Re-Evaluating Vietnam’s Nghe-Tinh Soviets (1930-1931) using a

Historical GIS: Some Preliminary Observations

David Del Testa, Ph.D.Associate Professor of History

Bucknell University

Introduction• Thanks to the Center for Southeast Asian Studies• A discussion today of both a technique and the interpretation of

the results– Along with social network analysis, GIS provides an important new

tool for interpretation – I am novice in the use of historical GIS and not yet an expert on the

Nghe-Tinh Soviets, so you may be underwhelmed, but much work– Tried to improve presentation last night and ended up damaging it a

little• A follow-on to ‘Paint the Trains Red’: Labor, Nationalism, and the

Railroads in French colonial Indochina, 1898-1945• Long interest in Nghe-Tinh Soviets parallels book project

– A synthetic moment at the 2003 EUROSEAS annual meeting in Paris– Special issue of South East Asia Research on the Nghe-Tinh Soviets

coming soon– Seeking support for an in-depth archival and field study

What is a historical GIS?• At base, the association of data with maps – clear overlays• Now most often associated with computer software

– Developed for use by the military and in the environmental sciences (at Harvard, US Army)– Most people use a GIS without knowing it when they use GoogleEarth or a vehicle’s GPS system (which adds

real-time capability to analytical map)– ESRI’s ArcGIS has the most commercial market share for analytical – A free, open source alternative is the GRASS system

• GIS as software offers users a powerful means for displaying maps that they build themselves , but the most significant power lies in its ability to query the data relative to the maps and build correlations and associations otherwise invisible to the naked eye or difficult to construct beyond a small area

Charles Joseph Menard, “Carte figurative des pertes successives…” 1869

Historical GIS• A historical GIS implies that a user examines events in the

past by adapting historical data• Developing historical GIS is not revolutionary and has been

underway for many decades– China Historical GIS– Historical GIS in Britain– Electronic Cultural Atlas sponsored by UC Berkeley– The Spatial History Project at Stanford University

• Some historical GIS work associated with Vietnam– Brian Zottoli did some early work in 2001/2002 on Hue and Hoi

An– David Biggs at UC Irvine is developing a historical GIS on canals

in southern Vietnam– Dr. Mamoru Shibayama at Kyoto developed a GIS of Hanoi– Joe Hupy at University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire’s many projects

Problems with Historical GIS

• To capture the historical past and create a truthful representation of history requires enormous investments of time and resources!– Most GIS data is based on contemporary

boundaries and features (look at San Francisco Bay as an example)• Making changes to existing data or creating

new outlines takes much time still• One must also access this data and have the

right to use it• One must trust the statistics one is using

• Fear of the dominance of ‘ground truth’ and return to a quantitative history

• Steps for my own work beyond the idea:– finding data (gallica.fr made this possible)– getting permission to use maps– having them digitized ($)– having them matched to current GIS data ($)– learning software– having appropriate equipment– finding the time to implement, etc.

• But the rewards are potentially rich and it has become much easier!

Nghe-Tinh Soviets History

Data and Layer Sources• Layers include:

– Rice harvests for Nghe An and Ha Tinh– Non-rice cultivars for Nghe An and Ha Tinh– Handicraft and industry for Nghe An and Ha Tinh– Religiosity for Nghe An and Ha Tinh– Location of important protests and the sites of Soviets– Households susceptible to taxation for 1924, 1930, 1931, and 1932

• Data for layers of points and polygons:– For contemporary administrative district boundaries from National

Geospatial Intelligence Agency for province, district, and commune– For economic and land use data, Cartes économique de l’Annam (in

1926) from LOC (only other copy at BN) of Ha Tinh, Nghe An, and Quang Ngai and the Bulletin économique de l’Indochine, Annuaire économique de l’Indochine (especially a 1930 special issue on Nghe An agriculture), etc. • Bucknell University Information Services provided support for

student Max Stiss and others to ‘rubbersheet’ these maps to contemporary data

– For religiosity, “Carte du vicarat apolostqiue du Vinh” (1880) and reports of the MEP (1920s)

– For politics, Tran Huy Lieu’s The Soviets du Nghe-Tinh (1961), Rapport mensuel de l’Ensemble de l’Annam, and other French and Vietnamese sources

• Data/Layer problems:– Real need to get down to village level– Lack of unicode entries to display diacritics– As Gilles De Gantès and Magali Barbieri have described, French-

origin data sometimes suspect

Observations• Note that Kim Lien plotting incorrectly – in 10th month rice,

non-Catholic area• According to the maps, except at Nghen in Ha Tinh, neither

protests nor soviets occurred in areas with two rice crops• According to the maps, except at Nghen in Ha Tinh, neither

protest nor soviets occurred in an area with a subsidiary industry

• According to the maps, all protests and soviets occurred in an area with a subsidiary cultivar

• The Nghe-Tinh Soviets didn’t significantly affect the collection of taxes

• Only at Nam Dan protests occurs in a Catholic area; many others adjacent

Some paths to follow for future research

• Single-crop rice and non-industry/handicraft areas lack extra resources at a time of inflation – not immiseration but monoculture

• Non-rice cultivars do not provide an economic cushion, perhaps because of falling commodity prices

• Catholic/Non-Catholic conflict not significant initially

• Tax collection rate a result of more vigorous collection

• Need to find village-level data, add honesty to rice/cultivar/industry representation, impact of floods of 1926 and 1928, site all conflicts and begin to conduct spatial analysis

THANK YOU!