Between 1920 and 1946, a Vietnamese "print culture" came into existence. This development is the topic of my dissertation, which combines the social history of French colonial control of printed matter with an understanding of the impact of printed materials on Vietnamese culture. The dissertation thus broadens our understanding of Vietnam's colonial history.
The dissertation is divided into three sections. The first section outlines the growth in use of printed matter, 1920-1945, and examines the concurrent expansion of a public sphere of printed discourse. It argues that French colonial law played a key role in structuring this emergent sphere. The second section moves from this general context to look at Vietnamese styles of reading, showing how Vietnamese knowledge was structured by gender and hierarchy. The third section turns to three case histories of the use of print: debates over elite and popular Buddhism in southern Vietnam, 1920-1945; the evolution of communist propaganda in northern Vietnam, 1929-1946; and debates over Confucianism and popular culture in Central Vietnam and Hanoi, 1922-1945.
The dissertation challenges the dominant paradigm in modern Vietnamese studies, which is to consider all events in the colonial period in relation to nationalist and revolutionary movements. While the dissertation does not minimize the importance of these political movements, it contests the idea that the success of Vietnam's independence struggle determines the meaning of all the events that preceded it. In contrast, this dissertation studies a process which contributed to political change but whose significance extends beyond politics. It distinguishes the ways in which discourse often circulated in overlapping (not identical) social, political, and ritual spheres; took distinct trajectories; and contributed in different ways to the rich texture of Vietnamese cultural life.
The dissertation draws selectively on debates in European and Asian studies on literacy, orality, the public sphere and print culture. It is based on archival, oral, and library sources in Vietnam, France, and the United States.
