Plataforma tecnológica virtual y recursos de aprendizaje

Canal excavation for both agriculture and security purposes continued in colonial times but with a dramatic adoption of mechanisation. Replacing the use of soldiers and conscripted labourers to dig canals with simple tools, the French introduction of dredging machines, or dredges, opened a new era of hydraulic intervention in the Delta’s water landscape. This period was highlighted by the transformation of water landscape under French colonisation, from French conquest in the 1860s through the struggles between French and Vietnamese military under Trung Trực’s rule until 1868 to the war between French troops and the Viet Minh until 1954. The French colonial interventions employed modern scientific knowledge and technologies and a colonial administration equipped with engineers and planners to build a ‘modern’ hydraulics landscape (Biggs 2012:11). During the first colonial period, interventions served mostly transportation and military purposes and triggered land reclamation to colonise the Delta with structured institutions (Table 3-2, Biggs 2012:90, Brocheux 1995:17).

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Table 3-2. Interventions in the canal system under French colonial rule (1960s–1954)

Year Canal Projects Funded and/or

Constructed

Purposes

1860s Canals in the dense, swampy forest of Bảy Thưa

~1891 Restoration of the Vinh Te Canal Ship canal parallel to the Chợ Gạo

28 canals in Cai Be Former district chief of

Cai Be Trần Ba Lộc,

1903 Checkerboard grid of canals at 1 km intervals numbered as One

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through peat bogs, salt marshes and mangroves (ibid:87-88).

Made by author, data source: Biggs (2012)

The hydraulic interventions in the Delta during French colonisation involved a combination of central colonial policies and local efforts to open up the Delta to transportation and agricultural production. Under colonial policies, agricultural production is especially important for exports and, even more importantly, for controlling the Delta to the benefit of the French. However, despite following a French engineering agenda implement with new technologies, colonial interventions did not build a modern water landscape in an empty space. Rather, the French projects continued what the Vietnamese and Chinese had started. As reported by Renaud, the main ‘painter’ of French colonial hydraulics development, these were a ‘work in progress’ to restore the waterways or to ‘continue the work [l’oeuvre] of civilization started by the Vietnamese’ (Biggs 2012:5).

Most significantly, this period witnessed the 1880 introduction of engineering technology to conquer nature: steam-powered dredges. Through the 1920s, the French excavated more than 1,500 km of navigable waterways and 2,500 km of secondary canals. This transformation of the waterscape sparked a new wave of Vietnamese southward migration (nam tiến), with an average 73,000 people annually settling along the canals from 1881–1921 and the moving outward to forests and swamps (ibid:71).

The French colonial ruler, especially after the 1879 French revolution, confirmed the commitment to canal maintenance¹⁴, road creation, bridge construction, the study of railroads and the establishment of hospitals and schools as part of the general French policy to act as a benefactor to colonial territories (ibid:34). However, this ideology existed only on paper; French interventions continued to be politicised and dominated by the goal of controlling the colonial territory. The colonial economic system based on large farms and exports ultimately benefited only French nationals, mostly civil servants, and Vietnamese who were loyal collaborators with the French regime, excluding a huge group of poor tenant farmers (tá điền) (Brocheux 1995, cited by Fuhrmann 2008:24). Dredges became a technological a tool for engineers and contractors, including the private ones who had been dominant since 1893, to gain power monopoly at the expense of local officials (Biggs 2012:45). (This situation was improved when the 1890–1930

14 The canal dredging projects in the Mekong The Delta were a test of the French reform mission civilisatrice’s ability to achieve canal building improvement, colonial modernisation and labour reforms (the abolishment of corvee – forced labour) using new science and technologies (Biggs 2012:35). However, the reform of paid labour failed because of changes in local dredging project. Much of the money went to labour contractors and other middlemen, and the government could not afford to pay tens of thousands of workers, even at low rates.

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canal building involved provincial planning (ibid)). The problems of prioritising security purposes in interventions and using technologies as a means for certain groups to attain power and other benefits are not specific to the French. These strategies were carried out during the pre-colonial empire and continued on in the following period of American colonisation and in post-colonial period. However, the degree of prioritisation and allowance for other goals (e.g. social welfare, agricultural production for the benefits of others) varied by political regimes and periods.

