Abandoned Eurasians

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE IN COLONIAL
INDOCHINA: THE REMOVAL OF ABANDONED EURASIAN

CHILDREN FROM THE VIETNAMESE MILIEU, 1890-1956
By Christina Firpo
California Polytechnic University
From 1890-1956 the French colonial government of Indochina became increasingly involved in the affairs of the colonys miniscule and marginalized population
of abandoned Eurasian children. During this period, French civilian protection
organizations and the French colonial government conducted exhaustive, often
covert searches throughout the Indochinese countryside to find mixed-race children who had been abandoned by their French fathers.1 Because they lacked a
French father and French cultural influences and lived within the Vietnamese
milieu, such children were labeled abandoned.2
The colonys small population of abandoned Eurasians was a consistent source
of anxiety for members of French colonial society. Many French colonists believed that the combination of a supposedly debauched Vietnamese mother and
a Vietnamese cultural environment put Eurasian children at risk for social deviance. These children, many of whom could pass for white yet had supposedly
been corrupted by Vietnamese culture, were considered a threat to white prestige.
If Eurasian females engaged in prostitution, as was feared, this would embarrass the
colony; if Eurasian males engaged in anti-colonial activities, this would call into
question the very authority of whiteness. French colonists further suspected that
abandoned Eurasians would come to resent their place in the colonial racial hierarchy when they reached young adulthood. Being of partial European descent,
yet classified under colonial law as Vietnamese, the abandoned Eurasians might
well expect privileges that would be denied them. French colonists feared that
these children, already supposedly predisposed toward deviance, would eventually channel their resentment into rebellion against the colonial government.3
In the 1890s, a small group of French civilians formed non-governmental societies to protect abandoned Eurasians from Vietnamese cultural influences,
thereby neutralizing the threat they were presumed to pose. The goal was to remove these children forcibly if necessary from their Vietnamese mothers and
the Vietnamese cultural environment and transform them into young French men
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and women. 4 As children, the abandoned Eurasians were believed to be culturally and morally malleable. Assuming French cultural practices to be morally corrective, and motivated by fears of political security, French colonists placed
abandoned Eurasians in French-run orphanages, where they were raised to be culturally French and loyal to the colonial government. In 1938, the colonial government would assume control of the protection organizations. These
organizations would continue, albeit under different names, through 1956, the
last days of French presence in Indochina.
This article will supplement the rich works of Emannuelle Saada, Gilles de la
Gantes, Pierre Guillaume, Ann Laura Stoler, and David M. Pomfret5 by focusing
on the diverse and changing attitudes toward the racial formation of abandoned
Eurasians that occurred throughout the colonial period 1890-1956. This period
was fraught with historical exigencies, perceived threats to white prestige, and inherent challenges to the colonial patriarchy. I will argue that the racial formations
of abandoned Eurasian children in colonial Indochina changed repeatedly in response to these threats. Drawing from the rhetoric of racial sciences, the colonial
government increasingly made the case that these children were white. 6 The
whiter that Eurasians appeared to the colonial gaze, the more pressing it became to remove them from the Vietnamese milieu and educate them as French.
The hope was that the newly whitened young French men and women would help
offset the many threats facing the colony. This article will trace the history of the
colonys security concerns and how these concerns led to a reimagining of abandoned Eurasian childrens racial formation.
Crucial to this reimagining of racial formation was the management of gender roles. The removal of abandoned Eurasian children from their Vietnamese
mothers was driven in part by a desire to maintain the colonial patriarchy. The
Eurasian welfare organizations were themselves male-dominated, in contrast to
Progressive-era child welfare organizations in the U.S.7 The desire to transform
the abandoned Eurasian children into culturally French individuals was motivated
not just by political expediency but also by the patriarchal assumption that race
passes through the father. Because abandoned Eurasian males did not meet French
standards of masculinity, the colonial government and Eurasian protection societies sought to make men of them, Frenchness being equated with masculinity.
The hope was that these Eurasian males would pass this French brand of masculinity on to future generations. As for abandoned Eurasian girls, there was no
discussion of making ladies of them; the aim was simply to prevent them from
becoming prostitutes and usher them into marriage with whites or other francified
Eurasians. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese mothers of abandoned Eurasians were perceived by the French colonists as an obstacle to the francification process. (The
childrens French fathers, being absent, were rarely discussed.) The colonists were
confronted with an uncomfortable contradiction in the fact that the mothers who
had given birth to these prospective French men and women were Vietnamese.
