Indochina: Reign and Legacy

French Indochina map. 

This week I watched director Rithy Panh’s The Seawall and read selected passages from France and “Indochina” Cultural Representations as well as read France in Indochina Colonial Encounters. Both books gave a good overview of colonial domination in French Indochina (Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam) as a whole, and more specifically how French aesthetics and practices were implanted into the colonies as a form of power. I overall enjoyed France and “Indochina” Cultural Representations, a compilation of essays, and found scholar Penny Edwards’ piece about “Taj Angkor” to relate very muchto what I have already read, especially in Michael Di Giovine’s The Heritage-scape. France in Indochina Colonial Encounters was also a very thorough book about colonial visuality and media, but 1) did not translate French into English (sorry my right brain doesn’t have google translate built in?) and 2) I felt may have over exaggerated or was overly critical, a bit like Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land.

Original cover of Duras' book.

The Seawall, or in French Un barrage contre le Pacifique, is based off of Marguerite Duras’ same-titled novel, one of the first to criticize colonialism in Southeast Asia, and Panh then molded the plot to fit the Cambodian context. Set in 1931, the film begins showing the immense estate belonging to “Madam” and her children, Joseph and Suzanne. Her husband, a civil servant, has either died or disappeared—it is not made clear. We first see madam in the rice fields, realizing that the crops for her and the villagers have been completely ruined because the salt water destroyed them.

Also at the beginning of the film, we find out that Joseph has purchased a horse, and that dies only after one week. Joseph pushes and pushes the horse to work, and finally, it collapses suffocating. According to Nicola Cooper, author of the essay “Disturbing the Colonial Order” in France and “Indochina” Cultural Representations, “the death of the family’s horse symbolizes at once the good intentions and the ideas of the European migrants to Indochina, and their failures.” As Duras’ novel originally states “Il essaya honnêtement de faire le travail qu’on lui demandait et qui était bien au-dessus de ses forces depuis longtemps, puis il creva,” or in English, “He tried honestly to the work that was asked of him and which had been beyond his capacities for a long time. And then he died” (Cooper in Robson & Kim 85, 93).  Madam is like the horse: she tries to “realize a hopeless project” (building a seawall, discussed later), and “succumbs to a seemingly inevitable outcome: madness and death,” just like the horse (Cooper in Robson & Kim 85).

The Seawall.

Madam’s main goal throughout the film is to gain the title to the plot of land she lives on, and to let the villagers use it as well. Part of this includes constructing the Seawall to ensure that the saltwater does not rush in and ruin the harvest in the future. She goes to the villagers and explains this request, and although is at first met with skepticism, the villagers oblige. She is very mutually orientated with the villagers and sees them as “equal” as the time period allows. Madam soon realizes that she was bribed into living on the faulty plot of land that she does, and writes to the French government that she is horrified by this and ashamed to be French—a theme that continues throughout the plot. Duras in her novel as well refers to French colonial corruption often (86). By the end of the film, the Cambodian people build a seawall, watch the rice become “pregnant” (in Balinese language, the term “pregnant” is also used as in both societies, rice has a soul), and in the end watch the seawall collapse.

A pepper plant outside of Kampot, Cambodia
Taken by yours truly in December 2009

The land entitlement certificate disputes get worse throughout the film when Mr. Khing, a Frenchman, tells the villagers around Madame’s bungalow that all of the plots that they have lived and worked on for their whole lives are now owned by and in control of the French government. This is because the Cambodian did not have a title for the land. As the French put it in the film: “Our office has let you farm this land.” The French want the Cambodians to stay on the land, and use demeaning rhetoric to make this look like a favor from the French. Why do the French want the Cambodians to stay? Because pepper plants (what they want to grow) are more valuable than gold, and people need to work on the pepper plantation. As Panh discusses critically in a Cinemonde interview (part of the DVD’s special features), the World Bank still does this today by forcing exports upon countries, such as palm oil, that farmers cannot actually use to feed their families. This makes the land, essentially, not theirs.

