Nguyễn Đặng Anh Minh

From: Vsg [mailto:vsg-bounces@mailman11.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Oscar Salemink

Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2019 1:28 AM

To: vsg@u.washington.edu

Cc: Andrew Hardy <hardyvn25@yahoo.com>; nguyendanganhminh@gmail.com

Subject: [Vsg] doctoral defense Nguyễn Đặng Anh Minh

Dear colleagues,

Please join me in congratulating Ms Nguyễn Đặng Anh Minh who last Monday successfully defended her doctoral dissertation Land Property, Land Politics: A history of the Bahnar in Kon Tum (1830 – 1945) at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. The thesis had been supervised by Andrew Hardy of the École Française de l’Extrême-Orient.

As external examiner I found the thesis a considerable achievement. The topic is original, namely the politics of land ownership roughly in the territory of Bahnar groups in Kon Tum province and especially around Kon Tum city, as a result of the presence and actions of French Catholic missionaries (since 1850) and of the French colonial administration (which she dates at 1867, with the beginning of French explorations in the area now known as the Central Highlands of Vietnam). The dissertation is structured in three parts, covering Bahnar territory, society and forms of landed property before the arrival of the first French and Việt missionaries in 1850; the implantation of a missionary presence and the church appropriations and uses of land (1850 – 1945); and the imposition of the French colonial rule and State regulation of land ownership and use (1867 – 1945).

Ms Nguyễn Đặng Anh Minh used an unprecedented amount of sources by accessing a wide variety of manuscript collections in colonial, missionary and military archives, in research institutes and museums, and in private hands, in Vietnam and France. She even catalogued some of the private archives, and facilitated their incorporation into public collections. Linguistically, she is not only fluent in Vietnamese, French and English, but also in Bahnar language in spoken and written form. This allowed her to complement the missionary and colonial sources with a reading of Bahnar epics with reference to land-related issues, as well as with oral history.

Using these multiple sources Ms Nguyễn Đặng Anh Minh showed how the Bahnar people initially welcomed the support of the French mission and the colonial State in their struggle against surrounding groups who were encroaching on their land, but how they were subsequently dispossessed in the course of time and in a large variety of manners by both Church and colonial State, which at times collaborated and at times competed.

All best,

Oscar Salemink

Professor

University of Copenhagen

Department of Anthropology

DIR +45-3532 4472

MOB +45-5014 2844

o.salemink@anthro.ku.dk