1

“Water in Mainland Southeast Asia” (Siem Reap, 30 November - 2 December 2005).

Communication for the Workshop organized by the Centre for Khmer Studies and the International
Institute for Asian Studies.

Pascal Bourdeaux
Phd in History, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris Sorbonne.
Post-doctorate fellowship, Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient (centre of Hanoi).
Post-doctorate fellowship, Centre for Khmer Studies (Phnom Penh).
Affiliated member of the “History and civilisations in Peninsular Indochina Centre” (EPHE-EFEO
Hanoi).

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Title of the Communication:

Reflections on the notion of the « riverine civilization » and on the History of the Mekong delta
seen through some aspects of the settlement of the Village of Sóc Sơn (1920-1945).

-------------------------------------------------

Abstract.

This paper exposes the results of a research currently conducted on the establishment of a
settlement in the principal Vietnamese coastal province on the Gulf of Siam. this
monograph, which deals with the “village” question in the Mekong delta during the
colonial period, focuses on the foundation of Sóc Sơn, renamed Nam Thai Sơn after
ulterior redefinitions of administrative boundaries (Hòn Đất district, Kiên Giang province).
I use, among other sources, the interviews realized during surveys of some of the first
inhabitants settled on the bank of the Rạch Giá - Hà Tiên canal (dug between 1926 and
1930), more specifically on the junction and along one of its secondary canals (Tri Tôn)
between 1927 and 1942. They contribute to explain the foundation process (irrigation
projects; planned and spontaneous migrations; forest clearing activities, agricultural
hydraulic system) and the shaping of the material and spiritual culture in the village
(mutual-aid networks; rice culture, forest resources exploitation, river activities; popular
beliefs).
After a brief presentation of the Hydraulic as a key factor of migration and of the
specificities of this migratory process - the “simultaneous confluence” of a local (Mekong
delta) and inter-regional (Red river plain) peasant migration -, this paper presents the
characteristics of the village’s development until 1945 (agrarian transfer of technology;
environmental adaptation; local economy). It illustrates the notion of “riverine civilization”,
so typical of the Mekong delta Society, which has determined its History and will
determine its development. At last, this paper specifies the notion of the fluvial civilization
in this coastal and new land area.
 2

Introduction.

Le livre Viêt-lun prétend que l’eau est l’origine du ciel et de la

terre : c’est elle qui les a constitués tous deux ; c’est elle aussi
qui est à l’origine de tout élément ; d’elle ont été formés le
soleil et la lune, ainsi que les étoiles.
(Aubaret G., Histoire et description de la Basse Cochinchine,
Traduction de Gia Định Thành Thông Chí de Trịnh Hoài Đức,
Paris, Imp. Impériale, 1863, p. 116).

Water, which is an essential element of the nature, precedes the appearance of all kinds of
biological life. This is an evidence which is also applicable to the appearance of the main human
activities in social, economical and cultural domains. From the interaction between nature and culture,
the first places of community life - nomads or settled populations – appeared. These places changed
and some of them created glorious civilisations which preserved a consubstantial link with its water
sources, especially with rivers, and defined their identity. Among the rivers from South-East Asia, I
focus my interest on its biggest one, the Mekong, to study how it created in its deltaic part, so
essentially in Vietnam 1 , an original and dynamic agrarian society, as a multi-faceted culture due to
regular contacts and exchanges during historical periods of war and peace.
The way we think about the Mekong delta (đồng bằng sông Cửu Long), from a Regional or a
National perspective, can change its geographical, historical and cultural significance.
From a Regional perspective, the Low-Mekong plain is a crossroad where Siamese, Malay,
Chinese, Khmer, Cham and Vietnamese people met each other. Some of these populations transited in
this area by coasting and following the rivers deep in the plain. Others settled temporality or
definitively in hamlets and little seaports located in advantageous places (river and canal crossroads,
places protected by floods, where there is alternation of the tide, soil with few alum…) or under the
political decisions of Vietnamese emperors who, from the 17th century, were looking for controlling
the space (military or penitentiary colonies, more flexible land management, digging canals).
From a National perspective, this region became a “Marge” of the Cambodian space and a
frontier for the Vietnamese people. In spite of a glorious but mysterious past during the Funanese
kingdom, and although some cluster of Cambodian people were located in different parts of the
region, the delta really took off thanks to dynamic Vietnamese Pioneers who left one way or the other
the provinces of actual Central Vietnam (Ngũ Quảng) from the 17th century to clear woodlands
infested by diseases and genies, to drain marshy plains, to settle hamlets, and lastly to build up a
diversified economy and an hybrid society which moved away from the schema of the Vietnamese
“tradition”. So they have created a pioneer culture, a “riverine civilisation” by adapting to ecology and
by managing it, by emancipating themselves from socio-political constraints which came from
Confucianism and the Village organization, and on the contrary by integrating different exogenous
cultural elements. From these two points of view, the Mekong delta, considered as a natural
environment and as social space is de facto defined differently.
To contribute to this general debate, I will base my speech on a monographic survey 2 which
aims to write the history of a founding village (Nam Thái Sơn, ex Sóc Sơn) in the coastal province of
Rạch Gía (now Kiên Giang) during the French colonial period (1920-1945). To go back to “ the roots
of the village of Nam Thái Sơn » gives us the opportunity not only to study the causal relations
between founding the village and digging the Rạch Gía - Hà Tiên canal in 1930 but also to understand
how the development of Nam Thái Sơn is nowadays directly linked to the public management of

1
According to the geographers, a « big south delta » is constituted by a flooding plain stretched over Cambodia
and Vietnam, from Kompong Cham to Biên Hòa if we include the Đồng Nai delta to the Mekong delta stricto
sensu (Koninck de, R., L’Asie du Sud-Est, Paris, Masson, pp. 282-283).
2
During three weekly surveys (may 2004-february 2005) in Nam Thái Sơn and villages around, I have collected
about 30 interviews with Lê Văn Nam, researcher to the Academy of Social Sciences in Hồ Chí Minh city.
 3

farming hydraulics 3 . In others words, this management depends on the efficiency of the struggle
against flooding in the Long Xuyên quadrangle (Tứ gíac Long Xuyên). By studying the founding of the
village, we can analyse furthermore how waterways, as in the case of the Tri Tôn canal and its
junction with the Rạch Gía - Hà Tiên canal, is a structuring element for the local society and an
essential vector of the development too.
The second interest of this study is that the village has been created by the settlement of North
Vietnamese migrants arrived there in 1942. In addition to the accounts given by southerner peasants
who came from different parts of Mekong delta, I have recorded the stories of families who came from
the Red River plain (sông Hồng). Thanks to these interviews, we can analyse the original aspects of
this migrating movement, and above all detail the creation of the hydraulic rack, the adaptation of
these migrants to a new agrarian society and, vice-versa, the contribution of these migrants to the
material and spiritual southern Vietnamese culture.
I will just focus on three different points: at first, I will consider hydraulic farming as a vector
of migration, then I will present the Tri Tôn canal as a meeting and exchanging point between pioneers
who came from different regions. At Last, I will present different ways to define the Mekong delta as a
natural and a social space.

Hydraulic farming, a migration vector 4 .

