Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World

by Philip Dwyer

  Violence, then, can serve as ‘an interpretive concept as well as a method for understanding’ colonial worlds, in this case that of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Tonkin . 5 Using reports of military and police operations from the conquest and administration of Tonkin , this chapter examines the ways in which the violence of the colonial state formed a set of cultural practices that contributed to making that colonial world. Because these sources are French, this chapter can only speak about the French side of this process. But they indicate that as the French described their opponents—as ‘bandits’, ‘pirates’, ‘deserters’, or ‘Chinese’—they discursively created relationships between these groups and the French colonial state. The effect of these terms was to locate the opponents of French rule—rebels supporting the Nguyen claimant to the throne, Chinese soldiers, ethnic groups, and pirate bands—outside the French colonial polity as enemies against whom the exercise of violence was justified and, often, practised. But it is also apparent that, as Brower noted in Algeria, the terms were unstable in use. While not creating an undifferentiated colonial other, violence—by the French themselves, by the Chinese army, by deserters from that army, by Vietnamese lettrés, and by bandits and pirates—destabilized the apparently clear divisions between the French and their indigenous allies, on the one hand, and the opponents of French rule on the other. 6 Whether in military conquest or policing, then, violence was continually at work in making colonial Tonkin .

  The Limits to French Power in Tonkin

  The French took possession of Indochina in fits and starts during the second half of the nineteenth century. In the early 1860s France gained significant parts of Cochinchina in the south, as well as a protectorate over Cambodia. In the 1870s, the remainder of Cochinchina was annexed, and expansion began to be focused in the north, Tonkin , in an attempt to open the Red River to trade with China . After a brief military campaign in 1884–1885 in the area between Hanoi and the Chinese border, a treaty was concluded at Tianjin giving France control of Tonkin . 7 But the ambiguous status of the border between China and Tonkin complicated the French colonizing project. As Eric Togliacozzo has pointed out, colonial state making in Southeast Asia contributed to the creation of violence in border areas. 8 The region between China and Tonkin was particularly susceptible to these contests. On the Chinese side lay a southwestern Chinese border region that had been settled over the previous centuries by immigrants from central China , and the border with Tonkin remained badly defined and scarcely mapped. This ‘illegibility’ of the border had already made the region the scene of frequent violence, but the French intrusion upset what tenuous stability existed. Even after the Tianjin Treaty the border remained porous for decades to come for Chinese troops and deserters as well as bandits operating in Tonkin .

  Colonial state making and the extension of French rule into the border regions of Tonkin also meant defining the people who inhabited the region in relation to the colonial project. The French usually saw these people as either participants in colonization or as its opponents. They were certainly well supplied with the latter, and opposition to the French came from a number of different quarters. First, they faced opposition from the deposed nominal ruler of Vietnam, the Nguyen King of Annam, and his supporters. But, second, the region closest to the Chinese border, north of Hanoi and on the upper parts of the Red River, had long been the home of bandits, and the Treaty of Tianjin in 1885 did nothing to end those activities. While not often appreciated by French in the metropole, these bandits posed a serious impediment to the colonization and exploitation of Tonkin . 9 Most prominent among them were the Pavillons Noirs , who in the 1860s moved south from Yunnan into Tonkin around Laokay, where the Red River crossed the border between Vietnam and China. 10 But the Pavillons Noirs were not the only problem. Other bands—such as the remnants of the Pavillons Jaunes, who in the 1870s controlled traffic on the Red River between Sontay and Laokay—also launched attacks on travellers and engaged in arms trafficking, kidnapping, and opium smuggling in the border region and only grudgingly agreed to submit themselves to French authority in return for French concessions that maintained the bandits’ local authority. 11 These bands continued for decades to recruit new members from among the escaped prisoners and deserters from the French-organized militia and other military forces that quickly became a feature of the colonial regime. 12 Finally, especially after the turn of the century, these opponents of French rule were joined by Chinese soldiers who were using Tonkin to escape from increasing unrest in China.

