| Summary: | This dissertation explores the discourses on poverty in Colonial Vietnam. Based
on French-language archival material and Vietnamese-language literary and
journalistic sources, the dissertation examines both the French colonial
administration's and Vietnamese intellectuals' conceptualization and
representation of poverty and poor relief. While both the French and Vietnamese
discourses on poverty diverged in their analyses of the problem, they both vied
for moral authority in the domain of poverty relief. This dissertation, therefore,
contributes to the Postmodernist argument that poverty is a socially constructed
concept, revealing more about the elite than the poor of whom they wrote.
Within the French colonial rhetoric one justification for colonial rule was
the improvement of the material condition of Indochina. Poor relief fell within the
purview of the French 'civilizing' mission, the official doctrine for French
Imperialism. The colonial agenda, racial prejudices, and the French
administrators' own ambivalent attitudes toward the poor made any attempt at
poor relief doomed for failure. While poor relief functioned as a justification for
the French presence in Indochina, when wielded by Vietnamese intellectuals the
discourse on poverty became a rallying call for patriotism, nationalism, and for
some, anti-colonialism. In the hands of the politically conservative intellectuals
poverty became a problem connected with Vietnam's 'backward' culture and
society. In the 1930s as the issue of poverty became more urgent, Vietnamese
journalists and novelists began to explore critically the impact of poverty on their
society. Literature of this period presented a compelling argument about the
corrosive effect of poverty on Vietnamese society, and it subtly implicated French
colonialism in the cause of poverty. By the late 1930s, left-wing writers took the
discussion further to analyze the causes of poverty. Their writings left no doubt
as to their conviction that colonialism and capitalism were responsible for the
impoverishment of their society.
In examining the various competing discourses on poverty among elite
Vietnamese writers, this dissertation shows the diversity among the elite as well
as the intellectual dynamism of the period as Vietnamese intellectuals grappled
with the global forces of colonialism and capitalism. While Vietnamese
intellectuals exhibited a modernist faith that poverty could be eradicated, and
thought of themselves as modern, their own idealized society, a van minh
(civilized) society was based on Confucian values, such as social harmony and
responsibility.
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