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• 1 2020-07-26T09:41:08-04:00 The Red River Delta in Physical and Human Geographies 16 Background information for Red River Delta plain 2020-07-28T14:02:23-04:00 Red River Delta 1900-2020 The Red River Delta is considered the cradle of Vietnamese civilization. Lê Bá Thảo, formerly one of the leading geographers of Vietnam, wrote in the 1990s of "the history of the conquest of the Red River delta" that created the "Red River civilization." (Thảo, Vietnam: The Country and Its Geographical Regions, 317).
  
  Geography of the Red River from Le, Nguyen dynasty sources. Short and swift river, frequently floods. Dike network that helps irrigate, controls floods.
  
  [Smith diss, map.]
  
  Thảo continues that the delta is the result "of both the Red River and the Thái Bình river systems, but for reason of convenience and habit, the delta is named after the principal river system (the Red River)." (Thảo, Vietnam: The Country and Its Geographical Regions, 318).
  
  Include Li Tana material on Gulf of Tonkin.
  
  The following French colonial maps published in 1886 shows several things. First, French knowledge of the Red River Delta was limited. French conquest of the Nguyen imperial court, and control over central and northern Vietnam, was only completed in 1885. The blank area around the delta was unknown and simply left blank. Second, physical geography was of keen interest, hence the topographic map. Third, this was a commercial map, both in the sense that it was for sale and in the sense that it depicted the Red River Delta in French imperial geographies of commerce. The inset shows the links of the Red River Delta to the rest of Indochina, and eventually, France.
  
  
  Current Landsat images reproduce images of the delta as a green, wedge-shaped space.
  
   
• 1 2020-07-28T09:44:19-04:00 The Red River Delta in Military Geographies 10 Background Information for Red River Delta plain 2020-07-28T13:54:11-04:00 The following French colonial maps published in 1886 shows several things. First, French knowledge of the Red River Delta was limited. French conquest of the Nguyen imperial court, and control over central and northern Vietnam, was only completed in 1885. The blank area around the delta was unknown and simply left blank. Second, physical geography was of keen interest, hence the topographic map. Third, this was a commercial map, both in the sense that it was for sale and in the sense that it depicted the Red River Delta in French imperial geographies of commerce. The inset shows the links of the Red River Delta to the rest of Indochina, and eventually, France.
  
  
  
  The Red River Delta was a commercialized and militarized space. These geographies, especially the militarized, played a key role shaping fears of biological warfare during the 1st Indochina War. As with earlier Sinosphere maps, French commercial and imperial concerns were interested in connections to Southern China as well, though for different reasons. Here is a map from 1894 showing Indochina's waterway connections to southern China.
  
  By the early twentieth century, the blank spaces around the delta had been filled with ethnographic knowledge relevant to military control of the delta. The following 1905 map of the military territories that ring the delta shows the presence of ethnic minorities and suggests how they can be used for military alliances.
  
  
  
  A third depiction of the Red River Delta's military and commercial connection with southern China comes from the Asia Pacific War. The following map comes from a 1940s Japanese publication aimed at school children showing French Indochina and China. This map emphasizes the waterways and railroad connections linking China to Hanoi and to points further south.
  
  
  
  Show Viet Bac, Viet Minh hospital?