Moreover, in raising their abandoned Eurasian children, these Vietnamese women
had effectively usurped the role of head of household, which in the colonial imag-
CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE
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ination was implicitly patriarchal. On the broader social level, the Vietnamese
womens movement, in challenging colonial gender roles, posed a political challenge to colonial patriarchy.
A marginalized population
Abandoned Eurasian children, both urban and rural, lived on the margins of
colonial society. Most of them were born near current or former military camps;
their fathers were usually unidentified but it is likely that most were colonial soldiers. Some fathers, however, were civilians or even members of the colonial administration. The fathers had abandoned their children for numerous reasons,
which included job reassignment, the end of a short-term romance with the
mother, divorce, and occasionally death. The mothers were wives, concubines,
prostitutes, house servants or victims of rape.8
There exists very little available data on Vietnamese perceptions of Eurasian
children during the colonial era. Articles on this subject appeared in the Vietnamese press only infrequently. A small number were translations of articles that
had appeared in the French language press publicizing and promoting the Eurasian
protection societies. Other articles, written by Vietnamese journalists, warned of
the dangers of miscegenation, which allegedly included adultery, domestic violence, robbery, and damage to the Vietnamese family structure.9 From the Vietnamese point of view Eurasians represented either collaboration with colonialism10
or, in the case of rape, colonial dominance.
Meanwhile, the large volume of French writings about Eurasians revealed
complex attitudes toward Eurasians. Eurasian children who had been legally recognized by their fathers were integrated into the French legal system and, usually,
French society. Eurasians who had not been officially recognized by their French
fathers, by contrast, were legally indigne [native].11 As for Eurasian children
who had been abandoned by their fathers, these children were shunned by French
society whether or not they had been recognized because they were not culturally French.
Although abandoned Eurasian children made up only a small percentage of
the population of colonial Indochina, some French administrators and civilians
perceived them as crucial to the preservation of whiteness in the colony. Being
part white, the Eurasian children occupied the margins of whiteness, according to
the French point of view. In this exposed position, they had on one hand the potential to reveal the vulnerabilities of whiteness, as prostitutes or anti-colonialists
for example. On the other hand, if francified and thus whitened in the protection societies, they could bolster declining white population numbers, thereby assuaging French anxiety about white depopulation. In short, abandoned Eurasian
childrens position at the margin of whiteness made them the first line of defense
in the protection of the empire.
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From colonization to 1914: The founding of Eurasian protection societies

Eurasian protection societies were founded within a context of colonial anxiety about the security of the new colony. The establishment of French colonial
rule in Vietnam and the other countries of Indochina was a gradual process marred
by rebellions that exposed French vulnerabilities. Although French missionaries, and some French advisors, had been in Vietnam since the mid-16th century, it
was not until the mid-19th century that the French military intervened directly in
Vietnam.12 From 1856 through the beginning of the 20th century, the French military fought Vietnamese anticolonial forces in bloody battles. Although the
French established governing powers through treaties, the local populations of
the area continued to combat the French military. Throughout the colonial period, the French government would continue to face multiple small rebellions,
thereby making security a preoccupation and a consistent theme in the discourse
on abandoned Eurasian children throughout the colonial period.
Officials in the colonial government were alarmed by abandoned Eurasian
children, whom they equated with a potential threat to white prestige and, by extension, colonial rule. French colonists identified three ways in which abandoned
Eurasian children would pose a threat to the colonial regime. First, colonists suspected that male abandoned Eurasians would, when they reached young adulthood, come to resent their place in the colonial racial hierarchy. Presumably
rejected by Vietnamese as well as French populations, these young men were
destined to become rebels and enemies of France.13 Second, colonists claimed
that Eurasian girls would damage white prestige by becoming prostitutes. Those
who held this belief frequently vilified the mothers. As one government administrator warned: [Because] there is no maternal direction, the child does poorly
in school and the girls often go on to become prostitutes. If not taken care of, they
are potential dangers to the colony. According to this administrator, it was the
moral duty of French colons to prevent girls from becoming prostitutes.14 Third,
officials in the French government expressed concern that abandoned Eurasians
would become a source of white poverty in Indochina as they had in the Netherlands Indies, where Eurasians comprised the majority of impoverished whites. In
order to prevent an epidemic of white poverty in Indochina, the French Consulate of Batavia advised Indochinas colonial government to monitor its entire
Eurasian population.15
To neutralize the threat that abandoned Eurasians were presumed to pose,
French civilians throughout Indochina formed non-governmental Eurasian protection societies in the early 1890s. Eurasian protection was designed to remove
abandoned Eurasian children from the Vietnamese cultural environment. According to a French social theory popular at the time, a change in social environment could correct a persons moral shortcomings.16 Assuming French cultural
practices to be morally corrective, French colonists placed abandoned Eurasians
in French-run orphanages, where they were raised to be culturally French and
loyal to the colonial government.