A pepper plantation outside of Kampot, Cambodia. Taken
by yours truly in December 2009

As Madam states, “This colony will never experience peace nor rest,” because not only have the French usurped the Cambodian’s livelihoods, but also have taken their dignity. She writes to the French that it is unfair to take the peasants’ land for pepper plants and that the peasants actually “know [their] methods inside and out.” She even writes to the French government to say that she has told the peasants that the government takes advantage of them with the fraudulent land certificates.

Indochina's "Piastres" money.

There are other mini plots throughout the film, for example, Joseph falling in love (lust is actually a better term) with a French girl who he follows to Saigon, and a “Chinaman,” or “Mr. Jo,” who falls in love with Suzanne, only to turnout to be complete scum and on the side of the French taking land. A main string throughout the film is that the family does not have any money, and must rely on selling a diamond ring that Mr. Jo gave Suzanne for money. Nonetheless, this diamond ring has a flaw and it is only by luck that the family can sell it to pay for their debts.

Postcard image circulated during
colonial exhibitions in France of a
"Cambodian Palace Pavillion." 

A French woman in Indochina’s role was to be a “moral tutor” of the “uncivilized” people (Cooper 101). Indeed, various advertisements and pamphlets instructed, “metropolitan French women in Indochina should improve conditions of the colony” (Cooper 102). (Another part was that by having the white men’s wives there, they would not stray with indigenous women and create an “unstable home life” (Cooper 102).) Not all women, however, did this. Madam exemplifies this role as a moral tutor, in a more equal and less “patriarchal feminist” way, because her profession was as a teacher (Cooper 101). Madam genuinely worries about the Cambodian people, and this worry eats at her and in part causes her bad health. We watch madam become disillusioned with the French colonial pursuit and wonder what the French are doing in Cambodia. The “charm and allure” of French Indochina subsided rapidly with “feelings of disappointment, failure, and impotence” (Cooper in Robson & Kim 81). It is also important to note that Indochina was never a settler colony, and that adverts had to convince French people to make the four-week boat journey to go (there was no air service until 1938) (Cooper 118). Very much unlike other French colonies such as Algeria, the French presence in Indochina never surpassed 42,000 (Cooper 118).   

Postcard from France's colonial exposition.

The French attempted to make their being in Cambodia as part of a humanitarian mission to cover up its economic motives (Cooper 33). This was meant to separate France from other European colonial powers that were more explicitly exploitative (Cooper 33). France showed off how much they helped Indochina through exhibits in France: general public works, constructing bridges, building rail / road networks, cultivating land for food, modernizing agriculture, and using raw materials (Cooper 79). This was all spun to be good. In other words: an ethical façade masked colonialism’s exploitive activity in Indochina. These “humanitarian” ideas then lead into what Cooper calls “media colonialism,” in which the main goal is not exploring unknown continents, but rather surveilling the already appropriated (Cooper 68). France, and most of Europe, was then fixed in an “authoritative gaze of dominating power” (Cooper 68).   

Street scene in Kampot, Cambodia. Taken by yours truly in
December 2009

Arc de Triomphe surrounded by fountains
and gardens in Vientiane, Laos. Taken
by yours truly in November 2009 

Cooper describes how colonial urbanism “asserts coercive force” and actually “reinforces cultural and economic superiority over the colonized” (Cooper 49). Urban architecture visually imposes the French’s dominance over Indochina. France used city-planning to reassert its identity and colonial ideal in Indochina (Cooper 49). Architecture was a form of dominance. “The visual impact of the cities…was a codified version of France’s doctrine colonial (Cooper 49). The political motives behind implanting this architectural style into Indochina were to infuse a French identity in the people (Cooper 52). Soon, in the 1930s, Indochina was heavily peppered with French colonial buildings, as well as scattered indigenous villages in the countryside (Cooper 52). These ideas tie into “media colonialism,” and how the architecture might be the visual surveillance giving the French power à la Foucault’s Panopticon (Cooper 68).

