The colonial good life : a commentary on Andre Joyeux's vision of French Indochina, 2008
This book reproduces and analyzes a collection of crucial primary documents from the early Twenti... more This book reproduces and analyzes a collection of crucial primary documents from the early Twentieth-Century. These simple yet rich visual sources provide us with a clever insight into the nature of the colonial order of things. Joyeux was a French artist who served in the colonial service as an art teacher and school administrator. Living primarily in and around Saigon, he captured many aspects of daily life in the French colony in a series of humorous, critical, and, at times, somber cartoons. Taking on individuals such as corrupt civil servants, decadent plantation owners, and scheming Vietnamese housekeepers, his pen and ink drawings spared few. Despite this, he never lost his humanity and empathy. As a member of the community he studied, Joyeux offers the reader an informed analysis of French colonial society from the inside. In addition to translating the cartoon captions, Vann and Montague provide an introductory essay and explications of each image.
The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam, 2018
The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam tells the dar... more The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam tells the darkly humorous story of the French colonial state's failed efforts to impose its vision of modernity upon the colonial city of Hanoi, Vietnam.
Part of the Graphic Histories series, this book offers a case study in the history of imperialism, highlighting the racialized economic inequalities of empire, colonization as a form of modernization, and industrial capitalism's creation of a radical power differential between "the West and the rest." On a deeper level, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt examines the contradictions unique to the French Third Republic's colonial "civilizing mission," the development of Vietnamese resistance to French rule, and the history of disease. Featuring forty-nine primary sources--many available in English for the first time--and three full-color maps, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt illustrates the ironic and tragic ways in which modernization projects can have unintended consequences.
On 26 December 2018, an Indonesian National Army (TNI) unit raided a book vendor in Kediri, East ... more On 26 December 2018, an Indonesian National Army (TNI) unit raided a book vendor in Kediri, East Java. They seized a handful of titles – all history books – about the nation’s turbulent politics in the 1960s. The army claimed the books were illegal as they promoted Marxism. Similar events in Padang, West Sumatra, and Tarakan, North Kalimantan (Borneo) followed. These raids raised many concerns around the archipelago, especially as Indonesia is headed towards a presidential election this spring. It is clear that Red-baiting and paranoia over the legacy of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and its bloody destruction will remain potent factors in national politics.
Suvannabhumi: Multi-disciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2020
[ Abstract ] This article is a subsection of a comparative analysis of depictions of violence in ... more [ Abstract ] This article is a subsection of a comparative analysis of depictions of violence in Jakarta's Museum of the Indonesian Communist Party's Treachery, Ho Chi Minh City's War Remnants Museum, and Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. In comparing these public history sites, I analyze how memories of mass violence were central to state formation in both Suharto's anti-Communist New Order (1966-1998), the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1976-present), and Cambodia since the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea (1979-present). While this comparison points out specific distinctions about the role of the military, the nature of revolution, and conceptions of gender, it argues for a central similarity in the use of a mythology of victimization in building these post-conflict nation-states. This article focuses on my gendered analysis of the use of images of women and children in each museum. Depending on context and political purpose, these museums cast women as tragic victim, revolutionary heroine, or threat to the social order. My analysis of gender places stereotypical images of violence against women (the trope of women and children as the * Professor, California State University, USA. mikevann@csus.edu
Based on an analysis of sexually explicit cartoons from a Hanoi newspaper, this essay is a gender... more Based on an analysis of sexually explicit cartoons from a Hanoi newspaper, this essay is a gendered reading of the colonial encounter in French Indochina. Using previously untapped sources from the pre-1954 collection in Vietnam's National Library, I engage critical theories of masculinity and whiteness to create a thick description of life in the colonial city. From a feminist perspective, I argue that imperialism's racial, gender, and class hierarchies combined with the Third Republic's paternalism and misogyny to give French men unprecedented power over their Asian subjects, especially Vietnamese women, be they prostitutes, concubines, or victims of sexual assault. This intersectionality created an openly predatory sexual culture in the overwhelmingly male white community of colonizers. These cartoons show specific locations in Hanoi and greater colonial Asia, providing insight into the lived experience of the colonial city and information to literally map these white men's sexual desires in the city.
A history of Governor General of Indochina Paul Doumer's transformation of Hanoi between 1897 and... more A history of Governor General of Indochina Paul Doumer's transformation of Hanoi between 1897 and 1902. Pays attention to the ways in which colonial whiteness and white supremacy were inscribed into the colonial city.
Global memories of 1968 often invoke images of determined but joyful popular uprisings, such as s... more Global memories of 1968 often invoke images of determined but joyful popular uprisings, such as students taking to the streets in Paris and Dubček’s “socialism with a human face” in Prague. From Mexico City to Beijing, youth revolt was in the air. We world historians know that this rebellious, even revolutionary, enthusiasm would be crushed by year’s end. In Jakarta one of the world’s most reactionary regimes was solidifying its power. On March 27, 1968, General Suharto was sworn in as the nation’s second President by a parliament firmly under his control. This ceremony institutionalized the next three decades of his rule, a brutal and corrupt military dictatorship known as the New Order. Suharto’s rise to power included the mass murder of at least 500,000 individuals for alleged ties to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the arrest, torture, and incarceration of roughly 1,000,000 political prisoners. In the summer of 1968, he commanded Operation Trisula, a final massacre of some two thousand alleged PKI members in South Blitar, East Java. Many of the Indonesian victims and prisoners once shared the rebellious enthusiasm of the Parisian soixante-huitards. For a number of reasons, but most importantly because the killers created the new state system, the perpetrators of one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century have never been held accountable. Furthermore, Suharto and his domestic and international allies made a concerted effort to conceal, confuse, and otherwise obfuscate the events of 1965-1968.1 For some five decades this significant world historical event has been shrouded in mystery. Only recently have scholars, filmmakers, and artists successfully shone light on this dark corner of the past.
This essay explores how Malacca became a trade emporium, connecting Southeast Asia to the wider w... more This essay explores how Malacca became a trade emporium, connecting Southeast Asia to the wider world system.
The success of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel
"The Sympathizer" has brought att... more The success of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel "The Sympathizer" has brought attention to Vietnamese diasporic literature. In his wide-ranging academic work "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War," Nguyen discusses the variety of literary genres explored by Vietnamese refugees, including graphic memoirs. Not to be confused with graphic novels, which are works of fiction, the genre of graphic memoir uses the medium of cartoons to situate personal stories within the context of larger historical processes.Whether we use the adjective graphic, illustrated, or comic, this subgenre of diasporic Vietnamese family histories is surprisingly robust. Taken as a whole, they represent an important cultural development in the literature and art of exile. With slowly uncovered secrets, hidden family members, and unspoken trauma, these three authors use gothic elements to tell their refugee family histories.