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Before the founding of the Eurasian protection societies in the 1890s,

Catholic orphanages cared for both Vietnamese and Eurasian orphans who had
been abandoned or deposited there. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, abandoned Eurasian children were sent to the new Eurasian-specific protection societies, which formed a separate, secular orphanage system. Catholic
orphanages continued to accept Eurasian wards but then channeled them to the
Eurasian system.17 The goal of the Eurasian protection societies was not only to
care for the children but to regulate environmental influences and the childrens
behavior.18 The private protection societies differed from the church-run orphanages in that the church passively accepted the Eurasian children into its care
while the private protection societies aggressively sought them out.
Eurasian protection societies employed metropolitan French legal mechanisms to justify removing Eurasian children from their mothers care. One such
law was the 24 July 1889 Metropolitan Law, which declared that the state could
claim paternal rights over children who had been physically or morally abandoned
by one or both of their parents. The law, known as the Dcheance de la puissance
paternelle, meaning the divestiture of paternal power, allowed the state to intervene
in the family and take custody of children.19 As a colony, Cochinchina was required to follow French Metropolitan laws on childcare, and the 1889 paternal divestment law was made applicable to French citizens in Indochina by a decree of
7 May, 1890.20 The law was not promulgated in the protectorates of Tonkin,
Annam, Laos, and Cambodia until 1924.21 Even before that year, however, protection societies for abandoned Eurasian children would use the rhetoric of the
1889 law to justify their actions. In 1907, the colonial state began offering legal
and financial support by declaring the organizations recognized by the public
and providing subventions. That said, protection societies would remain private
until 1938.
The Eurasian protection societies justified the removal of abandoned Eurasian
children from their mothers with the argument that a Eurasian childs domestic
environment should conform to French cultural norms. Some orphanage administrators expressed a belief that the parents of abandoned Eurasians were of
morally dubious character. Most of the colonys abandoned Eurasian children
were born out of wedlock, and unmarried parents were automatically assumed to
have low morals and thus to have a corruptive influence on their children.
Charles Gravelle, an orphanage administrator in Cambodia, made the case for
taking custody of Eurasians on the grounds that their mothers were prostitutes
and their fathers, as young soldiers, had been involved in debauchery, opium, or
oriental vices. Further evidence of the fathers immorality lay in the fact that
they had abandoned their children.22
The orphanage societies were alerted to the existence of Eurasian families
through witness reports. While touring the countryside, military officials would
report to local French colonial officials on cases of Eurasian children found living
with their single Vietnamese mothers.23 Police, orphanage administrators, and
local French civilians reported to the protection societies on Eurasians found living in single-mother homes.
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World War I
World War I shattered the illusion of French superiority in the world. During World War I and its aftermath, colonial Indochina experienced three major
threats to French dominance: nationalism, feminism, and a perceived white
French depopulation crisis. These threats intensified anxiety about Eurasian resentment and rebellion, which in turn increased efforts to francify abandoned
Eurasians in the protection societies.
During World War I, the Vietnamese nationalist movement continued to
grow and drew increasing attention from the French Sret, the colonial security
force. Colonial leaders feared losing political control as they sought to quell localized rebellions. These rebellions called attention to weaknesses in French authority and colonial security that became more apparent through the decade after
the war.24
Concurrently, elite Vietnamese female journalists began to challenge the patriarchal foundations of colonial society. In 1917, N! Gi"i Chung, the first Vietnamese-language newspaper for women, questioned gender roles in Vietnamese
society.2 The papers writers called for a more assertive female role in society; in
particular they championed female education.2 One article demanded that textbooks be written not only for male but also female students.27 The articles strongly
encouraged womens education in the sciences.28 Changes in gender roles in Vietnamese society resulting from the womens movement would alarm the French
colonial government during the following decade. Although the Vietnamese
womens movement did not take a stance on colonialism in its early years, it did
challenge the existing social order.29 Writers in the womens movement provided
an alternative to the patriarchy as France was referred to in feminine-maternal
terms such as M!u Qu"c [motherland],3 and Php Lan [western mother].3 The
womens movement was nationalist, and by the end of the 1920s it would become affiliated with the radical youth movement and thus pose a threat to colonial order.32
Eurasian protection society administrators reacted to the threat posed by the
changes in the colonial social order by once again urging colonial officials to take
a more aggressive role in the protection of abandoned Eurasian children.