French language was not only meant to dominate the people (as the peasants were unable to communicate with the higher-ups, as The Seawall exemplifies), but also in Indochina’s case especially, to homogenize the people from Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese backgrounds into one (Cooper 53). Education in Indochina sought to imbue more French nationalism into the people (Cooper 57). Indeed, the “leçons de morale” were meant to garner loyalty amongst the Indochinese colony and instruct them on what they owed to France (Cooper 57).

Kampot, Cambodia. Taken by
yours truly in December 2009

Angkor Wat poster.

As Rithy Panh explains in the Cinemonde interview, the French saw settling in Indochina as a civilizing mission. Digging underneath this common colonial excuse, Penny Edward’s describes in her essay “Taj Angkor: Enshrining l’Inde in le Cambodge” that although there was the “constant chorus of Cambodia’s need for French protection,” France actually “needed Cambodia to assert its own stakes in the global hegemony of cultural scholarship” (Edwards in Robson & Kim 23). Angkor Wat, for the French, was the “la perle de l'Extreme-Orient” or analogous to India as Britain’s “jewel in the crown.” It represented a great piece of cultural wealth that the French had and was a symbol for their colonial conquest. In fact, Angkor Wat was paraded throughout France in different exhibitions (exhibitions that showed France’s public works, discussed above). Today, Angkor Wat stands as a “locus of nostalgia for the lost empire” (Edwards in Robson & Kim 23). Indeed, Cooper analyzes French tourism trends and sees colonial rhetoric in multiple advertisements for Indochina, while there is a collective colonial amnesia in France about other former colonies, such as Algeria (Cooper 205). The colonial buildings today evoke a sense of “a time lost” for many people, namely French as Cooper argues. What makes Indochina so romantic and exotic? Is it that it was so far? Far enough to forget an exploitative colonial legacy through aesthetically pleasing and picturesque landscape? 

Works Cited:

Cooper, Nicola. “Disturbing the Colonial Order: Dystopia and Disillusionment in Indochina” in Robson, Kathryn and Jennifer Yee, eds. France and Indochina Cultural Representations. New York, New York: Lexington Books, 2005. Print.

Cooper, Nicola. France in Indochina Colonial Encounters. New York, New York: Berg Press, 2001. Print.

Edwards, Penny. “Taj Angkor: Enshrining l’Inde in le Cambodge” in Robson, Kathryn and Jennifer Yee, eds. France and Indochina Cultural Representations. New York, New York: Lexington Books, 2005. Print.

The Seawall. Dir. Rithy Panh. Catherine Dussart Productions, 2008. Film. 

Angkor, UNESCO, and Identity in Cambodia

Angkor Wat at sunrise. Taken by yours truly in December
2009 (as are all of the photos in this post)

Angkor Wat is arguably the most recognized archeological site in Southeast Asia—perhaps in Asia at large save the Great Wall of China and Taj Mahal. Angkor Wat is the central iconic temple, although the entire complex is often referred to as “Angkor Wat” and used interchangeably with names such as “The Temples of Angkor” or “The Angkor Wat Complex.” Angkor Thom city complex was built during the thirteenth century, during which King Jayavarman VII ruled. In 1992, Angkor Wat Complex became a UNESCO World Heritage site, with today two million and counting tourists visiting each year.

Ta Prohm Temple at Angkor, made partially famous by
Angelina Jolie.

In 1861, the French colonists discovered and began excavating the archeological site. This included taking artifacts for French and European museums—instigating a looting trend that continues today. Although when the French first “discovered” Angkor, “a labyrinth of monumental structures entangled with tree roots and lichen,” they claimed it was “‘lost,’ even dead,” this is fundamentally not true (Winter 53). There were actually multiple local villages peppered throughout what is today the archeological park. The French used the aesthetics of Angkor as abandoned and wild to promote the romantic mythology of loss and rediscovery (Winter 53). This mythology perpetuates today, in tourism and in Cambodia’s political rhetoric (Winter 53). Even after Cambodian independence from France, France still took an active role in Angkor Wat’s and its surrounding temples' maintenance until approximately 1972, when the political situation was too unsafe to continue.

