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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X11000552
Title: | Profits or people? rubber plantations and everyday technology in rural Indochina | Authors: | Aso, M. | Issue Date: | Jan-2012 | Citation: | Aso, M. (2012-01). Profits or people? rubber plantations and everyday technology in rural Indochina. Modern Asian Studies 46 (1) : 19-45. ScholarBank@NUS Repository. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X11000552 | Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between rubber plantations and changes in everyday technologies in rural Indochina. It also explores the effects that improvement projects had on the countryside in which those who were targeted by these programmes lived. Speeches given at the opening of the B̂n Cát agricultural school in Thuu Dâu Môt province in 1918, for example, show that this school was designed both to train Vietnamese assistants to work on large agricultural exploitations and to improve native agricultural practices. Officials used journals, such as the bilingual French-Vietnamese Cochinchine Agricole, which appeared between 1927 and 1930, to popularize latex-producing science and techniques. Though their motivations often differed from those of officials, the Vietnamese elite, ranging from those in the anti-colonial Duy Tân Hôi (Modernisation Society) to French-trained physicians, scientists, and engineers, also often sought to address the problems of rural southern Vietnam through improvements in everyday agricultural technologies. This paper suggests that plantation agriculture, which structured the everyday meanings of rubber in Vietnam, along with the failures of native improvement, began to weaken the support of the Vietnamese elite for the colonial regime during the 1930s. Uneasy compromises and contradictions meant that neither economic profit nor social improvement alone existed in the rubber-producing industry. © 2011 Cambridge University Press. | Source Title: | Modern Asian Studies | URI: | http://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/126273 | ISSN: | 0026749X | DOI: | 10.1017/S0026749X11000552 |
Appears in Collections: | Staff Publications |
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