Genocide and Mass Violence in Asia: An Introductory Reader, 2019
Visitors to Southeast Asia have the opportunity to see three distinct Cold War narratives. Museum... more Visitors to Southeast Asia have the opportunity to see three distinct Cold War narratives. Museum exhibits in Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, and Jakarta inform the public about specific acts of violence and murder during the ideological struggles of 1945 to 1989. Drawing from Paul Ricoeur and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, this chapter considers the ways in which the official voice of the state constructed Cold War narratives of violence and victimization in several Southeast Asian museums, a process of remembering, forgetting, and silencing. While these public history institutions emphasize the violence and tragedy of the Cold War and use similar narrative structures, themes, and formats, their political perspectives are so dramatically different as to create the feeling of parallel realities. Indeed, the Indonesian and Vietnamese museums can be read as ideological mirror images of each other, with the Cambodian sites seemingly above the Cold War political dichotomy. A comparative analysis of Jakarta’s Monument to the Revolutionary Heroes (Monumen Pahlawan Revolusi) complex, Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remnants Museum (Bảo tàng Chứng tích chiến tranh), and Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is the focus of this chapter.
This paper discusses the neo-logicist approach to the foundations of mathematics by highlighting ... more This paper discusses the neo-logicist approach to the foundations of mathematics by highlighting an issue that arises from looking at the Bad Company objection from an epistemological perspective. For the most part, our issue is independent of the details of any resolution of the Bad Company objection and, as we will show, it concerns other foundational approaches in the philosophy
A micro-history of the 1929 murder of a French labor "recruiter" in colonial Hanoi. Explores viol... more A micro-history of the 1929 murder of a French labor "recruiter" in colonial Hanoi. Explores violence in the colonial encounter.
Recent reflections on French urban history in relation to colonial and post-colonial cities in Fr... more Recent reflections on French urban history in relation to colonial and post-colonial cities in France and the former empire.
While there is a large body of literature on violence in colonial history, most studies have look... more While there is a large body of literature on violence in colonial history, most studies have looked at either the bloodshed of conquest, major revolts, or decolonization. Despite the undeniable importance of such moments in the history of empire, an over-emphasis on these events creates a punctuated narrative where violence enters the story line, rears its ugly head, and then retreats. This paper argues that a complete understanding of the colonial encounter requires us to look at the violence in the many days between the arrival of the colonizers’ expeditionary forces and the ! nal achievement of national liberation. By examining the intersection between a rebellious band of pirates, a colonial state bend on revenge, and an opportunistic postcard maker, the portrait that emerges is one of a colonial society where violence was not just commonplace but an essential technique in maintaining the colonial order. Be it in the form of criminal violence that challenged French rule, the institutionalized violence of the state execution, or the symbolic reminders of such violence in the form of cheap postcards for sale in the city streets, acts, images, and memories of colonial violence were omnipresent. Importantly, the colonial state publicized its violence, making its ability to punish known to all. This violence terrorized the conquered native population and reassured the vulnerable white community. It in only in this context that other topics in colonial history such as educational reforms, city planning, and economic development can be understood.
The colonial good life : a commentary on Andre Joyeux's vision of French Indochina, 2008
This book reproduces and analyzes a collection of crucial primary documents from the early Twenti... more This book reproduces and analyzes a collection of crucial primary documents from the early Twentieth-Century. These simple yet rich visual sources provide us with a clever insight into the nature of the colonial order of things. Joyeux was a French artist who served in the colonial service as an art teacher and school administrator. Living primarily in and around Saigon, he captured many aspects of daily life in the French colony in a series of humorous, critical, and, at times, somber cartoons. Taking on individuals such as corrupt civil servants, decadent plantation owners, and scheming Vietnamese housekeepers, his pen and ink drawings spared few. Despite this, he never lost his humanity and empathy. As a member of the community he studied, Joyeux offers the reader an informed analysis of French colonial society from the inside. In addition to translating the cartoon captions, Vann and Montague provide an introductory essay and explications of each image.
The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam, 2018
The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam tells the dar... more The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam tells the darkly humorous story of the French colonial state's failed efforts to impose its vision of modernity upon the colonial city of Hanoi, Vietnam.
Part of the Graphic Histories series, this book offers a case study in the history of imperialism, highlighting the racialized economic inequalities of empire, colonization as a form of modernization, and industrial capitalism's creation of a radical power differential between "the West and the rest." On a deeper level, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt examines the contradictions unique to the French Third Republic's colonial "civilizing mission," the development of Vietnamese resistance to French rule, and the history of disease. Featuring forty-nine primary sources--many available in English for the first time--and three full-color maps, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt illustrates the ironic and tragic ways in which modernization projects can have unintended consequences.
On 26 December 2018, an Indonesian National Army (TNI) unit raided a book vendor in Kediri, East ... more On 26 December 2018, an Indonesian National Army (TNI) unit raided a book vendor in Kediri, East Java. They seized a handful of titles – all history books – about the nation’s turbulent politics in the 1960s. The army claimed the books were illegal as they promoted Marxism. Similar events in Padang, West Sumatra, and Tarakan, North Kalimantan (Borneo) followed. These raids raised many concerns around the archipelago, especially as Indonesia is headed towards a presidential election this spring. It is clear that Red-baiting and paranoia over the legacy of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and its bloody destruction will remain potent factors in national politics.
Suvannabhumi: Multi-disciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2020
[ Abstract ] This article is a subsection of a comparative analysis of depictions of violence in ... more [ Abstract ] This article is a subsection of a comparative analysis of depictions of violence in Jakarta's Museum of the Indonesian Communist Party's Treachery, Ho Chi Minh City's War Remnants Museum, and Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. In comparing these public history sites, I analyze how memories of mass violence were central to state formation in both Suharto's anti-Communist New Order (1966-1998), the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1976-present), and Cambodia since the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea (1979-present). While this comparison points out specific distinctions about the role of the military, the nature of revolution, and conceptions of gender, it argues for a central similarity in the use of a mythology of victimization in building these post-conflict nation-states. This article focuses on my gendered analysis of the use of images of women and children in each museum. Depending on context and political purpose, these museums cast women as tragic victim, revolutionary heroine, or threat to the social order. My analysis of gender places stereotypical images of violence against women (the trope of women and children as the * Professor, California State University, USA. mikevann@csus.edu
Based on an analysis of sexually explicit cartoons from a Hanoi newspaper, this essay is a gender... more Based on an analysis of sexually explicit cartoons from a Hanoi newspaper, this essay is a gendered reading of the colonial encounter in French Indochina. Using previously untapped sources from the pre-1954 collection in Vietnam's National Library, I engage critical theories of masculinity and whiteness to create a thick description of life in the colonial city. From a feminist perspective, I argue that imperialism's racial, gender, and class hierarchies combined with the Third Republic's paternalism and misogyny to give French men unprecedented power over their Asian subjects, especially Vietnamese women, be they prostitutes, concubines, or victims of sexual assault. This intersectionality created an openly predatory sexual culture in the overwhelmingly male white community of colonizers. These cartoons show specific locations in Hanoi and greater colonial Asia, providing insight into the lived experience of the colonial city and information to literally map these white men's sexual desires in the city.
