The purpose of this piece is to propose and defend a potential essay topic. That topic is: the colonization of the culinary space in French Indochina. More specifically, the aim of the essay would be to see the evolution of the culinary space in Indochina from the beginning of French control until the end. Through the analysis of primary and secondary sources in French and English, the essay would focus on the literal culinary space of the kitchen and the symbolic culinary space of Indochinese cuisine. In the literal culinary space, the essay would look at the increase in the number of French utensils and kitchenware and French ingredients in Indochinese kitchens over time, as well as magazines and posters selling French kitchenware in Indochina. As for the symbolic culinary space, the essay will be using Doreen Massey’s definition of space and place. Massey’s definition of place focuses on having a sense of place rather than a geographical place.¹ In other words, her ‘place’ is the idea of individual specificity. Moreover, space and place are always changing as a result of space and place being created by social interactions. In the context of culinary colonization, the essay will discuss how the social interactions between French colonists and Indochinese colonials changed the culinary space of Indochinese colonials. These social interactions which colonized the Indochina’s culinary space were put in place with intent to colonize. The essay will show how these interactions in the culinary space happened in places such as cooking/educational magazines and the educational system for both women and children. To summarize, this essay will explore how the French colonized the culinary space of Indochinese colonials. First, the physical culinary space was colonized through the increase in the ratio of French products in the Kitchen. Next, it was done socially through education and advertisement to the masses.

 

 

Bibliography:

Massey, Doreen, Space, Place, and Gender, (Minneapolis, 1994)

1. Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, (Minneapolis, 1994), p. 118 [↩]

 

By the 1930s, the West’s cultural influence on Asia was evident. This was most noticeable in the western architecture present in Asia. In old Saigon, for instance, the Municipal Opera House erected in 1897 looks as if it were situated in the middle of Paris. This western architecture however, had not developed in the countryside yet. This piece will examine how urban architecture in Japan and China of the 1930s was heavily influenced by the West, and on the other hand, in rural Indochina, there is little to no Western influence on architecture.

First, in Tianjin, Elizabeth LaCouture explains that elites had multiple choices when choosing a house; these options were mainly either a courtyard house, a villa in the residential Italian Concession, a row house in the Japanese Concession, a modernist apartment on Rue de France, a townhouse in the British garden city, an alleyway house in the new Chinese municipality, or finally, a Qing-era courtyard house in the old Chinese city.¹ In Japan, Jordan Sand reports that Japanese architects were tasked with combining Western and Japanese styles in their work.² More specifically, Yasuoka Katsuya, a Japanese architect devoted his work to creating “The Ideal House” which, to put it simply, was a Japanese house with Western rooms and facilities.³ Western urban architecture had incorporated itself into that of China and Japan.

On the other hand, in 1919, Charles Robequain writes about houses in rural French Indochina.⁴ During his excursion, he says that rural houses he saw can be divided into two main groups: the land house and the house on stilts.⁵ According to Robequain, both types of houses were built mainly with unrefined natural resources, and they mainly consisted of a few rooms to house domesticated animals, the family, and one room for the kitchen.⁶ It can be seen that the architecture in rural French Indochina was not at all influenced by the West.

 

Biblioraphy:

 

Primary Sources:

Robequain Charles, ‘L’habitation rurale dans l’Indochine française’, Bulletin de l’Association de géographes français, 40:7, 1930, pp. 31-36

 

Secondary Sources:

LaCouture, Elizabeth, Dwelling in the World : Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860–1960, (New York, 2021)

Sand, Jordan, House and Home In Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880-1930, (Cambridge, 2005)

 

 

 

 

1. Elizabeth LaCouture, Dwelling in the World: Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860–1960, (New York, 2021), p. 123 [↩]
2. Jordan Sand, House and Home In Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880-1930, (Cambridge, 2005), p. 265 [↩]
3. Ibid., p. 267 [↩]
4. Robequain Charles, ‘L’habitation rurale dans l’Indochine française’, Bulletin de l’Association de géographes français, 40:7, 1930, pp. 31-36 [↩]
5. Ibid., p. 32 [↩]
6. Ibid., p. 34 [↩]

In the first half of the twentieth century, various parts of China were under colonial control. In the north, Japan controlled Manchuria from 1931 to 1945. In the south, Guangzhoudong was part of French Indochina from 1898 until it was taken over by the Japanese in 1943. In the early stages of either colony, French and Japanese officials employed different tactics in the colonial community building. This piece will compare Japanese and French efforts of community building in Manchuria and Guangzhoudong respectively.

