other places in Cochinchina. A friend of Nguyen Chanh Sat and Gilbert Tran Chanh Chi?u, Cannavaggio helped them to be responsible "editor" for the paper "L?c T?nh Tân Van"

- Louis Ogliastro, a successful entrepreneur involved in many businesses including import-export, with offices in Saigon (Quai de Belgique, now B?n Chuong Duong), H?i Phòng. Hanoi, Phnom P?nh Ogliastro later co-operated with Jean-Baptiste Hui Bon Hoa, a rich Chinese, in pawn-shop business. Hui Bon Hoa house is the present Vi?n M? Thu?t in Saigon.

- Many shops in the early 20th century on Catinat Street were owned by Corsicans such as Guintoli, Bardotti who owned shops in jewellery business. Later a well-known Corsican, Mathieu Francini, bought Hôtel Continental from Duc de Monpensier (a French aristocrat who was the first to drive by car from Saigon to Angkor) in 1930. Francini made this hotel a gathering place for Corsicans who often came to the special corner in the hotel to reminisce on their Corse homeland. Francini also made a bust of Bonaparte to be displayed in the hotel lobby.

Cheers

Hiep

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From: <tobiasrettig@smu.edu.sg>

Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 7:14 PM

To: Melissa Louise Anderson <mlanderson6@wisc.edu>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Dear Melissa,

To add on to previous posters:

Philippe Franchini's autobiographical Hotel Continental (if memory serves) is a very good read. He's the mixed-blood offspring of the hotel owner mentioned in a previous post. Born in 1928, painter, historian, author.

Natasha's supervisor, Prof William Gervaise Clarence-Smith knows a lot about the Corsicans. I am not sure whether he has published on the subject, but if I recall (this is more than ten years ago), he can atteibute different Corsican names to different Corsican regions.

This brings me on to Corsican networks: family, extended family, and so forth. Al McCoy's The Politics of Heroin provides an interesting overview of Corsican socio-cultural dynamics (especially pages 46-47 of my edition).

What I recall from skimming through French prison officer files (ten plus years ago) was that the Corsicans know how to play the game of being promoted. Many of the files at the CAOM contained letters of support written by their parliamentary representative in France. So local Corsican networks plus overseas-metropolitan networks appear crucial in creating and then maintaining a very strong Corsican presence in French Indochina. I would be surprised if ordinary Frenchmen would have got the same kind of support.

All the best,

Tobias

Tobias Rettig, Singapore Management Universitu

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From: <tobiasrettig@smu.edu.sg>

Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 7:18 PM

To: Melissa Louise Anderson <mlanderson6@wisc.edu>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Dear Melissa,

To add on to previous posters:

All the best,

Tobias

Tobias Rettig, Singapore Management Universitu

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From: eric panthou

Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 12:08 AM

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

Tran Tu Binh in The red earth : A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation, mentioned that the director of Phu-Rieng (Michelin rubber plantations) was Corsican, and he was before a captain in the Foreign Legion (p. 34)

A french translation of this testimony will be published in january of 2013 and completed by an social history of Michelin plantations.

Best regard

Eric Panthou

Independant researcher

France

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From: Judith A N Henchy

Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 3:02 AM

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

I believe that Jean-Pascal Bassino and Jean-Dominique Giacometti's work on colonial administration and historical economic statistics mentions the extensive influence of this group.

Best

Judith Henchy

UW Libraries

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From: Paul Sager

Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 3:51 AM

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

Some research on Corsicans has been done in French:

There is a French Master's thesis (mémoire de maitrise): Jean-Louis Prétini, Les Corses en Indochine à travers "Saïgon-Cyrnos": bulletin de l'amicale corse de Cochinchine et du Cambodge 1925-1939 (Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1990). (http://www.sudoc.fr/13432171)

and an article by the same author: Jean-Louis Pretini, “Saigon-Cyrnos. Les Corses à Saigon” Saigon 1925-1944, Autrement, 17 (September 1992): 92-103.

There are some general volumes that surely have information on Indochina:

Francis Arzalier, Les Corses et la question coloniale (Ajaccio : Albiana, impr. 2009).

Pascal Blanchard, Denis-Michel Boëll,Georges Condominas et al., eds, Corse-colonies: Exposition "Corse-Colonies" présentée au Musée régional d'anthropologie de la Corse du 20 septembre 2002 au 31 octobre 2003 (Albiana éditions, 2002). (This definitely covers Indochina, since a note in its library record reads: "Accompagné de deux minidisc 1: le Cambodge et le mythe d'Angkor. Indochine, une mosaïque ethnique et culturelle.L'empreinte coloniale. 2 : Un corse dans l'aventure coloniale, correspondance de Jean-Simon Bonardi")

The proceedings of a conference that accompanied this exposition have also been published:

Corse - Colonies: [actes du] colloque [des] 19-20 septembre 2002 (Ajaccio : A. Piazzola, 2004).

There is also a master's thesis on Corsicans in French Africa:

Jean-Marc Benedetti, L' engagement corse dans l'entreprise coloniale française en Afrique subsaharienne [Texte imprimé] : de l'expansion aux décolonisations, aspects et enjeux d'une présence (Université d'Aix-Marseille 1, 2001).

