Okay, let’s start taking a look at some archival material while we wait for the ZotPress – Zotero connection concern to resolve itself.
Concessions, that is land given to French and French-favoring Vietnamese for the purposes of economic development, interest me greatly relative to the Nghệ-Tĩnh Soviets, and they also interest me in general as an essential feature of settler colonialism. Indeed, if I live to be a hundred, my third book may be, Concessions to Colonialism: The Settler Economy in an Unsettled French Indochina. Unfortunately, not many records of these concessions have survived, or I haven’t found them yet, for the Protectorate of Annam. But I have a few, and they do give an insight on the negotiations that occurred between local people whose traditional use of the land a settler might usurp and the state impose a property regime on land previously deemed open to everyone for use. Let’s start with a good one.
Note that I can’t reproduce any of the actual archival materials. To do so, one generally has to ask permission of the archive from which they come. But I will describe and reproduce them as best I can.
Our first case is that of Mr. Gustave Joseph Monier. Mr. Monier’s petition originates from the archival files of the Centre des Archives nationales d’Outre-mer in Aix-en-Provence, France and are located in “Indochine. Résidence supérieure de l’Annam. M1.” “M” is the designation for files dealing with colonization according to the Boudet system of archival classification and official collects “ Dossiers et ventes de terrains domaniaux et terrains urbains, et concessions diverses à des services, des sociétés ou des particuliers, souvent accompagnés de cartes et plans.” Claire Edington kindly brought my attention to them and copied them for me in 2012, and Veronica Langberg, a freelance historical researcher, copied more materials for me in 2014.
The dossier itself contains two parts within a standard folder: Mr. Monier’s request, and a request by a company for a beachside site for a recreation center for employees at Cửa Lò, to the northeast of Vinh along the coast. The latter does not interest us at this time. The bulk of the file concerns Mr. Monier’s request, and consists of, in reverse chronological order, Monier’s request and permissions along with all of the paperwork required to request a concession. There are three plat maps, each of increasing complexity, and a routing chart of the ten officials (eight French and two Vietnamese) from whom the request had to receive permission. Everything is in good condition.
According to a copy of his birth certificate included with the application dossier, Monier was born 25 May 1875 in Saint-Priest, Commune of Vienne, Department of the Isère). Many settlers with commercial interests in Indochina originated in the Lyon area. According to the excellent and useful website http://entreprises-coloniales.fr, in 1926, Monier resided in Vinh, involved in the Garages du Nord-Annam and the Messageries du Nord-Annam until 1928. He is also noted in the Annuaire des commerçants of 1922 as an ‘entrepreneur’ in Hà Tĩnh, as a ‘renter of pousse-pousses’ in the 1933 Indochine addresses, but does not appear in the 1938 Indochine addresses (although a Mme. Monier dite Vu Thoi Thi does…where is Mr.?).
Monier sought a concession of land to the north of Thượng Thọ village in Hòa Hải commune (to the East of Phương Điện commune), Hường Khê district, Hà Tĩnh Province. This was tricky to find. Thượng Thọ didn’t come up on searches in Google Maps, Google Earth, Maplandia, or in the Vietnam Gazetteer. I tried to match the plats contained in the archival documents with aerial images but couldn’t find anything around Phương Điện commune. Hòa Hải commune is quite large and forested. Finally, finding a story about a drowning in 2017 in the river on Vietnamese news, I found the river, the Rào Nổ, that forms the southern border of Monier’s concession and followed it from its source to – bingo! – Thượng Thọ.
The attached image shows a satellite image of the area today. While Thượng Thọ village is still there on the south side of the Rào Nổ river, it doesn’t exist on the north side any more; on the maps incldued with the archival materials, the village of Tri Bản is where Thượng Thọ is marked on the colonial era maps. Perhaps the river changed course, the original Thượng Thọ was washed away and relocated across the river, etc. Looks like a peaceful, productive agricultural settlement; there’s a dry good store, a restaurant with mixed reviews, and a Catholic church nearby. There’s a big dam to the west, as well as an entrance to the Vườn quốc gia Vũ Quang (Vũ Quang National Park).
In letter number 2080 dated 9 November 1926 from the Résidence supérieure d’Annam in Huế, a Mr. J. d’Elloy decreed that, in response to his request of 10 January 1926, Mr. Monier of Vinh would receive a concession of land at Thượng Thọ, located between the villages of Phương Viện and Phương Điền, canton of Phương Viện , Hương Khê District, Hà Tĩnh province, with an area of proximately 345 hectares in size.
Other documents in the file indicate what preceded the granting of the concession. In a letter of 5 October 1926, the Government of Annam (the Cơ Mật Viện) had no reservations about the concession. Mr. d’Elloy in a letter of 19 June 1926 had expressed to Mr. Monier that he should simply receive the 346 hectares of land outright rather than occupying 189 hectares as a concession and asking that the remainder be placed in a reserve, because requesting such a reserve “peut avertir des conséquences plus délicates que le droit de propriété.” D’Elloy must have had some concern about local sensitivities.
Apparently, as indicated in a letter of 7 June 1926, Monier had asked for 500 hectares for a concession and 500 in reserve, but a letter dated 15 April 1926 from the Resident of Hà Tĩnh to the RSA indicated that the initial request had “provoqué la reclamation des villages voisines” and the request had been reduced to 189 hectares for the concession and 156 for the reserve, A subsequent letter of 23 September 1926 indicated he had fulfilled all the other requirements (as required by the decrees of 28 April 1899 and 11 August 1926. For the concession, Monier had to pay 345 piasters, plus tax stamps for the official plat maps.
A statement given by Mr. Letremble, the deputy administrator of Hà Tĩnh, and Tôn Thất Quảng, representing the governor of Hà Tĩnh, Mr. Tuần Phủ, indicated that the southern edge of Mr. Monier’s original claim had covered the rice paddies of two villagers, Nguyễn Phé and Nguyễn Dao, but that these two were farming the land without having enrolled their claims in the village registry (meaning, they were farming illegally). Monier apparently compensated both Phé and Dao for the improvements they had made (illegally, in the eyes of the state) on the land, and negotiated the use of the land with the local officials.
By the end of 1926, Mr. Monier had on the property:
- 3000 coffee plants
- 5000 coffee saplings
- 15 “mâu” of rice (1 mâu = 3,600 square meters or about 1/3 hectare, and just a little larger than an American acre)
- 1 “sao” of tea
- 15 betel trees
- 700 betel tree saplings
- 7 cows
- 6 water buffalo
- 7 goats
This is a significant investment! The official plat map shows a house, a storehouse, a well, a stable, and a drying shed at the site indicated by a “x” on the modern map. The area just to the south which is now built up used to be a small marsh, and any signs of Mr. Monier’s concession are long gone. Indeed, an Army Map Service map 1/50000 6145-VI “Quang Tệ” of c. 1965 shows buildings in the filled marsh, although there is still one building standing just to the north of it…perhaps still the farmhouse?
As always, I wonder what the local memory of it is, if any. I will venture to guess that Mr. Monier’s venture did not endure, but I would also wager that it was present in 1930. I will add it to the list of concessions.
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