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‘Society’ and Struggle in the Early Twentieth Century: The Vietnamese neologistic project and French colonialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2014

GEORGE DUTTON
GEORGE DUTTON*
Affiliation:
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Vietnamese were confronted with the harsh realities of French colonialism, while simultaneously engaging with a flood of new concepts and the language that came with them. Among these concepts was that of ‘society’, whose import was enhanced by its linkages with the discourse of social Darwinism. This article explores the Vietnamese neologistic project of the early twentieth century through a close examination of the ways in which the concept and labels for ‘society’ were brought in and understood. I argue that the arrival of ‘society’ in conjunction with social Darwinism profoundly shaped the Vietnamese understanding of the term, implicating it in a notion of struggle and contestation. By illustrating the introduction of ‘society’ through early modernist school textbooks I suggest the ways in which Vietnamese conceptualized it as they embarked on their own struggle with the threats posed by colonialism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 1994 - 2021
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Luân Lý Giáo Khoa (Tân Đính) (Manual for Teaching Morals, Revised Edition), reprinted in Văn Thơ Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục (Literature of the Tonkin Free School) (1997), Nhà Xuất Bản Văn Hóa, Hà Nội, p. 38. Originally published in 1907–1908.

2 This process, particularly as it related to Vietnam is discussed in numerous sources, for example, DeFrancis, John (1977), Colonialism and Language Policy in Viet Nam, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, pp. 206–212Google Scholar; Sinh, Vinh (2001), Việt Nam và Nhật Bản Giao Lưu Văn Hóa (Vietnam and Japan: Currents of Culture), Nhà Xuất Bản Văn Nghệ, Thành Phõ Hồ Chí Minh, pp. 173–181Google Scholar; Woodside, Alexander (1976), Community and Revolution in Vietnam, Houghton-Mifflin Publishers, Boston, pp. 54–55Google Scholar; Marr, David (1981), Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, p. 146ffGoogle Scholar.

3 The Vietnamese were, of course, hardly alone in this, it being an approach shared across the colonized and semi-colonized parts of Asia, east to west, and beyond.

4 To these abstract concepts could also be added the huge range of newly developed European scientific discourses—from Darwinian concepts of evolution to the principles of flight and Einstein's theories of relativity—that were also arriving from the West.

5 Indeed, it was very common to find newspaper and journal articles with extensive glossaries explaining the new vocabulary, and quite often including French equivalents.

6 Liu, Lydia (1995), Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity in China, 1900–1937, Stanford University Press, Stanford, p. 20Google Scholar.

7 Cited in DeFrancis, Colonialism and Language, p. 142.

8 T. Chi (1919), ‘Chữ Pháp Có Dùng Làm Quốc-Văn An-Nam Được Không? [Can French Be Used as the National Language of An-nam?]’, Nam Phong, Vol. 22, p. 283; Dương Quang Hàm (1919), ‘Bàn Về Tiếng Việt [Speaking of the Vietnamese Language]’, Nam Phong, Vol. 22, pp. 287–297; Dương Quang Hàm (1993; reprint of 1940 original), Việt Nam Văn Học Sử Yếu (The Essential History of Vietnamese Literature), Nhà Xuất Bản Tổng Hợp Đồng Tháp, Tiền Giang, p. 421.

9 V. C. Nghi (1922), ‘Tiếng An-Nam Có Nghèo Không [Is Vietnamese a Poor Language]?’, Nam Phong, May 1922, pp. 349–357.

10 David Marr has touched on this in Marr, David (1971), Vietnamese Anticolonialism, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, pp. 152–153, 167, 172, 253Google Scholar.

11 T. Chi, ‘Chữ Pháp’, pp. 279–280.

12 Quốc Dân Độc Bản (Volume to Be Read by the Nation's People), reprinted in Văn Thơ Đông Kinh, p. 57.

13 Discussions along these lines can be found in Hàm, ‘Bàn Về Tiếng Việt’, pp. 287–297; Hàm, Việt Nam Văn Học, p. 421.

14 Phan Khoi, quoted in Marr, David (1981), ‘Vietnamese Language Revolution’ in Gangwu, Wang, Guerrero, Milagros, and Marr, David (eds) (1981), Society and the Writer: Essays on Literature in Modern Asia, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, p. 24Google Scholar.

15 Marr, Tradition on Trial, p. 168.

16 Marr, Tradition on Trial, p. 158.

17 Cited in McHale, Shawn (2004), Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the Making of Modern Vietnam, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, p. 111Google Scholar.

18 The issue of orthography is taken up briefly in DeFrancis, Colonialism and Language, pp. 209–211; see also a 1922 appeal to writers for the journal Nam Phong urging them to use particular orthographic forms in their references, especially for foreign names, ‘Lời kính-cáo của toà biên-tập tạp-chí Nam Phong [A Polite Request from the Editorial Offices of the Journal Nam Phong]’, Nam Phong, p. 357.

19 The process of word-creation in Vietnam during the first several decades of the twentieth century is itself worthy of much closer attention. Some elements of the debates are touched on in DeFrancis, Colonialism and Language, pp. 211ff, and Marr, Tradition on Trial, pp. 168–175.

20 I have not been able to establish precisely when Amane coined the term, although it was certainly after his return from Holland in 1865, and probably some time in the later 1870s. For more on Amane, see the entry for him in Iwao, S. (1978), Biographical Dictionary of Japanese History, Burton Watson (trans.), Kodansha International, Tokyo, pp. 426–427Google Scholar.

