PhD thesis defence by Armel Campagne
Scholars have long debated the relative weight of different factors as driving forces of history and driving motivations of historical actors: ideas or material interests, emotions or instrumental rationality, agency or structure, among others. These debates are still of relevance today, especially in the field of colonial history where scholars continue to diverge over what predominantly shaped the attitudes and practices of colonial officials and the extent of their agency or structural constraints. Although calls for a combination of post-structuralist and structuralist approaches proved useful in debunking reductionisms inherited from past methodological oppositions, they too often shy away from taking stances on the relative weight in specific historical contexts of each factor.
Critically engaging with the existing literature, this dissertation investigates the factors which shaped the attitudes and practices of French public and private officials involved in the making of colonial Vietnam's coal industry between 1873 and 1939. More precisely, it makes the argument that Tonkin was conquered by France in 1883, notably, because of French representations of its coal resources as plentiful, easy to exploit, legitimate to appropriate, and necessary for the French Navy, but under threat of being seized by China or Great Britain. The thesis also establishes the relative importance of Sinophilia and Sinophobia in the recruitment of Vietnam’s collieries. It argues that the French colonizers relied on a shared moral economy of domination, exploitation, and justice, which justified before their own eyes their colonial and capitalist practices and interests. The dissertation furthermore demonstrates that workers’ individual resistance to exploitation and complete dispossession, rather than inter-classist anticolonial resistance or organized working-class resistance, was the main form of resistance in colonial Vietnam’s coal industry. It exposes the (self)contradictory character of French colonial biopolitics, which was ambitious and thought of as instrumental to the mise en valeur in theoretical and ministerial texts, but not enforced by local French public officials willing to prioritize the mise en valeur over workers’ lives. Finally, this thesis uncovers the centrality of environmental tensions of empire in the making of Vietnam’s coal industry by investigating a twenty-year controversy about water pollution and deforestation between Tonkin’s colonial administration, second largest colliery, and second most populated city. In the end, this dissertation demonstrates the necessity to assess the relative weight of different factors as driving forces of history and driving motivations of historical actors on a case-by-case basis, and thus to go beyond the mere call to combine post-structuralist and structuralist approaches.