Changes in Metropolitan theories about population management and race gave
Eurasian protection advocates a language through which to explain the significance of Eurasian children to the French colonial nation. Two trends in particular, Pronatalism and racial categorization, influenced colonial officials to
reconsider their racial perceptions of abandoned Eurasian children.
The large number of casualties resulting from World War I led to the rise of
the Metropolitan-originated Pronatalist movement in Indochina. Pronatalists
believed that a large population was the key to French military strength. The
Pronatalist movement therefore focused on promoting large families and child
protection.33 Ironically, while the Pronatalist movement in France focused on promoting the growth of the white French population,34 the Pronatalist movement in
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Indochina was partly responsible for the French reconsideration of abandoned

Eurasian children as descendants of Frenchmen and thus part of the French nation
and race. Ironically, the Eurasian protection societies used the rhetoric of Pronatalism while contradicting the movements initial trajectory.
The Pronatalist movement in Indochina owed its relative inclusivity to the
colonys distinct racial demographics. Most obviously, the French population in
the colony was far outnumbered by Asians. Given that the French had begun to
equate population numbers with political and military might, French colonists in
Indochina experienced considerable anxiety over the possibility of losing control
of the colony, and this anxiety was exacerbated by the rise of Vietnamese nationalism. Another difference between the Mtropole and the colony was the relative prevalence of miscegenation and mixed-race families. Pronatalist-supporting
French colonists sought to boost the numbers of white French in the colony in
order to maintain political power. Eurasian protection society administrators used
Pronatalist arguments to lobby the colonial government to expand benefits for
Eurasian children, who were starting to be considered French.
At the same time that Pronatalism was developing in France and Indochina,
scientific theories of racial blood typing, which categorized races based on a presumed biological difference, were gaining popularity in the Metropole. In 1919
Ludwik and Hanna Hirszfeld published The application of serological methods to the
problem of races, which proposed using blood groups to show the origins of ethnic
groups. The anthropology community used the Hirtszfelds theory as a basis for
distinguishing races.35 By the late 1920s, racial blood typing was popularly accepted in the Metropole.
In Indochina, science-based racial theories developed very differently from
the Mtropole. Instead of making the case for an essentialist definition of whiteness, colonial officials employed the scientific discourse on racial categorization
to make the case that Eurasians were white. As a note from the president of the
Society for the Protection of Abandoned Mixed-Race Children in Annam stated:
At a time when the Mre Patrie is losing a little more blood of its children every
day, it appears to us that, from a patriotic and social point of view, our
obligation is to increase efforts to save all those who are related to our race,
even if it [relation to race] is only a minimum.36
The presidents words mark a subtle shift in discourse on abandoned Eurasian

children. In the pre-war period, references to what the French viewed as immoral
Vietnamese cultural influences dominated the calls to remove abandoned Eurasian
children from their mothers care. As wartime French anxiety about population
decimation increased, discussions about abandoned Eurasian children changed to
include language that evoked a sense of Eurasians blood ties to the French race.
The wartime draft and resulting casualties meant that an increasing number
of Eurasian children were being abandoned by their French fathers and left in the
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care of their Vietnamese mothers. In 1917, protection society administrators estimated that the number of abandoned Eurasian children had quadrupled as
French fathers left for war.37 Protection society administrators stepped up their efforts to take custody of these children. In 1920, Charles Gravelle, a Eurasian protection society administrator, appealed to the Governor General to increase aid
to the protection societies because, being French from the heart and blood, the
Eurasian children represented a certain progress for the colonization of Indochina.38
By 1917 the colonial government had become deeply concerned about the
growing numbers of white and Eurasian children orphaned by war. Three wartime
laws were passed in the Mtropole and reinterpreted in the colony to protect the
children of soldiers. As efforts to ensure the survival of these children, these laws
entered the discourse on the perceived problem of French depopulation. Additionally, the laws enabled the colonial government to intervene in greater numbers of Eurasian families. The first was a law to retroactively legitimate illegitimate
children of French fathers who were killed in the line of duty.39 The second was
a law to establish permanent state support for war orphans, who were known as
Pupilles de la Nation. In the Mtropole, under the Pupille law, the state legally
adopted these children, although many had living mothers who had not abandoned them.40
At the same time that the Pupille law was being legislated, the Minister of
Colonies enacted another policy intended specifically for the Eurasian children of
fallen fathers. Whereas the original Pupille law had been formulated out of Metropolitan law and was intended to assist the French children of French mothers,
this third law was regulated the cultural environments in which Eurasians were
raised. In June 1917, the Minister of War and the Minister of Colonies decided
that both recognized and non-recognized Eurasian children in Indochina would
be raised with their Indochinese mothers until the age of ten, at which point the
state would institutionalize the children.41 This policy marked the first aggressive
governmental action to remove abandoned Eurasian children from their mothers
care. The Eurasian application of the Pupille de la Nation law, along with the original Pupille de la Nation and retroactive legitimation, opened the door for future
governmental interventions in Eurasian families, even in cases where the father
was not in the military.
