I. A survey of statistical sources and previous works

4. Brief presentation of previous works on Vietnam's economic statisitics and quantitative history

    A non - negligible part of the economic, demographic and social data has already been collected by different researchers for various monographs. First and foremost, one must mention the works of Marseille ( 1986 ), most notably with regard to foreign trade, tariffs, of Gonjo ( 1994 ) on finance, especially on the activity of the Banque de l 'Indochine, and also of Aumiphin ( 1996 ) on the activity of French private enterprises in mining, manufacturing and services. Important attempts to provide a synthesis were presented by Murray ( 1980 ) and more recently by Brocheux and Hemery ( 1995 ), but it can be said that the most interesting aspects of these works were on political and social history even if only several important aspects of quantitative economic history were explored.

    Other studies provided an overview and a critical analysis of long term series regarding other, more specific, economic questions : the opium monopoly ( Descours - Gatin, 1992 ) which allows one to evaluate contraband, the port activity and urban development of Haiphong ( Raffi, 1993 ), the diffusion of the French education system ( Trinh Van Thao, 1996 ) and the customs tariffs ( Giacometti, 1997 ). One must also keep track of the many comparable works by Vietnamese researchers, for example on the role of French companies in capital formation ( Ho Hai Quang, 1982 and 1985 ), or on agriculture in Tonkin ( Ta Thi Thyu, 1993 )). Current doctoral research will place other series at the disposal of scholars interested in quantitative economic history ; for example, various series on rubber plantations, internal trade and rice trading, and on Viet Minh's underground economic system during the Indochina War ( 1945 - 1954 )( Loscha, 1995 ).

    In spite of the importance of Vietnam in Southeast Asia, in terms of population and political importance after WWII, the quantitative or even institutional economic history of this country remains relatively unknown, and studies are still few. What is most surprising is the small number of works published in English on these issues with Murray ( 1980 ) being the main significant exception. Most of the books and articles were published in French or in Vietnamese, with a recent trend towards translation in French or Vietnamese, or simultaneous editions in both languages ( for example, Aumiphin, 1996 and Ta Thi Thuy, 1993 ). This is explained by the cultural legacy in the sense that French speaking scholars have obviously a comparative advantage. Most of the data and the previous works were accessible exclusively in this language, a situation which had pernicious implications since the research on Vietnam's economic history were excessively influenced by these references. The studies on Vietnam were not exposed to comments or suggestions by scholars specialised in other Asian countries. It seems that Vietnam's specialists were not really involved in international comparisons from an historical perspective.

    This situation is currently changing, mainly as a consequence of the interest of other European scholars, in Britain, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, in this issue. Most of them have a working knowledge of French and easy access to French Archives. But very few of these studies rely upon estimation and analysis of continuous quantitative indicators. On international trade, Norlund ( 1993 ) constitutes one exception. Until now, the most important impulse in this field was the Australia National University's Echosea project, which involved co - operation between Australian economic historians working on Southeast Asian countries, among others, Malcolm Falkus and Pierre van der Eng, and French specialists of Vietnam's history such as Pierre Brocheux. On Vietnam, the final results of this research are to be published by the end of the century. But, in contrast to the current Asian Historical Statistics COE Project, the focus was not exclusively on quantitative economic history and National Accounts estimate per se.

    The historical period in which they have been written notwithstanding, the studies on Vietnam economic history exhibit two common features. On the one hand, the sectors that were well monitored by the colonial administration were extensively explored while all the rest remained more or less neglected. On the other hand, approaches adopted for these studies are directly connected with the political and social agenda of the time.

    Various studies explored sectors such as international trade because custom offices of the great harbours were among the most efficient administrators in producing voluminous amounts of data - but were not always accurate. Despite this, the aggregate and easily available series of the General Government yearbooks ( Annuaire de l 'Indochine ) were preferred to the comprehensive and extremely disaggregate yearly or monthly data of the Tableau du Commerce de l 'Indochine ( including in recent works, for example Norlund ( 1993 )). More broadly, the economic life of Vietnam has been seen from the viewpoint of great sectors in which the colonial administration or Europeans had vested interests. But village economy, subsistence farming, fishing, short range water transport, all the things which provide substantial income to the general population and contributed decisively to the national economy, remain unexamined. In these sectors, prices, costs and incomes lie undiscovered ; estimations remain qualitative, rarely quantitative. In the course of the century, researchers tend to consider and use the books published before WWII as reliable sources, as a consequence of their anteriority. But one must note that these works utilised data or estimates provided by the colonial administration with little critical investigation.

