Vietnam
last update: 20 March 2022
Vietnam (Việt Nam), is the birthplace of my French wife. This webpage it's just my attempt to better understand what that meant.
This webpage was really motivated by one question, how to tag locations of old family photographs taken in different places in Vietnam.
And this meant understanding where places like Bình Đông, Chợ Lớn were? In addition, we also needed to find the present-day locations for addresses dating back to the French occupation.
And this starts with understanding what the map of Vietnam looked like in the early 20th century. Wikipedia has extensive articles on the History of Vietnam, French Indochina, History of Vietnam during WW I, and French Indochina in WW II.
Introduction
In 1858 Napoleon III ordered Rigault de Genouilly to attack the port of Đà Nẵng (baptised Tourane by the French). In the end he decided to sail south and capture the area around the poorly defended city of Gia Định (present-day Ho Chi Minh City). From 1859 to 1867, French troops expanded their control over all six provinces on the Mekong Delta and in 1871 all the territories formed a colony known as Cochinchina. In 1887, the colony became a confederal member of the Union of French Indochina. Unlike the protectorates of Annam (central Vietnam) and Tonkin (northern Vietnam), Cochinchina was ruled directly by the French, both de jure and de facto, and was represented by a deputy in the National Assembly in Paris.
The story goes that Rigault de Genouilly was sent to make a military demonstration on the coast of Annam. French nationals were being persecuted, and the honour of France needed to be defended. It was a simple operation which, obviously, was not to have any sequel. The small numbers (2,000 men) available to the admiral left no doubt about the meaning of this expedition. Yet it was from this brief and limited mission that the initial possession of Saigon resulted. The admiral first attacked 'Tourane' in 1858 and, after having taken the forts of the peninsula and those which blocked the entrance to the river, he had encamped his troops in front of the conquered positions. A rapid victory that was followed by an order to march on Huế. He very wisely considered this undertaking impossible because of the limited troops at his disposal and his ignorance of the countryside. His small troop that were camped around Tourane suffered the terrible attacks of the climate and epidemics and melted away day by day. He wrote "Saigon is on a river accessible to our war corvettes and our transports. The troops, on disembarking, will be on the point of attack. They will therefore have neither steps to take, nor bags, nor food to carry. Saigon is the warehouse of the rice which partly feeds Huế and the Annamese army and which must go north in March. We will stop the rice, and the blow struck in Saigon will prove to the government that, while retaining Tourane, we are capable of external action, and we will humiliate it in its pride, vis-à-vis the kings of Siam and Cambodia, its neighbours who hate and who will not be sorry to find the opportunity to take back what was taken from them".
The admiral therefore sailed towards Cochinchina and a couple of weeks later he was in Saigon. He took and destroyed the citadel, and set fire to the rice warehouses where the province's tax in kind was piled up. He certainly did not believe then that this conquest would be preserved, otherwise he would not have destroyed these riches. But Tourane still remained in his mind the main post, and he sent the troops back there, leaving a few hundred men and a few Tagalogs in Saigon. When the war in China began again he looked to put an end to the Annam expedition. He only asks for the opening of a few ports, religious tolerance and the presence of European consuls. He got nothing, so he returns to France without suspecting that it would be Saigon that would bring a glorious end to his expedition. After his departure, Tourane was evacuated. The hostilities in China called all available forces north, leaving a small garrison of barely eight hundred men in Saigon under siege by an Annamese army of twelve thousand men. Finally, in 1860 the China campaign over, part of the expeditionary force was transferred back to Cochinchina. The result is the story of Indochina.
After conquering Cochinchina, the French resumed in 1883 their expansion in Southern Asia. With the Treaty of Tientsin in 1885, China recognised the French protectorate over Annam (Chữ Nôm) and Tonkin (Bắc Kỳ) and implicitly abandoned her own claims to suzerainty over Vietnam. With Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin became part of French Indochina in 1887. In 1863 a treaty was signed acknowledging Cambodia as a French protectorate, and it also became part of French Indochina in 1887. Laos was also a French protectorate from 1893, and became part of French Indochina in 1899. In 1898 the French leased the Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan for 100 years, and it also became part of French Indochina (it was returned to the Chinese in 1945).
Often Annam was used in the West to refer to Vietnam as a whole, and the Vietnamese people were referred to as Annamites.
Above we have a map of Cochinchina dated 1861, where we can see the six provinces, namely An Giang, Biên-Hòa (now Đồng Nai), Định Tường (Ding-Tong), Gia Định (Gia-Ding), Hà Tiên (Hatien), and Vīne Long. We can see that Sài Gòn (Saigon) is in the province of Biên-Hòa, whereas Chợ Lớn (Cholon) was in the province of Gia Định.
Sài Gòn (Saigon or the French spelling Saïgon) was ceded to France in the 1862 Treaty of Saigon, and the French transformed it into a large town with various French-style buildings, including a botanical garden, Notre-Dame Cathedral, and Bến Thành Market, etc. Today Saigon is called Ho Chi Minh City, and is the largest city in Vietnam (the capital remains Hanoi). The above map is from 1896, and the below view from 1898, and we can see that Saigon is acquiring all the features of a traditional European city.
This "Sepia-Toned Tour of 1902 Saigon" includes some photographs of the Zoo and Botanical Garden. There is also a slideshow on Notre-Dame Cathedral in Saigon, and here we have some photographs entitled "A Shopping Trip in Ben Thanh Market in 1938".
Today Cholon (Chợ Lớn) is also part of Ho Chi Minh City, but originally Cholon and Saigon were two separate places with different parallel destinies. Wikipedia tells us Cholon was inhabited by the Vietnamese Chinese (or the Hoa people), and it suggests that it was originally called Tai-Ngon, meaning "embankment" in Cantonese (French quais), i.e. an area protected by high embankments against the flow of the Saigon River (Sông Sài Gòn). Another suggestion is that the area was more or less defined by the old, then new, Bình Tây Market (Chợ Bình Tây), and that Chợ Lớn directly translates as "big market" when it was first established in 1778 (not surprising since the early French called Cholon the "Bazar Chinois"). From that time Cholon was an integral part of Saigons' economy. When Cholon was incorporated as a city in 1879 it lay 11 km from Saigon, today it composes much of Districts 5 and 6 of Ho Chi Minh City.
The French moved into Cholon from 1859 and reinforced the link between the two cities with the construction of two roads and a tram line. Cholon kept its autonomy until the creation in 1931 of a unique urban entity called "Saigon-Cholon", name which was simplified to "Saigon" in 1956.
Railways in Vietnam notes that the first train from Saigon to Cholon ran in 27 December 1881 (above photograph), and at that time the terminal in Saigon was opposite the Bến Thành Market.
Check out this article "A Throwback to Saigon's Original Tramway Network".
My wife's father Paul, and his family
According to his French birth certificate, my wife's father was born in Bình Đông, Chợ Lớn. And we know my wife's father, Paul, had an older brother, presumably also born in Bình Đông.
In 1897 the whole Cholon province was divided into 12 cantons (tổng), one called Tân Phong Hạ had 5 villages (làng), one of which was called Bình Đông. From 1899 there was considerable reorganisation of the regions, and the 5 villages were merged into Tân Phong Hạ and Sài Gòn (Saigon) city. In 1939 Bình Đông was no longer mentioned in the four districts (quận) that made up Cholon. But today Bình Đông is alive a kicking. Still today the Tàu Hủ Canal that runs through Ho Chi Minh City is also known as the Bình Đông. This was a canal originally built in the early 1800's, and dredged in 1889 under French rule. There is a mention of it being used to transport fruit and vegetables into Saigon. The wharf-road that runs along the south side of canal is also called Bình Đông and is a stop on some bus routes. A bit further out of the city Bình Đông is also the name of the local parish church. So we can make a good guess as to where my wife's father was born. A map covering the early 1900's indicated that Bình Đông was just at the edge of Cholon, about 3 km from the centre of the town. In a map of 1923 it shows that in that area of Cholon there was a Commissariat of Police, the Distillery Fontaine (see below), six different factories, a market, and the abattoir of Bình Đông.
Auguste Raphael Fontaine obtained the monopoly of alcohol production in Cochinchina, undertaking at the same time to buy the existing Chinese distilleries (see photograph above). The Chinese organised campaigns hostile to the French company, which led to a boycott of Fontaine/Calmette alcohol by the Vietnamese. The sale of alcohol, hitherto exercised directly, was subsequently conceded to the Chinese, and the boycott was dropped. The alcohol monopoly, like the opium and salt monopolies, was one of "trois bêtes de somme" (beasts of burden), i.e. the basis of a stable taxation systems essential to maintaining the fiscal health of the local regime. Have a look at this article "A History of Rice Wine - Family Stills, Prohibition and Colonial Bloodshed".
A "Commissariat" is a local precinct of the French "police nationale", and a "commissaire de police" is in charge of both the administrative and investigative roles in a "Commissariat".
My wife's paternal grandfather finished his career as a Commissaire 3e classe de Police Municipale. I will spend a little time looking at the police in Indochina because it just so happens that my wife's material grandfather was also in the police, and its probable that my wife's parents met because of that connection.
My wife's paternal grandfather joined the Police Urbaine de Saigon in 1912 and rose through the ranks to Commissaire 3e classe, after being détaché to the Police de Sureté du Cambodge, and then working in the Commissariat de Police in Bình Tây, the market area of Cholon. The one thing I find difficult to understand is that he spent time, according to official records, in both the Police Urbaine and the Police Municipale, but what was the difference?
I've not been able to isolate a set of clear definitions nor their exact jurisdictions, and today France still has a Police Municipale but not a Police Urbaine. Today the French Police Municipale are a form of "police de proximité" (local police), under the authority of a mayor of a municipality. The Police Municipale obey the decrees of the mayor, whilst the national police follows and applies the instructions and directives of the French Ministry of the Interior. Today a municipal police officer has the quality of assistant judicial police officer, and his principle role is to ensure good order, safety, security and public health (including traffic offences).
Mentions from the past suggest that the Police Municipale in Indochina performed a multitude of activities from the surveillance of 'drinking establishments', through the repression of fraud, to ensuring the cleanliness of the city and avoiding damage to public buildings. In the past the Police Municipale in Indochina appears to have been associated with the many problems deriving from the movement of indigenous populations, and their spatial segregation inside colonial cities.
As far as I can understand things, Police Urbaine in Indochina were uniformed civil servants that maintained public order, had powers associated with population control, securing sensitive buildings, residences and public buildings, and acted to prevent and repress criminal offences. There appears to have been a kind of transfer of responsibilities, procedures and personnel from the colonial army to the Police Urbaine in terms of maintaining order, and even including the "service des renseignements" (intelligence services). There is mention on the need to "monitor the turbulent elements of the cities" and the surveillance of "foreigners, religious propagandist and individual who come to carry out evil actions". This included maintaining order in public places (symbols of the new power), guaranteeing the security of communication routers, surveillance of the press, and prevention and repression of crime, all in one way or another linked to urban areas and cities.
Given the not inconsiderable movement of indigenous peoples into urban areas, there was for both police forces a "civilising mission", i.e. the education of a colonised population in the principles of urban norms, making them "city-dwellers". Behind the scenes there was also the need to control the distribution of colonial spaces between the French/European populations and the indigenous peoples, i.e. ensuring that everyone had a place, and also "knew their place".
One worrying point is that the police in Indochina is mentioned in numerous texts, often not in a complimentary way, but I must question some of the comments and conclusions when not one of those texts draws the minimum distinction between Police Urbaine and Police Municipale. I'm not sure what the difference was, and this appears to be the case for everyone else.