Cliché Angkor Wat pond reflection at sunrise

This coincided with the inauguration of the first United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Convention, also in 1972. The umbrella organization UNESCO was created in 1945 after World War II along with the United Nations.  UNESCO’s goal at its conception was to promote “solidarity, peace, and equality” through “the free exchange of ideas and knowledge,” because the lack of these qualities was the root of war (Nielson 274). The initial 1946 document of UNESCO “UNESCO Its Purpose and its Philosophy” states a need for diversity and global appreciation of the arts, all while stitching nations together in unity—politically and scientifically—to prevent another war and bombing. UNESCO good-willingly promoted a global culture and knowledge sharing to perpetuate peace (Huxley 14). “UNESCO Its Purpose and its Philosophy” does mention that all cultures should receive equal attention, yet are not worth the same; however, who is determining this “worth” (Huxley 42)? The rhetoric echoed throughout the paper centers on preventing war, although today, extreme unity among nations can be considered homogenizing or hegemonic. The video UNESCO – Its Evil Purpose and Philosophy mostly discusses how UNESCO stifles independence, rocks national sovereignty, and also has an “indoctrination” view of education. Although one can perceive “UNESCO Its Purpose and its Philosophy” today as stating this, it is important to remember that it was written after World War II and with good intentions to build global harmony and prevent war. That being said, much of UNESCO’s rhetoric is simple and idealistic and fails to fully grasp complex concepts (Nielson 284).

The 1972 convention set the groundwork for creating a list of UNESCO World Heritage sites, made official in 1978. Today, there is a broad range of 962 cultural, natural, and “mixed” UNESCO World Heritage sites, as well as multiple sites in the midst of being evaluated or on the “List of World Heritage in Danger." In general, the overwhelming majority of the sites are over two hundred years old and are not part of “industry,” “technology,” or “modernity.” Although sprinkled with good intentions, World Heritage sites emerge as more problematic, notably in developing countries, than positive due to their museumification and faulty temporal designation. UNESCO creates standards, often derived from Western forms of thought, for designating cultural objects and sites around the world. Oftentimes, a cultural site is not given UNESCO status if it is not deemed aesthetically pleasing or conflicts with western visions of heritage. Within UNESCO, according to archeologist Henry Cleere:

Culture manifests itself principally in the form of archeological sites and monuments from classical Greece and Rome, European architecture from the later Middle Ages to neo-classicism, and the art and architecture of the Indian subcontinent and imperial China (32-33).

World Heritage sites are preserved in the past as “untouched” or “ancient sites” as a means of asserting their discontinuity with the present—creating separated gems of culture. Indeed, UNESCO often constructs World Heritage sites as intrinsically antique, aesthetically pleasing, and societally detached without contemporary implications or interactions with surrounding communities. This is certainly true of Angkor, especially with reference to French perception of the site.

Intricate Angkor sandstone carvings

In 1993, the year of the United Nation’s sponsored first free elections in Cambodia, the government started being more active in preserving Angkor Wat, but was still at the mercy of international bodies. Attention to the archeological site was extremely needed given the mass amount of looting occurring since the Khmer Rouge era, and before with the institutionalized looting of the French. In 1992, Angkor Wat was named a UNESCO World Heritage site, but not without the help of multiple other governments, naming Japan and France. The Declaration of Tokyo, written in 1993, expressed “the urgent need for international assistance to prevent the Angkor monuments from further decay and destruction” (Di Giovane 335). Cambodia was not heavily involved in formulating the Angkor development project that would later be imposed. Because of this un-involvement, “understanding Angkor as a form of ‘living heritage’ remains neglected” within the current management framework: crafting Angkor as an ancient site belonging to the past, similar to how the French framed it (Winter 50).