A history of Governor General of Indochina Paul Doumer's transformation of Hanoi between 1897 and... more A history of Governor General of Indochina Paul Doumer's transformation of Hanoi between 1897 and 1902. Pays attention to the ways in which colonial whiteness and white supremacy were inscribed into the colonial city.
Global memories of 1968 often invoke images of determined but joyful popular uprisings, such as s... more Global memories of 1968 often invoke images of determined but joyful popular uprisings, such as students taking to the streets in Paris and Dubček’s “socialism with a human face” in Prague. From Mexico City to Beijing, youth revolt was in the air. We world historians know that this rebellious, even revolutionary, enthusiasm would be crushed by year’s end. In Jakarta one of the world’s most reactionary regimes was solidifying its power. On March 27, 1968, General Suharto was sworn in as the nation’s second President by a parliament firmly under his control. This ceremony institutionalized the next three decades of his rule, a brutal and corrupt military dictatorship known as the New Order. Suharto’s rise to power included the mass murder of at least 500,000 individuals for alleged ties to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the arrest, torture, and incarceration of roughly 1,000,000 political prisoners. In the summer of 1968, he commanded Operation Trisula, a final massacre of some two thousand alleged PKI members in South Blitar, East Java. Many of the Indonesian victims and prisoners once shared the rebellious enthusiasm of the Parisian soixante-huitards. For a number of reasons, but most importantly because the killers created the new state system, the perpetrators of one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century have never been held accountable. Furthermore, Suharto and his domestic and international allies made a concerted effort to conceal, confuse, and otherwise obfuscate the events of 1965-1968.1 For some five decades this significant world historical event has been shrouded in mystery. Only recently have scholars, filmmakers, and artists successfully shone light on this dark corner of the past.
This essay explores how Malacca became a trade emporium, connecting Southeast Asia to the wider w... more This essay explores how Malacca became a trade emporium, connecting Southeast Asia to the wider world system.
The success of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel
"The Sympathizer" has brought att... more The success of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel "The Sympathizer" has brought attention to Vietnamese diasporic literature. In his wide-ranging academic work "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War," Nguyen discusses the variety of literary genres explored by Vietnamese refugees, including graphic memoirs. Not to be confused with graphic novels, which are works of fiction, the genre of graphic memoir uses the medium of cartoons to situate personal stories within the context of larger historical processes.Whether we use the adjective graphic, illustrated, or comic, this subgenre of diasporic Vietnamese family histories is surprisingly robust. Taken as a whole, they represent an important cultural development in the literature and art of exile. With slowly uncovered secrets, hidden family members, and unspoken trauma, these three authors use gothic elements to tell their refugee family histories.
Genocide and Mass Violence in Asia: An Introductory Reader, 2019
Visitors to Southeast Asia have the opportunity to see three distinct Cold War narratives. Museum... more Visitors to Southeast Asia have the opportunity to see three distinct Cold War narratives. Museum exhibits in Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, and Jakarta inform the public about specific acts of violence and murder during the ideological struggles of 1945 to 1989. Drawing from Paul Ricoeur and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, this chapter considers the ways in which the official voice of the state constructed Cold War narratives of violence and victimization in several Southeast Asian museums, a process of remembering, forgetting, and silencing. While these public history institutions emphasize the violence and tragedy of the Cold War and use similar narrative structures, themes, and formats, their political perspectives are so dramatically different as to create the feeling of parallel realities. Indeed, the Indonesian and Vietnamese museums can be read as ideological mirror images of each other, with the Cambodian sites seemingly above the Cold War political dichotomy. A comparative analysis of Jakarta’s Monument to the Revolutionary Heroes (Monumen Pahlawan Revolusi) complex, Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remnants Museum (Bảo tàng Chứng tích chiến tranh), and Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is the focus of this chapter.
This paper discusses the neo-logicist approach to the foundations of mathematics by highlighting ... more This paper discusses the neo-logicist approach to the foundations of mathematics by highlighting an issue that arises from looking at the Bad Company objection from an epistemological perspective. For the most part, our issue is independent of the details of any resolution of the Bad Company objection and, as we will show, it concerns other foundational approaches in the philosophy
A micro-history of the 1929 murder of a French labor "recruiter" in colonial Hanoi. Explores viol... more A micro-history of the 1929 murder of a French labor "recruiter" in colonial Hanoi. Explores violence in the colonial encounter.
Recent reflections on French urban history in relation to colonial and post-colonial cities in Fr... more Recent reflections on French urban history in relation to colonial and post-colonial cities in France and the former empire.
While there is a large body of literature on violence in colonial history, most studies have look... more While there is a large body of literature on violence in colonial history, most studies have looked at either the bloodshed of conquest, major revolts, or decolonization. Despite the undeniable importance of such moments in the history of empire, an over-emphasis on these events creates a punctuated narrative where violence enters the story line, rears its ugly head, and then retreats. This paper argues that a complete understanding of the colonial encounter requires us to look at the violence in the many days between the arrival of the colonizers’ expeditionary forces and the ! nal achievement of national liberation. By examining the intersection between a rebellious band of pirates, a colonial state bend on revenge, and an opportunistic postcard maker, the portrait that emerges is one of a colonial society where violence was not just commonplace but an essential technique in maintaining the colonial order. Be it in the form of criminal violence that challenged French rule, the institutionalized violence of the state execution, or the symbolic reminders of such violence in the form of cheap postcards for sale in the city streets, acts, images, and memories of colonial violence were omnipresent. Importantly, the colonial state publicized its violence, making its ability to punish known to all. This violence terrorized the conquered native population and reassured the vulnerable white community. It in only in this context that other topics in colonial history such as educational reforms, city planning, and economic development can be understood.
This is an analysis of the Indonesia film "Penumpasan Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI" (“Crushing the Trea... more This is an analysis of the Indonesia film "Penumpasan Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI" (“Crushing the Treachery of the Indonesian Communist Party and the September 30 Movement"). Released as a 271-minute feature film in 1984 and later available in a shorter 217-minute home video, Indonesians often refer it to as simply "G30S/PKI". That this shorthand is also the widely accepted term for the failed September 30, 1965 coup d’état, which was used as a pretext for the destruction of the Indonesian Community Party (PKI) and a wide range of progressive groups and individuals labeled “communist,” underlines the significance of the film. Repeatedly seen by almost everyone in Indonesia for some 15 years, G30S/PKI was central to a state-directed campaign that created the current conventional knowledge of these historical events. I argue that the film’s impact was so profound that it became Indonesia’s collective memory, making it one of the most successful propaganda films of all time. Furthermore, G30S/PKI’s lurid violence and sexuality and disturbing messages further traumatized the nation during President Suharto’s genocidal New Order (Orde Baru, 1966–98). As it was forced upon a generation of children, the legacy of the film continues into the era of democratic reform (Reformasi or “Reformation,” 1998–present; although some wags now call the period starting in 2018 “Regrasi” or “Regression”). Recently, a new generation of Indonesian historians have coined the term “Lubang Buaya Narrative” for this state-imposed historical memory (Djakababa 2009; Sullivan 2019). Named for the site of the most disturbing and unforgettable scene from "Penumpasan Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI", their terminology recognizes the film’s importance in Indonesia decades after the Cold War. "Penumpasan Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI" should be considered as one of the most successful propaganda films of the twentieth century. Its success is due to the mandatory television screenings every September 30, the anniversary of the failed coup, until the fall of Suharto. Furthermore, teachers would march their students to local theaters where the film was being screened. Because it was so widely viewed and because the regime violently repressed counternarratives, the film shaped Indonesian mass culture during the Cold War. Unlike other Cold War-era films that we can read as the product of a dominant cultural attitude, G30S/PKI actually created that attitude or perspective. The film created the nation’s collective memory.