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From: Shawn McHale

Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 4:10 AM

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

This is a fascinating thread. Years ago (1989), when Peter Zinoman and I were both grad students, we met and interviewed Nguy?n Thanh Son, who was a prominent early communist, participant in the August uprisings in Saigon, and a key player in Khmer-Vietnamese relations. He told us a funny anecdote of prison life on Côn Ð?o. The prisoners realized that many of the prison guards were Corsican, and loved Napoleon. So they put on a play about Napoleon, with the minor aim of amusing the guards and the major aim of conveying to the prisoners ideas about leadership. Nguy?n Thanh Son also mentioned that for the play, one prisoner -- and I am rather sure he said Lê Du?n -- dressed up as a woman! If my memory on Lê Du?n is correct, this would make him Vietnam's first Prime Minister in a skirt . . .

Shawn McHale

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From: Tai, Hue-Tam

Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 4:30 AM

To: "<mchale@gwu.edu>" <mchale@gwu.edu>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Interesting! My father mentioned in his memoir that he shared a cell with Le Duan (and also Phan van Hum and Nguyen An Ninh, with whom he was much closer).

Many thanks to Melissa for starting this thread.

I have long been aware of the role of socially marginal people in colonial empires. For Britain, that would be Scots, mostly (In Edge of Empire, however, Maya Jasanoff brings up a number of rootless individuals who aspired to be Britons). For France, it would be Corsicans and, to a lesser extent, Bretons. And then, there was the circulation of people from one colony to another. Alice Conklin, in A Mission to Civilize, discussed the French administrators in Africa who either had held office or would later hold office in Indochina. But there were also many individuals who came from Reunion to Indochina. Philippe Peycam and Haydon Cherry make mention of such individuals. In his early days as an anticolonial avtivist, my father worked with Edgar Ganofsky; he had come from Reunion, was destitute and was addicted to opium.

Hue Tam Ho Tai

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From: Melissa Louise Anderson

Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 8:26 AM

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

Many thanks to all for the great feedback.

In Saigon the distinction between Indians and Europeans in the police seems to have caused more friction than between mainland French and Corsicans. Although legally French, the Indians’ status as Europeans was openly challenged and belittled (again, see Pairaudeau) and their Indian origins are stressed in any account of their behavior (good or bad) in their personnel files. I do not see the same sort of distinctions made for Corsicans in Saigon.

I did find a case in Haiphong which suggests some internal divisions along these lines (in the absence of Indians perhaps.) In 1915 two Corscan policemen (an agent and a brigadier) complained to the Corsican representative in Paris that their commissaire made “malicious remarks” against Corsicans in the police and insulted their “professional dignity”. The deputy then contacted the GGI about the complaint and registered his protest on behalf of his “compatriots.” The RST instructed the central commissaire of Tonkin to open an investigation, following which the commissaire concluded that the accusation was groundless. He wrote that “Mr. Rechard denies having made malicious remarks with regards to Corsican agents” and both had a history of complaining over “the slightest thing.” This appeal directly to a Corsican politician definitely fits with Tobias Rettig's insight about the importance of overseas networks in promoting the interests of this particular group. Hopefully as my research progresses I will be able to say more about its effects on the internal power dynamic within the police.

Thanks again everyone for the great discussion and sources!

All the best,

Melissa

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From: sarah womack <sarahwwomack@gmail.com>

Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 8:38 AM

To: mlanderson6@wisc.edu, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

In re the pousse-pousse regulations,

as you've probably figured out, rules governing public or hire vehicles were promulgated at the municipal level, and could vary substantially from city to city (for example, in Phnom Penh non-payment of fare usually resulted in a fine paid to the city rather than to the driver). So it may well be that Hanoi had similar regulations to Saigon, but due to the structure of reglementation it wouldn't have to. This is also the case with the timing of regulation, though in most towns rules for most vehicles for hire seem to have been updated every few years. In Phnom Penh pretty much everything of that sort was first nailed down in 1898, and got more ridiculously specific almost yearly till 1934.

Sarah Womack

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From: David Del Testa

Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 3:10 PM

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

And maybe you have already seen it, but I recall there is a whole periodical dedicated to Corsicans in Indochina in Aix, and if memory serves correctly, perhaps even one dedicated just to Corsicans serving in the police. Best, David

David Del Testa, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Chair

Department of History

Bucknell University

1 Dent Drive

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania 17837 USA

Treasurer, Western Society for French History

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From: Philippe Peycam <phpey@hotmail.com>

Date: Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 1:37 AM

To: vsg@u.washington.edu

In addition to what has been already written about the Corsicans, I recall meeting in the mid-90s an old man (whose name I forgot) who was a former singer and a good friend of Trinh Cong Son with whom he regularly had coffee on Sunday afternoons at Givral cafe (Givral, which has by the way been recently destroyed along with the whole building block around it on Dong Khoi street to give way to another Vincom-owned shopping mall). He once explained how he and many of his Vietnamese comrades got involved in the 1930s in a fan club for the Corsica-born singer Tino Rossi entitled "Ai Tino" ("love Tino") which continued all the way through the 50s. Many of these people were openly involved in anti-colonial activities but they cherished Tino and his love songs (many of which, written by another Corsican, Vicent Scotto, were translated into Vietnamese). Tino Rossi is arguably the most famous Corsican after Napoleon (he is, according to Wikipedia, the Frenchman who sold the largest number of records ever).

As for the discussion on pousse-pousses: in my book, I mention the major debate which took place in the spring of 1928 over whether this mode of transportation should be abolished because, as the instigator of the whole affair Huynh Phuc Yen, editor of the Catholic newspaper cong Giao Dong Thinh (Catholic Voice), put it, it was "an instrument of humiliation of the Vietnamese race". People took side in favor or not of a boycott ofpousse-pousses. References to regulations and the establishment of a mutual assistance fund for the rickshaws were made. The huge number of 5-7,000 rickshaws operating in Saigon was mentioned.

Best,

Philippe

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