The three historical developments described above Vietnamese anti-colonialism and feminism, racial blood typing, and Pronatalist laws collectively led
the colonial government to play a more active role in protection programs for
Eurasians. During World War I, Eurasian protection societies developed a plan to
utilize the labor potential of institutionalized Eurasians after the war. Abandoned
Eurasian children would be placed in land settlement training programs in the #
L$t/Lang Bien area of Annam as well as in the Mtropole. The programs would
serve three purposes. First, they would help, however minimally, to solve post-war
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labor shortages in Annam and the Mtropole.42 Secondly, the programs would educate the Eurasian wards to become productive citizens loyal to the colonial government, thereby mitigating any security threat they might pose. (An
administrator named Lan of the Society for Abandoned Mixed-Race Children of
Annam warned of the dangers of [creating] a caste of Mtis; instead, he proposed transforming Eurasian children into industrial workers or farmers capable
of rendering service in the country that receives them.43) Thirdly, at the settlements, protection society administrators could regulate the behavior of abandoned
Eurasian children and prevent them from joining the ranks of the anticolonial
movement.44
The colonial settlement programs would last, in various forms, through the
end of the colonial period. As for the Metropolitan French apprenticeship version, it appeared to end with the financial collapse of 1929.45
The Great Depression and the Radicalization of Eurasian Protection Policies
The Great Depression crippled France and the colonies. Among other things,
Depression era privations led to the rise of various political movements that posed
a potential threat to colonial security and the established patriarchy. These included a communist movement, a feminist movement, and a Eurasian identity
movement. In response, the colonial government would step up its control of the
Eurasian protection societies to ensure that their Eurasian charges would not become involved in anti-colonial activities.
Throughout the 1930s, the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) took advantage of Depression-era privations to boost its membership and worked in poor
areas to aid farmers and lead rebellions. The rise of the ICP and frequency of
worker and peasant strikes called attention to weaknesses in colonial authority. In
1937, various members of the colonial administration articulated a fear that impoverished Eurasian adults would join the ranks of the communist movement.46
The government responded by increasing security in many aspects of colonial life,
including Eurasian care.
A second threat developed in the form of the Vietnamese womens movement, which challenged the colonial social order and patriarchy. In the late 1920s,
the Vietnamese feminist movement promoted nationalist values and urged women
to consider the maternal role as their contribution to nationalism. As the movement continued in the 1930s, it became increasingly nationalist and anticolonial.
Shortly after the ICP was founded in 1930, the Vietnamese Womens Union, a
branch of the Communist Party devoted to womens issues, emerged;4 women
began organizing trade unions and supporting ICP strikes.4 Meanwhile, Ph# N!
Tn V$n, the most popular mainstream womens magazine, joined the anti-colonial movement. Ph# N! Tn V$n urged women to take an active role in the
movement by raising their children to be young nationalists.
