Michitake Aso
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469637150
- eISBN:
- 9781469637174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469637150.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
Plantation regimes encouraged knowledge production about plant and disease ecologies and the relationship among organisms and their environments more generally. More detailed knowledge about newly ...
More
Plantation regimes encouraged knowledge production about plant and disease ecologies and the relationship among organisms and their environments more generally. More detailed knowledge about newly introduced plant species, plant and human diseases, and their shared environments was a key ingredient of better, more profitable management of rubber plantations. Chapter 2 explores the process by which agronomy came to support the burgeoning rubber industry after rubber arrived in Indochina in 1897. The French colonial government was not the first to encourage agricultural improvement on the Indochinese peninsula, but the qualitative and quantitative investment that it made in these projects set it apart from previous states. Encouraged by the success of their British and Dutch neighbors, French planters envisioned turning biologically and culturally diverse landscapes into neat rows of hevea. Plantation agriculture also played an important role in defining the political and intellectual scope of the science of ecology in Indochina, encouraging agronomists to direct their energies toward transnational businesses and the colonial project. The process of integrating the efforts of scientists, officials, and planters was not always smooth, however, and this chapter highlights the conflicts and tensions generated by a political economy of plantation agriculture.Less
Plantation regimes encouraged knowledge production about plant and disease ecologies and the relationship among organisms and their environments more generally. More detailed knowledge about newly introduced plant species, plant and human diseases, and their shared environments was a key ingredient of better, more profitable management of rubber plantations. Chapter 2 explores the process by which agronomy came to support the burgeoning rubber industry after rubber arrived in Indochina in 1897. The French colonial government was not the first to encourage agricultural improvement on the Indochinese peninsula, but the qualitative and quantitative investment that it made in these projects set it apart from previous states. Encouraged by the success of their British and Dutch neighbors, French planters envisioned turning biologically and culturally diverse landscapes into neat rows of hevea. Plantation agriculture also played an important role in defining the political and intellectual scope of the science of ecology in Indochina, encouraging agronomists to direct their energies toward transnational businesses and the colonial project. The process of integrating the efforts of scientists, officials, and planters was not always smooth, however, and this chapter highlights the conflicts and tensions generated by a political economy of plantation agriculture.
Michitake Aso
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469637150
- eISBN:
- 9781469637174
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469637150.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
How can a single tree species affect human projects on the scale of empires and nations? Rubber and the Making of Vietnam explores this question for the rubber tree in Vietnamese history. Dating back ...
More
How can a single tree species affect human projects on the scale of empires and nations? Rubber and the Making of Vietnam explores this question for the rubber tree in Vietnamese history. Dating back to the nineteenth-century transplantation of a latex-producing tree from the Amazon to Southeast Asia, rubber production has wrought monumental changes worldwide. During a turbulent Vietnamese past, rubber has transcended capitalism and socialism, colonization and decolonization, becoming a key commodity around which life and history have flowed. Synthesizing archival material in English, French, and Vietnamese, this book narrates how rubber trees came to dominate the material and symbolic landscape of French Indochina and postcolonial Vietnam, structuring the region’s environments of agriculture, health, and violence. Once established, private and state-run plantations became landscapes of oppression, resistance, and modernity. Agronomists, medical doctors, laborers, and leaders of independence movements form part of this narrative as they struggled over various visions of labor in nature and the nature of labor. Mosquitoes and plasmodia also play a part in this narrative as they helped spread malaria among Vietnamese who planted and tended rubber trees. Rather than a human-centered past, this book adopts an ecological perspective as it tells twentieth-century Vietnamese history starting with the view from a rubber tree and branching outwards in multiple directions. In other words, this book taps the rubber tree to examine the entanglements of nature, culture, and politics and demonstrates how the demand for rubber has impacted nearly a century of war and peace in Vietnamese society.Less
How can a single tree species affect human projects on the scale of empires and nations? Rubber and the Making of Vietnam explores this question for the rubber tree in Vietnamese history. Dating back to the nineteenth-century transplantation of a latex-producing tree from the Amazon to Southeast Asia, rubber production has wrought monumental changes worldwide. During a turbulent Vietnamese past, rubber has transcended capitalism and socialism, colonization and decolonization, becoming a key commodity around which life and history have flowed. Synthesizing archival material in English, French, and Vietnamese, this book narrates how rubber trees came to dominate the material and symbolic landscape of French Indochina and postcolonial Vietnam, structuring the region’s environments of agriculture, health, and violence. Once established, private and state-run plantations became landscapes of oppression, resistance, and modernity. Agronomists, medical doctors, laborers, and leaders of independence movements form part of this narrative as they struggled over various visions of labor in nature and the nature of labor. Mosquitoes and plasmodia also play a part in this narrative as they helped spread malaria among Vietnamese who planted and tended rubber trees. Rather than a human-centered past, this book adopts an ecological perspective as it tells twentieth-century Vietnamese history starting with the view from a rubber tree and branching outwards in multiple directions. In other words, this book taps the rubber tree to examine the entanglements of nature, culture, and politics and demonstrates how the demand for rubber has impacted nearly a century of war and peace in Vietnamese society.