When Pépé le Moko finally premiered in the United States of America in the spring of 1941, over f... more When Pépé le Moko finally premiered in the United States of America in the spring of 1941, over four years after its release in France, Bosley Crother’s review in The New York Times praised it as “a raw-edged, realistic and utterly frank exposition of a basically evil story.” Crother, then at the start of his nearly three-decade career at the Times, continued:
Don’t get the idea, however, that “Pepe le Moko” is a risqué film. Rather it is the plain-spoken and honestly factual account of a Parisian crook’s exile in the vicious and sordid Casbah of Algiers, that notorious area of corruption and native depravity from which he is eventually drawn to his doom by love for a woman. All the filthiness and vice of the Casbah are impressively shown in the film; there is no question at all about the ruthless wickedness of Pepe, and the woman who finally lures him into the open is obviously the mistress of another man.[1]
Julien Duvivier’s film clearly seduced this critic. This is not surprising as generations of viewers have been taken in by Jean Gabin’s iconic performance in this superbly crafted example of French film noir. From the lighting to the dialog, Pépé le Moko is a cinematic treat. What is noteworthy in this review is the way in which Crother never questions the colonial context. He clearly accepts it as the natural state of affairs that France controls Algiers and the native quarter of the city is a “notorious” and filthy den of “vice,” “corruption,” and “native depravity.” While noting the compromised morals of the two white lead characters, he accepts the film’s presentation of the Casbah at face-value. Written as Europe’s global empires are just about to unravel in spectacular fashion, Crother’s review is a text-book example of Orientalism’s cultural hegemony.[2] Indeed, Pépé le Moko is one of the finest articulations of the ultimate colonial fantasy, the ability of a white man to master a distant land and its exotic people. Yet, even in this dream of empire, colonialism’s contradictions reveal white supremacy’s background anxieties and insecurities.
This article from "The radical History Review" considers the use of film in teaching French colon... more This article from "The radical History Review" considers the use of film in teaching French colonial Algeria.
Despite commercial success and receiving the academy award for best Foreign Film, Post-colonial c... more Despite commercial success and receiving the academy award for best Foreign Film, Post-colonial critics such as Panivong Norindr, Nicola Cooper, and Lily Chiu have strongly criticized Régis Wargnier’s 1992 epic Indochine as neo-colonialist nostalgia. The standard line, drawn from Edward Said’s analysis of representations of “the other,” is that the film romanticizes the French colonial empire, glamorizes the lives of white colonials, and uses the indigenous Vietnamese and overseas Chinese population as mere props, as racial backdrops that add color to a white man’s fantasy. this review argues against the established academic interpretations of the film.
SCOTT LADERMAN
Empire in Waves
A Political History of Surfing
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 20... more SCOTT LADERMAN
Empire in Waves A Political History of Surfing
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 2014 June 19, 2020 Michael G. Vann
Since 2020 has been such a horrifying year (and it’s only June!), it would be nice to relax a bit this summer and talk about something fun and apolitical like surfing. After all, what’s more chill then hanging at the beach and catching some waves?
But wait a minute! Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing (University of California Press, 2014) is about imperialism, white supremacy, Apartheid, Cold War politics in Central America and Southeast Asia, genocide, and the ways in which large corporations commodify and suck the very soul out of vibrant countercultures. Scott Laderman tells us “surfing is not a mindless entertainment, but a cultural force born of empire (at least in its modern phase), reliant on Western power, and invested in neoliberal capitalism.” Whoa, total bummer, dude! Empire in Waves is part of the University of California Press’ “Sports in World History” series and uses surfing as a prism to explore a number of crucial political, economic, and cultural issues.
Scott Laderman is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, Duluth – home of the best surfing in the upper Midwest.
KIM A. WAGNER
Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre
YALE UNIVERSITY PRE... more KIM A. WAGNER
Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 2019 January 15, 2020 Michael G. Vann
You’ve probably seen the film Gandhi and you likely think that you know all about the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. After all, Richard Attenborough’s 1982 academy award winning film did an incredible job of recreating every detail of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordering his Gurkha and Sikh troops to open fire on a peaceful crowd listening to a nationalist speech. Right? Well, professor Kim Wagner of the University of London Queen Mary wants to undo the mythology that surrounds this event.
Critiquing both Indian nationalist narratives and Raj nostalgia, Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre (Yale University Press, 2019) puts this act of colonial violence in its proper historical context. Based on meticulous archival research and presented in a lively and engaging style, Wagner argues that this massacre was not an aberration from an otherwise just and well-managed British colony. Rather, the massacre was part of a longer history of violence that includes the suppression of the Thugee, the brutal crushing of the 1857 mutiny, and a series of other violent events. Indeed, Wagner sees British violence as central to the imperial project. The book also explores the afterlife of the massacre, including popular British support for the disgraced Dyer and the uses of the event by the Indian nationalist movement. Considering President Trump’s recent pardoning of a Navy SEAL convicted of war crimes, our discussion of Amritsar 1919 resonates with current events.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.
DAVID BIGGS
Footprints of War
Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS ... more DAVID BIGGS
Footprints of War Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS 2018 October 31, 2019 Michael G. Vann
By now we all know that Vietnam is a country, not a war. But how have decades, and even centuries, of war impacted the land of this southeast Asian nation? Professor David A. Biggs of the University of California, Riverside, specializes in Vietnamese environmental history. In Footprints of War: Militarized Landscapes of Vietnam (University of Washington Press, 2018) he examines the impacts of warfare in the region around Hue in central Vietnam. Using cutting edge methodology drawn from GIS (graphic information system), aerial photography, and more traditional archival documents, Biggs finds legacies of war in the soil, water, and rain forests.
Starting with 14th-century battles between the Cham states and the invading Viet and continuing through the Ming Dynasty’s occupation in the early 1400s, the Tayson Rebellion (1771-1802) and the French colonial occupation from the 1880s to 1954, Biggs argues for an important pre-history of wars prior to the American War of the 1960s to January, 1973. The book ends with the American military machines “creative destruction” and a discussion of the toxic war remnants that pollute former battlefields and military bases. Linking environmental history to social, military, and political history, Footprints of War excavates the layers of history that make up the landscape of central Vietnam. Our conversation about the book reveals his deep understanding of Vietnamese culture and his original conceptualization of the meaning of war in the country.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, he can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.