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The flurry of articles encouraging women to teach their children nationalist

values played into colonial fears about the rebellious potential of abandoned
Eurasians being raised by their Vietnamese mothers. Ph% N! Tn V$ns authors
wrote that nationalism was to be practiced within the family domain. Children
were expected to respect and nurture the nation in much the same way that they
were expected to respect and nurture their parents. One article declared: We
know how to love our family; we must know how to love our country.49 In addition, the articles portrayed the family as the means by which to reproduce the nation. In the most fundamental sense, this meant increasing population numbers
(clearly an influence of the rhetoric on population emanating from the French
Pronatalist movement). One Ph# N! Tn V$n article was entitled Society
Should Encourage Large Families.5 Multiple children, according to another article, were the key to reproducing a strong society. The task of reproducing the
nation also entailed raising upstanding, patriotic young citizens .51 The magazine
urged mothers to raise their children to become intellectuals who would lead the
independent Vietnamese nation.52 Articles instructed child-readers to love your
country as you love your mother and father.53 It was within this environment of
increasing anticolonial women and the politicization of children that the colonial
government, in 1937, formulated plans to remove abandoned Eurasians from their
mothers care.54
Further contributing to colonial anxiety over the Eurasian threat was a new
political-identity group led by Eurasians that emerged in Indochina in the mid1930s. The group, Les Franais de lIndochine, was comprised mostly of male
Eurasians, as well as Vietnamese, Cambodians and French. Les Franais de lIndochine were, among other things, low-ranking colonial administrators and philanthropists concerned about abandoned Eurasians.55 Those who belonged to Les
Franais de lIndochine described themselves as a new race or ethnicity, argued for
equal rights with the French from the Metropole, and sought Franco-Vietnamese
collaboration. Although they were supportive of the colonial government,56 the
government for its part perceived them as a political threat. This, in fact, was exactly the type of Eurasian identity movement that colonial administrators sought
to prevent.57
In addition to creating a new political and ethnic identity, Les Franais de
lIndochine were interested in securing more rights for Eurasians, whom they felt
were treated as second rank Frenchmen.58 The group focused in particular on
child protection, as some of its members themselves had once been orphans. Les
Franais de lIndochine lobbied the government to take a greater role in the lives
of abandoned Eurasian children.59 One Eurasian even suggested that Les Franais
de lIndochine should take (voler) abandoned Eurasian children from their mothers homes in the name of protecting the children from the supposedly corruptive
influences of their Vietnamese mothers.60
By 1936, the group lobbied to transform Indochina into a settler colony, a
move that would give Les Franais de lIndochine more political power vis--vis
the transient French population. Of course, in order to maintain this power, the
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group would need to sustain its population. After all, they were a new ethnic
group, with neither ancestors nor heritage. Les Franais de lIndochine thus sought
to secure political rights and welfare for their next generation.61 It was these calls
for unity among Eurasians and collaboration with Vietnamese that had caused
anxiety among French colonial administrators since the late 19th century. Citing
the Franais de lIndochine among other threats, the colonial government would
in 1937 take complete control of the colonys abandoned Eurasian protection program.
In 1936, Popular Front Prime Minister Leon Blum dispatched the Guernut
Mission to Indochina to explore the social, political, and economic problems of
the colony and to seek ways of addressing these problems.62 The rhetoric referencing abandoned Eurasian children in the reports to the Guernut Commission
was consistent with pre-Depression discourse on these children. As in the pre-Depression period, the moral dubiousness of abandoned Eurasian children was a concern. Colonial administrators likewise continued to be preoccupied with what
they perceived as the base moral nature of their mothers. Vietnamese cultural
practices were linked to debauchery while French cultural practices were considered evidence of moral righteousness. The Mission concluded that the situation
of the Eurasians in Indochina posed a serious moral and political problem for the
colony.63 According to the colonial administrators who reported to the Guernut
Mission, the moral problem was that the children of Frenchmen were not being
raised as culturally French.
As in the 1920s, reports to the Guernut Mission echoed the theme that
Eurasians were biologically French. In the Guernut reports, an administrator from
B$c Liu identified the Eurasians as already French by blood,6 and the Resident
Superior of Tonkin described Eurasians as carrying true French blood.6 Ironically, the belief that abandoned Eurasians were French by blood contradicted
theories of racial biology popular in the Mtropole at the time. By the mid-1930s,
European countries had embraced fascist racial categorizations; according to these
theories, a person without two white parents was not white.66
Many colonial administrators who reported to the Guernut Mission also
echoed the pre-Depression concern that abandoned Eurasian children posed a potential political problem for the government. Of particular threat was the growing influenceboth numerically and politicallyof Les Franais de lIndochine.67
The report of the Guernut Mission warned that the Eurasians posed a particular
political threat because, by 1937, Eurasian adults with French citizenship already
held a majority of French votes in the colonial legislature. A growing Eurasian
population, he argued, would increase the proportion of Eurasian votes; for this
reason it was in the colonial governments best interest to foster Eurasian loyalty
to the colonial state.68
The final Guernut report warned that Eurasian young people who did not
join Les Franais de lIndochine would become Vietnamese patriots and turn
against the French empirea symbolic as well as a political blow for France.69
Administrators reporting to the Guernut Mission warned that the Eurasians were
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a possible destabilizing element; after all, the anti-French deposed Prince C&'ng
#( had issued a directive for Vietnamese revolutionaries to ally with the colonys
Eurasians.7
Guernut Mission officials urged the colonial government to take the Eurasian
children from their Vietnamese mothers, who were presumed to be influencing
their children with indigne ways.7 An administrator from B$c Liu suggested
that the government take charge of the children, educate and instruct the abandoned Mtis to raise them effectively within the ranks of French citizens.7 The
suggestions by the Guernut Mission were realized in 1938 with a decision to found
the Jules Brvi Foundation, a centralized Eurasian child protection institution
under the administrative command of the colonial state. The Governor General
issued state directives to institutionalize impoverished Eurasian children who had
been abandoned by their French fathers. The Brvi Foundation would operate
through 1946.