  An Ambiguous Enemy

  After the conclusion of the Tianjin Treaty with China, the French Expeditionary Corps spent the summer of 1885 engaged in campaigns that were aimed at ‘bandits’ and ‘pirates’ rather than the Chinese troops that had been their opponents on the campaign to capture Langson. The presence of these multiple groups in the region made it difficult for the French to settle on a term to identify their opponents. The same reports sometimes described the enemy as ‘Chinese’, but at other times as ‘pirates’ or ‘bandits’. 13 In November 1885, several local administrators were reported to have been assassinated by a band of ‘Chinese’ at Phu-an-Binh. A detachment of Tirailleurs Tonkinois dispersed a band of ‘Chinese’, while a French post in the region repulsed two attacks by ‘pirates’. That month the French occupied a village abandoned by ‘pirates’ who left behind ‘arms, munitions, cannons, horses, and provisions’, suggesting they were an organized and well-supplied military force, and ‘Chinese’ threatening Hanoi were later identified as ‘pirates’. The French captured the pirate chief, Doc-Hui, but other pirates remained in hiding in nearby villages. 14 In late December 1885, the French operations reports note engagements with ‘pirates’ in the area between the Red River and the Clear River, ‘bandits’ at Phu-Tho and Yen-Ninh, Pavillons Noirs at Cam-Nhan, ‘Chinese’ at Giap on the Clear River, ‘pirates’ between the Song-Calo and the road from Hanoi to Bac-Ninh, and ‘pirates’ near the Song-Calo. 15 Another operation in December 1885 was aimed at ‘Chinese and Annamite pirates’ near Hung-Son north of the Song-Calo. 16 Three years later, in January 1888, a force of French riflemen surprised ‘Chinese pirates’ in Cho-Cam, and one of the French officers, Lt. Haillot, entered the lodgings of the ‘pirate chief’ and shot two ‘Chinese’ as well as seven other ‘pirates’. 17

  There is no indication in these reports that these were the same groups, and it seems likely that they were different in some ways. But the reports indicate that the French military faced an indeterminate enemy, even if the French did try to distinguish them by using different terms. The enemy was identified sometimes as Chinese, sometimes as ‘pirates’, sometimes as ‘bandits’, and occasionally as ‘montagnards’. Particularly confusing was that these different groups often used the same tactics, launching hit-and-run attacks, controlling villages and roads, and benefiting from support by local authorities in the region.

  It is apparent that the terms used by the French were unable to describe the situation faced on the ground by French troops, and this contributed to the ambiguous meanings of those terms. No doubt a significant part of the slippage of these terms stemmed from the overlap of the different groups who were shooting at the French troops in this mountainous terrain: some bandits came from China (but some did not); some bandits allied with supporters of Ham Nghi (but some did not); and the Chinese continued to dispute French control of the as-yet unmarked border. But the different terms used in these reports place these groups in specific relationships to the French colonial state that was extending its power into northern Vietnam at this time. Describing them as ‘pirates’ moved these opponents of the French out of the field of normal state-to-state (French vs. Chinese) relations and into one of illegality and extra-territoriality. The French could attribute to them a series of atrocities against villagers, a ‘regime of terror’ in the words of one French officer, and a dissolute life of opium-smoking and sexual exploitation of kidnapped women, and thus distinguish them not only from the
French but also from the better-behaved Chinese regulars. Another officer derided the bandits he faced in the late 1890s as ‘almost all former “pavillons noirs ”, a kind of dilettante of piracy , habituated for fifteen years to live in luxury and to do almost nothing: an occasional expedition, but, in return, rich food, opium and alcohol whenever he wishes, often even some “con gái” (young women) waiting until he finds a good occasion for [their] sale in China’. 18 The language in these reports shows how the French discourse about this colonial conquest constructed the opponents of French rule—Chinese who could be negotiated with, at least in the French view, indigenous rebels, and bandits and pirates who had no such ‘state’ backing and therefore were much more difficult to deal with—and how these categories shaped the colonial venture. These distinctions mattered: it would prove difficult for the French to bring themselves to bargain with ‘outlaws’.