In Japan, colonial city planning efforts prioritized Japanese prosperity. In order to do so, they planned to create an array of organized farming villages with the help of the Guangdong Army. According to David Tucker, in 1933 Japanese planners proposed to move over 100,000 farmers to fifty new villages in northern Manchuria.¹ Tucker explains that Japanese planners saw Manchuria as a blank slate, perfect for the pursuit of utopian plans.² The plan, as Tucker describes, consists of the creation of villages, each comprised of three hamlets whose goal was to sustain an economically and psychologically viable life for Japanese immigrant farmers.³ It is important to note that these hamlets were built in order to appeal to the everyday life of the Japanese. Tucker reveals that “the village plan portrays an entire plain as completely Japanese; one sees at first not even a sliver of Chinese space.”⁴ Japanese planners aimed to create a Japanese utopia; the lives of the Chinese immigrants were not recognized. In accordance, these villages were heavily militarized in order to keep the non-Japanese out. In Tucker’s words: “the plan accommodates two sets of very different activities, those of the Japanese settlers and those of the enemy it defends against.”⁵ With this in mind, Japanese planners’ goal in the creation of farming villages in Manchuria was to create a Japanese utopia. All plans revolved around the prosperity and military protection of the Japanese immigrant. On the other hand, French officials sought to create a community where colonials shared prosperity.

In 1902, Alfred Cunningham writes of his experience of French colonization efforts in Guangzhoudong. In a similar fashion to the Japanese hamlets and villages, Cunningham reveals that “French Administrators are assisted by a system of rural communes;” however, whereas the Japanese hamlets were under Japanese control, the communes in Guangzhoudong appointed a council of elders to collect taxes and decide where tax money should be allocated for infrastructure.⁶ Although Cunningham does not clearly say who these elders are and who appoints them, there are multiple distinctions between the French and the elders, implying that the elders are in fact Chinese. Moreover, the French military was not entirely French. In order to create a community space, Cunningham tells us that French officials employed a “garde indigene,” a local police force comprised of Chinese policemen.⁷ The greatest difference between the Japanese and the French was the French’s welcoming community building efforts. Cunningham says that in the French communes “everything was being prepared for the accommodation of the population, foreign and native, by a paternal government.”

In short, in France and Japan’s colonial city planning efforts in China, Japanese officials sought to create a Japanese utopia, built by and for the Japanese people, while French officials created a community which favored the prosperity of all.

 

 

Bibliography:

Cunningham, Alfred, The French in Tonkin and South China, (London, 1902)

Tucker, David, ‘2. City Planning without Cities: Order and Chaos in Utopian Manchukuo’ in Mariko Asano Tamanoi (ed), Crossed Histories, (Honolulu, 2005), pp. 53-81

 

1. Tucker, David, ‘2. City Planning without Cities: Order and Chaos in Utopian Manchukuo’ in Mariko Asano Tamanoi (ed), Crossed Histories, (Honolulu, 2005), p. 53 [↩]
2. Tucker, ‘City Planning without Cities’, p. 55 [↩]
3. Tucker, ‘City Planning without Cities’, pp. 61-64 [↩]
4. Tucker, ‘City Planning without Cities’, p. 67 [↩]
5. Tucker, ‘City Planning without Cities’, p. 66 [↩]
6. Cunningham, Alfred, The French in Tonkin and South China, (London, 1902), pp.13-14 [↩]
7. Cunningham, The French in Tonkin and South China, p.14 [↩]

 

            Although separated by over three thousand kilometers, Korea and the area formerly known as French Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Guangzhouwan China) share similar weather, and every year for roughly a month they endure a monsoon season. Today, the potential dangers of these monsoons are adequately eliminated as a result of modern infrastructure, which did not appear out of the blue. In the early twentieth century in Japanese colonized Korea and French Indochina, officials began concerning themselves with city planning regarding flooding caused by monsoons. Although preventing flood damage was not the only goal in mind, this piece will focus specifically on the different approaches taken by the Japanese and French Government-General in order to solve issues of flooding.