World War II and the Japanese Occupation
Security concerns during World War II contributed to French fears that abandoned Eurasian children would join the anticolonial movement. During this period, the ICP and other anticolonial groups capitalized on French weaknesses and
gained political support. On 29 September 1939, the Indochinese Communist
Party announced a change in strategy to join with all patriotic elements of the
Vietnamese populationfarmers, the proletariat, and even the bourgeoisieto
fight for national Vietnamese liberation.73 In the summer of 1939, the Japanese
invasion of Hainan Island alerted the French to an impending war in Indochina.
In June 1940, less than a year later, France fell to the Germans. The 22 June 1940
armistice moved the French capital to Vichy and installed Marshall Ren Ptain
as leader.
Along with the security threats facing the colony, French colonial administrators believed there was an additional threat to colonial whiteness in the form
of a perceived population imbalance. French administrators feared that the colony
did not have a visible white presence. 74 Colonial officials turned to Eurasians to
bolster the French population. In 1942, a demographic study by Philip Huard and
Do Xuan Hop argued that Eurasian births could solve the white population deficit.
Huard and Do argued that although the biracial births do not reach the importance of the strictly white births, they are a distinctly fair way to increase the
white population.75 This argument was a departure from the World War II-era
racial sciences that held that race was an essentialized category and denounced
mixed-race people as non-white.
French colonial administrators proposed to use Eurasians to solve two specific population issues: the settlement of # L$t and the dearth of colonial administrators. In 1937, # L$t was designated to become the new colonial capital.
As Eric Jennings has shown, # L$t urban planners designed the town as a con-
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spicuous symbol of French domination.7 # L$t, in the words of one colonial author, was to become a cozy little corner of France.7 The problem, however, was
that the capital-to-be lacked a sufficient white French settlement and was thus
scarcely appropriate as a symbol of domination. Although it was a popular seasonal vacation destination, its isolated location in the mountains discouraged permanent French settlers.
Colonial administrators looked to abandoned Eurasian children to form the
new white population of # L$t and the surrounding Lang Bien area. Jules Brvi
Foundation president Georges Coeds, also president of Lcole Franaise de lExtrme Orient and himself the father of six Eurasian children, devised a plan to
bolster the white population of # L$t by locating the main orphanages of the
Jules Brvi Foundation in the center of town.78 The Eurasians were to be educated as young metropolitans and, as such, augment the white population of
the proposed new colonial capital.79
The Japanese occupation caused a significant shift in the demography of the
colony that would lead to a reconsideration of the role that Eurasians could play
in the colonial social order. The war brought a dramatic influx of Japanese soldiers, which restricted the power of colonial administrators. Moreover, a suspension in maritime travel caused a decrease in the number these officials.80 In
response, the colonial government stepped up its efforts to remove abandoned
Eurasians from the native milieu and groom them as the colonys next generation of political elites. Since Eurasians, according to this plan, had no permanent
ties in France, they would not be inclined to leave the colony, as so many French
administrators had done in previous years. France would thus have a stable and
fixed population of colonial political elite. The children would be educated to
form a class of future colonists,81 or a classe spciale de Franais de lIndochine82 This plan assured that the colony would never again lack for white
French administrators.
As soon as it was apparent that war was coming to Indochina, colonial administrators intensified efforts to remove abandoned Eurasian children from the
Vietnamese milieu. On 18 March 1939, P.I. De Tastes, the Resident Superior of
Tonkin, Indochina, issued a directive to conduct a massive search for Eurasian
children who had been abandoned by their French fathers and were living with
their native mothers. Once located, these children were categorized as colored/black, lightly tinted, or white;83 those labeled colored/black were left
in the native milieu. Children under the age of seven who could pass for white
were taken, sometimes forcibly, from their native mothers.84 These abandoned
Eurasian children were then placed in orphanages where they would be educated
as little Frenchmen, or the future permanent colonial French population.85
The policies ordered by the De Tastes directive were practiced throughout the
colonial period, although not necessarily by the colonial government.