21 Ký, T. V. (1884), Petite Dictionnaire Français-Annamite, Imprimerie de la Mission, Sài Gòn, p. 1075Google Scholar.

22 Although the combined term ‘xã hội’ was a new one, the two component parts already had distinct meanings in the Vietnamese context. ‘Xã’ was a term that described a community of people, one that, Của's 1895 dictionary noted, contained more than 200 individuals (suggesting that it already had a concrete administrative meaning). ‘Hội’ stood in its narrow sense for a grouping of people for a particular social, economic, or educational purpose. By association, the neologism was then rather straightforward: a collective grouping not of people, but of villages, which by extension could be conceptualized as a describing a supra-village organization.

23 Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, pp. 98–100; also DeFrancis, Colonialism and Language, p. 160. What is clear is that by 1907 the term appeared in the earliest modern Vietnamese school textbooks. Over time, the concept of‘society’ was joined by a broad range of related concepts and ideologies, so that by the time Đào Duy Anh published his Hán Việt Tự Điển (Chinese-Vietnamese Dictionary) in 1932, to the base xã hội had already been added 20 compounds, ranging from ‘social reformism’ and ‘socialism’ to ‘social sciences’ and ‘sociology’.

24 Woodside, Community and Revolution, p. 54.

25 See, for example, Phan Bội Châu's 1913 announcement of the founding of the Việt Nam Quang Phục Quân, in Phan Bội Châu Toàn Tập (Complete Writings of Phan Bội Châu) (2000), Nhà Xuất Bản Thuận Hóa, Hà Nội, Vol. 3, p. 397; and also Phan Châu Trinh's use of the terms in his essay ‘A New Vietnam Following the Franco-Vietnamese Alliance’ [1910–1911] in Vinh Sinh (2009), Phan Châu Trinh and His Political Writings, Cornell Southeast Asia Press, Ithaca, New York, 2009, p. 57.

26 Quốc Dân Đọc Bản, p. 52.

27 ‘Việt Nam Quốc Sử Khảo’ (1909) in Phan Bội Châu Toàn Tập, Vol. 3, p. 41.

28 Vien, Nguyen Khac (1987), Vietnam: A Long History, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Hanoi, pp. 186–187Google Scholar; Brocheux, Pierre and Hémery, Daniel (2009), Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, p. 291Google Scholar.

29 Pusey, James R. (1983), China and Charles Darwin, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Raymond Williams traces the development and usage of the term in Europe and does not identify an explicit link between ‘society’ and struggle or contestation in this usage. Williams, Raymond (1985), Keywords, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 291–295Google Scholar.

31 Văn Minh Tân Hộc Sách (New Textbook for the Study of Civilization). Originally published in 1904, and reprinted in Tổng Tập Văn Học Việt Nam (Anthology of Vietnamese Literature) (2000), Nhà Xuất Bản Khoa Học Xã Hội, Hà Nội, Vol. 19, p. 370.

32 Masaya, Shiraishi (1990), ‘Phan Bội Châu in Japan’, Vietnam Forum, Vol. 13, pp. 96–97Google Scholar.

33 Phan Bội Châu (nd), Việt Nam Vong Quốc Sử (History of the Loss of the Nation of Vietnam) reprint: Xuân Thu, Houston, Texas, p. 23–24; for more on Phan Bội Châu as a social Darwinist, see Masaya, ‘Phan Bội Châu’, pp. 97–101.

34 Quoted in Masaya, ‘Phan Bội Châu’, p. 101.

35 Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, p. 156.

36 A detailed examination of the school's origins, agenda, and impact can be found in Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, pp. 156–184

37 Nguyen Q. Thắng (1993), Nhân Vật Lịch Sử Việt Nam (Vietnamese Historical Figures), Nhà Xuất Bản Văn Học, Huế, p. 122.

38 ‘Strong people make a country strong’, Quốc Dân Độc Bản, p. 57.

39 Quốc Dân Độc Bản, p. 47.

40 Spencer, Herbert (1896), The Principles of Sociology, Vols 1–2, D. Appleton and Company, New York, p. 449Google Scholar.

41 Ibid, p. 47.

42 Ibid, p. 60.

43 Quốc Dân Độc Bản, p. 38.

44 Quốc Dân Độc Bản, p. 51.

45 Luân Lý Giáo Khoa (Tân Đính), p. 34.

46 Quốc Dân Độc Bản, p. 63.

47 Quốc Dân Độc Bản, p. 57.

48 Marr indicates that these philosophical underpinnings were somewhat more complex than I suggest here, though the general notion of seeking to achieve harmony and to avoid at least an excess of conflict seems to hold. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition, pp. 290–292.

49 Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, p. 165.

50 Quốc Dân Độc Bản, p. 53.

51 Ibid, p. 61.

52 For example, the Huế newspaper, Tiếng Dân (Voice of the People) ran a multipart series on Darwin's theories of evolution which focused heavily on their social implications. ‘Đác-Vanh và Tiến Hóa [Darwin and Progress]’, Tiếng Dân, 6 March–3 April 1929.

53 Châu, Phan Bội (1907), ‘Đề Tỉnh Quốc Dân Hồn [Setting Forth a Consciousness of a National Soul]’ in Phan Bội Châu Toàn Tập, Vol. 3, p. 347Google Scholar.

54 Quốc Dân Độc Bản, p. 49.

55 Ibid, p. 50.

56 Nguyễn Văn Dương (ed.) (1995), Tuyền Tập Phan Châu Trinh (Selected Works of Phan Châu Trinh), Nhà Xuất Bản Đà Nẵng, Đà Nẵng, pp. 776 and 779; see also the English translation in Sinh, Phan Châu Trinh, pp. 113 and 115.