Livelihoods in the Vietnamese Northern Borderlands Recorded in French Colonial Military Ethnographies 1897-1904

Examination of unpublished colonial military archives on the Tonkinese borderlands offers new insights into the conditions within which indigenous inhabitants of these remote uplands made a living at the turn of the twentieth century. After sketching the background, methods and historical sequence behind the production of these archives, the paper draws from them a snapshot of indigenous living conditions, focusing on patterns of settlement, property rights, taxation and capitalisation. Three core elements of upland livelihoods are identifiable: hunting and gathering; agriculture; and trade and wage work. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of this archival material for the study of highland societies in the northern uplands of Vietnam today.