  Soldiers in the field, however, cared little if the enemy was Chinese, a bandit or pirate, a rebel supporting Ham Nghi, or one of the ethnic minorities in the mountains around Laokay. But for those trying to formulate a strategy to ‘pacify’ Tonkin , it was important to identify them. The ways they did so placed France’s opponents in different groups discursively by the different terms used by the French officers mounting operations against them. But pirates occupied and fortified villages, perhaps having learned these techniques from the army from Yunnan that intervened in Tonkin in early 1884. 19 Chinese troops utilized the support of local authorities, and adherents of Ham Nghi engaged in the fleeting attacks characteristic of the pirate bands in the area between the Red River and the Black River. Information about pirate bands was difficult to acquire, and often came to the French after the pirates had moved on from their supposed location. The terms themselves proved unstable, and the certainty they implied was often undercut in the field. The difficulties of identifying the enemy are apparent in the conclusion of a report from 1889: as a French column passed through a deserted countryside on its way back to its base in Sontay, it occasionally saw small groups of men at a distance, but was not able ‘to ascertain if they were pirates’. 20 It was, in short, a countryside in which anyone could be a bandit or a supporter of the French.

  In 1890 the French made an agreement with one bandit leader, Luong Tam Ky, by which he agreed to submit to French rule in exchange for a subvention, control over a region around the Black River, and other concessions. 21 But the region to the north of Hanoi, the Yen-Thê area, had long been a home to opponents of the Annam government, with bands finding it a good place to hide from the authorities. It quickly became apparent that the French had inherited from the Annam government a situation in the Yen-Thê in which a bandit chief, Hoang Hoa Tham, known as Dê Tham , ‘exercised uncontested control over all of the countryside’. He reputedly led about 1000 men and was able to find new recruits among refugees from failed resistance groups in Hanoi and other cities as well as among peasants on whom the tax and labour burdens of the regime fell. In November 1890, a French column engaged Dê Tham ’s band in an effort to reopen the route to Langson, forcing the Dê Tham to move to a base near Hou-Thuong. An attempt by Legionnaires and Tirailleurs to drive them out was unsuccessful, as were several others at the end of December and in early January 1891. Finally, on 11 January, an attack on a fortified camp succeeded, with more than 150 pirates killed, including six chiefs. Dê Tham himself was wounded in the battle. 22 In late November 1891 a band, identified in the report as being that of the ‘pirate De-Thanh’, was attacked at Ca-Dinh. 23 The French seem to have been able to do little about this challenge to their control of the region during the next few years, and in 1894, another operation was undertaken against them, ‘failing completely’. In 1895, a concerted operation under Col. Joseph Gallieni brought three different columns to bear on them, and on 30 November 1895, Gallieni seized control of Dê Tham ’s headquarters in the Yen-Thê. Gallieni tried to prevent a revival of the band by destroying its principal strong points and through the ‘tache d’huile’ tactic in which French control was progressively extended through military posts and armed villages. 24 In October 1897, Dê Tham submitted to French authority in exchange for a large agricultural concession in Yen Thê, but this proved to be only temporary. 25

  The fighting in Tonkin between 1884 and the end of the century, therefore, was marked not only by violence—the various engagements I have recounted left dead and wounded on both sides, not to mention the villagers who are hardly ever included but who must have been caught in the operations—but also, on the part of the French officers writing these reports, an ambiguous definition of whom they were fighting. The terms ‘bandits’, ‘pirates’, ‘rebels’, and ‘Chinese’ distinguished between opponents who tended to slip together. All had similar characteristics: at least a semi-military organization; tactics that at times involved fixed fortifications, at times movement across the countryside; support from at least part of the local population; and an ambiguous relationship with China and the Chinese authorities across the border in Yunnan. They were also male, in contrast to the kidnapped women French units often sought to rescue. As the terms were used by the French, they also had in common a position outside the bounds of the Tonkinese population that the French had come to rule. Thus, the French brought violence and death to these outsiders while at the same time seeking the support of the local population.