The Gendarmerie is a branch of the French army, and as such they are soldiers. Whilst the police operate in cities, the gendarme normally operates in all places that are not urban areas/agglomerations/communes of 25,000 inhabitants or more, i.e. in rural and suburban areas. The Gendarmerie (re)appeared in Indochina in the last quarter of 1946. Deducted from the troops deployed in Germany, Austria, then, as a last resort, from those in mainland France, they consisted of three "Legions of March" or Republican Guards. The 1st Legion supervises the Cochinchina Civil Guard, the 2nd Legion was deployed around Saigon, and the 3rd Legion was initially deployed in Tonkin. Between 1946 and 1956 there were nearly 14,000 men who succeeded each other on the peninsula, with an average stay of 24 months. Their presence concluded in 1956 with the training of the armies of the new associated States.
Saigon - the early years
As the most important commercial hub of Vietnam, Saigon had a humble origin as a frontier post where people from a diverse background came to make their fortune and/or to escape their former lives. The city of Saigon as we know it today took shape over a long period of nearly 400 years, and went through several stages of development under different masters, from Khmer kings to the Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam, the French colonial power, and then as a Socialist Republic. The first time the territory was mentioned in Vietnamese documents was in 1623 when the then king of Cambodia Chey Chetta II agreed to let the Việt set up two custom-posts one at Sài Gòn and one at an adjacent site today known as Bến Nghé in District 1. The names of these two locations were later changed around during the French occupation, what was called Saigon then became today’s Chinatown Chợ Lớn, and Bến Nghé became today’s Saigon.
Historically, the site of today’s Saigon was a wild and muddy area but not uninhabitable as observed by the Nguyễn when they came to establish their custom-posts. They would have found a Khmer settlement there, surrounded by stagnant ponds and a dense jungle full of wildlife. The Khmers were settled there, probably for centuries, living on the raw products they found in the area, such as wild animals, trees for building house and fuel, etc. They lived in stilt houses on dry high ground along a stretch of land running north up to the Đồng Nai river, about 20 kms away.
Sailing in Southeast-Asia depended on the monsoon winds, the north-easterly wind for the southbound voyages between late December and early March and the south-easterly wind in July for the northbound trip. In between, the merchants needed somewhere to stay and a number of trading depots along the East-West Maritime Route were created as the result. Saigon was known to be one of these from the 17th century onward. While resting, the merchants stocked up on local products which were brought to them from the hinterland mainly by boats. A barge, or junk, could carry a larger load and travel more efficiently than oxcarts, or by porters, who would have to negotiate difficult and unpredictable roads. Between Cambodia, Siam, Laos and today’s coast of Vietnam, the main waterway was the Mekong River, and further north from the Mekong, the Đồng Nai river acted as the main artery between the inland and the coast.
The 17th century was a busy time for the Nguyễn Lords who held power in central Vietnam, and resided in Phú Xuân, today’s Huế. Despite, or because, of their on-going war with their rival, the Trịnh, the power behind the court in today’s Hanoi, the Nguyễn began to expand southward to occupy more land, and to secure crucial supplies such as rice and materials for ship-building and weapon production. Following the footsteps of the first Lord Nguyễn Hoàng and continuing under his successors, the Việt moved steadily and systematically south in a colonising movement later termed the Nam Tiến. They first took over a large swathe of land from the kingdoms of Champa, the group of coastal polities occupying the lower part of central Vietnam. By 1653, the Việt had moved far enough south to have a Khmer-Việt border that did not exist before. By the end of the 17th century internal trouble had weakened the Khmer court to the point that the Vietnamese could expand further westward and southward, almost without resistance. This mean that the Nguyễn occupied the land between the two main rivers Mekong and Đồng Nai, pushing even further south of the Mekong River, and consolidated their presence in Saigon.
Following the establishment of the Nguyễn custom-houses of Saigon and Bến Nghé in 1623, Việt immigrants began to settle in the region, and gradually migrated into Saigon itself. People from all walks of life and a variety of ethnicities lived together, although not always in harmony. The most prominent among these were the Khmer, the Việt and, later, the Chinese who arrived in 1679. These Chinese belonged to one of the two groups of 3000 Ming loyalists who sailed south from China to ask the Nguyễn for asylum from the Qing and were told to settle in today’s Biên Hòa. They gradually expanded south to become neighbours of the traditional Khmers and the Việt. The second Ming group was directed to settle in today’s Mỹ Tho on the Mekong.
The Chinese were particularly industrious at their first chosen site by the Đồng Nai river. Here, they established a large port on a river island called Cù Lao Phố. Before long, this island became a major depôt of goods from the Vietnamese highlands and Cambodia, earning it the name of Cảng Đại Phố (the great port of Phố), a busy market only second to Bến Nghé, nearer to the sea. By 1693, the Nguyễn’s control stretched from today’s Bình Thuận to the Mekong Delta, a huge piece of land. A Grand Mandarin Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh was appointed and quickly established administrative units for the area, such as towns, districts and villages and then appealed to people from northern provinces to move in to settle. The existing Chinese were grouped into their own villages and called the Minh Hương (Ming loyalists), and in 1693 they were officially entered in the Việt population register. Under Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, the number of people was recorded as over 40,000 households, and the region was listed as thousands of square kilometres. For his governing seat, Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh chose Saigon, which was quickly developed into a site where products from both the mountains and the Mekong Delta gathered to find the best maritime traders from India, Japan, China and even further in both east-west directions. The produce from the Mekong were transported north via a system of rivers and canals, and from the mountains by foot-porters along the upstream of the river Đồng Nai where it was full of rapids and cascades. Further downstream, the goods were carried by boats as the water became calmer north of Biên Hòa.
For most of the 18th century, the market that became the city of Saigon continued to grow out of necessity. Houses, official buildings and garrisons were constructed but roads were haphazardly built, as the main means of transport was still by waterways. Mid-18th century, however, was a busy time for commerce with rice from the Mekong Delta being the most sought-after commodity. Many new canals were dug by hand during this period, for the small natural rivers and creeks serving the area tended to silt up during the dry season, forcing merchants to cease all activities and wait until the water was high enough to travel again. The Nguyễn authority ordered an extensive clean-up of the existing canals and for new canals to be dug to facilitate the flow of water. The first ones were dug in Saigon, which is today’s Chợ Lớn. A major canal called "Ruột Ngựa" was created in 1772, so called because it was "as straight as a horse gut".
The convenience of water travel in Saigon and Bến Nghé drew more people to settle along the river and canal banks, bringing with them a variety of skills, such as pottery making, boat-building, wood carving, jewellery making and carpentry etc. Each group of artisans gathered in their own enclave, creating a rich tapestry of professional wards flourishing along the rivers and canals of Saigon, some of them, such as the potters were still in business until the beginning of the 20th century, when a French canal cleaning and filling campaign drove them out of business. The growth of the handicraft industries, in turn, inspired yet more canals to be dug, each one carried the name of the product they were created for. Along the canals and the rivers, there were several boatyards acting as 'garages' for boat repair and maintenance. These yards were built on slightly higher ground, making them convenient for later land constructions, once the canals were filled up to become roads in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The ease of travel from the South China Sea to Saigon turned into a lethal weapon against the city. Following the journey that many merchant ships had taken before, the French fleet travelled up the Saigon river and start with a heavy bombardment before launching a ground assault. Saigon quickly succumbed on February 17, 1859.
Here is a wonderfully evocative article with photographs of daily life in Vietnam in the 1880's, and I quote "At the end of the 19th century southern women preferred "ao ngu than" (five-piece ao dai) and beaded jewellery. According to designer Sy Hoang, rich women used to wear this type of ao dai, with four layers representing the parents of the wife and husband and the fifth, the wearer. The tunic also had five buttons, symbolic of the five qualities everyone should have - nhan (kindness), le (decorum), nghia (uprightness), tri (wisdom) and tin (faithfulness)". Here is another collection of photographs from as early as 1866, and here we have 35 rare photographs from the 1880's.
One report noted that the population of Saigon in 1905 was 54,745, exclusive of naval and military forces. The French population numbered 8,749, other Europeans 152, Chinese 14,000 and Annamites about 30,000. On the other hand Cholon had a population of 140,000, was the market for both Cochinchina and Cambodia, was the residence of all Chinese merchants, and was the place were all the rice mills could be found.
Another text tells us that in the 1920's there were about 42,000 resident French, and about 72% were government employees, within the armed forces or the civil service. According to this report they drew civil service pay, and in some cases were provided with furnished living accommodation, and a special overseas allowance. The latter was calculated in Franc but payable in piasters worth four times the official rate. As a result no other French colonial domain offered a more attractive government employment option.
A separate report mentioned that in 1935 there were 100 Americans, including children, residing in all of Indochina, most connected to an American oil company or as Christian missionaries. The same report mentioned that there were 30 British and 20 Americans resident in Saigon in the mid-1930's, and that the Saigon Golf Club near the airfield had become their favoured retreat.
My wife's mother Margurite, and her family
In 1909, my wife's mother was not yet born, but we know her parents were a French couple living in Nam Định, a city about 90 km south-east of Hanoi. It was one of the more populous towns and regions in Tonkin at that time. My wife's maternal grandfather was also in the police, and her maternal grandmother was an artist-painter (who in later life would become known for her paintings of the Côte d'Azur). Oddly, according to official documents my wife's maternal grandfather had entered the Police Urbaine de Saigon in 1910, but had later had a career in the Police Urbaine de Hanoi. Some time between 1922 and 1924 the family moved to Saigon, and in 1925 he was Secrétaire de 1er classe in the Secrétariat de Commissariat in Saigon.
Secrétaire de 1er classe has a somewhat negative connotation in todays world, however, the hierarchy of the police at that time was quite complex. Frankly, I'm not sure of all the different 'grades' nor if they were same in the Police Urbaine and Police Municipale. However people would start as Agent Stagaire, then move up through Agent de 3e classe, then 2e classe, and 1re classe. Then there was Sous-brigadier de 2e classe, Sous-brigadier de 1re classe, followed by Brigadier. Then came Secrétaire de 3e classe, then 2e classe, and 1re classe. Then there was Commissaire de 3e classe, then 2e classe, and 1re classe, followed by Commissaire hors classe.
In fact my wife's material grandfather was Secrétaire de 1er classe in the Secrétariat de Commissariat in Saigon, at the same time as her paternal grandfather was Commissaire de 3e classe. I suspect that the Police was a tight knit community, even more so at the higher echelons, so it not surprising that my wife's parents would meet.
Now turning to my wife's mother, who was born to that French couple, who had now moved to Hanoi (Hà Nội is 1500 km away from Saigon). The French had taken more than eight years to make themselves masters of Cochinchina (a protectorate already had been imposed on Cambodia in 1863). But it took them 16 more years to extend their control over the rest of the country. The first attempt in 1873 failed, but in 1882 the administration in Saigon was able to impose its rule by force over the entire Red River Delta.
In August 1883 the Vietnamese court signed a treaty that turned northern Vietnam, Tonkin (Chữ Nôm), and central Vietnam, Annam (Chữ Nôm), into French protectorates. Hanoi, located in the protectorate of Tonkin, became the capital of French Indochina in 1887.
In 1911 my wife's maternal grandparents were living at 58 rue Jean Dupuis, in Hanoi. This must have been a relatively prestigious road since it led to one of the city gates (and was the subject of a number of different postcards).