MICHITAKE ASO
Rubber and the Making of Vietnam
An Ecological History, 1897-1975
UNIVERSITY OF N... more MICHITAKE ASO
Rubber and the Making of Vietnam An Ecological History, 1897-1975
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 2018 October 11, 2019 Michael G. Vann
How can the history of rubber be used as a way to understand the history of 20th-century Vietnam? In this episode of New Books in History, Michael G. Vann talks about Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), with Michitake Aso, an Associate Professor of history at SUNY Albany. This extremely well-researched study of Vietnamese rubber plantations from the colonial origins to their near destruction during the American war opens new insights into the development of contemporary Vietnam. Dr. Aso explains such things as the difference between environmental and ecological history, how rubber plantations symbolized a type of French colonial modernization, the changing nature of French science, and the role of plantations in the First and Second Indochina Wars.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018).
CLAIRE EDINGTON
Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam
CORNELL UNIVERSITY... more CLAIRE EDINGTON
Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS 2019 November 13, 2019 Michael G. Vann
Both colonies and insane asylums are well known institutions of power. But what of asylums in Europe’s early 20th-century colonial empires? How did they operate? Who was confined in them? Who worked there? What was daily life like in such an institution? How did Western medical experts and the colonized population understand mental illness and its treatment? How did colonial racism impact mental illness? In this episode we chat with Claire Edington, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego, about her new book of Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam (Cornell University Press, 2019).
Beyond the Asylum draws from extensive archival research in Vietnam and France. A gifted writer, Edington is particularly good at presenting the life stories of patients, doctors, and workers drawn into French Indochina’s mental health system. She also looks at the families of patients and the Vietnamese language popular press, as they tried to make sense of troubling issues around mental health, including how the French colonizers understood and treated psychological afflictions. More than a history of the asylum as an institution, Edington uses mental health care facilities as a prism to explore crucial transformations of Vietnamese society in the era of high imperialism. This wide-ranging conversation will be of interest to listeners interested in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, imperialism, French history, and the study and treatment of mental illness. The book is an excellent complement to the increasingly rich historiography of colonial Vietnam.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.
My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2017 February 7, 2020 Michael G. Vann
In his book My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Oxford UP, 2017), Dr. Howard Jones describes how on March 16th, 1968, several units of American soldiers descended upon a collection of small villages in Central Vietnam, now collectively known as My Lai. In the space of a few short hours, they committed one of America’s most infamous war crimes. While failing to find the enemy troops that their intelligence insisted were there, the Americans forced dozens of unarmed elderly men, women, children, and babies out of their homes at gun point. An unknown number of women were raped as other soldiers set fire to their homes. In an act of barbarism that can correctly be compared to Nazi violence, several hundred Vietnamese civilians were forced into ditches and machine gunned. Only three brave Americans in a helicopter tried to stop the slaughter. Almost immediately, the Army covered up the massacre. Officers, including a young Colin Powell, swept the incident under the rug and fabricated an alternative narrative of the events. Thanks to a lone whistle blower and the tireless efforts of investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh the story was eventually uncovered.
Howard Jones is University research Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Alabama.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.
Today we sit down with Michael Vann, and discuss his exciting new graphic history "The Great Hano... more Today we sit down with Michael Vann, and discuss his exciting new graphic history "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire Disease and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam". Podcast by Dr. Eric Jones of NIU's Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
Dave and Matt sit down with Michael Vann to talk about his new graphic history, The Great Hanoi R... more Dave and Matt sit down with Michael Vann to talk about his new graphic history, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam.
Your hosts discuss the joy of finding unexpected things in the archive, the necessity of writing a colonial urban history as a world history, the importance of cultural history and thick description, and the opportunities that graphic histories give teachers in the classroom. Also, check out Mike's excellently-titled article in the Journal of World History: Sex and the Colonial City: Mapping Masculinity, Whiteness, and Desire in French Occupied Hanoi
Recommendations:
All - The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam by Michael G. Vann and Liz Clarke Micheal - Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders by Adam M. McKeown Dave - Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi by Kenda Mutongi Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation by Jennifer Anne Hart Matt - Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott
Music: Angkor by Eric Jones Le Festin by Camille from the Ratatouille soundtrack Bullet with Butterfly Wings by the Smashing Pumpkins Godzilla by Blue Öyster Cult
Join us as Michael Vann and Eric Jones sit down to engage issues of history and memory, state-con... more Join us as Michael Vann and Eric Jones sit down to engage issues of history and memory, state-constructed narratives, political silences, and uncomfortable relationships within the contemporary ASEAN framework
Gendering Narratives of Cold War Violence in Indonesian, Vietnamese, Cambodian Museums w/ Michael Vann by Southeast Asia Crossroads Podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Today we sit down with Michael Vann, and discuss his exciting new graphic history "The Great Hano... more Today we sit down with Michael Vann, and discuss his exciting new graphic history "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire Disease and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam" (Oxford Univesity Press, 2018).
Cities are one of the most important sites of historical interaction in world history. Within the... more Cities are one of the most important sites of historical interaction in world history. Within the relatively confined space of the urban center social classes, ethno-religious groups, and competing political factions are forced to engage with each other producing unique cultural forms, systems, and processes. Colonial cities present some of the most dynamic examples of this phenomenon. Southeast Asia is home to a number of cities shaped by the history of colonialism with Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, providing an ideal case study for exploring the urban colonial encounter. This documentary examines the ways in which French colonial rule shaped Phnom Penh from the late 19th century to the 1930s. In particular, the film analyzes the relationship between architecture and imperial rule, arguing that the colonial city created a unique style specific to that distinct historical moment, all the while placing this historical transformation within the larger context of Cambodian history. Funded by the Center for Khmer Studies and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, Gold Medal, 2014 International Movie Awards
Systems of control are essential. Complex societies cannot function without institutions and prac... more Systems of control are essential. Complex societies cannot function without institutions and practices that guide, monitor, and discipline individuals. Scholars from a variety of disciplines have placed critiques of political, economic, and cultural management at the center of their discussions of modernity. Fifty years ago, Samuel P. Huntington published Political Order in Changing Societies, arguing that what distinguished states was not their ideology but whether they effectively governed or not. His statism rejected the bipolar ideological certainties of Cold War divisions in favor of the mechanics of governing. At the same time but in a dramatically different milieu, Michel Foucault’s studies of hospitals, prisons, and sexuality turned attention away from the formal political state and towards scores of other institutions that disciplined and punished members of a society. Such a theorization of power called attention to the ways in which what might seem benign and banal was actually essential to creating, maintaining, and reproducing social elites’ hegemony. While by any metric Foucault and Huntington could not have been more different, their critiques of systems of control belie the significance of such power relationships to academic studies. Two recent books on Southeast/East Asia capture the diverse approaches to the study of power. If Sheena Chestnut Greitens’ Dictators and Their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence is a conventional work of political science that uses South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan as case-studies to advance a theoretical model, Jan M. Padios’ A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines is a beautifully written anthropological study of a crucial phenomenon of late capitalism’s globalization. In both their subject matter and their disciplinary framing, these two books would seem to be at odds with each other. Yet when considered together they offer valuable insights into the management of Southeast/East Asian societies in the late 20th century.