Despite of the power and benefits gained through colonial control and technology monopoly, engineers under the French colonial government faced difficulties stemming from both nature and human opponents in the Delta. The tidal and swampy environment challenged the French rulers with silted canals, acidic and salty soil and destructive floods and hindered canal interventions with new flooding and inundation zones¹⁵, alum contamination¹⁶ and lower water table¹⁷ (Biggs 2012:72). While effective for French engineers, the new modern technologies were in all. For instance, the flushing basin technique which eliminating the dead points in the Cho Gao and Saintard canals served as a solution for engineers but prompted resistance from farmers, which forced French authorities to restore water circulation vital to farmers’ survival (ibid:41). In another case, locals became angry with the Xa No canal project when the 3-m clay wall blocked natural waterways, creating inundation on one side and drought on the other (ibid:76).

Despite the drawbacks and inequality created by the colonial regime, the canal projects and other hydraulic interventions in this period laid a foundation for a controlled water landscape and shaped the Delta’s subsequent human settlements. The pumps and water gates, which were the first of their kind in the region, impressed local residents, and the checkerboard canal grid built in 1903 became the foundation for the establishment of hamlets named according to the canal: One Thousand canal, One Thousand hamlet and so on. This period saw the advent of ‘high modernism’ (Scott 1998) as the French used the legitimacy of science and technology to evoke faith in their ability of their ideas to achieve their interests. The ideology of modernism has persisted in the Delta and aligned with global modernisation.

15 For example, the Quản Lộ–Phụng Hiệp canal (1918) created new flooding issues in the Ca Mau peninsula (ibid:95).

16 The new canal network reduced tidal fluctuations, preventing farmers from draining acidic water from their fields.

17 The lower water table in the Long Xuyen Quadrangle caused by new canal excavation increased the exposure of the soil to sun, produced more acidic sulphate through oxidation and allowed salt water to move further inland (ibid:96).

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During the balkanisation period of 1945–1954 (Biggs 2012:127), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was established in the North and started nation building. The South and Mekong Delta, in particular, witnessed the struggle for power and control by various groups: the French, Viet Minh, Hoa Hao and Cao Dai troops¹⁸. These struggles lead to the First Indochinese War.

Interventions in waterways during this time were few, with isolated projects to serve military purposes. In 1946 and 1947, ‘the water landscape gradually split apart (socially and hydrologically) into separate water enclaves: the one of the Viet Minh and the one of the French’. Through 1949 on the Viet Minh side, the People’s Army canals (Kinh Quan Dan) altered the waterscape to allow for quicker travel from U Minh eastward to coastal bases on the South China Sea (Biggs 2012:138).

Canal dredging was accelerated from 1948 to 1954 under the guidance of Lê Duẩn, (head of the Party’s Southern Regional Committee (Xứ Ủy Nam Bộ) and other Northern party leaders. One outstanding project was the 11-km People’s Army Canal constructed in the dry season of 1949 to transport people and material in and out of the Delta near Bạc Lieu along the South China Sea (Biggs 2012:145). In the territory under French control, the water network was rehabilitated in early 1947 to protect convoys transporting equipment and rice along the Delta (Biggs 2012:138).

Although the struggle destroyed roads and bridges, the Viet Minh did play an important role in regenerating the wetlands of the Delta (ibid: 139). The stagnation in infrastructure development due to warfare changed slightly with the official presence of US troops in the Delta around 1954, however, the Delta entered the destructive American War.

Thus, under French colonisation, the water landscape was strongly influenced by the ideological struggle to develop a colonial economy to benefit the colonial power and colony or to maintain security and control over the colonial territory. The later purpose, which resulted in politicised hydraulic interventions, dominated in this period. Despite the French interventions, the natural conditions, social and political conditions and conflicts over inequality made achieving colonial goals difficult for more than 100 years. Therefore, ‘the French colonial administration never managed to gain full hydraulic control of the Mekong Delta’ (Evers and Benedikter 2009:13) but did succeed in establishing the ideas of a hydrological bureaucracy.