[Tlc] C-memorial/correction

[justinm at ucr.edu]

Forwarded from Dr. Shawn McHale.
Thanks,
justin


Dear list,

Sok-Kheang Ly's essay  on Khmer Kampuchea Krom has one small error with some important implications for his argument.  He writes that "French colonialism changed  Cambodian borders by ceding the lower Mekong Delta to Vietnam in the late 19th century." This is not technically true.

In the 1860s, France seized the "luc tinh," or six provinces of southern Vietnam, from the Nguyen dynasty and made them a direct colony of France. This meant that until 1949, the Mekong delta was, legally, NOT a part of Vietnam. It became part of a larger entity -- French Indochina -- but not of Vietnam. Vietnam had no government apparatus, no legal authority, over the Mekong delta in this period. France did.

In 1949, France "ceded" Cochinchina to the State of Vietnam.  For the first time since the 1860s, Khmer of the Mekong delta were once under the ultimate authority of the Vietnamese, not the French.

It is precisely because this "cession" to the Vietnamese state has been so recent that it is still so contested in the minds of Khmer Krom.



Shawn McHale
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
202/ 994-2760 

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
3046 INTN
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu