(Philip Taylor) (PDF 3.1MB) - ANU

INDIGENIZING COLONIAL MODERNITY IN NAM EO
Vietnamese who, arriving only 300--400 years ago, were the most recent
immigrants to the ancient region of Na m B¢, in two ways. First:
... the Vietnamese of Nam BQ, the terminal point of Vietnam, assimilated the
experience of millennia of generations of Vietnamese in opening up the land
in the south with that of the local communities here since long ag0 93
Second, the complex and dynamic society created by the Vietnamese
evoked, somewhat more poetically, the experience of Phu Nam, the highest
achievement of the D6ng Nai people:
Here, [the Vietnamese] quickly transformed the Mekong plain into a multiformed
agricultural area, linked with trade activity beyond the region. This
agriculture was marked by the synchronous development of wet rice,
orchards, forestry, fisheries in conditions of a rich, multi-formed natural
environment. Here we can see it is as if the experience of Phu Nam was reestablished
... 94
Dim was somewhat hesitant to stress the factors of continuity linking the
achievements of previous peoples settling the Na m B¢ region ("D6ng Nai,"
Cham, Cambodian) to those of their successors, the Vietnamese. Indeed, his
few allusive references to this continuity were already quite surprising, the
prevailing line on Mekong delta settlement history being that by the time the
first Vietnamese settlers arrived there, the whole region (including contemporary
H6 Chi Minh City) had long reverted to wilderness (hoangphe) 95 Such
a history writing convention was blind to the presence of Khmers (and
others) in the Nam B¢ region and fell silent on the Nguyn Lords' political
and military actions that neutralized the Khmer state's control over the eastern
third of their Kingdom. In contemporary Party histories, references to the
119
91 Ibid., p.303.
92 Ibid.
93 An example of this historiographic
convention can be found in Triln van GiilU's
(987) contribution to a 1987 three-volume
work on H6 Chi Minh City. GiilU wrote that
Vietnamese settlers in the region now
covered by H6 Chi Minh city had to contend
with tigers, and that the land in which they
had settled was a wilderness (ddt haang):
"LuCie Slt thanh ph6 H6 Chi Minh" [History
ofH6 Chi Minh City], in Triin Van Giau et al.,
eds, Dfa chi thanh pM H 6 Chi Minh [H6 Chi
Minh City monograph] (H6 Chi Minh City:
H6 Chi Minh City Publishing House, 1987),
p.236.0ne of the notable exceptions is Phan
Quang, Viet nt: xu dan trang 1558-1 777
cu¢C Nam Tifn ClKl dan t¢C Viqt Nam [History
of the Inner Region 1558-1777: the southward
advance of the Vietnamese people]
(Saigon: Nha Sach Khai Tri, 1967).
Figure 9
Cham towers at Phan Rang