Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the Making of Modern Vietnam

274 Pages·2004·2.18 MB·English

by  Shawn Frederick McHale

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Print and Power
Southeast Asia
politics meaning and memory
, ,
Rita Smith Kipp and David Chandler
series editors
Print
and
Power
Confucianism, Communism, and
Buddhism in the Making
of Modern Vietnam
shawn frederick m hale
c
university of hawai‘i press Honolulu
©2004Universityof Hawai‘iPress
Allrightsreserved
PrintedintheUnitedStatesof America
Paperback edition 2008
13 12 11 10 09 08 6 5 4 3 2 1
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
McHale,ShawnFrederick.
Printandpower:Confucianism,communism,and
BuddhisminthemakingofmodernVietnam/Shawn
FrederickMcHale.
p. cm.—(SoutheastAsia)
Includesbibliographyreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-8248-3304-6((paperback : alk. paper)
1.Vietnam—History—1858–1945—Historiography.
2.Buddhism—Vietnam—History—20thcentury.
3.Confucianism—Vietnam—History—20thcentury.
4.Communism—Vietnam—History. 5.Printing—
Vietnam—History—20thcentury. I.Title. II.Series.
DS556.8.M387 2003
959.7’03—dc21
2003007985
Illustrationscredit:ArchivesNationalesdeFrance,
CentredesArchivesd’Outre-Mer
Universityof Hawai‘iPressbooksareprintedonacid-
freepaperandmeettheguidelinesforpermanenceand
durabilityof theCouncilonLibraryResources.
DesignedbyAprilHiggins,afterdesignbyRichHendel
PrintedbyTheMaple-VailBookManufacturingGroup
contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
part the state and the public sphere
1:
Chapter 1
Transforming Print Culture and
the Public Sphere 3
Chapter 2
TheColonial State and Repression
of the Printed Word 39
part three realms of print
2:
Chapter 3
Confucianism and
Vietnamese Culture 66
Chapter 4
Printing Revolution,
Spreading Communism 102
Chapter 5
From Popular Visions of Paradise
to the Buddhist Revival 143
Conclusion 173
Notes 183
Bibliography 225
Index 251

acknowledgments
This book began to take shape years ago as a doctoral dissertation
and has since been revised extensively. I would like to thank David
Wyatt, Sherman Cochran, and Keith Taylor for their early counsel. For
help in conducting research in France, the following persons deserve
special mention: Lucette Vachier and Simone Me´nager of the Centre
des Archives d’Outre-Mer (Aix-en-Provence) and Professor Pierre Bro-
cheux,Universite´ deParis–VII.
IwouldlikeespeciallytothankProfessorPhanHuyLeˆ andProfessor
Ðoa`n Thieˆ(cid:2)n Thuaˆ(cid:2)t, University of Hanoi, the director and vice-director
of the Center for Vietnamese and Intercultural Studies, which first
sponsored meinVietnam.Nguye±nVa˘nL(cid:2)ich,director of theCenter for
the Study of Southeast Asia and Vietnam, University of Ho Chi Minh
City,facilitatedtwoof myvisitstoHoChiMinhCity.Iwouldalsoliketo
thankthestaffsof theRevolutionaryMuseum(Hanoi)andtheNational
Archives(HanoiandHoChiMinhCity).FormyresearchonBuddhism,
membersof theVietnameseInstituteforBuddhistStudiesandmonksat
theQua´nS§´ temple(Hanoi)andtheXa´ Lƒ(cid:2)itemple(HoChiMinhCity)
helpedmewithsomeraresources.
Myresearchabroadwasmade possiblebyaFulbright-HaysDoctoral
DissertationFellowshipprovidedbytheU.S.Departmentof Education;
by a grant from the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia of the Social
Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Soci-
eties with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the
FordFoundation,andtheHenryLuceFoundation;andbysupplemental
fundingfromtheCornellDepartmentof History.Dissertationwrite-up
was funded bya Mellon Completion Fellowship. Since then, I have also
benefitedfromsupportfromtheGeorgeWashingtonUniversity,includ-
ingcrucialhelpfromtheSigurCenterforAsianStudies.
Over the years, I have benefited from the advice of several individ-
uals,includingChristophGiebelandMikeMontesano.Forcriticismsof
various parts of the book, I would like to thank Ed McCord, Helen
Chauncey,PeterZinoman,HueTamHoTai,KeithTaylor,DavidChan-
dler, Chris Goscha, and Li Tana. I have not, I confess, always followed
viii : Acknowledgments
my critics’ advice, but their criticisms have forced me to clarify my
arguments. Pam Kelley and Cheri Dunn at the University of Hawai‘i
Press have professionally shepherded thismanuscripttopress.Finally,I
would like to thank the members of my department at George Wash-
ingtonUniversity,whohave providedapleasantlycollegialenvironment
inwhichtowork.
This book would not have been written without the key help and
support of four individuals. Over the years, Keith Taylor has provided
extensive commentary on my work. Keith’s combination of scholarly
rigor, friendship, and support is exemplary. My spouse, Diane Kristen
McHale, has been a constant source of encouragement, especially in
thosethreestressfulyearsbeforeIlandedatenure-trackposition.Toher
I want to express my love and heartfelt thanks. And to my parents,
Thomas and Mary McHale, my debt is incalculable. Thanks to them,
I was introduced to the world of Southeast Asia. Their deep curiosity
abouttheregionsparkedmine.Thisbookisalovingtributetothem.
introduction
Ten years ago, I became captivated by the topic that forms the core of
this book: the rise of a Vietnamese public sphere and the role of print
therein from 1920 to 1945. While scholars have routinely commented
on how ‘‘literary’’ the Vietnamese have been, no one had studied the
economic and social history of the Vietnamese use of print. This book
began,then,asaprojecttofillthatgap.
Myprojectwasalsoanimatedbyadisquietingsensethatthereceived
political narrative of Vietnamese history, in which anticolonial national-
ism and revolution ultimately defined the significance of most of the
twentieth century, had slighted the cultural and intellectual history of
Buddhism and Confucianism while overrating the significance of com-
munism.Areevaluationwas,Ibelieved,inorder.
Arriving at an understanding of Vietnam’s public and clandestine
spheres and their print cultures was harder than I had at first imagined
because of the nature of the sources at my disposal, especially archives
and the pre-1945 publications themselves. I was disappointed to find
that the archival sources had insufficient information on the economic
and social history of publishing. These archives, product of a colonial
state,overwhelminglypresentapictureof theworldof printintermsof
its relation to politics and state power. After all, the colonial state was
most interested in controlling and repressing perceived threats to its
authority. This statist viewof the public realm, reflected inthe archives,
might lead the researcher to conclude that the colonial state dominated
therealmof print.Itisanenormouslyseductiveview.
Seductive? Yes, for historiographical and personal reasons. ‘‘Reading
the archive,’’ the French historian Arlette Farge states, ‘‘immediately
incites a sense of the real that no printed matter, however little known,
canarouse.’’1If printed textsaremeanttobereadbyapublic,thesame
is not true of archival documents. The fact that the archive was not
meanttobeopentothepublicleadsustobelievethatweareunmasking
secrets: ‘‘It is in this sense that it compels reading, ‘ensnares’the reader,
producesinhimthefeelingof finallyseizingholdof thereal.Andnotof
examining[thereal]throughastoryabout,adiscourseon.’’2Itisperhapsno