    During the entire century, studies on Vietnam are directly connected with political and social agenda of the time in the sense that in many cases the Vietnamese economy is only an auxiliary explanation : French domination and national involvement in Asia, and the individual interests of particular groups, are obviously the core issues prior to 1940. After WWII, scholars adopting the Leninist theory of imperialism as the ultimate stage of Capitalism considered Vietnam as a ideal illustration of this theory without much concern to evince such a perspective. For reasons good and bad, Vietnam was a very sentimental issue for French Marxist scholars and their counterparts in other countries, including of course Japan and the US. Murray ( 1980 ) is an example of this tendency to consider Vietnamese economic history from unique ideological viewpoints, excluding therefore any non - Marxist approaches or critiques.

    For these two reasons, sources and ideology, it might be useful to adopt a diachronic approach in the presentation of previous works. One important point to be observed is that the concepts used in these books are ambiguous. Before WWII, numerous works seem to be dealing with economics, but they are actually describing the " mise en valeur ". This colonial concept might be understood in two ways, one is retrospective, the other prospective. The first was a way to legitimise domination, the second was an attempt to orient future economic choices. In its retrospective sense, mise en valeur is everything that had been done since the initiation of the territory as a French colony and the sum of all investments, of all works, public or private. It is a detailed list of all productions, made by the indigenous people and European colonialists, " l 'oeuvre de la France " in the colony.

    In sum, this kind of work consists of a descriptive enumeration, close to panegyric, of everything done or at work. But it presents no order, neither distinction between what was expected or asked a priori and what happened and was created in a natural way, or unexpected and unplanned ; the economic and political failure of the main colonial project, the Yunnan railway, and the unexpected rubber production success are good examples. In the prospective sense, the expression mise en valeur offers a different vista. It elaborates on what is possible and desirable to achieve; and that often means a rational plan in which State ( General Government ) intervention will guide and support public and private investments. Retrospectively, we find in these reports, articles and books a set of disorganized investments, but prospectively a coherent plan... never financed. This diachronic opposition must be taken into account if one wants to utilise the colonial bibliography effectively.

    As sources, the ancient bibliography presented another kind of problem, given the strong line it adopts in favour of one colonial policy or another : it is especially the case in the debate on international trade : " pacte colonial " ( colonial agreement, colonial integration ) versus economic integration in the Asia - Pacific economic area. The term of the time " mise en valeur " ( economic development ), remains an empty box in which each author, a politician, a banker or a former high rank civil servant placed their own subjective interpretation. Their books are in essence real theses, by which they expose a conception of the economic organisation of Vietnam vis à vis the French imperial system.

    Followers of the pacte colonial found before them authors arguing for an alternative free - trade policy, mostly carried out by representatives of the Indochinese colonial administration, and first the General Government, and local entrepreneurs, backed by French interests. In Indochina, free traders found their best arguments in the arena of real commercial relations : before 1929, up to 70 of exports went to the Asia - Pacific Region ( mainly Hong Kong and Singapore ) and only 30 to metropolitan France and Europe ; proportions for importation were almost exactly the reverse.

    Authors such as Pierre Gourou, Charles Robequain or Paul Bernard's proposals might be understood in the context of debates on Vietnam's industrialisation and the need to feed foreign trade with high value - added products. Their books, often seen as major sources of reference on Vietnam's economy must be read also in the light of this trial of economic and commercial orientation given to colonial Vietnam. This orientation was not decided in advance as a result of colonial domination, real exchange rates, or political decisions.