First, let’s remind the successive steps and reasons that motivated the hydraulic planning of
the Mekong delta in order to understand how digging canal is a driving force behind agrarian
development, population expansion and assertiveness of local socio-cultural characters.
During the 18th and the 19th centuries, the delta plain suffered from lots of trouble. The events
explain how the development and the multi-ethnic composition of this region were oriented. The
rivalry between the Siamese and Vietnamese courts led new military intrusions and fights in the region
as well as stired up dissensions within the Cambodian royal family. In view of their decline of
authority on these margin regions, the Nguyễn princes sustained at the same time the settlement of
peasant pioneers and an alliance policy with exiled Chinese communities who took refuge in the Đàng
Trong. Thus the Nguyễn authorized one of them (Mạc Cửu or Mo Jiu) to settle in the Deep South, to
create an autonomous principality around Hà Tiên in order to control through this outpost the western
“march” 5 . The inner situation deteriorated again during the Tây Sơn revolt until Nguyễn Ánh acceded
to the throne, found the new Nguyễn dynasty and insure the country’s stability. It is paradoxically
during this civil war period that the most southern area integrated administratively and symbolically
the Empire 6 .
From then on, the Huế court engaged an ambitious project to transform the marshes parts of
the Gia Định Thành by promoting new colonization hamlets and citadels 7 , by digging a hydraulic

3
Government Decision n° 99/TTg in 1998 (Lê Quốc Sử, Những khía cạnh kinh tế của Văn Minh Kênh Rạch
Nam Bộ, Nxb KHXH, Hà Nội, 1999, pp. 296-321).
4
For more details, see: « Study of a migratory confluence in the Mekong delta during the colonial period (1920-
1945): First steps towards the History of Thổ Sơn and Sóc Sơn villages (Hòn Đất district, Kiên Giang province »
(paper presented at the Second International Conference on Vietnamese Studies, Hồ Chí Minh City, July 14-16
2004, to be published).
5
Boudet, P., « La conquête de la Cochinchine par les Nguyên et le rôle des émigrés chinois », BEFEO XLII,
1942, pp. 115-132 ; Li Tana : Nguyên Cochinchina, Southern Vietnam in the seventeenth and eighteen’s century,
SEAP, Cornell University, 1998 ; Sellers, N., The Princes of Hà Tiên (1682-1867), Etudes Orientales n°11,
Thanh Long, Bruxelles, 1983.
6
« Le Sud fut pour les Nguyễn une base de reconquête du pouvoir face aux Tây Sơn dans le dernier quart du
XVIIIe siècle (1771-1802). La victoire finale de Nguyễn Ánh et son accession au trône en 1802 avait sacralisé
l’espace. » (The South was for the Nguyễn a base of power reconquest against the Tây Sơn during the last
quarter of the XIXth century (1771-1802). The Nguyễn Ánh’s final victory and his accession to the throne in
1802 made the space sacred). (Thanh Tâm Langlet, « Situations de guerre et de paix dans le Sud du Vietnam
actuel au XIXème siècle », dans : Nguyễn Thế Anh et Alain Forest (éd.), Guerre et Paix en Asie du Sud-Est,
l’Harmattan, Paris, 1998, p. 262).
7
Kresser P., La commune annamite en Cochinchine, Domat Montchrestien, 1935.
 4

network for commercial and above all strategic aims. The Thọai Hà canal linking Long Xuyên to Rạch
Giá (1818) and the Vĩnh Tế canal linking Châu Đốc to Hà Tiên (1824) allowed the control of the
quadrangle of Long Xuyên, to install troops along this linear frontier. But if these canals flank the
marshes plain, they can’t drain it, they can’t penetrate it 8 , and they can’t allow to expand an irrigate
agriculture except on the hills (giồng) and along riverbanks, arroyos (rạch, vàm) and new canals 9 .
Sóc Sơn’s village is located inside the quadrangle, 15 km away from the gulf of Siam. At the
beginning of the 19th, a few thousand inhabitants were settled the area. As rice was only cultivated in
the highlands, most activities were dependant from the sea (fishing, coastal shipping) and from the
extraction of the forest natural products. In 1821, during his long peregrination in the Mekong delta,
Trịnh Hòai Đức noticies as soon as he leaves the littoral the nomadic trend of local people 10 . The
inhabitants are a mixture of Chinese people who founded 7 coastal villages 11 , Cambodian’s who lived
on the hillside and Vietnamese who settled after Siamese incursions and began to manage this military
march. But Hòn Đất district 12 is still a marshy zone covered with tràm trees and rushes and few hills
(seven mountains or Thất Sơn, littoral hills between Hà Tiên et Hòn Đất). The acidity of the soil, the
endemic diseases, the beliefs in genies, the lack of natural water roads, explain why this region was as
repulsive the “Junk Plain” (đồng tháp mười) was at the same time 13 .
At the beginning of the French conquest, the clearance of the forest made little progress. In
Rạch Giá, the population trebled in 30 years (from 35.000 to 90.000) exclusively in the city port and
the villages around 14 . In 1921, the population census proves an exponential increase 15 . This growth is
located in the eastern part of the province because of the intensification of the hydraulic planning in

8
Let’s mention how catholic missionnaries tried to enter in Cochinchina from Kampot and transit in the region :
« J’espère cependant lui faire passer la douane dans une barque chargée de coton et si je ne puis le suivre de près,
j’attendrai la saison du débordement du fleuve en voyageant à travers la forêt » (Let’s hope I will be able to
make him cross the border in a boat heavy with cotton ; if I can’t closely follow him, I will wait the overflowing
river season by travelling through the forest) [Lettre de Miche à Albrand du 24 mars 1849 n°45 (MEP, vol.
755)].
9
Nguyễn Văn Hầu, Thoại Ngọc Hậu và những cuộc khai phá Miền Hậu Giang, TpHCM, Nxb Trẻ, 1999 ; Sơn
Nam, Lịch sử An Giang, Long Xuyên, Nxb An Giang, 1986 ; for a cambodian interpretation of the Vĩnh tế
canal’s digging, see : Khinh Sok, L’annexion du Cambodge par les Vietnamiens au XIXème siècle d’après les
deux poèmes du vénérable Bâtum Baramey Pich, You Feng, Paris, 2002.
10
Aubaret G., Histoire et description de la Basse Cochinchine, Traduction de Gia Định Thành Thông Chí de
Trịnh Hoài Đức, Paris, Imp. Impériale, 1863.
11
Sơn Nam, Tìm hiểu đất Hậu Giang, Phù Sa, Saigon, 1959, p. 36.
12
When the Gia Định Thành was divided in Six Provinces (Lục Tỉnh), Sóc Sơn belonged to Kiên Giang under-
prefecture (huyện) in the Hà Tiên province. Under the French colonial administration (division in 21 provinces),
the village belonged to Châu Thành district, Kiên Hảo canton (tổng) in the Rạch Giá province. Nowadays, Sóc
Sơn, renamed Nam Thái Sơn belongs to Hòn Đất district (huyện), Kiên Giang province. For more details on
administrative boundaries evolution, see: Langlet Ph., Quach Thanh Tâm, Atlas historique des Six provinces du
Sud du Vietnam: du milieu du XIXe siècle au début du XXe siècle, Paris, Les Indes Savantes, 2001; Nguyễn
Quang Ân, Việt Nam, những thay đổi địa danh và địa giới các đơn vị hành chính 1945-19997, Hà Nội, Nxb Văn
hóa thông tin, 1997.
13
Brébion A., Croyances et superstitions cochinchinoises, Revue Indochinoise, Hanoi, 1916 ; Lê Bá Thảo, Địa
lý đồng bằng sông Cửu Long, Nxb tổng hợp Đồng Tháp, 1986 ; Biggs D., « Problematic Progress : Reading
Environmental and Social Change in the Mekong Delta », JSEAS, 34(1), pp. 77-96, february 2003.
14
According to Baurac, there were some rice fields in Thổ Sơn village at the foot of the Hòn Đất hill ; it proves
a little evolution from the Trịnh Hòai Đức’s inquiry. La Cochinchine et ses habitants (provinces de l’ouest),
Saigon, imprimerie commerciale Rey, Curiol et cie, 1894.
15
Monographie de la province de Rạch Giá, Le moniteur d’Indochine, n°272-273, 1924.
Recensement de la population de la province de Rạch Gía en 1926 (ANVN-II, SL-313).
Summary table of demographic growth in Rạch Gía province:
Years Population Annamese non Cochinchinese
1878 35.000 --
1893 90.000 --
1901 102.389 --
1921 233.987 611
1926 244.399 273 (195 men and 31 women, 47
children).
 5

