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The Concessions of Nghệ-Tĩnh, circa 1928

Ah, now, this is where it gets interesting. One would think that the concessions – that is, ‘unused’ land granted to Europeans and French-favoring Vietnamese to develop economically over the course of five years – would represent the bullseye of anti-colonial sentiment in Nghệ-Tĩnh, with settlers imposing colonial cash crops such as coffee on local people and employing local people to care for and harvest them. But if you take a look at the combined map and filter for “protests” and “concessions”, the picture is not so clear, especially in Nghệ An’s north and Hà Tĩnh’s west. 

Note that with the update of September 2022, I added six “unknown” concessions marked on the Carte d’Indochine 1:100000 maps. It is unclear if these concessions functioned by 1928, but I have included them anyway.

The sites of functioning concessions are drawn from the following:

  • Chef de Brigade Grossard, “Thanh Chương,” Carte des Deltas de l’Annam, 1:25000. Hanoi: Service géographique de l’Indochine, 1907.
  • “Carte agricole au 1:1000000: Deltas du Fleuve Rouge. Hanoi: Inspection des Affaires économiques, 1925.
  • Service géographique de l’Indochine. Nghe An. Cartes économiques de l’Annam. Hanoi: Service géographique de l’Indochine, 1926.
  • Service géographique de l’Indochine. Ha Tinh. Cartes économiques de l’Annam. Hanoi: Service géographique de l’Indochine, 1926.
  • Service géographique de l’Indochine. Quang Ngai. Cartes économiques de l’Annam. Hanoi: Service géographique de l’Indochine, 1926.
  • Carte économique du Tonkin. Hanoi: Service géographique de l’Indochine, 1940.
  • Carte de l’Indochine au 1:100000. Hanoi: Service géographique de l’Indochine, 1907-53 (esp. 86E&W, 87E&W, 88E&W, 95E&W, 96E&W, 97E, 102E&W, 103E&W)

Concessions evolved and changed over time. As I advance this project, I will include concessionary information from the “M – Colonisation” series of records (Boudet classification system; see this summary for information) from the archives of the Résident supérieure de l’Annam (RSA), drawn from the Archives nationales d’Outre-mer in Aix-en-Provence, France and the Lưu trữ quốc gia IV (National Archives of Vietnam no. 4), in Dalat.