No / This paper examines the ways in which the French colonial administration in Cochinchina sought to regulate the alienation of native lands and their sale to overseas investors between about 1900 and 1940. Drawing on archival evidence, the paper considers how the administration developed land legislation in order to facilitate the expansion of European agricultural interests in the colony. The conflicts between those different interests is examined and the paper argues that debates over land sale policies exposed the complex and sometimes conflicting nature of French colonial policy in Indochina.

This project is a transcription and translation of a 21-page annual letter written about the Cochinchina mission for the year 1619 by the Jesuit missionary João Rodrigues Girão. In 1619 the Cochinchina mission consisted of central and southern Vietnam. The two Jesuit residents at this time were located in the city of Faifo, in the province of Cacham, and Nuocman, in the province of Pulocamby. A semi-diplomatic and diplomatic transcription style is used for the transcription, with a dynamic-equivalent (sense-for-sense) style used for the translation.

This project is a transcription and translation of a letter from the Japonica Sinica 85 collection of the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu. It was written by an unidentified Jesuit who recounts three years of history (1655-1657) of the Tonkin kingdom (in present-day Vietnam), replacing the annual letters from those years that had been lost at sea. The account includes descriptions of their wars with Cochinchina, the succession of the kingship, and the funeral and burial of the Lê-Triṇh lord, Triṇh Tráng.

This project consists of a transcription and translation of the Annuae 1626-1645, written by an unidentified Jesuit missionary in Tonkin (Vietnam). The document appears to have been used as a source text for António Cardim's book Batalhas da Companhia de Jesus, and, as a result, there are many similarities between the two works. Despite these similarities, the Annuae contains new and insightful information on the state of the Tonkin mission as well as an interesting outsider's perspective on Vietnamese politics in the early 17th century.

Transcription and Translation of the 1658 Jesuit Annual Letter, VietnamNathan Joseph RichardsonDepartment of Spanish and Portuguese, BYUMaster of ArtsThis project provides a translation and two transcriptions (semi-diplomatic and normalized) of the 1658 Jesuit Annua letter sent from the Tonkin kingdom (now Vietnam) to Jesuit authorities back in Portugal. Specifically, the letter, which is housed in the archives of the worldwide Society of Jesus in Rome (folder 89, Japonica Sinica series, fols 286-290v), reports the progress of the Jesuit mission in that kingdom. However, it also contains a fascinating account of contemporary political and other events there. The purpose of this project is to make this letter accessible to a variety of readers. The English translation makes the letter's contents available to an English readership interested in Portugal's expansion in Asia, especially the activities of Jesuit missionaries in Vietnam; the normalized transcription is aimed at those with similar interests who read Portuguese; and the semi-diplomatic transcription, together with a facsimile of the original manuscript, is intended for those who study the history of the Portuguese language and are particularly concerned with the edition of early modern texts.

Dès la conquête de la Cochinchine en 1862, l’Administration coloniale et des particuliers français exploitèrent l’agriculture locale et y développèrent l’économie. Ils tentèrent de faire l’essai et d’introduire diverses cultures, en particulier des arbres à caoutchouc. L’année 1897 marqua le début de l’hévéaculture de Cochinchine, lorsqu’on planta avec succès près de deux mille hévéas brasiliensis. La superficie de l’hévéaculture en Cochinchine se développait prodigieusement, allant de cent hectares à la fin du XIXème siècle à près de cent mille hectares au début des années trente, grâce d’une part à des capitaux provenant de la Métropole et, d’autre part à des mesures d’encouragement du Gouvernement colonial. Les plantations d’hévéa attirèrent les travailleurs locaux, surtout en provenance du Tonkin et de l’Annam, à raison d’une dizaine de mille, parfois une vingtaine de mille par an.Parallèlement à l’extension des superficies plantées, la production du caoutchouc de la colonie s’accrut rapidement, allant d’un peu plus d’une tonne en 1908 à plus de soixante mille tonnes en 1939. Les plantations d’hévéa devinrent l’une des cultures les plus importantes de Cochinchine à l’époque coloniale française. Non seulement elles apportèrent la fortune aux planteurs de la colonie, mais elles assurèrent une partie, et depuis 1938, la totalité des besoins de caoutchouc de l’industrie métropolitaine. Les plantations d’hévéa de Cochinchine représentaient un symbole de la colonisation agricole française, mais aussi hélas l’une des pages noires de l’histoire du colonialisme français au Vietnam par l’exploitation brutale des planteurs envers les travailleurs vietnamiens. / As early as the conquest of Cochinchina in 1862, the colonial administration and French individuals exploited the local agriculture and developed the economy there. They tried to experiment and introduce various crops, especially rubber trees. The year of 1897 marked the beginning of the rubber plantation of Cochinchina, when two thousand rubber trees brasiliensis were successfully planted. The area of rubber tree plantation in Cochinchina grew tremendously, ranging from one hundred hectares at the end of the 19th century to nearly one hundred thousand hectares in the early 1930s, because of, on the one hand, the capital invested from the metropolis, and, on the other hand, the measures of encouragement taken by the colonial Government. The rubber plantations attracted local workers, mainly from Tonkin and Annam, at a rate of about 10.000, sometimes 20.000 persons a year. In parallel with the extension of the area of rubber plantation, the colonial rubber production rapidly increased from just over one tonne in 1908 to more than 60.000 tons in 1939.The rubber tree plantation became one of the most important crops of Cochinchina during the French colonial era. Not only they brought fortune to the planters of the colony, but they secured a part, and since 1938, the whole of the rubber demands of the metropolitan industries. The Cochinchina rubber plantations represented a symbol of French agricultural colonization and, unfortunately, one of the black pages of the history of French colonialism in Vietnam by the brutal exploitation of Vietnamese workers by rubber planters.