Cần Thơ and Sóc Trăng provinces. Motivated by commercial reasons, the digging of the canals and
the clearing of the land speed up the appearance of an extensive monoculture system by recruiting
poor peasants (tá điền) on large rice domains 16 .
In the canton of Kiên Hảo, the take-off is effective with the digging’s prospecting of the Rạch Giá - Hà
Tiên canal in 1924. The project is approved in 1926 and the canal (composed by 4 deferens canal and
4 drop pipes 17 ) is inaugurated on the 15th September 1930. The real impulsion is given and the canton
really begins to attract new settlements 18 .
Then, the methodical constitution of « hydraulic racks » in the quadrangle of Long Xuyên
begins in 1934. The two delimited racks in Kiên Hảo’s canton present two specificities: firstly each of
them covers the area of one village (Thổ Sơn and Sóc Sơn are also qualified as “colonization villages”
or làng khẩn hoang 19 ) ; secondly the “rack” covers a technical definition and at the same time a space
reserved for the peasant migration experiment 20 : the « hydraulic » rack is replaced by the “Tonkinese”
rack in Sóc Sơn 21 and by the rack « reserve » in Thổ Sơn.

16
Brocheux P., The Delta Mekong, Ecology, Economy and Revolution 1860-1960, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 1995; For a presentation of the Cambodian situation, see: Penny Edwards, Cambodge: The
Cultivation of a Nation 1860-1945, PhD, Monash University, Melbourne, 1999, 431 p. Chapter I: Mapping
Cambodge, Charting a Khmer Nation through Communication routes, Geography and Cartography (pp. 24-60).
17
Gouvernement Général de l’Indochine, Inspection générale des Travaux Publics, Dragages de Cochinchine,
le canal de Rachgia à Hatiên, 1930.
Technical data of the Rạch Gía - Hà Tiên canal:
Canal Year Length Depth Width at Excavated
in kilometers in meters mouth in soil in
meters millions m3
Rạch Gía - Hà Tiên 1926- 49,725 (provincial part) 3,5 to 3,8 26 7,2
1930 81 (max. length)
Tri Tôn Beginning 22,050 (provincial part) 2,5 to 3,1 26 2,3
Linking the 7 mountains of 1928 31 (max. length)
and Rạch Gía-Hà Tiên
canals
Ba Thê Beginning 13,650 (provincial part) 2,5 to 3,1 26 2,9
of 1930 40 (max. length)
Giồng Riềng - Bến Nhứt 1930- 10,176 2,5 to 3,1 26
1931 7,2
canal n°1 1930- 8,000 2,5 to 3,1 26 (both canals)
linking the Rạch Gía - Hà 1931
Tiên and Vĩnh Tế canals
Coupure Vàm Răng 1927 3,650 3,8 28
Coupure Cây Me 1928 8,950 3,8 28 2,7 (4 canals)
Coupure Vàm Rầy 1930 6,400 3,8 28
Extend of Quản Lộ Canh 1929 5,365 3,8
Điền
Nguyễn Thùy Dương, Kinh tế Hà Tiên Rạch Gía thời Pháp thuộc (1867-1939), Luận án phó tiến sĩ khoa học lịch
sử, Viện khoa học xã hội tại Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, 1997.
18
Causal relations between farming hydraulic and migration can also be reversed : « En Cochinchine, les
questions d’hydraulique agricole, sans avoir été complètement négligées, sont loin d’avoir atteint la même
importance qu’au Tonkin… C’est seulement depuis quelques années qu’en présence de la lente augmentation de
la population, on a songé à la possibilité de cultiver les étendues plates de la plaine des joncs et des autres terres
de l’ouest cochinchinois » (In Cochinchina, hydraulic farming questions have not been completely neglected but
they don’t reach yet the same importance as in Tonkin… It is only since few years, with the slow progress of
population that we began thinking about the interest of cultivating the large areas of the Junk Plain and others in
Western Cochinchina); Delahaye, V., La plaine des Joncs et sa mise en valeur, Rennes, Imp. Ouest éclair, 1928.
19
Huỳnh Lứa, Lịch sử khai phá vùng đất Nam Bộ, NxbTpHCM, 1987, p. 179.
20
In order to prevent new failures, from 1930, the tonkinese migration in Cochinchina was defined by two
principles: the peasant colonization aimed for each migrant becomes owner of his plot; the massive colonization
guaranteed adaptation of these families in a new natural and social environment. Therefore, the migrants had to
be clearers, peasants and above all hamlets founders (di dân lập ấp).
21
RST, Inspection du travail, procès verbal du 14 octobre 1935 de la Commission d’étude du problème de
l’immigration tonkinoise en Cochinchine (ANVN-I, RST 76109).
 6

But the French colonial authorities have to consider the spontaneous and individual migratory
trends from Cochinchinese peasants who decide to leave the eastern provinces to dig canal, build roads
and settle “following the dredges” on the new free lands of Transbassac (coolies clearing old marshes
in the dry season, lumberjacks and coalmen exploiting tram forest, fishermen and peasants settling on
river and canal blanks) 22 . During the 1920’s, the highest demographic growth in all Cochinchina is in
the Rạch Gía province just after the Bạc Liêu one 23 . This trend, particularly visible between 1926 and
1929 is confirmed afterwards 24 .
Thus the province administration is in need to set up this population, to regularize clearing free
lands or, on the contrary, to prevent illegal occupation along Tri Tôn and Ba Thê canals 25 . To find a
solution to this prickly problem 26 , just the Sóc Sơn rack is maintained to cater exclusively for
northerner families because it is less cleared and squatted. As a result the right bank of Tri Tôn canal is
equipped (planning secondary canal digging, dividing up land, establish an administrative centre). At
the end of 1942, 750 families (around 3000 people of half of them were children) left the two
provinces of Nam Định et de Thái Bình 27 . They travelled to Saigon by train and then they continued
their journey by junk along the Mekong River and other canals to Sóc Sơn. As the writer Nguyễn Hiến
Lê who also left the Tonkin in 1935 (Sơn Tây) to work in Long Xuyên as hydraulic technician, these
families were surely impressed by the tangle of rivers, canals, rạch and bridges 28 . Once arrived at
destination, each family lived in a temporary dwelling built in each plot, and perceived first necessity
goods and tools to finish to dig secondary canals (kênh, mương) and to clear the land.
This new settlement area, the canton of Kiên Hảo, grows up under the joint effect of hydraulic
management and regulation of a migratory confluence concerning Vietnamese peasants coming from
the two Vietnam’s deltas (Mekong, Red River).