The road was named after Jean Dupuis (1828-1912), a French trader and explorer who opened up the commerce along the Red River for the French in 1872 and assisted the French in conducting warfare in Tonkin in 1873 (unusually he was still living when the road was named). The Vietnamese regimes followed the French precedent in naming streets after people. They renamed rue Jean Dupuis as Quang Trung, the imperial title of Nguyễn Huệ (1753-1792), the 2nd emperor of the Tây Sơn dynasty of Vietnam, who reigned from 1788 until 1792. The Vietnamese nowadays regard Nguyễn Huệ as a national hero who reunified Vietnam again and defeated two invading armies - I suppose this is a form of poetic justice.
My wife's parents meet in Saigon
We now zoom forward to 1930's and the marriage of my wife's parents. As I mentioned above we now find both families living in Saigon, and both grandfathers working in the same police service.
In 1930 we know my wife's paternal grandparents lived at 1 Quai Le Myre de Vilers, presumable named after Charles Le Myre de Vilers (1833-1918), the first civilian governor of Cochinchina (1879-1882).
This is a map of Saigon dated 1926, and we can see Quai Le Myre de Vilers in B-3.
There are few sites that are tagged but not identified, namely B is the offices of the Messageries Maritimes (see below for more details) and C is probably the offices of the Messageries Fluviales. According to a map of 1920 on the corner of Quai Le Myre de Vilers and Bd. de la Somme was the offices of the Direction du Port de Commerce, and just at the entry to Bd. Charner was the Douanes et Régies. According to the same map, the first building on corner between Quai Le Myre de Vilers and Place Rigault de Genouilly was a Commissariat de Police.
By 1920 the Douanes et Régies in Saigon was responsible for the whole of French Indochina. For those interested, check out "La flottille des Douanes et Régies de l'Indochine Française" by Serge Rinkel.
I guess Bd. Charner was named after Admiral Léonard Charner who participated in the Siege of Saigon, and I presume under the command of Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly (1807-1873).
Below I found these modern day equivalents in Vietnamese to the légende in the above map.
1. Nhà đoan (quan thuế) - B3
2. Bưu điện và điện tín - C2
3. Nhà Thờ Lớn - C2
4. Viện Bảo Tàng - C2
5. Nhà hát - B2
6. Thư viện - B2
7. Vườn Bách Thảo - D3
8. Công viên Maurice Long (Vườn Tao Đàn) - B1
10. Dinh Toàn quyền - B1
11. Dinh Thống đốc Nam Kỳ - B2
12. Tòa Thị chính - B2
13. Dinh Đại tướng (chỉ huy quân đội) - C2
14. Dinh Thủy sư chỉ huy Hải quân - C3
15. Tòa Giám mục - C1
16. Tòa án (pháp đình) - B2
17. Chợ Trung tâm - B2
23. Bệnh viện nhà binh - C2
24. Trại lính - D2
25. Sở Chỉ huy Pháo binh - C3
26. Xưởng công binh (Ba Son) - D3
In the below detail we can see more clearly the exact extent of Quai Le Myre de Vilers, and we can see that the quai (wharf) was clearly an essential part of the port of Saigon.
Historic Việt Nam has an interesting webpage dedicated to the port of Saigon, from which I have taken this very liberal extract. The French opened the port of Saigon to navigation and commerce on 22 February 1860. In February 1861, the Compagnie des Messageries Impériales (known after 1871 as the Compagnies des Messageries Maritimes) was entrusted with postal and passenger services from Marseille to Saigon, and part of the existing mercantile port in Khánh Hội (now District 4), the Messageries Maritimes wharf or Dragon Wharf (Bến Nhà Rồng), became its headquarters.
Thereafter, the company’s courier vessels conveyed mail and passengers from Marseilles via Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to Saigon and then onward to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama, with connecting services from Saigon to Manila.
These courier vessels were operated initially on a monthly basis, but their frequency increased to once per week following the opening of the Suez canal in 1869. The Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes enjoyed a monopoly until 1901, when the Compagnie de Navigation des Chargeurs Réunis was permitted to launch rival services and share the Messageries Maritimes terminal. Below we have the same wharf dated to between 1920 and 1929.
We can see the difference with the wharf of the Messageries Fluviales below.
Have a look at "Saigon’s Colonial-Era Shipping Line Brought the World to Vietnam". There is also a website that follows the history of Messageries Maritimes and there is separate website French Lines that collects information on all French maritime companies, etc.
To enter Saigon, ships would have to navigate the Saigon River System, near the mouth of the Mekong. Both were, and I guess still are, subject to shallows banks offshore that might be uncovered at low water but covered during spring tides. In the Mekong Delta fixed lights and beacons were in place, and wrecks were usually indicated by buoys. The Saigon River delta was wide but there were numerous small islands separated by rivers or channels leading to sea. At the time it was thought that the Saigon had no known source (today we know it rises near Phum Daung in southeastern Cambodia), but it's still true that the river as seen in Saigon is probably replenished by the inundations from the Mekong. The advice was for vessels to remain at least 5 miles away at night, and wait for a guiding vessel during the day. There was a lighthouse and a signal and semaphore station so that vessels could communicate by International Code, and thence by telegraph to Saigon. During later times, an added difficultly was the presence of submarines, signalled by special flag.
There was a pilot station connected by both semaphore and telephone, and they had a steam pilot-boat. Pilots were compulsory for merchant vessels, even when anchoring out to sea. About 20 miles below Saigon there was a channel dragged to a depth off 23 feet, and it was known that the steamers of the Messageries Maritimes could go up to Saigon city. The principle danger were sand banks, often just covered in water, and there were a series of fixed lights and beacons to help navigate.
The idea was that ships going to berths in Saigon were to attract the attention of the signalman in the signal station, using the steam whistle or siren. At the same time the ships were to fly a national flag, and distinguishing signals, e.g. mail steamer, company flag, quarantine flag as specified by the sanitary police, and for commercial vessels their number in the International Code. The signalman would telephone the harbour with the information, and would hoist on the signal mast any messages, e.g. to wait and anchor, to discharge first petroleum or explosives, etc., to get underway quickly, etc. In addition in Saigon there were tidal streams of between 2 and 4 knots, depending upon high water, etc., but tugs were available. The river itself was seen as being tortuous for long vessels, but "navigable with proper care". By 1907 the commercial port was one side of the time signal (described later), and cargoes were handled rapidly. The other side of the time signal was reserved from naval vessels. All vessels were under the direction of the harbour master, and no vessels were permitted to anchor in the river. There was a signal station and a customhouse at the harbour.
All sorts of fresh food could be obtained in Saigon, and good water was supplied by tank boats from the reservoirs on the hill westward of Saigon. Coal was brought alongside in lighters, and about 200 tons could be loaded in a day. Repairs could be made at the government docks, and they also had floating steam lifting cranes. The military hospital has 200 beds, and seamen of all nations could be treated.
Saigon was not a free port, i.e. no favourable custom regulations to particular parties.
Saigon was known to be dominated by dry and wet seasons, "not disagreeable" in the dry season, and "very distressing to the body" in the hot, humid season. Opinions varied, one US Consul called Saigon, "this marsh-set city of enervating heat and vitiated air", whereas the next US Consul wrote "it would be difficult to find a consulate of medium grade where a tropical tour of duty could be put in more agreeably". Later still the rule was introduced that US staff should be of "the best of condition physically" or "almost certain that they will become casualties". In addition to renewing passports the US consulate appeared to be interesting in the 1930's in monitoring Indochina's government opium factory and the 44 licensed opium dens. This was not rocket science, since they were listed in Saigons business directory. These were the days when parking for the US consulate rickshaw was still a problem, and finding anywhere free of mosquitoes was a don du ciel. With the advent of WW II, things would change forever, the US consulate was bombed in 1941, and again in 1950, when two employees were also gunned down.
Historic Việt Nam has translated into English "Un an de séjour en Cochinchine: guide du voyageur" written by Arthur Delteil in 1882, and published in 1887. It's in three parts, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Here is a description (in French) of a trip Saigon-Marseille in 1909. They left Saigon on the 6 February and disembarked 12 March in Marseille, for a trip of 34 days. Another description (in French) is off a trip Marseille-Saigon in 1923. They left the 3 November and arrived in Saigon the 26 November, a trip of 23 days. This description (in French) is for a troop transport Marseille-Saigon, leaving 28 March 1947 and arrived the 20 April, for a trip of 23 days. And finally this description (in French) is for another troop transport leaving Marseille on 17 January 1951 and arriving in Saigon 10 February 1951, for a trip of 24 days.
Bến Nhà Rồng (Nha Rong Wharf) is one of several Ho Chi Minh Museums in Vietnam, and in Saigon it is now a cluster of architectural monuments marking an event in the life of Nguyễn Tất Thành (later known as Ho Chi Minh). It is written that on 5 June 1911 he boarded the ship "Admiral Latouche Tréville to work as a cook in order to be able to go to Europe, thus opening his revolutionary journey". Since 1975, the cluster of architectural monuments has been rebuilt by the State of Vietnam into a memorial area for Ho Chi Minh, and June 5 is chosen as the day he left to "find a way to save the country". I'm surprised that many Vietnamese websites show the ship Latouche-Tréville as a merchant ship, whereas, according to Wikipedia, the Latouche-Tréville was firstly a wooden-hulled steam sloop aviso that was decommissioned in 1870, and later an armoured cruiser that was active in the Mediterranean (1894-1919).
Above we can see the original Messageries Maritimes building, and as it is today as a museum dedicated to Ho Chi Minh.
During the early years of colonial rule, the Mercantile port (Port de commerce) continued to use wharves in the area of the Arroyo Chinois (Bến Nghé creek) and extending as far as the Rond-Point (later known as Place Rigault de Genouilly, and today known as Công Trường Mê Linh). In subsequent years, this quayside area was known variously as Quai de Donnaï, Quai Napoléon, Quai du Commerce, Quai Francis-Garnier and latterly Quai Le Myre de Vilers. However, in 1881 these wharves, known to the French as the "appontements de Canton" and "appontements de Charner", were transferred to the control of the river couriers (see below), so replacement facilities for the mercantile port had to be found in Khánh Hội (modern District 4). By the mid 1880s, these new mercantile port facilities extended nearly 1 km southeast along the riverbank beyond the Messageries Maritimes compound. The article in Historic Việt Nam goes on to described the expansion of the Port de Commerce that took place from 1900 to 1929.
In the more detailed map above, dated from 1896, we can see the Signal Mast (N°36), the Direction du Port de Commerce (N°25), the Douane (N°29), and the Postes de Police (N°28). We can also see that the railway had its own station on the wharf (N°33), and the one of the two custom hangers (N°35) was connected directly to the tramway from Cholon. The Loire moored on Quai Primauguet, was the hulk of the French steam-powered ship Prince Jérôme.
In 1881, as noted above, all of the wharves between the Arroyo Chinois and the Rond-Point (including the former royal wharf) were transformed into the River Port (port fluvial) and entrusted to the management of the Compagnies des Messageries Fluviales, which subsequently ran postal and passenger services to Phnom Penh and later to other destinations in French Indochina, as well as along the coast to Bangkok.
This is a photograph dated 1867, and we can see the Signal Mast, and what I presume was the Direction du Port de Commerce, and the Douane still under construction. Below we have a photograph of houses and shops on the port side, dated 1909. They look surprisingly like the buildings seen in the distance on the photograph dated 1867, and I'm surprised such banal buildings remained intact for nearly 40 years in an area that was going through a substantial and constant mutation.
