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• 1 2020-07-28T09:44:19-04:00 Borderlands 29 Background Information for Northern Vietnam plain 4802 2020-08-11T18:24:09-04:00 Northern Vietnam 1894-1940s Michitake Aso As the "cradle of Vietnamese civilization," the Red River Delta has often been considered a heartland. Yet,  the Red River Delta and its surrounding mid- and uplands have also been commercialized and militarized spaces. Those invoking such spaces often imagined northern Vietnam in a regional geography that has included southern China. Thus, northern Vietnam, like Xing An in Shellen Wu's module, has often been cast as a contested borderland. It has also been seen as either a core or a periphery, depending on the questions being asked and the interest of the viewer.
  
  During the period of French colonization, Dai Nam was divided into Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin and became part of French Indochina. The name Tonkin was mistakenly derived from an older name for Hanoi, Đông Kinh (東京) or eastern capital, and mistakenly equated with the Vietnamese term Đàng Ngoài (the northern region of Vietnam). This newly created political unit was incorporated in a French imperial world. French commercial and imperial concerns continued to be interested in northern Vietnam's potential access to the markets of China. Here is a French map from 1894 showing Indochina's waterway connections to southern China.
  
  
  
  By the early twentieth century, the blank spaces around the Red River Delta on French maps 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.
  
  
  
  The following 1931 map shows some of the battles of the Sino-French war of 1884 and 1885. This map is included at the end of an essay on painting created after this war by Chinese artists and presented to the Qing Emperor. Note how this map only shows northern Vietnam, symbolically severing it from the Chinese context of the war.    
  
  
  
  A final depiction of northern Vietnam's military and commercial connection with southern China comes from the Asia Pacific War. When French Indochina was incorporated into maps of the Japanese empire. 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.
  
  
  
  
  
   
• 1 2020-07-28T09:40:04-04:00 The Red River Delta in Sinosphere Geographies 9 Background Information for Red River Delta plain 2020-07-28T13:30:32-04:00 Before the central coast and the Mekong Delta were incorporated in Vietnamese national space, the Red River Delta was viewed as the southern frontier of Chinese civilization. This view was common among Chinese intellectuals, of course, but also oriented the views of Vietnamese intellectuals and elite. An example of this space is the following 1811 Qing era map called Da Qing wannian yitong tianxia quantu, or Complete map of all under Heaven, eternally unified by the great Qing (Richard Smith, "Mapping China and the Question of a China-Centered Tributary System," The Asia-Pacific Journal, no. 11 (3): 3). It depicts "Annam," or the pacified South, in the lower center left, along with a description of its relationship to China. 
  
  
  Later Sinosphere maps that focused on the Red River Delta continued to show its connections to southern China. The following maps show this connection. The first map is from 1870, a couple of decades before the Sino-French war of 1884 and 1885. In 1870, the Qing court still occupied a privileged position vis-a-vis the delta and the Nguyen Court. It shows a gridded space as Chinese mapmakers began to deal with European cartographic conventions. The second map is from sometime between 1885 and 1890. This map comes from after the Sino-French war. It shows a similar Sinosphere imaginary even after the Red River Delta had fallen under French control and been incorporated into the new political entity of Indochina. Both maps use the term "Yuë(h) Nam," or southern Yuëh, a neutral term, rather than the pejorative "An Nam."
  
  
  
  
  
  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.
  
  
  
  A third depiction of the Red River Delta's 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.