22
When he launched the Rạch Giá - Hà Tiên canal (September the 15th 1930), the Governor of Cochinchina
declared: « Le canal Rachgia - Hatien a offert le spectacle impressionnant de cette ruée vers la terre. J’ai moi-
même, l’an dernier, contemplé, sur la limite même de la zone de travail, les nombreuses barques indigènes
chargées de familles annamites, de leurs animaux domestiques et de leur modeste bagage, attendant patiemment
l’avancement de la drague pour s’installer immédiatement sur les lieux, sous un abri précaire, afin d’utiliser les
ressources naturelles de la région auxquelles s’ajoute le rendement de hâtives cultures vivrières entreprises sur
les déblais mêmes du nouveau canal. » (The Rachia-Hatien canal has offered the impressive scene of a earth
rush. Last year, I saw by myself on the working zone, several indigenous junks heavy with annamese families,
animals, humble luggages who were patiently waiting the dredge progress to settle immediately under a
precarious shelter in order to exploit the natural resources of the area. In addition to that, they cultivated on the
rubble of the new canal hasty subsistence crops.) Gouvernement Général de l’Indochine, Inspection générale des
Travaux Publics, Dragages de Cochinchine, le canal de Rachgia à Hatiên, 1930 ; Extrait du livre vert de la
Cochinchine 1933, 8p. (CAOM GGI-se 1612) ; Rapport de Carbon Ferrière communiqué aux administrateurs
chefs des provinces de Rachgia et de Baclieu, 2 mai 1939 : contestations foncières dans le Transbassac (CAOM
INF 2502).
23
According to a « comparison of Cochinchina before the conquest and in 1930 » (ANVN-II GCD 3606, quoted
by Nguyễn Thùy Dương, op. cit., p. 94), the population in Rạch Gía increased by 130.000 between 1920 and
1930.
24
This frontier accounts 13.000 people in 1928; in 1936, the population in Kiên Hảo accounts 50.864 people;
Huỳnh Lứa, op. cit., p. 179; “Population des cantons, densité de la population par province, superficie et nombre
de subdivisions administratives des provinces de Cochinchine en 1936” (ANVN-II, TĐBCPNV E02-30).
25
In 1935, around 2000 families settled along the Tri Tôn and Ba Thê canal banks [RST, Inspection du travail,
procès verbal de la Commission d’étude du problème de l’immigration tonkinoise en Cochinchine, du 14 octobre
1935 (ANVN-I, RST 76109)].
26
Ngô Thanh Tương (chủ biên), Nông dân Kiên Giang truyền thống đấu tranh cách mạng, Hội nông dân Việt
Nam tỉnh Kiên Giang, Rạch Giá, 1992.
27
Rapport d’inspection de la province de Rạch Gía, 1-3 juin 1943 (CAOM GGI 65262) ; According to the
« rapport économique provincial du 29 juillet 1943 » (ANVN-II, TĐBCPNV L4-5), there are 1573 adults and
1515 children ; the article published in the newspaper d’Indochine Hebdomadaire Illustré (n°147) speaks about
3450 people. Few weeks later, 14 other families (10 from Thái Bình, 2 from Nam Định and 2 from Ninh Bình)
came to settle by their own initiative.
28
The author also quotes that « from the lanscape to the people, all seems blazing, happy, easy ». (Nguyễn Hiến
Lê, Hồi Ký, Nxb Văn Nghệ TpHCM, TpHCM, 2001, p. 160).
 7

The developing of the quadrangle of Long Xuyên and the settling in new colonization hamlets
are so much interdependent that it is tempting to qualify this colonial policy as a “migratory
hydraulic”.

The Tri Tôn canal, a place of confluence and exchanges.

Settled along the Tri Tôn canal, more exactly along the ten canals which began to be dug at the
same time perpendicularly and regularly every 500 meters, the families take their bearings in this new
environment. Private life and collective economical activities are organized. After few months,
numbers of families built a new house according to their own technics and customs 29 . Then, during the
first months, each head of the family achieved to dig secondary canals and received a salary for his
effective work. The year after, they built a road on the bank of the canal, dug arterioles between each
allotment while women cultivated spices and vegetables. Finally they all planted rice with seeds, tools
and draught animals supplied by the rack’s supervisor and provincial administers.
Around the “Tonkinese rack”, on the other side of the Tri Tôn canal, all kind of activities rised. At the
junction between Rạch Gía - Hà Tiên and Tri Tôn canal (nga ba Tri Tôn), a hamlet and a floating
market appeared; the Tri Tôn crossroad became also an administrative relay and a stopover for the
junks and other ships running from Hà Tiên to Rạch Gía and over to Long Xuyên, Cần Thơ and
Saigon. Local trade also appeared along the Tri Tôn canal; thus it became the way to step up economic
contacts but also technical and cultural exchanges between Cochinchinese and Tonkinese peasants
leaving side by side and, less intensively, with Cambodian people settled on the hill side (Hòn Đất,
núi Cô Tô) and with few Chinese mobile merchants some of whom opened a bazaar at the junction
canal.
At this time, lots of already perceived ideas spread on the adaptation’s capability of the
northerner migrants to the environment (climate, vegetation, amphibian environment) and therefore to
this new agrarian society ; as well as lots of a priori spread on the hospitality from the local peasants
towards these new residents. Far from explaining some outstanding characters of social psychology –
which is moreover a contestable notion -, these prejudices express first of all the fear that the projects
of the Colonial authorities (decongest overpopulated provinces in Tonkin and rationalize new rice
fields exploitation in Transbassac) will fail again. Most of these arguments have generally sanitary,
social, psychological and religious reasons. Some administrators considered that the “Tonkinois”
refuses to adapt 30 ; others think that differences between Cochinchinese and Tonkinese are too
important to predict the union of men and women “who don’t speak exactly the same language, who at
the beginning don’t understand each other very well because of their habits, customs and standard
living differences 31 ”. It seems that if the Tonkinese, more than any other Vietnamese, refused to leave

