The “tax issue” concerning how people in Cambodia were taxed when it was under Vietnamese control in the 1830s is very complex, and therefore, also very interesting. I will return to that issue, but in order to do so, we need to first examine some other issues.
A couple of issues that we need to look at are the establishment of military colonies (đồn điền 屯田) in Cambodia and the issue of “Vietnamization.”
David Chandler, citing the Đại Nam thực lục, makes the following comment in A History of Cambodia:
“Because ethnic Khmer caused so many problems, Minh Mạng sought to colonize the region with Vietnamese. He justified this policy on the grounds that “military convicts and ordinary prisoners, if kept in jail, would prove useless. Therefore, it would be better for them to be sent to Cambodia and live among the people there, who would benefit from their teaching” (1st edition, 126).
In the fourth edition of this text, Chandler adds the sentence, “The idea that Vietnamese criminals were superior to innocent Khmer was another aspect of Vietnam’s ‘civilizing mission’ in Cambodia” (152).
Chandler (through his translator) does a good job of conveying the gist of what the Đại Nam thực lục records about this issue, but the worldview in which these comments were made did not make it through the translation process, nor did the scale of what was mentioned in these comments.
Here is what Minh Mạng wrote (in 1836):
“Trấn Tây [i.e., the area of Cambodia that the Vietnamese controlled] is just beginning to be cleared for cultivation. The fields are fertile, and there is a lot of wild land. I have already ordered defense clerks and soldiers to establish military colonies that now cover more than 400 mẫu.
“If more area can gradually be cleared for cultivation, then more land will be developed, and there will be a surplus of rice that will truly be of incalculable benefit for countless generations to come.
“Therefore, considering that military deserters and prisoners being held in custody are not providing any benefit, why don’t we appoint them to military colonies and let them be able to diligently cultivate the land.
“They will also live interspersed amongst [Chân] Lạp people, and can enable them to become accustomed to Hán mores. This the way of ‘using Hạ to transform Barbarians.’” (172/19b-20a)
There is nothing here that indicates that “Because ethnic Khmer caused so many problems, Minh Mạng sought to colonize the region with Vietnamese.” That said, moving ethnic Vietnamese into the region was of course potentially a way to establish a better hold on the region.
But what “region” was mentioned here?
Minh Mạng proudly declared that 400 mẫu of land had already been opened for cultivation by military colonists.
Somewhere around 6.6 mẫu was the equivalent of one acre. So 400 mẫu was the equivalent of approximately 86 acres.
I grew up on a farm in Vermont of around 100 acres. No one ever accused my family of trying to colonize the state of Vermont by doing so. . . And Vermont is about 1/6th the size of Cambodia. . .
In other words, the extremely limited scale of the Vietnamese military colonies in Cambodia demonstrates that this was not part of some master plan “to colonize the region with Vietnamese”. . . “because ethnic Khmer caused so many problems.”
Meanwhile, Minh Mạng believed that the ethnic Vietnamese in that very small area would be able to help Cambodians in that very small area become accustomed to “Hán mores.”
While Chandler uses the term “Vietnamization” in his book and equates what he saw in this passage with a “civilizing mission,” thereby drawing connections with the “mission civilisatrice” of the French in the twentieth century, Minh Mạng repeatedly talked about “Hán mores” (Hán phong 漢風) in the Đại Nam thực lục, and he also spoke here of “using Hạ to transform Barbarians” (dụng Hạ biến Di 用夏變夷).
What does all of this mean? And can we use terms like “Vietnamization” and “civilizing mission” to describe what Minh Mạng was trying to achieve? Or are those concepts alien, or anachronistic, to the cultural context of the Nguyễn Dynasty worldview in the 1830s?
“Hạ,” pronounced “Xia” in Chinese, is a reference to the Xia Dynasty, but more generally, to the cultural world of the elite who inhabited the cultural core of the Chinese world in antiquity.
The idea behind this concept is that the Xia people were culturally superior to people who were different from them, and that through interacting with non-Xia peoples, those peoples would gradually come to follow Xia ways.
Is this the same as “Vietnamization”? No, it’s not, because “Xia-ness,” or “Hán-ness” as Minh Mạng expressed it, was not a form of ethnic identity. It was (theoretically) universal.
As such, if we were to look for an equivalent for what Minh Mạnh hoped to achieve, it would be closer to a concept like “Christianization.”
Minh Mạng wanted everyone (not just Cambodians, but everyone across his empire as well) to follow what he saw as a “universal” way of being, just as Christian missionaries at the time wanted people to follow what they saw as a “universal” way of being.
And like the importance of ancient Jerusalem to Christian belief, there was an ancient “holy land” in Minh Mạng’s worldview – the ancient world of the Hạ/Xia. Further, it was what he perceived as the ways of the people from that holy land in antiquity that he wanted everyone to follow in his own time.
As such, the concept of being “Vietnamese” would have made little sense to Minh Mạng, nor would the Vietnamese translation of “Hán mores” (Hán phong) in the Dại Nam thực lục as “Kinh customs” (thói Kinh) have been intelligible to him either.
Minh Mạng believed in something much bigger, and for him more powerful, than being “Vietnamese.”
Finally, like Christian missionaries, Minh Mạng also saw “the big picture.” He knew that transforming the world would take time. Starting with people on an 86-acre piece of land was ok.
As historians, it’s also important that we see this “big picture.” Putting people on 86 acres and hoping that those people will have an influence on their neighbors just by “being there” is not the same as a “civilizing mission” or “colonizing a region with Vietnamese.”