    Take the case of Paul Bernard, who argued ardently for the industrialisation of Indochina. That meant per force granting complete autonomy to Indochina with regard to customs and tariffs, in order to allow it to defend local small - scale production against competition from industrialised countries, including France, whose products entered Indochina free of any duties. P. Bernard was, however, always pushed by the company he managed, the Société Financière Française et Coloniale ( the French and Colonial Finance Company ) into opposing negotiations between France and Japan, aimed at giving the latter a special tariff status in the colony. And yet, by creating a special status for Japan, which would be only the prelude to other special tariffs for other countries including France, those negotiations had as their ultimate goal the eventual destruction of the customs system which bound the colony to the metropolitan market. By opposing those negotiations in 1924, Paul Bernard worked against what he would subsequently propose himself in the 1930s, the industrialization of the colony.

    The case of Charles Robequain leads to an similar general conclusion, regarding the existence of a political thesis defended by various sources which seemed to deal only with economic issues. His book on the economic transformation of Indochina is used by all writers who take an interest in the economic conditions in Vietnam before WWII and the evolution of capitalism in colonial Indochina. But that leaves aside the first calling of Robequain's work, which appears on page 4 of the foreword. It reads : " This work was prepared by the request and with the help of the 'Institute of Pacific Relations'. It is published by the Centre d' Etudes de Politique Etrangère ( CEPE ), under the auspices of the Comité d' Etudes des Problèmes du Pacifique ( CEPP ), which is one of its permanent committees. Immediately one understands what Robequain has done, presenting the question of the inclusion of Indochina's economy in the context of the Pacific, and thus the question of Indochina's autonomy with regard to France, even while he apparently dealt only with economic questions.

    After WWII, we observe among researchers specialised on Vietnam an increasing tendency to focus on international trade, and mostly with France, and French capital investment in Vietnam. Foreign trade fashioned by imperial protectionism was at this time the general explanatory schema for the economic evolution of Vietnam. Thus, the economic question may have appeared resolved in advance, by using Marxist - Leninist concepts and tools in order to explain the prevailing imperialist relations. Many works attempted therefore to find precise and accurate illustrations of this domination, rather than to furnish an economic analysis. With the colonial administration's data facilitation, the goal was reached, as well as the demonstration that foreign trade and other economic relations with metropolitan France were the most important issues, because the colonialist administration was devoted to its supervision.

    The Marxist approach also favoured some important studies on the social and demographic development of a certain part of the population - for example research devoted to the coolies working on South Vietnam rubber plantations. Some essays dealt with mining and manufacturing or attempted to describe the formation of social classes, the working class, of course, but also concepts such as " medium low peasantry ", " city medium native bourgeoisie ", and so one. But behind the economic side of such questions studied, it was rather the formation of the political and nationalist consciousness which attracted attention, in trying to have a better understanding of successive uprisings and wars in Vietnam. Here again, political questions imposed certain subjects for discussion and analyses.

    Nowadays however the fact that attempts have been made by Vietnamese scholars to study specialised production villages ( i.e. pottery villages, basket makers' villages, special market places, inter alia ) must be underlined, as well as studies undertaken to deal with Tonkin rural trade. Regarding recent works, we must recall the statement made by David Marr ( Marr,1992 ) : ' The pre - eminent economic objective of the French was to develop a modern export sector. They focused particularly on rice and mining, then later rubber as well '. With this point strongly emphasised, studies must now look into some questions: who were the ' French ' ? ; did they achieve their ' modern ' objectives ? ; did they ultimately decide anything ? ; how did they manage relations with pre - colonial finance and trade networks, for example the Chinese ones ? ; why did the French focus on these specific products, when at the same time industries were established in Vietnam, not only by European but also by Vietnamese and Chinese entrepreneurs - for example, chemistry, textile, soap, glass ? ; and how competitive were these products and where was their effective demand located, - in Indochina, metropolitan France, or on the Asian and international market in general, which was an important issue for a colonial domination ?

    The economic history of colonial Vietnam remains largely in the shadow, because the larger economic sectors still remain unexplored and unresearched and also because the links between the basic economic realities, the geographical context, the relevant political decisions and economic evolution has never been studied over the long - term, in a pragmatic way, utilising extant statistical series.