29
Mai, from Nam Thái Sơn where he was born (his parents were native of Trà Vinh and Châu Đốc) explains that
Southerners press down marshes to erect houses, then they use tràm wood as pillars. Northerners first made a
hillock then made a wall with a mixed of earth, junk and rice straw (interview, may 18th 2004, Nam Thái Sơn).
Lỹ, Sino Vietnamese, was born in Tri Tôn in 1933. He completes by explaining that southerner use palm (dung)
to build the walls and the roof of their house. As they don’t raise the height of the house, they make the floor
with tràm wood (interview, may 20th 2004, Thị trấn Hòn Đất). Sơn, migrant from Giáo Thủy district (Nam Định)
confirms that his father built a house divided in three pieces, erected on a earth’s hillock, with a palm roof and
earth walls (interview, may 20th 2004, Thị trấn Hòn Đất). Nowadays, we can see again along the banks of the
canals some narrow houses made by wood or earth which were certainly built, at different periods, by
Vietnamese northerners.
30
« Hors de son pays, de son village, des disciplines qui lui sont familières, le Tonkinois perd ses qualités
natives et, vite atteint de nostalgie, revient vers son foyer natal. D’ailleurs, les meilleurs restent chez eux. »
(Outside his country, his village, familiar disciplines, the Tonkinese looses all his native qualities and touched by
nostalgia, he quickly comes back. Besides the best people stay home.” [RST, Inspection du travail n°12607,
lettre du Résident supérieur du Tonkin au Gouverneur général de l’Indochine, 14 août 1935 (CAOM GGI-se
1614).
31
Note du Gouverneur de Cochinchine n°308 sur la colonisation des terres incultes de la cochinchine par la main
d’œuvre tonkinoise, 15 octobre 1907 (ANVNI, RND 3175) ; Note de l’inspecteur général des Travaux Publics, 4
juillet 1935 sur le problème de l’Immigration tonkinoise en Cochinchine (CAOM GGI-se 1614).
 8

his native village (quê hương) above all because he didn’t want to break out the village solidarity’s
links, to extract himself from the reallocation system of communal land (công điền) and lastly to
preserve the ritual links with his ancestors and the sacrality of their land 32 .
More than a so-called ill-will, it is the economical and political choices which can also explain
anterior refusal and mistakes. The rich landowners who form the largest part of the Cochinchinese
public opinion, were actually hostiles to the migration of colonists who were often physically weak,
recalcitrant rice farmers, or even “turbulent and rebellious” 33 . In this case, these prejudices reveal the
weaknesses of a migration project which didn’t imply the settlement of the pioneer-peasants and
therefore the access to ownership. On the contrary, this project only encouraged marginalized people
to leave their land 34 in order to sustain the exploitation modus with new labour without having to
worry about social repercussions.
As for Cochinchinese peasants, they formed their own ideas about the adaptation capabilities
and the contribution of these migrants to the material and spiritual life 35 .

Thus the Tri Tôn canal became the meeting point for intercultural relations between peasants
and clearers who came from different parts of Vietnam. Spurred on by a “pioneer soul”, they founded
together a new society blending various agrarian traditions. Let’s briefly describe few examples
concerning the control and the utilization of water for domestic and economical activities.
As for each clearer arriving in western Cochinchina, the first element that Northerners had to
domesticate was water, in order to protect housing against recurrent floods, to control access and
storage of drinking water, to regulate irrigate rice fields on allotments before hand drained. The
completion of hydraulic network followed the ten-year Indochina’s equipment plan defined in 1931. In
the “casier tonkinois”, an organization was rapidly set up to dig secondary canals 36 , in order to extend

32
« Le sentiment religieux est à ce point vivace au pays annamite, qu’il a toujours été le plus sérieux obstacle à
ce déplacement des populations. Le sentiment religieux fait préférer à cette humanité grouillante, la vie
misérable sur une terre exiguë, à l’abandon pour une existence plus large, de la terre des ancêtres. » (The
religious feeling is so vital in Annam that it has always been the most serious obstacle to the population
displacement. This religious feeling makes that this swarming humanity prefers a miserable life on a cramped
plot of land than forsake the ancestor earth for a more comfortable existence.) Grivaz, R., Aspects sociaux et
économiques du sentiment religieux en pays annamite, Paris, Montchrétien, 1942, pp. 118-124 ; Khérian, G.,
« Esquisse d’une politique démographique en Indochine », Revue indochinoise juridique et économique, 1937
n°2, pp. 5-44.
Talking about another migration attempt in Hà Tiên, the Inspector Eutrope wrote : « Les difficultés qui ont été
éprouvées et les raisons qui ont empêché les Tonkinois de se fixer en Cochinchine relèvent entièrement de leur
mentalité et de leur inaptitude au travail soutenu qui est indispensable chez un colon…Cet échec ne fait que
confirmer l’insuccés de tentatives de même nature effectués en Cochinchine et qui se sont heurtées aux
difficultés d’adaptation morale et physique des indigènes du delta tonkinois au climat et aux conditions spéciales
de la mise en valeur des terres en Cochinchine. » (The difficulties we met and the reasons that have prevented
the Tonkinese to settle in Cochinchina come under their mentality and their unfitness to a sustained labour…
This failure confirms other equal attempts in Cochinchina that failed for physical and moral unfitness from the
Tonkinese delta indigenous to the Cochinchinese climate and specific agricultural conditions ) [Lettre n°1495/it
du Gouverneur de Cochinchine au Gouverneur Général de l’Indochine, Saigon le 9 novembre 1932 (ANVN-I
GGI 254)].
33
Lettre de Maillard administrateur de Hatiên n°103 au Gouverneur de Cochinchine, 16 novembre 1931
(ANVN-II dom 7924) ; Lotzer, L.E, et Wormser, G., La surpopulation du Tonkin et du Nord Annam : ses
rapports avec la colonisation de la péninsule indochinoise, Hanoi, IDEO, 1941.
34
Nhiêu, native from Phạm Xá (Nam Định) explains that during the 1930’s, some villagers went to work in the
South. When they came back, they told that it was very easy to find a job there. To grow land, people only plow
and sow rice. At this time, life in Nam Định was on the contrary really difficult (interview, may 20th 2004, Thị
trấn Hòn Đất).
35
Studying temples in general (đình, miếu, đền, chùa) lining the Tri Tôn canal throws light on this relationship.
Indeed, we find local cults (for examples Bà Chúa Xư, Nguyễn Trung Trực, little pagodas built by some ông đạo
who studied in the Thất Sơn mountains, presence of neak ta), imported cults (Đình of the Nam Định migrants
dedicated to Trần Hưng Đạo, Đình to the Thái Bình migrants dedicated to Đức thánh Phụ genie, relic of chapel
and catholic gravestones), and other temples that create a strange symbiosis of all these cults.
36
Télégramme d’Etat, cabinet du Gouverneur Général, Saigon, 29 décembre 1942, Gouverneur Général à
Colonies, n°1556 à 1562 (SHM fonds Decoux).
 9

the ten canals perpendicular to the Tri Tôn canal where families (selected according to their native
province 37 ) were temporarily settled at the mouth. They also had to dig a supply canal parallel to the
Tri Tôn canal which had to be 3 km away from it (this “canal d’alimentation” was renamed kênh ba
ngàn); lastly they had to achieve the network by arteriole (mương, mương phèn) between each plot.
Before their arrival, some cadastre inspectors had marked the layout of the future canals so that people
had only to follow the milestones. With this aim in mind, the head of the families were gathered
together to form working teams. According to the remembrance of our informants, these teams were
not uniform: their composition varied between 6 and 30 people (or “families”) and the number of
teams by canal varied between 2 and 6 38 .
However, they all agreed on the staff’s supervision who was responsible either for the group
or for the digging of a canal as a whole 39 . These supervisors, who were also migrants, were in general
more educated and some of them spoke French. They were actually chosen by the families who had
settled along a canal to hand on the daily work which was imposed by the general administrator of the
rack (Belot). During three years, these men organized in teams, were responsible for order and security
but also controlled the good progrss of the excavation 40 . They also carried out the distribution of the
equipment, salaries and occasionally food products (salt, nước mắm…).
If, in the Red River delta, these migrants were used to confine waterways, on the contrary in
the Mekong delta, they discovered a new hydraulic technique to drain stagnant rainy water and to
favour the circulation of sweet water by using the flood tide and ebb tide.
Once the regulation of irrigation system had been settled, they had to sort out the problem of
supplying and stocking drinking water during the dry season. Trịnh Hoài Đức had already mentioned
that digging wells was not an appropriate solution because the nearest sea made the water unusable for
cooking and drinking. Consequently, « each year, from the 10th lunar month which ends the rainy
season, until the 4th month when rains have not strated yet, it was a very complicated task to fill in the
boats (which had been beforehand very well cleaned up) with sweet water and then carry it to the
villages where water was missing » 41 . As the canals water was brackish and ferruginous, the
inhabitants had to dig ponds on individual plots or had to find natural ponds in the forest and then
stock this drinking water in local earth pots 42 .