Attempting to return to this past time of Khmer glory became the basis of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge reign—even though the Khmer Kingdom was during the thirteenth century and Pol Pot used the term “year zero.” He admired the intricate irrigation system that the Angkor kings had built, allowing for 3-4 crops a year, and tried and failed at replicating these in a quest for Cambodian self-sufficiency (Brinkley 20; Stark & Griffin 121-122). Pol Pot wanted to defy seasonality and plant rubber, coconut, rice, and cotton all year long (Winter 58). In reality, the “hydraulic theories of early 20^th-century French scholars” that Pol Pot copied was in “part historical fantasy” (Winter 58). Regardless of using Angkor Wat as a symbol during an awful period of turmoil, genocide, and civil war, the Angkor temples still hold great national importance in Cambodia.  

According to Miriam P. Stark and P. Bion Griffin, “Nowhere is this linkage between nationalism and heritage management more evident than in Cambodia.” Angkor Wat is “a vehicle of agency” to help Cambodians understand their identity (Winter, 50). Nonetheless, Angkor tourism is centered on “high price tourism,” as well as the overall high “quality of the [tourist] experience” (UNESCO in Winter 55). This bars local, and often poor, tourists from going to the site to visit (picnicking in the temple's fields was once a popular pastime) or for prayer at one of the many Buddhist pagodas in the temples. Pol Pot once denied Cambodians “a celebration of their own cultural heritage…[and]…traditional Cambodian holidays were not observed” as travel was not allowed (Winter 58). Not only was it recently opened up to the international tourist market, but also to Cambodians themselves. Angkor Wat, therefore, holds lots of meaning for the Cambodian people.  As Cambodia continues to reconstruct its society, living heritage can be used as a vital contributor “to the ongoing constitution of national, cultural, and ethnic identities,” but not when international bodies promote otherwise (Winter 64).

 

Although the government (international and Cambodian) and even some Cambodians wish to see Angkor as a modern tourist site, Cambodians generally agree that the complex must keep some of its traditional structures and management should allow the Khmer people to see their heritage and enjoy the temples (Winter). This cannot be done, however, if Cambodians cannot have their voice be heard in the mainly international bureaucracy governing the site. Their heritage has been marketed to be something beyond the Cambodians themselves and for other peoples’ consumption. Nonetheless, according to UNESCO, all of the cultures and sites in the world are for an international body to appreciate. Whose “heritage” is it? If “all the world’s a stage,” as sixteenth century English poet William Shakespeare once said, then UNESCO World Heritage sites emerge as “playhouses of diversity,” and platforms for re-presenting “imagined dramas” and settings for a global audience (Di Giovine 275). UNESCO removes agency from the people and spreads it globally—the consequences being positive or negative, depending on the point of view.

Works Cited:

Brinkley, Joel. Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land. New York, New York: PublicAffairs, 2011. Print.

Cleere, Henry. “The World Heritage Convention as a Medium for Promoting the Industrial Heritage.” The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 26.2 (2000): 31-42. Print.

Di Giovine, Michel A. The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism. New York, New York: Lexington Books, 2009. Print.

Huxley, Julian.  “UNESCO: its Purpose and its Philosophy.” Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. 1946. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0006/000681/068197eo.pdf. Print.

Nielson, Bjarke. “UNESCO and the ‘right’ kind of culture: Bureaucratic production and articulation.” Critique of Anthropology 31.4. (2011): 273-292. Print.

Stark, Miriam T. and P. Bion Griffin. “Archeological Research and Cultural Heritage Management in Cambodia’s Mekong Delta: The Search for the ‘Cradle of Khmer Civilization.’” in Baram, Uzi and Yorke Rowan, eds. Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past. New York, New York: Altamira Press, 2004. Print.

UNESCO – It’s Evil Purpose and Philosophy. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iqv5Q8Ujj2s. Web.

UNESCO Website. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/. Web.

Winter, Tim. “Landscape, Memory, and Heritage: New Year Celebrations at Angkor, Cambodia.” in Harrison, David and Michael Hitchcock, eds. The Politics of World Heritage. Tanawanda, New York: Channel View Publications, 2005. Print.