[ Abstract ] This article is a subsection of a comparative analysis of depictions of violence in ... more [ Abstract ] This article is a subsection of a comparative analysis of depictions of violence in Jakarta's Museum of the Indonesian Communist Party's Treachery, Ho Chi Minh City's War Remnants Museum, and Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. In comparing these public history sites, I analyze how memories of mass violence were central to state formation in both Suharto's anti-Communist New Order (1966-1998), the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1976-present), and Cambodia since the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea (1979-present). While this comparison points out specific distinctions about the role of the military, the nature of revolution, and conceptions of gender, it argues for a central similarity in the use of a mythology of victimization in building these post-conflict nation-states. This article focuses on my gendered analysis of the use of images of women and children in each museum. Depending on context and political purpose, these museums cast women as tragic victim, revolutionary heroine, or threat to the social order. My analysis of gender places stereotypical images of violence against women (the trope of women and children as the * Professor, California State University, USA. mikevann@csus.edu
ISSN: 1035-7823 (Print) 1467-8403 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/casr... more ISSN: 1035-7823 (Print) 1467-8403 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/casr20 Vi?t Nam: a history from earliest times to the present, by Ben Kiernan Michael G. Vann To cite this article: Michael G. Vann (2018): Vi?t Nam: a history from earliest times to the present, by Ben Kiernan, Asian Studies Review, DOI: 10.1080/10357823.2019.1522710 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2019.1522710
Academics in a variety of fields have documented the history of colonial exhibitions staged in Fr... more Academics in a variety of fields have documented the history of colonial exhibitions staged in France.1 Both the Marseilles exhibition of 1922 and the larger and more famous Parisian Exposition Coloniale Internationale of 1931 provide important insights into the numerous economic, political, cultural, intellectual and racial processes involved in French colonial rule. From popular colonial kitsch to the academic work of anthropologists, ethnologists and archaeologists, and from the bottom-line nationalist economic rationale to the moral justification of France’s mission civilisatrice, these events were multi-faceted manifestations of imperial rule staged within the safety and order of the hexagon. Surprisingly, little attention has been paid to colonial exhibitions outside the home country, which were manifestations of imperial domination in the colonies themselves.2 How were expositions used in the colonial world? The Hanoi Exhibition, which ran from 3 November 1902 to 26 February 1903, offers a remarkable case study. In many ways the Hanoi Exhibition was a mirror image of the Parisian Exhibition which followed. It served many of the same functions as its metropolitan counterpart, but always with a decidedly colonial twist. On several occasions this colonial twist resulted in small disasters which ironically point out the failings of France’s imperial project in Indo-China.
The success of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel "The Sympathizer&quo... more The success of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel "The Sympathizer" has brought attention to Vietnamese diasporic literature. In his wide-ranging academic work "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War," Nguyen discusses the variety of literary genres explored by Vietnamese refugees, including graphic memoirs. Not to be confused with graphic novels, which are works of fiction, the genre of graphic memoir uses the medium of cartoons to situate personal stories within the context of larger historical processes.Whether we use the adjective graphic, illustrated, or comic, this subgenre of diasporic Vietnamese family histories is surprisingly robust. Taken as a whole, they represent an important cultural development in the literature and art of exile. With slowly uncovered secrets, hidden family members, and unspoken trauma, these three authors use gothic elements to tell their refugee family histories.
Uploads
https://www.worldcat.org/title/colonial-good-life-a-commentary-on-andre-joyeuxs-vision-of-french-indochina/oclc/263095177
Part of the Graphic Histories series, this book offers a case study in the history of imperialism, highlighting the racialized economic inequalities of empire, colonization as a form of modernization, and industrial capitalism's creation of a radical power differential between "the West and the rest." On a deeper level, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt examines the contradictions unique to the French Third Republic's colonial "civilizing mission," the development of Vietnamese resistance to French rule, and the history of disease. Featuring forty-nine primary sources--many available in English for the first time--and three full-color maps, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt illustrates the ironic and tragic ways in which modernization projects can have unintended consequences.
ISBN: 9780190602697
https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-great-hanoi-rat-hunt-9780190602697?cc=us&lang=en&
of the world’s most reactionary regimes was solidifying its power. On March 27, 1968, General Suharto was sworn in as the nation’s second President by a parliament firmly under his control. This ceremony institutionalized the next three decades of his rule, a brutal and corrupt military dictatorship known as the New Order. Suharto’s rise to power included the mass murder of at least 500,000 individuals for alleged ties to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the arrest, torture, and incarceration of roughly 1,000,000 political prisoners. In the summer of 1968, he commanded Operation Trisula, a final massacre of some two thousand alleged PKI members in South Blitar, East Java. Many of the Indonesian victims and prisoners once shared the rebellious enthusiasm of the Parisian soixante-huitards. For a number of reasons, but most importantly because the killers created the new state system, the perpetrators of one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century have never been held accountable. Furthermore, Suharto and his domestic and international allies made a concerted effort to conceal, confuse, and otherwise obfuscate the events of 1965-1968.1 For some five decades this significant world historical event has been shrouded in mystery. Only recently have scholars, filmmakers, and artists successfully shone light on this dark corner of the past.
"The Sympathizer" has brought attention to Vietnamese diasporic literature. In his wide-ranging academic work "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the
Memory of War," Nguyen discusses the variety of literary genres explored
by Vietnamese refugees, including graphic memoirs. Not to be confused
with graphic novels, which are works of fiction, the genre of graphic memoir
uses the medium of cartoons to situate personal stories within the context of larger historical processes.Whether we use the adjective graphic, illustrated, or comic, this subgenre of diasporic Vietnamese family histories is surprisingly robust. Taken as a whole, they represent an important
cultural development in the literature and art of exile. With slowly uncovered secrets, hidden family members, and unspoken trauma, these three authors use gothic elements to tell their refugee family histories.