Lastly, let’s sketch out the emergence of economical activities around the Tri Tôn canal. The
Cochinchinese peasants continued cultivating rice with rudimentary tools and methods: they sew
shapeless glades and earth hollows located in the tràm forests. In order to fertilize the earth, each year
they were burning grass, junks, and stumps; the more the coat’s ash was thick, the more the harvest
was fruitful 43 . Peasants were picking up carbonised wood to sell it, were levelling soil and simply
sewing rice. Only the richest peasants who owned ox or buffalos were using harrows. They knew by
experience that a strong flood was repeated on average every three years; this year, they were sowing
a kind of floating rice (nằng tây) which was sold in Rạch Giá. The other years, they were sowing other
regular varieties of rice. During the harvest, work force was coming, especially from Long Xuyên.

37
The Nam Định’s families settled along the canals 1 to 5, the Thái Bình’s families in the following canals until
the 10th canal. The administrative center was located between the canals n° 5 and 6.
38
Thực quoted that his team on the canal n°2 was composed by 12 families, the Tảng’s one on the canal n° 4 by
22 people, Trường’s one on the canal n°8 by 6, Huân’s one, on the same canal by 15 families.
39
The Tonkinese peasants named these two different supervisors « xep phin » (or « xep kip ») and « xep cup »
(or « xep rup »). Although some informants made the confusion, it seems that the first one was in charge of one
team and the second was controlling the digging of one canal. These names are certainly the phonetic
transcription of the two French expressions « chef d’équipe » and « chef de groupe ».
40
Huân adds that the canal was 2 meters width at the bottom, 4 meters width at the bank level, 1,5 meters depth.
41
Aubaret, op. cit., p. 94 (my translation).
42
Hai, inhabitant in Bình Sơn village (before Thổ Sơn village that extended on the opposite bank of the Tri Tôn
canal) adds that during the dry season, people were going to the forest, to a place called Cơ Trắng to find
drinking water. Another well (giếng) was located between the Vàm Rây bridge and the sea (interview, may 19th
2004, Bình Sơn).
43
Burning grass and sowing rice under a double coat of ash and earth is named sạ tro bay (interview with Tám,
Bình Sơn, may 19th 2004).
 10

Thus, they were withdrawing from 25 to 30 gịa (about 40 litres) by công without using manure or
fertilizer 44 .
In the Tonkinese rack, cultivate fields really started to take place in 1944. At first, families
received individually seeds and ploughing tools, and collectively draught animals to plough their own
two hectares plot. To help these newcomers to cultivate following the local practices, the general
administrator Belot asked some Cochinchinese peasants to come to the rack and show how to sow, to
explain the specificities of different seeds (especially the unknown floating rice or lúa nổi), and to
describe the agrarian cycle. Despite all these recommendations, some people, more laborious and
more attached to the tonkinese techniques continued to weed, to manure and above all to transplant
rice where it was not growing 45 .
In addition, they had to use the southerner’s plough pulled by a couple of ox or buffalos.
Some migrants tried to modify it in using only one animal and by the way succeeded in improve it.
Easier to handle, the plough was more suited to the spongy soil. So, the highest yields were in the
Tonkinese plot, as all the neighbours were pointing out.
Some peasants who didn’t own any land were finally offering their services as daily labourers
to harvest and to husk paddy in the Tonkinese rack. The northerners migrants noticed that these farm
labourers (southerner peasants) were not using a sickle (liềm) but a kind of wishbone (lưỡi hái) much
more efficiently so that they also adopted it afterwards. For husking, they also adopted the southerner
handy pestle and the woody mortar which is more suitable than the northerner foot pestle and the
stone or clay mortar.
Outside these few examples of local rice culture adaptation, migrants jointly diversified
activities by following provincial customs. During an inspection round in the Transbassac on February
1944, the General Governor Decoux noticed:

A Rạch Giá, au casier tonkinois, j’ai constaté que l’expérience entreprise se poursuit
d’une manière entièrement satisfaisante -stop- le défrichement des peuplements de
« tràm » et le creusement du réseau d’irrigation sont pratiquement achevés -stop- En
attendant que les terres alunées aient été lavées et ainsi préparées à porter des rizières,
les familles tonkinoises ont entrepris les premières cultures vivrières, et mis en train
plusieurs activités artisanales (To Rạch Giá, in the « tonkinese rack », I have noticed that
the experiment in progress is giving us satisfaction -stop- the clearance of tràm trees and
digging the irrigation network are practically accomplished -stop- in the meantime the
soil will be washed and good enough for rice culture, the Tonkinese families have planted
the first subsistence crops and started some handicraft activities) 46 .

Indeed, Rạch Giá is not only well known for the exploitation of forest resources, extraction of
honey and wax 47 but also for hunting (snakes, precious feather’s birds) and various fishing activities.
Salterns, nước mắm factories, pepper plantations appeared again around the Hòn Đất hill (literally the
earth’s hill), as wickerwork (junk) and pottery (earth) handicrafts 48 .
During the dry season or between sowing and harvesting, inhabitants were practicing these
complementary activities. They were carrying on building wood (this activity is called: làm cây) and
bundles of fire wood (làm củi). The northerner migrants initiated this activity on their plot and then
around the rack. But if the southerners managed to sell 49 this wood to intermediates who were coming
from Châu Đốc, Long Xuyên or Cần Thơ by overstepping the colonial rules, inhabitants of the rack