From the early 1860s, the Messageries maritime wharf, Mercantile port and River port all came under the control of a French Commercial Port Directorate (Direction du Port de Commerce). In 1879-1880, a new impressive-looking colonial headquarters building was constructed for this department on the headland near the Signal Mast.
After the arrival of the French, the quayside immediately to the north of the River port, between the Rond-Point (known after 1878 as the Place Rigault de Genouilly) and the Arroyo de l’Avalanche (Thị Nghè creek, which is situated beyond the Arsenal), became the Naval port (Port de la Marine), under the control of the French Navy (Marine Nationale Française).
The southernmost section of this naval port, extending nearly 600 metres along the river from the Rond-Pont and known initially as Quai Primauguet and later as Quai de l’Argonne, housed the Naval Commander’s headquarters (Hôtel du Commandant de la Marine), the Naval Artillery (Artillerie de Marine) and the Naval Barracks (Caserne de la Marine, later Caserne Francis-Garnier). Beyond that, in the 22-hectare compound previously occupied by the former royal naval workshop, the French established their Naval Arsenal and Shipyard. Founded in 1864, it was gradually equipped with state-of-the-art repair workshops, and by 1888 it boasted several boat repair docks, including a 168 metre long dry dock. After the reorganisation of the French navy in 1902, the Naval Arsenal became the headquarters for 38 vessels, 183 officers and 3,630 troops. Thanks to further upgrades in the early 20th century, by 1918 the Naval Arsenal could not only maintain and repair the French fleet, but also build new vessels of up to 3,500 tonnes.
The Signal Mast has been mentioned several times, and even today a replica is still in place in modern Ho Chi Minh City, but what is a Signal Mast? There is a very interesting article from Saigoneer about the role played by the Signal Mast in Saigon society of the time, given that it was first installed in 1865.
Firstly a Signal Mast is just that, it carries signals destined for ships entering and leaving the port. The Saigon Signal Mast received daily storm information from an observatory at Haiphong. Signals were composed using a series of different shapes, e.g. square, triangle, etc., and the messages were hung on the yardarms of the signal mast. They were able to indicate both the position and direction of gales, typhoon and depressions. Also a single shape on the top indicated when the warning had been issued, e.g. a diamond meant yesterday afternoon.
In addition a time ball was installed in 1908, and in 1915 it is documented that the ball was dropped twice daily, first at noon Saigon mean time (16h 53m 11.7s Greenwich Mean Time), and then minutes 48.3 seconds later at 17:00 Greenwich Mean Time. In 1917 these times were changed to 15:00 exactly and 15h 05m 00s Greenwich Mean Time, i.e. 10:00 and 10:05 standard civil time (in Saigon). In 1925 a radio signal was also available from a radio station in Saigon (call sign HZA). The time ball was used to verify the setting of marine chronometers, today a Global Navigation Satellite System is used.
But what did Quai Le Myre de Vilers actually look like? Below we can see what it looked like in 1904…, and below what it looked like in 1930.
So my wife's paternal grandfather was a commissaire de police and in 1930 the family gave their address as 1 Quai Le Myre de Vilers. And 1 Quai Le Myre de Vilers was the Commissariat de Police of the 1er arrondissement Saigon (as seen below).
But let for a moment return to Rond-Point, or as it became known, Place Rigault de Genouilly, after 1878 (today Công Trường Mê Linh). Below we can see the same place in 1969, and now in 2020, as they say "time waits for no man…".
Let us now turn to where the mother of my wife, Marguerite, was living with her parents in 1930's, at 34 rue Gustave Vinson, Saigon. It would appear that Gustave Vinson had been a lawyer (avocat-défenseur) and mayor of Saigon 1874-1876.
The exact address is difficult to see, but it's a short road linking Bd. Lord Kitchener with rue Boresse, and as far as I can tell was the location of the Commissariat de police of the 2eme arrondissement Saigon. Which is not surprising, since my wife's material grandfather was a commissaire de police (or géomètre and agent de police according to an alternative source).
As was the case with my wife's fathers family, I presume her mothers family were living at the Commissariat de police of the 2eme arrondissement Saigon.
Opium in Vietnam
Opium in Vietnam is a worthwhile topic in itself for two reasons. Firstly, it was, along with alcohol and salt monopolies, one of "trois bêtes de somme" (beasts of burden), i.e. the basis of a stable taxation systems essential to maintaining the fiscal health of the local French colonial regime. Secondly, between 1990 and 2001 Vietnam managed to reduce opium production by 98%, and is still one of only a handful of states that successfully did so.
Experts see the opium trade in Asia as being linked to population flows. Beginning in the 19th century, China provided the first large-scale "free wage labour" for parts of Southeast Asia. Migrant workers moved en masse into Malaya, Sumatra, southern Siam, Tonkin and Borneo, and were quickly recruited into tin or gold mines, or on plantations. The migration of Haw, Hmong and other tribes from China into other parts of Asia favoured the spread of opium cultivation and consumption. It's generally agreed that contact with Chinese immigrants was the cause of the indigenous population acquiring the opium-smoking habit. The expansion of drug markets was an inevitably economic, and thereby developmental, phenomenon. The expansion of drug supply and drug markets globally was an innate process of globalisation. The early caravan tracks became trade routes serving both legal and illegal commodities, including drugs. But globalisation merely accelerated and magnified the use of drugs such as opium. And it did not help that technological changes significantly increased the gross tonnage of supplies and trade. The central question at the end of the 19th century was less about restricting the distribution and sale of opium, and more about who would benefit from creating and implementing those regulations.
The reality is that the Sino-Indian opium trade began in the mid-16th century, and was soon taken over by Portuguese, British and Dutch traders. A fragmentary and ultimately localised trade soon became subsumed under the monopoly of the British East India Trading Company. Where China increasingly sought to restrict and prohibit the domestic consumption of opium, European empires looked at it as a way to correct major trading imbalances. As opium became associated with Western consumption practices, namely the mixing with tobacco to form smokable opium known as 'madak', so too did the sense of foreign incursion and threat. These early concerns became amplified when it became apparent that the Chinese state was haemorrhaging silver to buy Indian opium. Qing efforts to counter these outflows ultimately produced the Opium Wars with Great Britain. China’s defeat in these conflicts, and it's forced opening to trade with the West, saw China legalise opium. This was formalised under the Convention of Peking of 1860, in part to provide revenues to sustain the ever-weakening Chinese government.
European powers started by using revenue farming systems to minimise their imperial administrative and political cost base. In this way, they 'farmed out' revenue collection to indigenous elites by auctioning the right to tax or develop a monopoly on distribution or sale of a specific good, including opium, alcohol, sex work, gambling and other activities. Opium represented a particularly liquid enterprise with high cash flow and thereby an ability to accumulate large capital stocks. The farms also financed commodity production and helped to generate the infrastructure for consumer economies. These institutions helped to create the finance and state structures that protected businessmen and their profits. In fact, all Asian governments depended upon opium farms for major portions of their revenue.
The British East India Trading Company banned private cultivation and sale of opium. Their agents provided capital advances to producers, they determined the growing areas, and the opium was harvested and delivered to their agents. It was then auctioned in Calcutta to privateers, who would usually sell on to China. Profits were high, and monopoly power was openly wielded to thwart competition, and occasionally utilised to flood the market, such as during the 1830's. This approach maintained standards and quality, and ensured that the monopoly survived for over a century. Opium represented anything between 15% and 35% of colonial government revenues, including in Cochinchina.
In the latter part of the 19th century Britain, France and the Netherlands each controlled both island and mainland Southeast Asia lands, and each endeavoured to establish effective administrative structures which prioritised the centralisation and fiscal reform. They each wanted a tax system under the direct control of the colonial administrations, and which was sufficiently buoyant to provide enough revenues to fund current expenditures while at the same time providing a surplus for investment in infrastructure. Old practices of revenue farming, and the widespread use of corvée labour (i.e. unpaid, forced labour), were largely, if not entirely, eliminated over the last decades of the 19th and the early 20th century in favour of more "modern" revenue systems relying on trade taxes, on domestic excises and sales taxes and in some cases on corporate and individual income taxes. Corvée had been the only way for governments to find scarce labour for their projects, and revenue farms were a useful means for often rather weak indigenous governments to secure more money income, usually by appointing the commercially powerful Chinese as tax farmers. By the early 1900's, a very different view of the fiscal functions of the state was taking hold, a view based on the idea of a strong central state taking responsibility for both revenue raising and expenditures. At least some of the expenditures would be devoted to the provision of infrastructure which was increasingly demanded by private investors.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries Southeast Asia saw both a population growing at over 1% per annum, and a growing involvement in international trade. In the 1830's, exports from Southeast Asia comprised less than 10% of total exports from Asia, but by 1937 this had risen to 37%. In fact by 1937 the region accounted for about ⅓ of all exports from the tropical world. The growth of population facilitated export growth, by providing more labour, and export growth in turn facilitated the growth and diversification of government revenues. Not surprisingly, there was a significant relationship between export growth and revenue growth in all colonial territories, but the way export growth impacted on revenue growth varied across the region. Taxation of exports accounted for only a small proportion of total revenues in most colonies, with non-tax revenues accounted for a substantial part of total revenues. And this included revenues from government monopolies, including those on the production and sale of opium.
Taxing agricultural land was hit-and-miss in French Indochina because cadastral surveys were not very accurate, and export taxes were not widely used before 1940 except for tin. Excise duties on things like alcohol, tobacco, fuel, etc. represented over 30% of revenues in Vietnam, whereas both European and Chinese businesses resisted income taxes. In French Indochina, the Doumer reforms of the late 19th century were intended to centralise and modernise the revenue system, and to lay the groundwork for economic diversification into industry, mining and plantations. Following French post-revolutionary practice, indirect taxes were favoured over direct taxes. This was not popular with the indigenous populations, who preferred the older direct taxes. It seems probable that the net effect of the Doumer reforms was to add to the tax burden of many Vietnamese.
One of the most controversial issues in fiscal policy in most parts of South East Asia was the reliance on revenues from opium sales. The British, French and Dutch regimes were all, by the early 20th century, justifying their colonialism in terms of a 'civilising mission', bringing enlightened standards of government to the benighted populations of Asia. How could they justify deriving often substantial revenues from a narcotic whose sale and consumption was increasingly controlled, if not completely banned, by governments in the metropolitan countries? Some experts claimed that British rule in both Burma and Malaya was "supported by narco-colonialism on a colossal scale". The other colony where opium revenue was an important, if controversial, source of government revenue was French Indochina. In the first decade of the 20th century, gross receipts from the opium regie were around 25% of total revenues accruing to the general budget, although the net revenues were considerably lower. The regie was in effect a government monopoly which meant that the government had to bear the cost of buying and processing the opium. One estimate was that these costs amounted to around 30% of the gross revenues. Both gross and net receipts declined as a proportion of total revenues after 1910, and after 1913 revenues from all monopolies (salt and alcohol as well as opium) declined as a proportion of total revenues accruing to the central budget. In Vietnam revenues from the monopolies fell from around half of all revenues in 1913 to around 19% in 1940.
One reason why taxes on opium, and indeed other "sin taxes" including excises on alcohol and tobacco, however obnoxious to public opinion, were favoured by colonial governments, was that they were seen as a way of taxing the Chinese, who were considered more affluent than the indigenous populations, and were usually very reluctant to pay income tax, even in those colonies where it was levied. However it's also true that many among the indigenous populations in Southeast Asia consumed opium, alcohol and tobacco. In Indochina, it was estimated that the Chinese were only 22% of all opium smokers in Cochinchina and a much smaller percentage in other parts of Vietnam, although they were around 60% of all smokers in Cambodia.