            In Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945, Todd Henry analyzes the Japanese Government-General’s attempts to transform Keijo, modern day Seoul, into “Great Keijo.”¹The Japanese Government-General had an underlying goal in the creation of a “Great Keijo.” Henry explains that Japanese officials sought to create a ‘showcase city’ of Japanese modernity.² In other words, city planning in Keijo was a demonstration of Japan’s civilized status to the West; city planning prioritized image over function. With this in mind, flooding issues in Keijo was of little concern to the Japanese Government General. Henry reveals that by 1912 citizens of Keijo expressed concerns regarding monsoon flooding of the Hanh River.³ Japanese officials responded with a multitude of short term solutions which inevitably failed. According to Henry, city planners mostly ignored these flooding issues until a flood in 1925 which caused roughly four hundred deaths and forty-six million yen in property damage.⁴ This event finally brought the issues of flooding to Japanese officials’ attention; unfortunately, Henry indicates that “the Government-General continued to pursue its own plans to transform Keijo into a showcase city.”⁵ From Henry’s analysis of the Government-General’s efforts in flood prevention, it can be seen that in the city planning of the ‘Great Keijo’ Japanese officials were concerned with validating their position as a ‘civilized’ nation rather than the function of their plans.   

On the other hand, France was already considered ‘civilized’. As a result, the French Government-General in Indonesia’s city planning efforts were concerned with function over image. In 1912, Jules Sion writes about the major importance of rainfall in the lives of the native population, and consequently rainfall in the French Indochinese territories must be scientifically studied.⁶ Sion’s article addresses the negative aspects of the shutting down of rain measuring stations in French Indochina. He argues that, given the importance of rainfall for the Indochinese population, rain measuring stations must be re-opened for scientific research; more importantly, he emphasizes that rainfall must be measured in order to prevent destructive flooding.⁵ Additionally, Sion acknowledges the urgent necessity of building roads and railways, but the absence of rainfall measurements will lead to inevitable missteps.⁷ Evidently, Sion is advocating for the reopening of rainfall measurement facilities in order to benefit nation building and infrastructure construction. Moreover, in 1930, Charles Robequain also discusses the importance of rainfall measuring stations in French Indochina; however, this time, it is to discuss the positive efforts of the Government-General. In accordance with Sion, he insists on the insufficient number of rainfall measuring stations in Indochina in 1912, and that the development of rainfall measuring stations would limit the destruction of floods.⁸ He fortunately reveals that at the end of 1928 the number of functioning rain stations were 338, as opposed to only 150 in 1926.⁵ This swift re-opening of these stations by the French Government-General highlights the prioritization of flood prevention by French officials.

 

By comparing the efforts of French and Japanese officials in flood prevention, it is evident that they had disparate goals. While Japanese officials ignored the needs of flood preventing infrastructure in order to assert themselves in the ‘civilized’ world, the French saw the rain’s destructive ability and established stations which gathered scientific data in order to predict future meteorological destruction. Admittedly, rain played a different role in both spaces. In Indochina, understanding rainfall was not only important to prevent destruction, but it was also paramount in growing its mostly agricultural economy. Nonetheless, while the Japanese Government-General focused its city planning on the impression it would make on the world, the French Government-General implemented stations in order to aid the Indochinese population.

 

Bibliography:

Primary Sources:

Robequain, Charles, ‘Le climat de l’Indochine française’ Annales de Géographie, 39:222, 1930, pp. 651-653

Sion, Jules, ‘Les Pluis de L’indochine’, Annales de Géographie, 21:120, 1912 pp. 462-464

Secondary Sources:

Todd A. Henry, Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945, (California Scholarship Online, 2014)

 

 

1. Todd A. Henry, Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945, (California Scholarship Online, 2014), p. 42 [↩]
2. Todd A. Henry, Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945, (California Scholarship Online, 2014), p. 31 [↩]
3. Todd A. Henry, Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945, (California Scholarship Online, 2014), p. 47 [↩]
4. Ibid [↩]
5. Ibid [↩] [↩] [↩]
6. Sion, Jules, ‘Les Pluis de L’indochine’, Annales de Géographie, 21:120, 1912 p. 462 [↩]
7. Ibid p.464 [↩]
8. Robequain, Charles, ‘Le climat de l’Indochine française’ Annales de Géographie, 39:222, 1930, p. 653 [↩]