44
Interviews with Lỹ and Lên, Thị trấn Hòn Đất, may 2004, with Quang, Nam Thái Sơn, january 18th 2005.
45
Hiêu remembers that their local instructor was called Tam Thu.
46
Télégramme d’Etat, cabinet du Gouverneur Général à Colonies, Saigon, 2 mars 1944, n°10218-10224 (SHM
fonds Decoux).
47
The Cambodian name of Rạch Giá, krâmu an sâ means precisely “white wax ”; the Vietnamese name refers to
an arroyo (rạch) around which grew in abundance a tree specie (giá).
48
Baurac, op. cit. ; Nguyễn Thùy Dương, op. cit., p. 33 ; on the special Hòn Đất’s pottery (cà ràng), see :
Trương Thanh Hùng, « Nghề nắn nồi đất ở Hòn Đát, Kiên Giang », in : Phan Thị Yến Tuyết (chủ biên), Xóm
nghề thủ công truyền Nam Bộ, TpHCM, Nxb Trẻ, 2002, tr. 110-118.
49
Lến quotes that wood was also exchanged against fruit and vegetables cultivated by Khmer people on the
hillside.
 11

had not other possibility than sell it to the general administrator. They were anyway withdrawing good
allowances.
As canal and rice fields were abounding in fish (cá bống; cá rô …), fishing with keep net or
angling was another important activity. A local technique was to dig large ponds in the forest and
catch fishes at the end of the dry season when the major part of water had been evaporated. Migrants
also learned from southerners’ new ways to preserve and to transform fish. They began to make fat by
dissolving fish innards (cá bống, cá sặt) to feed oil lamp. More than drying the fish, they above all
discovered the mắm, an unknown culinary product that they first called cá ngâm (soaking fish). They
studied how to preserve fishes mixed with salt in earth pots and learned to appreciate new flavours 50 .
Thanks to the southerners peasants, they also learned how to collect honey, how to build ovens
to bake pottery and how to identify edible vegetables and medicinal plants. On the other hand, they
developed and diversified market garden produces (notably sweet potato, beans, marrow) that
Cochinchinese peasants had neglected so far. All these agricultural methods and activities allowed the
expansion of a flourishing local trade and economy along the Tri Tôn canal and its junction.

Brief comments on the difficulty in defining the environmental and social space of the Mekong
Delta.

At last, let’s attempt to determine the contribution of this monograph on the knowledge of
history and culture of a region that shows visible particularities which are difficult to categorize with
scientific criteria. First of all, what does the expression Mekong delta mean? This common name is
indeed complex because of it is generic and polysemous. This expression can be interpreted as a trans-
national geographical space determined by physical, natural or agrarian environment (river system,
climate, hydrology, relief…, tràm forests, mangrove swamp…; orchards, industrial cultures…), or
more specifically, by the different ways of flooded rice culture : the rice culture, which is the main and
somehow the unique cultural activity, directly depends on hydrographical systems and networks 51 . In
this case, the Mekong delta is defined by agronomy. It also can be considered from various angles of
ethnicity, past and recent administrative boundaries, religious beliefs and practices, historical events,
ways of life etc… Talking about the Mekong delta is talking about all these aspects at the same time.
Far from being a gloomy and uniform plain, the Mekong delta is, on the contrary, a really varied
space 52 .
Others appellations dating from the French colonial period don’t give more explanation on this
problem of semantic. New administrative expressions appeared to redefine the colonial territory of
Cochinchina. When talking about the Mekong delta, the administrators were generally referring to
“Low Cochinchina” (Basse Cochinchine), “Western Cochinchina” (Cochinchine occidentale),
Transbassac, Cisbassac, or to talk about a provincial space, they were using the name of the
administrative centres (Cần Thơ, Bạc Liêu…).

50
Trường, native from Thái Bình, recognizes that the mắm produced in the rack was more tasteless than the one
produced all around (interviews with Hiệu, Thị trấn Hòn Đất, may 18th 2004, Trường, Nam Thái Sơn, October
4th 2004).
51
When the country was still divided in two states, a technical study was dividing the “Vietnam Republic”
territory into 5 hydraulic zones:
Zone A: One transplanting rice zone, including the most « old » provinces (Gia Định, Long An, Đinh Tương,
Kiên Hóa, Vĩnh Biên, Ba Xuyên, An Xuyên), affected by salty water.
Zone B: double transplanting rice zone, including the Vĩnh Long, Sa Đéc, Cần Thơ provinces, touched by the
combined action of sea tide and Mekong floods.
Zone C: floating rice and direct sowing zone (An Giang, Kiên Giang) yearly flooded by the Mekong.
Zone D : Eastern and Central Vietnam provinces with irrigation problems and floods.
Zone E: Highlands zone with irrigation and soil conservation problems.
(Secrétariat d’Etat à l’agriculture, République du Viêt Nam, Les travaux d’hydraulique agricole au Viet Nam,
Saigon, An Quan, 1960, p. 9).
52
« I noticed that the South was not uniform, monotonous, morose as we can imagine when we see a card in a
geography book… There is only the miền tây [Mekong delta] where there are so many differences from one
zone to another » (Nguyễn Hiến Lê, Hồi Ký, Nxb Văn Nghệ TpHCM, TpHCM, 2001, p. 171).
 12

As for the Vietnamese expressions, they refer to other space conceptions. If the term đồng
bằng sông Cửu Long is unanimously used to talk about the Mekong delta, its origin and its
popularisation are still unclear 53 . The other term used by Southerners is miền tây nam bộ (south-
western region) or miền tây in short 54 . As for the inhabitants of the Mekong delta, they use a lot of
different local idioms that prove precisely the variety of the region and of the conception of their land.
We can thus hear in the discussions the terms of Lục tỉnh (historical term of the Six Provinces at the
imperial period), Hậu giang (name of the Posterior River named Bassac in the past), miệt dưới (under
region) or miệt trên (upper region) to define the region on either sides of the Anterior River (Tiền
giang), miệt vườn to talk about the orchards region. The examples increase of course when we
consider the localities popular definitions that often refer to river and canal names. These -sometimes-
dialectal idioms and sayings allow defining the deltaic space with symbolic boundary markings, which
come from a vital popular culture.
One man of the Mekong delta has devoted himself to this popular culture and to all kind of
oral traditions so much that he decided to preserve them by writing them down which became the
heart of his literacy creation. The writer Sơn Nam, native from Kiên Giang, from a locality named
miệt thứ (“Region of the 4th canal, near the U Minh forest) tried and succeeded to describe and
understand the “popular soul” (his own terms) of the region and of its inhabitants 55 . Thus his dozens of
books give to the lecturer a deep and precise look on the local history and society and, at the same
time, a synthetic view on his native land, (Hậu giang 56 ), more generally on the Mekong delta (đồng
bằng sông Cửu long) and on Southern Vietnam. For instance, it’s one of his books that vulgarised the
expression miệt vườn and that created the neologism of “Orchard civilisation” (Văn minh miệt vườn) 57
to talk about the Vĩnh Long and Bến Tre agrarian specificities.
He also proposed to qualify the Mekong delta as a “riverine civilisation” (Văn minh sông
nước) to describe the central function of waterways (river, canal, coastal sea) in daily life, economy,
popular beliefs but also in relation and exchange with other Vietnamese region and with Southeast
Asian countries (Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore). This expression allows his author to
differentiate in a very colourful way the large cultural regions of Vietnam: according to his
conception, the northern Vietnam is, until Thanh Hóa, a continental civilisation; then from Hội An