The beginning of the end of the mercantilist opium systems came with the Anglo-Chinese Opium Agreements of 1907‒14. Britain, often portrayed as a reluctant protagonist in the international control system, in fact helped inaugurate it through these far-reaching bilateral agreements. From its peak in the 1870's, opium had been supplanted by domestic Chinese opium by 1900. While traditional historiography portrayed Britain and other imperial powers as pursuing naked economic self-interest in bucking reformist calls for international prohibitions, but the reality was that the European powers were at once conflicted and ambivalent about opium’s role within the economic systems and societies they managed, but ultimately reluctant to attempt grand experiments with social engineering, such as prohibition. Nevertheless, changing economic realities helped weaken the opposition to prohibitions. Transportation improvements reinforced the comparative attractiveness of producing bulkier and perishable commodities for global markets. Wheat, barley, sugar, tobacco and potatoes all pushed poppy out of fields. Cultivators fled en masse to other crops, never to return.
Howe does this affect our interest in Saigon-Cholon? Well, the Opium factory (bouillerie) in Cholon near Saigon was established in about 1874, and was the last factory of the craftsmen era (i.e. using manual labour). The raw opium arrived in the harbour of Saigon from Bengal and was immediately brought to the storehouse of the 'tjandoe' factory (tjandoe or pure opium as opposed to smoking opium 'madak'). Each chest held 40 opium balls. The balls needed were carried to the first section of the factory (bouillerie d’opium), in which four large stoves (fourneaux pour grandes bassines) were situated, each provided with two large kettles of 300 litres for opium water. The water was used for boiling the opium and later for peelings the balls to remove the écorces (opium bark), a product which was in high demand among poorer people.
The labourers started by cutting the balls in two and taking the opium out of them with wet hands. The peelings were put aside for later boiling, whilst the inner parts were first boiled in the large kettles. The opium content of 2½ balls was put in a large copper pan together with four litres of opium water and boiled on a charcoal fire until concentrated. After it was removed from the heat, stirring continued to prevent the substances from sticking. This stage took two hours, and then a new procedure was started. The pan was put upside down on a soft charcoal fire, whereupon the substance fell apart in small slices which were removed immediately. These black-brown "pancakes" (crêpes) were so crispy within a few minutes that they fell apart if touched. The pieces were gathered in other large copper pans, each containing the equivalent of five balls. Twelve litres of opium water were added, and after soaking for about 18 hours, the "pancakes" had disappeared.
This result was filtered twice after the substance was boiled on a hot charcoal fire. After 2½ hours it was beaten until it was cold. The final product was weighed and transported to the factory storage. In the store it was kept for four months in large, closed, 300 litre copper barrels, filled halfway so some fermentation could take place. After this period the tjandoe with a 9.15% morphine content was ready to be packed. This was done in flat square boxes, and the cover was fastened by a drop of solder.
If you look at the year 1885, the French Cochinchina imported 850 chests at an average price of 568 piasters per chest. After processing this produced an opium revenue of nearly 1.8 million piasters for tjandoe and about 54,000 piasters for the écorces. Taking a production costs of about 30%, thus still produced a net profit in excess of 40%. Later the Dutch developed a "machine age" opium factory which proved to be far more economical, with production cost slightly lower than 20%. And remembering that whilst production costs stayed more or less the same, sales figures shot through the roof from about 1905, peaking during 1920-1930, before slipping substantially before WW II.
Here is an interesting and very extensive article on the Saigon opium factory, and Historic Việt Nam has an interesting article on Cochinchina opium monopoly.
My wife's fathers military service
Paul, my wife's father was called up for military service before his marriage, and remained on call (conge sans solde) until 1954. He was later called up for training in 1934, again in 1938, and again in 1939. He was also called up to serve for short secondments in both Cambodia and Laos in the 1940-41.
Initially he was Chef de section d'Infanterie - section de Fusiliers Voltigeurs in the 11e Regiment d'Infanterie Coloniale. Now what is a "Fusiliers Voltigeurs"? Firstly, a "voltigeur" was not an acrobat. In Napoleonic times, they were marksmen in the light infantry that skirmished, i.e. help protect a battalion from the enemy. Their origin lies with hunters and scouts (éclaireurs) who would sit behind a rider, jump to ground and open fire, and this gradually evolved into a skirmisher. In the more modern context they were a hall-squad (6 men) that provided a "shock" (voltigeur) along with the other hall-squad (6 men) who provided the "fire" (fusilier). So the fusilier would shoot at the enemy, creating enough time for the voltigeur to vault out of the trenches, sprint across the gap, and assault the enemy in their trenches. For those passionate to know everything, check out "Instruction pour les Unités de Fisiliers-Volitgeurs" date 1939. Later Paul, was nominate "sergeant de reserve".
The family moved to Cholon
The next identifiable step in my wife's "virtual" history with Vietnam is when Paul and Marguerite, once married, moved to Cholon in the early 1930's. We know my wife's younger sister was born in the Hôpital Militaire Français Grall, and that the family was living at 15 Bd. Charles Thomson in Cholon. My wife remembers being told that both she and her older sister were also born in the same hospital, so we presume that 15 Bd. Charles Thomson was their principle family home since we have no records of them living elsewhere in Cholon. We do know that the family later had to move to Saigon for safety reasons, but we also know they were still in Cholon in December 1943.
Above we have a map of Cholon where we can see that 15 Bd. Charles Thomson is a major axis running right through the town, and in the below map we see that it was later renamed Hồng Bàng. Charles Antoine François Thomson (1845-1898) was governor of Cochinchina between 1882 and 1885, during which time the French increased their control over the region, including Cambodia. The Vietnamese government naturally replaced him, by renaming the road Hồng Bàng, after the legendary dynasty that ruled Vietnam from 2879 BC to 258 BC.
My wife remembers (being told) that she was born in the Hôpital Militaire Français Grall, as were her two sisters. The hospital dated from 1862, and in 1925 it took its name from Charles Grall (1851-1924), who was the first director of health of Indochina. Check out this article on the hospital going back to the 1870's. Above we have the main entrance, and below an aerial view, both dating form 1930. It is now a children's hospital called Bệnh viện Nhi đồng 2 and its address is now 14 Lý Tự Trọng. Again we seen the way the Vietnamese have tried to more than simple erase the past, they have replaced a military hospital with a children's hospital.
Already in 1931 Saigon and Cholon had become a single urban entity called "Saigon-Cholon". Even if it was still very rare for the French to live in the "Chinese" Cholon, life must have had its advantages. My wife still has fond memories of the house domestics, and in particular the nanny that would sleep at the foot of her bed, and the cook who slept next to the outdoor kitchen.
My wife also still speaks of a big garden, with monkeys living in the trees and playing with the childrens' swing, and the ever present risk of venomous snakes dropping out of the branches. There is no risk of that now, since it looks as if there are virtually no single houses with large gardens left on today's Hồng Bàng. Today this old boulevard is now a 4-lane highway dominated by shop-fronts and commercial premises.
As a final anecdote, my wife always remembers that her older sister was born blond with green eyes, and given that yellow was always a sign of wealth, prosperity and happiness, everyone wanted to touch her hair. We will lean at the end of the this webpage, that my wife's sister also had luck on her side.
When living abroad, in my humble opinion, the highs are a little higher, and the lows a little lower. And that must have been, perhaps even more so, in Vietnam in the years before WW II.
Below we have photograph of my wife's parents enjoying themselves in 1938 at Le Cercle Sportif Saïgonnais. My wife's father is "centre stage", and my wife's mother is standing behind him. As is usual the Vietnamese always managed to find an "appropriate" alternative name for their colonial heritage. The elite Cercle Sportif is now called The Labour Culture Palace, at 55B Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai.
This joy was tempered by that fact that my wife's younger sister died in Vietnam of cholera. During the colonial period, diseases accounted for more than 10% of all hospital cases, and cholera was top of the list. And childhood diseases at that time had a 35% mortality rate. For those who may have a deeper interest, checkout this video on cholera between 1890's and 1930's in Hanoi.
From what my wife remembers, 15 Bd. Charles Thomson was very near a church, which I am pretty sure must have been the Church of St. Joan of Arc (Nhà thờ Thánh nữ Jeanne d'Arc) at 116A Đường Hùng Vương, Phường 9, Quận 5, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh (or in English 116A Hung Vuong Street, Ward 9, District 5, Ho Chi Minh City). The church has Romanesque architecture style, and was built on a "grave field" or cemetery of overseas Chinese. It would appear that being in a more or less open area at the crossing of several roads has meant that it is now not considered totally safe and is often used as convenient parking spot, and more. It now has a fence and security doors as seen in the above photograph. In addition there is some controversy about the yellow colour of the church, with some people preferring the original white.
My wife also remembers going to school at the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat, now called Lê Quý Đôn High School (Trường Trung học Phổ thông Lê Quý Đôn) at 110 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai. The Wikipedia article tells us that it was originally named after Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat (1805-1873) who was a French politician who, amongst other things, organised an expedition to chart the navigability of the Mekong. Now the school is named after Lê Quý,
This article on Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat is far more readable and highlights how the school evolved to become one of the most prestigious in the region. It tells us that in addition to educating my wife, it also trained the Vietnamese revolutionary leader Trần Văn Giàu (1911-2010), the French novelist Marguerite Duras (1914-1996), the last South Vietnamese president General Dương Văn Minh (1916-2001), the King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia (1922-2012) and finally the historian Vương Hồng Sển (1926-1996). This article reminds us that it is still one of the oldest building in Saigon, and this article mentions Marguerite Duras and her novel l'Amant that described her affair when a student at the lycée. Here is a more general description of the Chasseloup-Laubat Street (now Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai) which still runs right through the middle of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
My wife remembers cycling back and forth to school (presumably with her older sister). It was about 4 km from their home in Cholon, but less than 2 km from her later address in Saigon. She distinctly remembers see prisoners of war working in the streets and on the railway and tramway tracks, and the kids would make a V-sign when the Japanese guards were not looking.
There was a prisoner of war camp in Saigon, Jean Eudal Street (may be Nguyễn Tất Thành), and 200 metres from the river and 600 meters from the canal, i.e. in the Saigon port area. One report mentioned that the camp was an old French Foreign Legion Barracks. Interned 1664 allied prisoners, 900 Dutch, 500 British, 209 Americans, 55 Australians (Indian troops were held elsewhere). See "Prisoner of War Camps in Areas Other Than the Four Principal Islands of Japan" (pages 60-63). In addition Tan Son Nhat Airport was built by the French in the 1930s, and during WW II, the Imperial Japanese Army used Tan Son Nhat as a transport base.
Historical context
Below is a summarised text on the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, which is followed by texts drawn from the Britannica on the conflict Vietnamese nationalists. I including it here more as background since it does not impact directly on the story about my wife. Her memories of that period were those of a young girl caught up in things she did not full understand.
From early 1940, Tokyo began pressuring French colonial administrators in Vietnam, demanding that Japanese soldiers be allowed into the country to secure the Chinese border. These requests were refused until 1940 when soldiers from Nazi Germany invaded France. Within a month, the French government had surrendered and signed an armistice with Berlin. The French colonial government in Vietnam had little option but to concede to Japanese demands. An agreement signed in June 1940 allowed Japanese troops to control the northern border between Vietnam and China. Another, signed in August, acknowledged Japan’s rights and interests in south-east Asia.