  Chinese Deserters, Bandits, Pirates, and Violence After Pacification

  The violence of French rule and the inability to determine who the enemies of that rule were would continue after the turn of the century. At least until 1908, attempts to suppress opposition were often seen by the French as policing rather than military operations. But seen in a longer perspective, there are obvious similarities between reports from the gendarmerie about crimes such as robbery and murder committed in the period of ‘calm’ between 1898 and 1908 and earlier reports of the Expeditionary Corps and the Tirailleurs Tonkinois. 26 The investigations into these robberies and assaults inevitably failed to find and arrest the perpetrators, and so they do not conclude with any definite identification or description of who carried out the crimes. In these incidents the initiative lay with the pirates. But the similarity of these police reports to the earlier reports by the Tirailleurs Tonkinois and other military units should lead us to be cautious about accepting any distinction between ‘pacification’ and ‘crime’. Instead, they suggest that Tonkin continued to be marked by the kinds of violence that had marked the campaigns by the French army and the Tirailleurs Tonkinois against bandits, pirates, rebels, and the Chinese army before 1898.

  However the robberies in the first few years of the century were interpreted by the French, they had little doubt about the political nature of the wave of unrest that occurred in Annam and Tonkin in 1908. The French linked this to external influences from Japan and the events in China that led to the establishment of the Chinese republic in 1911. A number of Vietnamese students went to Japan to study in the first decade of the twentieth century, and the victory of that country over Russia in 1905 enhanced its reputation. Its attraction was furthered by its geographical proximity and that it was a constitutional monarchy, a system favoured by Vietnamese radicals who sought to restore the power of the Nguyen dynasty in Vietnam. 27

  Closer to home, the weakness of the Qing empire in the first decade of the twentieth century contributed to instability in the provinces that bordered on Tonkin , and in 1908 Chinese developments spilled across the border into northern Vietnam. The French claimed to remain neutral in this conflict between what they called ‘Chinese reformers’ or ‘reformists’ and regular Chinese soldiers, with French troops instructed only to arrest any on either side who entered the territory of Tonkin. The ‘reformers’ were apparently well-armed, and seem to have been dissident soldiers in the Chinese army who had deserted from their units and crossed the border in Tonkin. 28

  In the course of several months of fighting, these ‘reformists’ would be joined by other opponents of th
e French. They would also challenge the French ability to make sense of their opponents, as the operations reports begin in June 1908 to use ‘reformist’ and ‘pirate’ interchangeably. 29 That summer another French column had also been engaged in operations against ‘Chinese reformists’ in Tonkin. The reports make clear the interchangeability of the different terms used, describing an operation beginning on 8 August, when they moved to Lang-Xum to destroy a small band of what were also described as ‘pirates’ who were thought to be the advance guard of a much larger column. 30

  While it may have been clear to the French that these forces were Chinese deserters using Tonkin as a refuge from Chinese troops loyal to the Chinese government, there were others in Tonkin who, while outside of French rule, were not so clearly from beyond the border. In 1908 and 1909, ‘piracy ’ revived in the regions around Yen-Thê, where Dê Tham had been active in the 1890s and where he had received a concession from the French in return for his submission to French authority. While he was certainly not the only bandit chief in the area north of the Red River, or even in the Yen-Thê, he seems to have resumed his activities several years earlier. There is evidence that Dê Tham had contact with the nationalist leader Phan Boi Chau in 1906, and that Dê Tham had joined the nationalist organization Duy Tan Hoi, accepting Prince Cuong Dê, a member of the Nguyen dynasty, as nominal leader. He was also training cadres from central Vietnam and, in exchange for military supplies and support if he made an attack on the French, promised to support future uprisings.