53
Using hán nôm to name the river (Cứu long, Nine dragons) and its delta (đồng bằng sông cứu long, literally
the plain of the nine dragons river instead of châu thổ sông Cửu long technically more correct) needs
clarifications. My hypothesis is that using hán nôm signifies redefine and sacralize the space with confucianist
and daoist references. Toponomy and historical geography still need more improvement studies.
54
Since the August Revolution (1945), Bắc bộ, Trung bộ and Nam bộ terms were replaced with Bắc kỳ, Trung kỳ
et Nam kỳ to speak about North, Centre and South Vietnam. The miền đồng Nam bộ covers the region located at
the North of Hồ Chí Minh City to Phan Thiết, the miền tây Nam Bộ covers the all area located at the South of the
City, the big Mekong delta.
55
Sơn Nam is a prolix author well known and appreciated since a half century by a large part of the Vietnamese.
His writings have been republished several times and recently by Nhà xuất bản Trẻ (Hồ Chí Minh City) in their
entirety. Historians also estimate his books: Nguyễn Thế Anh has described him as “the usual painter of the daily
life […] in the Mekong delta” (« le peintre habituel de la vie quotidienne […] dans le delta du Mékong », review
of the book Miền Nam đầu thế kỷ XX. Thiên Địa Hội và cuộc Minh Tân, BSEI, 1973-1, p. 761) ; Pierre Brocheux
quotes his large empirical knowledge sustained by a rich erudition » (« grande connaissance empirique, soutenue
par une riche érudition » (personnal correspondance, december 2004), Nguyễn Đinh Đầu recognizes the quality
of his writings based not only on historical documents but also on « intuitions and feelings that influence more
people » (« intuitions et des sentiments qui influencent davantage les gens de la société », interview, Hồ Chí
Minh City, december 1st 2004) ; Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng, in particular expert on popular literature explains that Sơn
Nam bases his writings mainly “on his remembrances which are supported by documentation. His appreciations
prove a bright intelligence, a real knowledge of the southerners’ specificities. He suggests to the lecturer a way
of looking at things. Moreover, he writes with a very southern style (« rất nam bộ »), in a very realistic way; he
has created a very personnal prose style” (interview, Hồ Chí Minh City, january 2005).
56
Tìm hiểu đất Hậu giang, Phù sa, Saigon, 1959. Sơn Nam is the founder of this publishing house (phù sa means
alluvia) that published his first writings on author accounts.
57
Đồng bằng sông Cửu long hay là văn minh miệt vườn, An Tiêm, Saigon, 1970.
 13

(Central Region), Vietnam turns to the sea; then, from Saigon, Vietnam belongs to an “Asian
Mediterranean sea” 58 .
These last years, the professor Lê Quốc Sử has published a study centred on economical
aspects of the region that he prefers to call « canal civilisation » (văn minh kênh rạch) 59 . In addition to
his personal reflection, the author mentions other examples to define the region and proposes a first
classification trial 60 . But several aspects need to be more précise in order to define the deltaic space
with theoretical and socio-linguistic criteria.
Following the economical perspective (văn minh kênh rạch) or more generally the cultural one
(Văn minh sông nước), the study on the village of Sóc Sơn, and by extension, on the Tri Tôn canal,
tends to prove the validity of these two definitions. Indeed, the Tri Tôn canal is one root of the hamlets
and village founding process; it was also the place of a flourishing economy. Lastly, it became a
cultural exchange zone between Cochinchinese and Tonkinese peasants.

Conclusion :

It thus seems that this intertwined life on the canal and this pioneer spirit common to a various
population founds the melting pot of the riverine society of the Mekong delta and, more generally of a
popular culture. Studies of the recent founding of the village of Nam Thái Sơn (old Sóc Sơn) also
reveals the interactions between hydraulic management of a region stayed underdeveloped during a
long time and human settlements along new canals, as in this case represented by a double
spontaneous and planed migration movement. At the origins of the local economy taking off, the canal
was also the medium that allowed the circulation and the interconnection between different cultural
traditions. If at the beginning the Tonkinese migrants were only “a new piece of the mosaic already
formed” (“une nouvelle pièce de la mosaïque déjà dessinée » 61 ), these hundreds of families adapted to
the environment and to the population of this “pioneer front that transforms each new comer in an
complete member of the community” 62 . There is no doubt that this kind of reception-integration has
been effective and it can be explained especially by the common experience of forest clearance and
hydraulic network management. In 1924, a French writer, Albert Viviès was writing in a very
evocative way that “the Indochina Peninsula has the shape of a beautiful breast and that Low
Cochinchina would be its generous bud. Its vessels are loaded with wealthy life” 63 . This personal
metaphor wouldn’t better express the gratitude of a laborious population towards his nourishing earth
as well as the vitality of an all region constantly regenerated by the water flow.

58
It seems that Sơn Nam has found inspiration when he read in the middle of the 1950’s an article published in
the French review Géographia that spoke about the “riverine civilisation” in Amazonia. Son Nam has then
translated and adapted this expression to the Mekong. We currently try to find this article (Interview with Sơn
Nam, Gò Vấp, november 2004-february 2005).
59
Lê Quốc Sử, Những khía cạnh kinh tế của Văn Minh Kênh Rạch Nam Bộ, Nxb KHXH, Hà Nội, 1999.
60
The author lists : Văn minh sông nước, Văn minh kênh rạch, Văn minh miệt vườn, Văn minh lúa nước, Văn
minh sông biển, Văn minh sông ngòi, Văn minh sông rạch, Văn minh kênh rãnh, Văn minh kênh đào.
61
Gouvernement de la Cochinchine n°308, Saigon, 15 octobre 1917 : note sur la colonisation des terres incultes
de la Cochinchine par la main d’oeuvre tonkinoise (ANVN-I GGI 7706).
62
Thanh Tâm Langlet, art. cit., p.265.
63
« La péninsule indochinoise a la forme d’un superbe sein dont la Basse-Cochinchine serait le généreux bouton.
Ses vaisseaux sont chargés de vie magnifiquement riche », Viviès Albert, L’âme de la Cochinchine, Saigon,
Portail, 1924, p. 16.
 14

Abbreviation List

ANVN-I Archives Nationales du Vietnam, centre n°1 (Hanoi)

ANVN-II Archives Nationales du Vietnam, centre n°2 (Hô Chi Minh Ville)
art.cit. Articulum citatum
CAOM Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer (Aix-en-Provence, France)
Dom Domaines (fonds d’archives, ANVN-II)
EFEO Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient
GCD Gouvernement de Cochinchine Divers (fonds d’archives ANVN-II)
GGI Gouvernement Général de l’Indochine (fonds d’archives)
GGI-SE Gouvernement Général de l’Indochine, services économiques
HCI-CS Haut Commissariat en Indochine, conseiller social (fonds d’archives)
IDEO Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient
Imp Imprimerie
INF Indochine Nouveau Fonds (fonds d’archives CAOM)
JSEAS Journal of South East Asian Studies
MEP Missions Etrangères de Paris (service des archives)
NCLS Nghiên Cửu Lịch Sử (Historical Studies, Review)
Nxb Nhà xuất bản (Publishing House)
Nxbkhxh Nhà xuất bản Khoa học xã hội (Social Sciences Publishing House)
OIR Office Indochinois du Riz
ONS Ouvriers Non Spécialisés
op. cit. Opus citatum
RND Résidence de Nam Định (fonds d’archives)
RST Résidence Supérieure du Tonkin (fonds d’archives)
RSTNF Résidence Supérieure du Tonkin, nouveau fonds (archives CAOM)
SHM Servie Historique de la Marine (fonds d’archives, Vincennes, France)
SL Services Locaux (fonds d’archives ANVN-II)
TpHCM Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh (Hô Chi Minh City)
TĐBCPNV Toà Đại biểu chính phủ Nam Việt (fonds des représentants du
gouvernement au Sud Vietnam, fonds d’archives ANVN-II)
 15

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 16

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 17

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