On September 20th 1940 the French governor-general, Jean Decoux, signed an agreement with Tokyo giving the Japanese access to Haiphong harbour and allowing the placement of up to 6,000 troops in northern Vietnam. But the Japanese, dissatisfied with this agreement, broke it the following day. By midnight on September 22nd 1940, the Japanese invasion of Vietnam was underway. Japanese forces took just a week to secure control of Vietnam. By October 1940, there were around 10,000 Japanese soldiers stationed there, mainly around the ports, airfields and important industrial centres.
For most of their occupation, the Japanese left the French colonial government in place, though its authority was greatly diminished. This tactic contradicted Tokyo’s policy of "Asia for Asians" but at the time, Japan did not have the resources for a full-scale occupation of Vietnam. Instead, they preferred to leave the French in charge and develop Vietnam as a client state (at no point did Japanese troop numbers in Vietnam exceed 35,000 men).
Between 1941 and 1945, French colonial authorities in Vietnam, led by Decoux, engaged in a policy of 'co-existence' with the Japanese. Decoux’s administration mirrored the Vichy regime that governed occupied France in collaboration with the Nazis. In May 1941, Decoux granted Japan 'most favoured nation' status, meaning the bulk of Vietnamese exports were allocated to Tokyo at low prices. Later, Japanese troops were given unrestricted access to Vietnam’s roads, rail network and ports. This allowed them to use Vietnam both as a thoroughfare for the conquest of Thailand and Burma, and a staging point for attacks further south.
The Vietnamese people had mixed feelings about this dual imperialism. Some welcomed the arrival of the Japanese. They believed that domination by an Asian colonial power was preferable to domination by Westerners. Two notable Vietnamese religious groups, Cao Dai and Hoa Hao, openly collaborated with the Japanese. Other Vietnamese considered the Japanese just another troupe of foreign imperialists, no different to the French. The Japanese made some effort to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, a policy that differed from their brutality and oppression in China. Propaganda suggested the Japanese were in Vietnam as "liberators" rather than conquerors. Japanese language courses were organised in large cities. Japanese films, literature and poetry were translated into local languages. The Vietnamese people were told how Japan’s military supremacy was slowly driving the white imperialists out of Asia. While some Vietnamese drew closer to the Japanese, most believed Japanese imperialism would be the same, or even worse, than that of the French.
The Japanese presence in Vietnam also attracted foreign attention, particularly from the United States. In 1940, America was not yet at war with Japan but it was still working to restrict Japanese expansion through Asia. The US also wanted to protect its imports of raw rubber, half of which came from Vietnam. At first, Washington backed the French colonial regime in Vietnam, hoping it would resist Japanese overtures. When Decoux and the French caved into Japanese demands, the US changed tack. The attack on Pearl Harbour and the US entry into the war in December 1941 changed things further. By 1943, President Roosevelt was floating the idea of Vietnamese independence. The war in the Asia-Pacific sharpened Washington’s interest in Indochina. The Americans opened a military station at Kunming in southern China, while American advisers and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agents supported both the Chinese Guomindang and Vietnamese resistance groups. The Americans also worked closely with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, who supplied the US military with information about Japanese troop numbers and movements. This was more a convenient working relationship than an alliance, but it gave Ho Chi Minh hope that Washington might support Vietnamese independence, once the war had ended.
By the start of 1945, the war was going poorly for Japan. Having surrendered the Philippines, the Japanese were in retreat across south-east Asia, relinquishing captured territory and incurring heavy losses. Tokyo had previously identified Vietnam as a fallback position for retreating Japanese troops because it could be more easily occupied, secured and defended. In March 1945, the Japanese occupation force, claiming French colonists were assisting the Allies, withdrew their support for the colonial regime. The French were removed from power in Vietnam. Every French colonial official or military officer was arrested and locked up, and all French soldiers were disarmed. The Japanese invited emperor Bao Dai to declare Vietnamese independence and handed him the reins of power, though both were only nominal.
Shutting down colonial authority in Indochina only benefited the Viet Minh, which flourished without pressure from French troops. Ho Chi Minh condemned the Japanese occupation and declared the Japanese his "number one enemy", but he resisted calls for a major Viet Minh campaign against them. Knowing the Japanese were in retreat and that a major Allied attack against them was imminent, He preferred to wait. By June 1945, Ho Chi Minh felt strong enough to establish a Viet Minh-controlled zone in north-western Vietnam. This region was remote and had no strategic significance to the Japanese, so they did not launch any major campaigns against it. Through the middle of 1945, the Viet Minh busied itself with organisation, propaganda and recruiting. Ho Chi Minh also had to deal with food shortages and famine, which were widespread in the North. The Viet Minh movement consolidated its hold in the North and began to spread into central Vietnam, gaining 100,000 new recruits. By the start of August 1945, the Japanese were on the verge of defeat and the resistance movement was stronger than ever. Viet Minh cadres began seizing control of Japanese-held villages and towns. In early August 1945, the US dropped atomic weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, attacks that would lead to the Japanese surrender.
After WW II negotiations between the French and Ho Chi Minh led to an agreement in March 1946 that appeared to promise a peaceful solution. Under the agreement France would recognise the Viet Minh government and give Vietnam the status of a free state within the French Union. French troops were to remain in Vietnam, but they would be withdrawn progressively over five years. For a period in early 1946 the French cooperated with Ho Chi Minh as he consolidated the Viet Minh’s dominance over other nationalist groups, in particular those politicians who were backed by the Chinese Nationalist Party.
Despite tactical cooperation between the French and the Viet Minh, their policies were irreconcilable, the French wanted to reestablish colonial rule, while Hanoi wanted total independence. French intentions were revealed in the decision of Georges-Thierry d’Argenlieu, the high commissioner for Indochina, to proclaim Cochinchina an autonomous republic in June 1946. Further negotiations did not resolve the basic differences between the French and the Viet Minh. In late November 1946 French naval vessels bombarded Haiphong, causing several thousand civilian casualties, the subsequent Viet Minh attempt to overwhelm French troops in Hanoi in December is generally considered to be the beginning of the First Indochina War.
Initially confident of victory, the French reunited Cochinchina with the rest of Vietnam in 1949, proclaiming the Associated State of Vietnam, and appointed the former emperor Bao Dai as chief of state. Most nationalists, however, denounced these manoeuvres, and leadership in the struggle for independence from the French remained with the Viet Minh. Meanwhile, the Viet Minh waged an increasingly successful guerrilla war, aided after 1949 by the new communist government of China. The United States, fearful of the spread of communism in Asia, sent large amounts of aid to the French. The French, however, were shaken by the fall of their garrison at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 and agreed to negotiate an end to the war at an international conference in Geneva.
In 1945, back in Paris, the authorities were still proud of their colonial domains, declaring that the France was a nation of 110 million inhabitants, by adding the 70 million inhabitants of their "possessions". But they were beginning to realise (finally) that the sovereignty of France was being contested, and that some "colonised peoples" aimed for complete independence. They knew that French Indochina was claiming more or less complete autonomy but many thought that they seemed "hardly capable of governing and perfecting themselves and they would no doubt quickly return to decadence if the interaction of the France disappeared".
Yet many still thought that "French Indochina is the most beautiful jewel of our Empire. The effort that the French have made there since sixty years, seconds by intelligent indigenous people and laborious is a prodigy and the results obtained have struck admiration of all foreigners who have visited this country between 1918 and 1940. It was French sovereignty that really made 1862 to 1897, date of the creation of Indochina, of heterogeneous countries and various peoples - Annamites, Cambodians, Laotians, Moïs - a solid whole with an area exceeding by one-third that of the France and currently populated by 23 million inhabitants, population which is increasing rapidly and which will probably equal that of France in a new cycle of sixty years".
This was a time to "sell" the successes of France. In less than fifty years the Cochinchina had increased by 1½ million tons its exports of rice. "She" could never have done this without the 2,000 km canals dug with French investment. Beautiful cities: Saigon, Cholon, Dalat, Phnow-Penh, Haiphong, Hanoi, were claimed to have a very French stamp, to which France had added 2,908 km of railways and 26,000 km of beautiful paved roads. Rubber plantations and the mining industry were seen as "dazzlingly brilliant demonstrations of French initiative". In Cochinchina and in Cambodia 127,000 hectares of rubber trees were "conquered from the jungle", and with rubber production reached 70,000 tons in 1939 it "sufficed for the complete supply of the metropolis in this basic necessity". The tea plantations in the mountains provided 2,000 tons of excellent tea exported to France, and 10,000 hectares were devoted to the cultivation of the coffee tree. Cambodia provides all the pepper France needed. In 1937 the mining deposits of Indochina were traded (export and import) for more than 4 billion French francs, including more than 2 billion with metropolitan France.
We should not ignore that in 1939, Franco-indigenous public education reached as far as primary and upper primary education, 646,700 children. Vocational education was offered in 32 schools and secondary education in 48 establishments. In three high schools (Saigon, Dalat, Hanoi) teaching was provided in French but there had also created a native baccalaureate. A University exists in Hanoi, including a school of medicine and pharmacy, a law school, a school of Fine Arts, a school of public works, and finally a school of agriculture and forestry. In 1939 there were 833 health units, 26 hospitals, 104 medical centres, 170 infirmaries, 196 dispensaries, 221 maternities, 11 leprosaria, 4 Pasteur Institutes. The fight against epidemic diseases such as smallpox, typhus, malaria, plague, and cholera was being won.
Many thought that the France still needed to integrate the Indochinese federation into the greater French Federation in the same way as Russia had integrated its associated socialite republics of Asia in to their great organisation I'.R.S.S., "which gave them victory and saved civilisation". Some respected academics argued for the need to recognise that Indochina should have quasi-autonomy, by making it a true second metropolis having its own economic unit, its own particular laws, its own languages, "with French only being offered to the elite". They argued that formerly it was the economy which prevailed over human needs, but that in the future French natives and Europeans must have exactly the same rights. They recognised that it was necessary to improve considerably the living conditions of the natives and especially of the mass of the people who, for the vast majority, were still undernourished, clothed "only in rags", and sheltered under "lamentable huts".
——
Indochina was a colony of exploitation and not of settlement. Albert Sarraut, Governor General from 1911 to 1914 and from 1916 to 1919, then Minister of the Colonies after 1920, made himself the herald of the development of regional resources. He drew up the equipment plan for the Peninsula, known as the "Sarraut plan" in 1921. The Banque d'Indochine - both a commercial bank, an investment bank and a financial company - founded in 1875, was closely associated with the economic development of the colony (13). In 1937, she was a stakeholder in almost all Indochinese economic enterprises. But large metropolitan financial and industrial firms, such as the Michelin company, also invested in Indochina (14). The flow of metropolitan investments mainly converged on mining, rice cultivation, rubber, tea and coffee plantations, as well as certain processing industries, such as cement works, textiles (in Nam Dinh and Haiphong), manufacturing tobacco, rice alcohol distilleries (choum). Thanks to the coal basin of Hongay, in Tonkin, - with its 30,000 workers and its vast terraces - Indochina occupied in 1939, the 2nd rank of Asian coal exporters (Japan and China). In Cochinchina, the surface of the rice fields of the Mekong delta was increased sixfold; by 1933, Indochina had become the world's second largest exporter of rice, which accounted for 60% of foreign trade earnings. The first large rubber plantations, a symbol of colonial success, appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, on the “red lands” of South Annam and North-East Cochinchina (120,000 hectares in 1940). Rubber, in 1939, accounted for more than a quarter of the value of the peninsula's total exports (15). Local craftsmanship, although in decline, was maintained, because the high cost of European products made them inaccessible to a population with a low standard of living and often undernourished (16).