the undeniable importance of such moments in the history of empire, an over-emphasis on these events creates a punctuated narrative where violence enters the story line, rears
its ugly head, and then retreats. This paper argues that a complete understanding of the colonial encounter requires us to look at the violence in the many days between the arrival of the colonizers’ expeditionary forces and the ! nal achievement of national liberation. By examining the intersection between a rebellious band of pirates, a colonial state bend on revenge, and an opportunistic postcard maker, the portrait that emerges is one of a colonial society where violence was not just commonplace but an essential technique in maintaining the colonial order. Be it in the form of criminal violence that challenged French rule, the institutionalized violence of the state execution, or the symbolic reminders of such violence in the form of cheap postcards for sale in the city streets, acts, images, and memories of colonial violence were omnipresent. Importantly, the colonial state publicized its violence, making its ability to punish known to all. This violence terrorized the conquered native population and reassured the vulnerable white community. It in only in this context that other topics in colonial history such as educational reforms, city planning, and economic development can be understood.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/colonial-good-life-a-commentary-on-andre-joyeuxs-vision-of-french-indochina/oclc/263095177
Part of the Graphic Histories series, this book offers a case study in the history of imperialism, highlighting the racialized economic inequalities of empire, colonization as a form of modernization, and industrial capitalism's creation of a radical power differential between "the West and the rest." On a deeper level, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt examines the contradictions unique to the French Third Republic's colonial "civilizing mission," the development of Vietnamese resistance to French rule, and the history of disease. Featuring forty-nine primary sources--many available in English for the first time--and three full-color maps, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt illustrates the ironic and tragic ways in which modernization projects can have unintended consequences.
ISBN: 9780190602697
https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-great-hanoi-rat-hunt-9780190602697?cc=us&lang=en&
of the world’s most reactionary regimes was solidifying its power. On March 27, 1968, General Suharto was sworn in as the nation’s second President by a parliament firmly under his control. This ceremony institutionalized the next three decades of his rule, a brutal and corrupt military dictatorship known as the New Order. Suharto’s rise to power included the mass murder of at least 500,000 individuals for alleged ties to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the arrest, torture, and incarceration of roughly 1,000,000 political prisoners. In the summer of 1968, he commanded Operation Trisula, a final massacre of some two thousand alleged PKI members in South Blitar, East Java. Many of the Indonesian victims and prisoners once shared the rebellious enthusiasm of the Parisian soixante-huitards. For a number of reasons, but most importantly because the killers created the new state system, the perpetrators of one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century have never been held accountable. Furthermore, Suharto and his domestic and international allies made a concerted effort to conceal, confuse, and otherwise obfuscate the events of 1965-1968.1 For some five decades this significant world historical event has been shrouded in mystery. Only recently have scholars, filmmakers, and artists successfully shone light on this dark corner of the past.
"The Sympathizer" has brought attention to Vietnamese diasporic literature. In his wide-ranging academic work "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the
Memory of War," Nguyen discusses the variety of literary genres explored
by Vietnamese refugees, including graphic memoirs. Not to be confused
with graphic novels, which are works of fiction, the genre of graphic memoir
uses the medium of cartoons to situate personal stories within the context of larger historical processes.Whether we use the adjective graphic, illustrated, or comic, this subgenre of diasporic Vietnamese family histories is surprisingly robust. Taken as a whole, they represent an important
cultural development in the literature and art of exile. With slowly uncovered secrets, hidden family members, and unspoken trauma, these three authors use gothic elements to tell their refugee family histories.
the undeniable importance of such moments in the history of empire, an over-emphasis on these events creates a punctuated narrative where violence enters the story line, rears
its ugly head, and then retreats. This paper argues that a complete understanding of the colonial encounter requires us to look at the violence in the many days between the arrival of the colonizers’ expeditionary forces and the ! nal achievement of national liberation. By examining the intersection between a rebellious band of pirates, a colonial state bend on revenge, and an opportunistic postcard maker, the portrait that emerges is one of a colonial society where violence was not just commonplace but an essential technique in maintaining the colonial order. Be it in the form of criminal violence that challenged French rule, the institutionalized violence of the state execution, or the symbolic reminders of such violence in the form of cheap postcards for sale in the city streets, acts, images, and memories of colonial violence were omnipresent. Importantly, the colonial state publicized its violence, making its ability to punish known to all. This violence terrorized the conquered native population and reassured the vulnerable white community. It in only in this context that other topics in colonial history such as educational reforms, city planning, and economic development can be understood.
"Penumpasan Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI" should be considered
as one of the most successful propaganda films of the twentieth century. Its success is due to the mandatory television screenings every September 30, the anniversary of the failed coup, until the fall of Suharto. Furthermore, teachers would march their students to local theaters where the film was being screened. Because it was so widely viewed and because the regime violently repressed counternarratives, the film shaped Indonesian mass culture during the Cold War. Unlike other Cold War-era films that we can read as the product of a dominant cultural attitude, G30S/PKI actually created that attitude or perspective. The film created the nation’s collective memory.
Don’t get the idea, however, that “Pepe le Moko” is a risqué film. Rather it is the plain-spoken and honestly factual account of a Parisian crook’s exile in the vicious and sordid Casbah of Algiers, that notorious area of corruption and native depravity from which he is eventually drawn to his doom by love for a woman. All the filthiness and vice of the Casbah are impressively shown in the film; there is no question at all about the ruthless wickedness of Pepe, and the woman who finally lures him into the open is obviously the mistress of another man.[1]
Julien Duvivier’s film clearly seduced this critic. This is not surprising as generations of viewers have been taken in by Jean Gabin’s iconic performance in this superbly crafted example of French film noir. From the lighting to the dialog, Pépé le Moko is a cinematic treat. What is noteworthy in this review is the way in which Crother never questions the colonial context. He clearly accepts it as the natural state of affairs that France controls Algiers and the native quarter of the city is a “notorious” and filthy den of “vice,” “corruption,” and “native depravity.” While noting the compromised morals of the two white lead characters, he accepts the film’s presentation of the Casbah at face-value. Written as Europe’s global empires are just about to unravel in spectacular fashion, Crother’s review is a text-book example of Orientalism’s cultural hegemony.[2] Indeed, Pépé le Moko is one of the finest articulations of the ultimate colonial fantasy, the ability of a white man to master a distant land and its exotic people. Yet, even in this dream of empire, colonialism’s contradictions reveal white supremacy’s background anxieties and insecurities.
uses the indigenous Vietnamese and overseas Chinese population as mere props, as racial backdrops that add color to a white man’s fantasy. this review argues against the established academic interpretations of the film.
Empire in Waves
A Political History of Surfing
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 2014
June 19, 2020 Michael G. Vann
Since 2020 has been such a horrifying year (and it’s only June!), it would be nice to relax a bit this summer and talk about something fun and apolitical like surfing. After all, what’s more chill then hanging at the beach and catching some waves?
But wait a minute! Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing (University of California Press, 2014) is about imperialism, white supremacy, Apartheid, Cold War politics in Central America and Southeast Asia, genocide, and the ways in which large corporations commodify and suck the very soul out of vibrant countercultures. Scott Laderman tells us “surfing is not a mindless entertainment, but a cultural force born of empire (at least in its modern phase), reliant on Western power, and invested in neoliberal capitalism.” Whoa, total bummer, dude! Empire in Waves is part of the University of California Press’ “Sports in World History” series and uses surfing as a prism to explore a number of crucial political, economic, and cultural issues.