Transportation and communication routes, essential to the expansion of the colonial economy, received special attention from the state. Saigon became a major port in the Far East, ranked 6th among French ports in 1937. The Paul Doumer Bridge - both a railway and a pedestrian bridge - inaugurated in 1902, was the only engineering structure on the Red River in Hanoi (17). To open southern China to French influence, the Yunnan (Kunming-Haiphong) railway was completed in 1910. From 1937, the Transindochinese linked Hanoi to Saigon (18). Similarly, tracks and roads have been opened. The "mandarin road", traced between Saigon and Hanoi in pre-colonial times, was renovated with a wide roadway of 6 meters without any transhipment, the last ferries being removed. Colonization created few new towns (Haîphong is an exception), but the old agglomerations, in particular Hanoi and Saigon, received modern equipment (19).
The health status of the population has been greatly improved. In 1878, vaccination campaigns began which later became massive and systematic. Smallpox and cholera receded, but malaria remained unconquered, despite the distribution of quinine and the sanitation of plantations and building sites. The foundation in 1891 of the Pasteur Institute in Saigon was imitated in Nha Trang, Hanoi and Phnom Penh, which reduced mortality. In 1902, the school (later), Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of Hanoi opened its doors and the medical network developed little by little in the peninsula: in 1930, there were 10,000 free hospital beds and hundreds rural dispensaries (20).
The education system put in place developed the study of French and the Vietnamese language (quoc-ngu). Primary and secondary education remained very insufficient; in 1939, Indochina had only 500,000 school children – out of a total population of 22.6 million – and more than 80% illiterate. In 1940, the group of higher or specialized education was estimated at 5,000 people. Colonization endowed the country with quality intellectual tools: let us mention, among others, the geographical, meteorological and geological services, and above all the French School of the Far East with remarkable studies on the civilizations of Indochina. The Fine Arts have restored many monuments, in particular the temples of Angkor (21).
Much has been done, much remains to be done. Such is the assessment usually presented by the colonial authority. In his book “Grandeurs et servitudes coloniales” (published in 1931), Albert Sarraut made himself the champion of French-style colonization: the work is exhilarating and the Republic must continue it. Moreover, in his correspondence, an artillery captain, serving on the General Staff in Saigon, presented the results of colonization in 1947 as follows: "First of all, it must be admitted that this country is prodigiously interesting, and that if France withdrew from there, it would be an irreparable loss in itself. It is varied, powerfully rich. The richness of the land is absolutely fabulous for a European… But what is especially noteworthy is the work of the French in eighty years of management. There are magnificent achievements from an industrial, tourist and habitat point of view, from a human and social, cultural and civilizing point of view… There is an incredible number of indigenous villages with theatre, dispensary, maternity, school, hospitals. The medical organization and that of education are very successful and represent a sum of considerable effort. Moreover, they (the settlers) allowed us to have a position of first choice in the Far East, which gives us the right to speak in the questions of the Pacific, where the future of the world is at stake as much, if not more than 'in Europe. They won us for the country an interesting place in a number of international markets such as rubber or rice. They have revolutionized the miserable life of this country by creating a gigantic work of roads, railways, works of art, port facilities, factories... All this has generally been the work of individual initiatives, because governmental organizations do not were not abused. » (22)
——
The Japanese coup of March 9, 1945 dealt a fatal blow to the French presence in Indochina by causing the elimination of the French administration and army; by destroying the administrative and social network patiently woven by several decades of colonization, entire areas of the country were delivered to anarchy. By ordering the reconquest of Indochina, General de Gaulle wanted to give back to France all the elements of its greatness lost by the defeat of 1940. The objectives of the reconquest were in total mismatch with the realities on the ground, just like the means implemented to achieve them. Originally, the French expeditionary force of 70,000 men was planned to liberate Indochina from the Japanese. But, on their arrival in October 1945, they then had to face, not the already defeated Japanese, but the Indochinese who had proclaimed their independence. Moreover, the international context was very unfavorable: Americans, Chinese and Japanese agreed to eliminate us from Indochina.
The family moved to Saigon
Sometime between December 1943 and the end of WW II the family was obliged to move to Saigon for their own safety, and they were welcomed by their friends, the family Carlier.
My wife remembers that at the end of the war, different families received POW's to help them recover. She remembers her host family, the Carlier, receiving individual POW's for a short periods, and she still remembers as a youngster helping to feed Australians and Dutch who survived but were very thin and weak.
Once in Saigon, the family clearly decided not to return to Cholon. Their new address was 12 rue Paulin Vial in Saigon (middle-upper box), now called Phan Liêm, Đa Kao, Quận 1, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh.
Paulin Vial was résident général of French Indochina between 1886-1887. A résident général was the official representative of a colonial power practicing indirect rule. Despite the role being a political adviser seconded to a local sovereign, the reality often made them the real head of state.
Despite Paris being "still proud of their colonial domains", in the period 1938 to 1944 Vietnam, like many other Southeast Asian countries, was seeing one of modern history's deepest macroeconomic crisis. Real per capital income fell by nearly 50%. Japan as an occupier only used a fraction of the rice, rubber, tin and sugar produced, and at the same time it monopolised local transport (add to that the bombing of bridges, rail lines, etc. by the Allies). Vietnam found itself a net importer of textiles, shoes, sandals, matches, paper, batteries, light bulbs, medicines, etc. And in Saigon-Cholon the population rose from 256,000 in 1936 to 500,000 in 1945 (by 1949 it would be 1.2 million). The net result would be the Vietnamese famine from October 1944.
The cost of living increased substantially in the period 1941-43, even for the French living in Indochina, but above all it hit the local working population the hardest. For them the cost of living rose by a factor of four from 1939 to 1943, with the Japanese stockpiling matches, sugar, soap, cigarettes, chickens, etc. and then selling them locally at excessive prices. From 1942 butchers were closing at least one day per week, and there were no chickens or fish for one-two days per week. The local government forced merchants to indicate their stocks of essentials such a paper, alcohol, etc., and they tried to limit price increases (but were not very successful). Also in 1942 the local government had to increased wages of the military by 42% and civil servants by 13%. Rents increased by 250% in the first 6 months of 1941, in part because the Japanese were commandeering buildings. After 1944 rationing was introduced for milk, bread, rice, medicines, etc. Everyone was complaining, the French were accusing locals for preferring the Japanese, locals were accusing the military because they had a right to more rations, and the French civil servants were complaining because they had nothing but their wages to live on. In a report from 1944 the lowly civil servant have become the new poor of Indochina, whereas the once modestly Indochinese artisans were the new rich. A more realistic analysis noted that many complaints were more about the loss of past privileges, and others also noted that conditions in occupied France were far worse.
The French in Indochina were still better paid than the local community, but there were now obliged to present a "Déclaration de non-appartenance" to les francs-maçons, and denouncing a Gaullist was worth 10 to 200 piastres, and even more if it involved someone trying to cross the Chinese boarder to join the movement Gaullist. The press was obliged to print the declarations of Pétain, and his bust or photograph was an obligation in every shop. French civil servants that were non coopératif were mutated to Hanoi. The Vichy ideology was intense and oppressive, and the French anti-Jewish law was also introduced in Indochina in early 1942. Evidently all would change with the fall of the Vichy regime, Pétains' busts disappeared, and Radio-Saigon started to qualify the Germans as the enemy.
So it's not surprising that sometime after December 1943, despite being highly integrated into the local environment in Cholon, the family felt increasingly unsafe, and moved to Saigon.
https://books.google.es/books?id=DZg6AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA57-PA19&lpg=RA57-PA19&dq=CIE+DES+EAUX+ET+D’ÉLECTRICITÉ+DE+L’INDOCHINE&source=bl&ots=oSHKqeLlt6&sig=ACfU3U33uCqIHtagJPzYuDYNKGv3O0kbuw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjm-ruZieP2AhVHJBoKHU4lBPUQ6AF6BAgZEAM#v=onepage&q=CIE%20DES%20EAUX%20ET%20D’ÉLECTRICITÉ%20DE%20L’INDOCHINE&f=false
The only documents we have concerning the work of my wife's father, Paul, concerns the period 1942-1949.
In 1942 he worked for the service techniques de la Ville de Saigon, as Contrôleur du Service des Eaux. The Service des eaux at assainissement de la Cochinchine was created in 1931 with the task to monitor and control existing facilities, study the construction of new facilities, develop water purification, and study projects for deep catchments. I'm guessing that as a civil servant he was responsible for controlling water distribution and sanitation, so both the provision of water and the treatment of wastewater, presumably by service companies such as Compagnie des Eaux et d'Electricité de l'Indochine.
So lets' look at the water situation in both Cholon and Saigon. The common feature was that both were conditioned by the rise and fall of the tide (more or less 2 metres), and the water in the river was still salty. The countryside was flat and both Cholon and Saigon were (and still are) only a metre or two above the level of the river and the sea. The general approach was that both had a central pumping station connected to wells both within the city limit and outside. Each had large cistern at the pumping station and water was pumped into sheet-iron reservoirs set at about 20 metres above sea level. Distribution was then by gravity. Basically customers had to pay for the installation and maintenance of their connection, as well as for the water consumed according to a meter. The only difference between Cholon and Saigon, was that Saigon had more wells and reservoirs. According to a report for 1915, in neither case was the water filtered. The water from the wells passed through a layer of sand at the bottom of the well before entering the network, so the water was unsafe unless boiled. M wife confirmed this.
In fact a different report concluded that "The water of the Saigon river is obviously unfit for consumption, in its raw state. To become drinkable, it must be clarified, filtered and sterilised, however, after this treatment, it would remain of mediocre quality. This water, like all the waters of the other rivers of Cochin China, is, in fact, endowed with a corrosive action due to its acid reaction and has no nutritive power because of its lack of mineral salts".
In 1923 one author noted that it was too expensive to hide reinforced concrete, or the skeleton of a metal frame, "under the rich clothes of cut stone, the draperies of mouldings and astragals", and that people had to accept hideous reservoirs which were popping up almost everywhere, "like gigantic mushrooms and which, despite all my efforts to try to hide their natural ugliness a little, always look like big toads perched on stilts".
This same author was able to describe an example of one installation in Saigon. The hydrostatic well was 2.80 metres inside diameter and 20 metres deep, made with masonry rings resting on a cast iron wheel. The filter basin was a huge vaulted underground room of 120 metres long by 12 metres wide and 9.50 metres high, divided in the middle by the hydrostatic well. The walls were made of pillars supporting the vault and dry stone walls down to the ground. The floor was about 12 metres below the roadway. The pillars supporting the vault were connected at about 4 metres in height by "arched spacers form a stop against the thrust of the earth". This room was accessed by two wells located on either side of the hydrostatic well, and whose covers were surmounted by two small kiosks.
The water tower was a sheet metal tank of 100 cubic metres supported at 20 metres height by eight masonry pillars constituting an octagonal tower, rising above a base forming a pump room. The cover was a kind of Chinese hat in tiles, on a wooden frame surrounded by a canopy also in wood. A revolving metal staircase, located in the centre of the tower, provides access to the cellar.
Both networks were run by Compagnie des Eaux et d'Electricité de l'Indochine, a French company based in Paris, who in 1900 had taken over the three principle concessions in Indochina (water in Cholon and Saigon, and water and electricity in Pnom-Penh). They had then taken over the electricity concession in Cholon in 1909, and had all bought the electricity concession from Societé d'Electricité de Saigon. They then constantly renewed the concussion, with increased tariffs. However, the installations belonged to the cities, so for example, it was Saigon that had to drill and equip new wells, etc.
In 1932 Saigon-Cholon approved a new concession for Compagnie des Eaux et d'Electricité de l'Indochine for 35 years. This covered the distribution of electricity, including for lighting and ventilation, in the cities of Saigon and Cholon. Under the terms of this contract, the Compagnie bought the electricity plant from the city of Cholon, which was placed outside the concession, thus allowing the Compagnie to produce or acquire energy as it saw fit (naturally it had already built a new plant). In addition they agreed to gradually transform the central part of the city of Saigon to alternating current. Its interesting to see the extent of the concessions accorded to Compagnie des Eaux et d'Electricité de l'Indochine, for example, the concession for water and electricity in Saigon-Cholon and Pnom-Penh was extended to 1967, already in 1952. For 1954 the Compagnie declared a net profit in excess of 1 billion French Francs. In 1958 the electrical installations of the Compagnie were sold to the son of the reigning monarch of Cambodia, remembering that the Compagnie was already a major distributor of electricity in that country.
It must be said that an analysis performed in 1937 showed that the price of electricity in France, even in the largest cities, whose consumption cannot be compared to that of Hanoi, was generally more expensive. The same analysis showed that electricity was also less expensive in Hanoi than in Alger, Dakar, and Fort de France.
It was interesting to note that the Compagnie was legally obliged from 1st January 1937 to introduce an 8-hour day, and from 1st January 1938, paid holidays.
In May 1949 my wife's father became Contrôleur hors classe des Service Technique de la Region Saigon-Cholon, and Contrôleur Principal hors classe des Service Regionaux.
Contrôleur hors classe
Existed contrôleur principal 2e classe
contrôleur principal 1re classe
contrôleur 4e, 3e, 2e, 1re classe
Commis de 3e, 2e, 1re classe
Administrateur 5e, 4e, 3e, 2e, 1re classe
Inspecteur 4e classe
Surveillant 2e
Surveillant principal hors classe
I think it must have become evident in the years following WW II that French nationals living in Vietnam would have to start considering how best to return to France. I would have thought the massacre of dozens of French and French-Vietnamese men, women and children on 24-25 September 1945 and the subsequent fighting, and later the Battle in Hanoi in December 1946, were sufficient to convince anyone that it was time to leave.
Those final years were certain not all negative. My wife continued her schooling, and become a passionate netball player (she would end up finishing her schooling and taking her baccalauréat back in France). My wife's sister would marry in Saigon. But by late 1950 the entire family had moved back to France.
The sinking of the MS Georges Phillippar
I mentioned earlier that my wife's older sister had had a lucky escape, but what could that be? My wife was not even a glimmer of a thought in the minds of her parents, however her older sister was a very real bouncing baby.
In 1932 the family were travelling back to France on the MS Georges Philippar, and brand new ocean liner. An ocean liner that was sold as being the best in safety and luxury fittings, and as unsinkable as the … Titanic.
The ship caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Aden. My wife's parents were (I think) enjoying a late night, when the fire alarms went off. They were more or less pushed into a lifeboat, and fortunately (so the story goes), my future wife's little sister was passed through a porthole. In any case all three were picked up and landed safe and sound.
My wife's maternal grandparents, had retired, and were also taking their last trip back to France. They also survived, but their entire collection of (uninsured) possessions, etc. were lost.
References
There are a number of websites that were extremely valuable, namely:-
There is a website called Les entreprises coloniales françaises which has a section on Indochine with a massive collection of documents covering almost every imaginable subject under the sun, e.g. Guide Historique des Rues de Saigon, Société Française des Distilleries de l'Indochine, and the Port de Commerce de Saigon.
There is a Flickr maps collection for Saigon-Cholon which proved to be very useful in find roads, and working our what the might be called today.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/13476480@N07/albums/72157638432452975/
Journal d'Indochine 1959-1951 - a photograph collection of gendarme Bernard Crombèke
And then there were documents that I found interesting:-
Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954)
In the Year of the Tiger: the War for Cochinchina, 1945-1951
CIA and the Generals - Covert support to Military Government in South Vietnam
Impossible Indochina - Obstacles, Problems, and Failures of French Colonial Exploration in Southeast Asia (1862-1914)
The Lessons of the Vietnam War
Vietnam - a country study
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940–1946_in_French_Indochina
http://saigon-vietnam.fr/saigon_en7.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hồng_Bàng_dynasty
Dai Lo Hong Bang district 5
https://www.flickr.com/photos/13476480@N07/11299052123/in/album-72157638432452975/
Dai Lo Hong Bang district 5
Search on images for "Direction du Port de Commerce saigon"
https://saigoneer.com/saigon-heritage/5414-date-with-the-wrecking-ball-the-customs-directorate-building
http://saigon-vietnam.fr/saigon_en1.php
http://saigon-vietnam.fr/port-saigon_en.php
Le Cercle Sportif est le lieu ou se montrer pour le Tout-Saïgon colonial. Il est le lieu ou il faut être vu, ou se retrouvent les ambassadeurs, les industriels, les mondains autour de la seule piscine de la ville a l’époque.
(1954), May Bodard : “La piscine de Saigon est très belle. Toutes les belles filles de la ville s’y retrouvent à partir de 11 heures. Les hommes arrivent à partir de midi pour les regarder. Chacun regagne sont domicile à 1 heure avec sa maîtresse ou seul suivant les cas. Cette piscine appartient à un “cercle sportif” ou il n’est pas chic de ne pas en faire partie“.
Le cercle sportif a été édifié sur des terrains qui faisaient partie à l’origine du vaste domaine du Palais du Gouverneur. Le terrain a été offert à la ville en 1869, puis donné à diverses sociétés : cercle cycliste, cercle sportif, loge maçonnique, le philharmonique … Le cercle sportif est très sélect tandis que la boule gauloise l’était beaucoup moins. Les coloniaux se retrouvent entre eux, à travers une multitudes de sociétés dont le niveau social conditionne l’entrée.
La piscine fut aussi une révélation pour les coloniaux : jusque là contraints par le port du casque en liège pour se protéger des rayons du soleil, l’accès à la piscine les fait découvrir les joies de la tête nue, finalement sans dommage. C’est une véritable révolution qui va ainsi s’opérer en quelques années dans la belle colonie : l’abandon généralisé du sacro saint casque.
En 1925, François de Tessan écrivait (in “Dans l’Asie qui s’éveille”) : “Les Français ne sont pas les seuls à d’adonner à ce sport, voici que les indigènes les imitent. Eux aussi jouent au ballon. Leurs leaders préconisent l’athlétisme rationnel pour fortifier la race, et le lieutenant de vaisseau Hébert a fait des adeptes à Saigon. La culture physique sous toutes ses formes y est à la mode.”
La piscine fut inaugurée en 1933, elle a très fréquentée par les français puis par les américains (dont l’Ambassadeur des Etats-Unis M. Henry Cabot Lodge dans les années 60).
Quatre ou cinq bals avaient lieu chaque année (le premier fut donné le 28 février 1920) à propos du passage d’équipes sportives ; deux fêtes sont données au bord de la piscine ; le grand bal de la fin février, sur les courts d’un plancher glissant, constitue l’une des mondanités les plus savourées de la “gentry saigonnaise”.
http://saigon-vietnam.fr/cercle-sportif_en.php
Here we have my wife's parents at Le Grand Bal of the Le Cercle Sportif Saïgonnai (usually held near the end of February). It is now called The Labour Culture Palace at 55B Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai.
Saigoneer has a webpage on Saigon's famous streets and squares
Part One, Part Two,
Trần Hưng Đạo Boulevard and the route Haute and route Basse between Saigon and Cholon
Thái Văn Lung (rue Pasteur)
Hai Bà Trưng (rue Impériale)
Lê Duản (Boulevard Norodom)
Tôn Thất Thiệp (rue de l'Église)
Quách Thị Trang (Place du Marché and from 1916 Place Eugène-Cuniac)
Hùng King Temple at 2 Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm (Temple du Souvenir Annamite)
https://saigoneer.com/saigon-heritage?start=240
Saigons Canals
Saigon’s Racetracks
Notre-Dame Cathedral
Commissariat central de Police
Pictures of Cho Lon
Pictures of Saigon
Old Saigon
Quach Dam: The Man Who Shaped Modern Cho Lon, Part 1 Part 2
Opera House
Tân Định Church in 1876
Foyer du Soldat et du Marin
Saigon 1945
Saigon canals + canals
Saigon market
Cholon Opium Den
Cholon Streetcars
Saigons opium refinery
Saigon before WW II
Go Vap in 1930
Saigon And Cho Lon From 1866
Saigon Street Vendors
Saigon streetcars
Carriages in Saigon
Oldest Known Photos Of Saigon
Saigoneer has a webpage on the waterways of Saigon and Cholon (Part 1, Part 2)
Saigoneer has a webpage with old postcards of the streets of Cholon
Saigoneer has a webpage on the Ong Lanh bridge in Saigon
Saigoneer has a webpage on the Hôtel des Amiraux-Gouverneurs in Saigon (from 1862)
Saigoneer has a webpage on Saigon's Canal de Centure (from 1862)
Saigoneer has a webpage on the École de Sainte-Enfance in 1864
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon in 1866 by Émile Gsell
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon in 1867
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon in 1860's
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Cercle des Officiers in 1876 and look at https://saigoneer.com/saigon-heritage/1535-old-saigon-building-of-the-week-cercle-des-officiers-building
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon Cathedral (1877-89)
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon's Tramway (from 1881)
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon–Mỹ Tho railway line (1885)
Saigon 1885
Saigon 1930
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Hôtel and Café de la Musique in the mid-1880's
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon and Hanoi in 1890
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Société d’Électricité de Saigon from 1896
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Grand-Théâtre de Saigon in 1900
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon in 1902
Saigoneer has a webpage on Saigon's Pont Tournant (1902-03)
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon in 1904
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Huyen Sy Church in Saigon (built 1902-1905)
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Casino de Saigon in 1910
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Vietnam Railways Building in 1915
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon in 1920
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of the visit of Marshal Joffre to Saigon in 1921
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Cercle Sportif Saigonnais (from 1925) look also at https://saigoneer.com/saigon-heritage/2311-old-saigon-building-of-the-week-the-former-cercle-sportif-saigonnais
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Hôpital Grall (now Children’s Hospital 2 (Bệnh viện Nhi đồng 2) at 14 Lý Tự Trọng)
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Bến Thành Market in the 1920's
Saigoneer has a webpage with aerial photographs of Saigon in 1920's
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Cholon's first post office in the 1920's
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of interior of the Norodom Palace in the 1920's
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Lycée Pétrus Ky in Saigon (1927-1945)
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon in 1929
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of the Grand-Hôtel de Saigon in 1930
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Ernst Thälmann Secondary School (from 1931)
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Bến Thành Market in Saigon in 1938
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon in 1938-39
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Pont Tripode in 1941
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of the Japanese Surrender (1945)
Saigoneer has a webpage with photographs of Saigon in 1948
Historic Vietnam
Saigoneer
Saigon Modernist
Vietnamnet (in Vietnamese)
Colonial Cholon and its 'Missing' Metisses (1859-1919)
Cholon’s urban evolution, 1879–1930: State, Locals, and Trans-locals
https://www.entreprises-coloniales.fr/inde-et-indochine.html
https://www.entreprises-coloniales.fr/inde-et-indochine.html
Flickr maps https://www.flickr.com/photos/13476480@N07/albums/72157638432452975/