Scott Laderman is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, Duluth – home of the best surfing in the upper Midwest.
Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 2019
January 15, 2020 Michael G. Vann
You’ve probably seen the film Gandhi and you likely think that you know all about the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. After all, Richard Attenborough’s 1982 academy award winning film did an incredible job of recreating every detail of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordering his Gurkha and Sikh troops to open fire on a peaceful crowd listening to a nationalist speech. Right? Well, professor Kim Wagner of the University of London Queen Mary wants to undo the mythology that surrounds this event.
Critiquing both Indian nationalist narratives and Raj nostalgia, Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre (Yale University Press, 2019) puts this act of colonial violence in its proper historical context. Based on meticulous archival research and presented in a lively and engaging style, Wagner argues that this massacre was not an aberration from an otherwise just and well-managed British colony. Rather, the massacre was part of a longer history of violence that includes the suppression of the Thugee, the brutal crushing of the 1857 mutiny, and a series of other violent events. Indeed, Wagner sees British violence as central to the imperial project. The book also explores the afterlife of the massacre, including popular British support for the disgraced Dyer and the uses of the event by the Indian nationalist movement. Considering President Trump’s recent pardoning of a Navy SEAL convicted of war crimes, our discussion of Amritsar 1919 resonates with current events.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.
Footprints of War
Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS 2018
October 31, 2019 Michael G. Vann
By now we all know that Vietnam is a country, not a war. But how have decades, and even centuries, of war impacted the land of this southeast Asian nation? Professor David A. Biggs of the University of California, Riverside, specializes in Vietnamese environmental history. In Footprints of War: Militarized Landscapes of Vietnam (University of Washington Press, 2018) he examines the impacts of warfare in the region around Hue in central Vietnam. Using cutting edge methodology drawn from GIS (graphic information system), aerial photography, and more traditional archival documents, Biggs finds legacies of war in the soil, water, and rain forests.
Starting with 14th-century battles between the Cham states and the invading Viet and continuing through the Ming Dynasty’s occupation in the early 1400s, the Tayson Rebellion (1771-1802) and the French colonial occupation from the 1880s to 1954, Biggs argues for an important pre-history of wars prior to the American War of the 1960s to January, 1973. The book ends with the American military machines “creative destruction” and a discussion of the toxic war remnants that pollute former battlefields and military bases. Linking environmental history to social, military, and political history, Footprints of War excavates the layers of history that make up the landscape of central Vietnam. Our conversation about the book reveals his deep understanding of Vietnamese culture and his original conceptualization of the meaning of war in the country.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, he can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.
Rubber and the Making of Vietnam
An Ecological History, 1897-1975
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 2018
October 11, 2019 Michael G. Vann
How can the history of rubber be used as a way to understand the history of 20th-century Vietnam? In this episode of New Books in History, Michael G. Vann talks about Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), with Michitake Aso, an Associate Professor of history at SUNY Albany. This extremely well-researched study of Vietnamese rubber plantations from the colonial origins to their near destruction during the American war opens new insights into the development of contemporary Vietnam. Dr. Aso explains such things as the difference between environmental and ecological history, how rubber plantations symbolized a type of French colonial modernization, the changing nature of French science, and the role of plantations in the First and Second Indochina Wars.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS 2019
November 13, 2019 Michael G. Vann
Both colonies and insane asylums are well known institutions of power. But what of asylums in Europe’s early 20th-century colonial empires? How did they operate? Who was confined in them? Who worked there? What was daily life like in such an institution? How did Western medical experts and the colonized population understand mental illness and its treatment? How did colonial racism impact mental illness? In this episode we chat with Claire Edington, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego, about her new book of Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam (Cornell University Press, 2019).
Beyond the Asylum draws from extensive archival research in Vietnam and France. A gifted writer, Edington is particularly good at presenting the life stories of patients, doctors, and workers drawn into French Indochina’s mental health system. She also looks at the families of patients and the Vietnamese language popular press, as they tried to make sense of troubling issues around mental health, including how the French colonizers understood and treated psychological afflictions. More than a history of the asylum as an institution, Edington uses mental health care facilities as a prism to explore crucial transformations of Vietnamese society in the era of high imperialism. This wide-ranging conversation will be of interest to listeners interested in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, imperialism, French history, and the study and treatment of mental illness. The book is an excellent complement to the increasingly rich historiography of colonial Vietnam.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.
HOWARD JONES
My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2017
February 7, 2020 Michael G. Vann
In his book My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Oxford UP, 2017), Dr. Howard Jones describes how on March 16th, 1968, several units of American soldiers descended upon a collection of small villages in Central Vietnam, now collectively known as My Lai. In the space of a few short hours, they committed one of America’s most infamous war crimes. While failing to find the enemy troops that their intelligence insisted were there, the Americans forced dozens of unarmed elderly men, women, children, and babies out of their homes at gun point. An unknown number of women were raped as other soldiers set fire to their homes. In an act of barbarism that can correctly be compared to Nazi violence, several hundred Vietnamese civilians were forced into ditches and machine gunned. Only three brave Americans in a helicopter tried to stop the slaughter. Almost immediately, the Army covered up the massacre. Officers, including a young Colin Powell, swept the incident under the rug and fabricated an alternative narrative of the events. Thanks to a lone whistle blower and the tireless efforts of investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh the story was eventually uncovered.
Howard Jones is University research Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Alabama.
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.
http://podhistory.libsyn.com/ep-42-the-great-hanoi-rat-hunt
Your hosts discuss the joy of finding unexpected things in the archive, the necessity of writing a colonial urban history as a world history, the importance of cultural history and thick description, and the opportunities that graphic histories give teachers in the classroom.
Also, check out Mike's excellently-titled article in the Journal of World History: Sex and the Colonial City: Mapping Masculinity, Whiteness, and Desire in French Occupied Hanoi
Recommendations:
All - The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam by Michael G. Vann and Liz Clarke
Micheal - Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders by Adam M. McKeown
Dave - Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi by Kenda Mutongi
Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation by Jennifer Anne Hart
Matt - Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
by James C. Scott
Music:
Angkor by Eric Jones
Le Festin by Camille from the Ratatouille soundtrack
Bullet with Butterfly Wings by the Smashing Pumpkins
Godzilla by Blue Öyster Cult
Gendering Narratives of Cold War Violence in Indonesian, Vietnamese, Cambodian Museums w/ Michael Vann by Southeast Asia Crossroads Podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Listen to the podcast here:
https://soundcloud.com/seacrossroads/gendering-narratives-of-cold-war-violence-in-indonesian-vietnamesecambodian-museums-w-michael-vann
Link: https://soundcloud.com/seacrossroads/the-great-hanoi-rat-hunt-with-michael-vann
The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt with Michael Vann by Southeast Asia Crossroads Podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Funded by the Center for Khmer Studies and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers,
Gold Medal, 2014 International Movie Awards