The colonial government proceeded to conduct searches throughout the Indochinese countryside to find Eurasian children who had been abandoned by their
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French fathers. Government administrators searched areas of former military

camps and followed leads reported by French or Vietnamese civilians. Jules Brvi
Foundation administrators demanded a quick, serious track-down of the children before they are 6 years of age, and instructed its agents to tear [arracher] [the
children] from their mothers, preferably at 2 to 3 years of age and enroll them in
French schools.86
The Jules Brvi Foundation, still dominated by men, hired white women to
search for abandoned Eurasian children, and either negotiate with Vietnamese
women or coerce them into placing their children in the Brvi orphanages. One
of the women, a Madame Aumont, conducted a search for Eurasian children in the
Ha) Phng area of Tonkin. From 1942-44, Aumont placed Eurasian children in
the Jules Brvi Foundation, many of them unwillingly abandoned by their mothers. As Aumont reported to the Resident Superior of Tonkin, she deliberately
placed the children in orphanages in discreet locations where the mothers would
not find them. 87
In one complicated case, a mother with three Eurasian children engaged in
a kind of cat-and-mouse pursuit with Madame Aumont. The Jules Brvi Foundation obtained custody of two of the children, Thrse and Felix, through the efforts of Madame Aumont.88 In 1940, the Brvi Foundation sought to gain
custody of the third child, Marc, and offered his mother a subvention of 10 piastres per month. The mother originally complied, then changed her mind and
asked to have all three of her children back. The Brvi Foundation refused and
moved her children to three separate orphanages so that she would have trouble
finding them. The mother did, however, manage to track Marc down and forced
the priest in charge of the orphanage to give her back her child. The mother escaped Madame Aumont by frequently moving within the area of Gia Vin and
Ki*n An. Aumont suspected that Vietnamese village heads in various areas were
aiding the mother by sending advance notifications warning of Aumonts arrival.
Aumont also suspected that other mothers went into hiding when they learned of
her impending visits.89
The First Indochina War and Decolonization 1945-1956
On the night of 8 March 1945, the Japanese military staged a coup dtat and
seized power from the French officials in Indochina. The Japanese takeover provided an opportunity for Ho Chi Minhs anti-colonial Viet Minh party to gather
support. The Japanese surrender was announced on 15 August, leaving a power
vacuum in Indochina. Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence and the
establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) on 2 September,
the same day as the international ceremony to accept the Japanese surrender. The
DRV rapidly attracted political support, loyalty, and soldiers.90
Neither the French nor the Allied forces that were supporting them accepted
Hos declaration, and in mid-September Chinese and British troops were sent to
Indochina to disarm the Japanese troops and assist with the French return to
601
power. By 25 September the French government had returned to Southern Vietnam. By 1946, the First Indochina War had broken out between the French and
Vietnamese. During the bloody and chaotic decade that followed, both the
French and Vietnamese governments claimed control of Indochina.
Almost immediately after H+ Ch Minh declared independence, the new
Vietnamese government began to institute a range of new social programs designed in part to build political loyalty among villagers. Among other things, the
DRV offered, and granted, Vietnamese citizenship to Eurasians, including those
who had been francified under the protection societies.91 The DRVs inclusive citizenship program played into the longstanding fears of colonial authorities about
the political threat posed by Eurasians. The French military responded by increasing efforts to remove abandoned biracial children of military fathers from the
Vietnamese milieu.
As the French colonial government Indochina faced its greatest challenge
yet in the form of the DRV, a second potential threat emerged: two related mixedrace identity groups that included former members of Les Franais de lIndochine.92 The groups were La Mutuelle des Franais de lIndochine and the
Fderation des ouvres pour les enfants Franco-Indochinois (FOEFI). The former
concerned itself with the political situation of adult Eurasians, while the latter
made efforts to ensure the political and personal welfare of Eurasian children.
Both groups sought political rights for biracial individuals equal to those of French
Metropolitan citizens.93 The FOEFI, the institutional descendant of the Jules
Brvi Foundation,94 was directed by William Baz, a former low-ranking Brvi
Foundation administrator and minister under the colonial government.95 Baz
criticized the French government for treating Eurasians, metaphorically speaking,
as Frances illegitimate child (and indeed many were the children of unmarried
parents). He observed that this problem extended throughout the French empire, drawing a parallel between the situation of the Franco-Vietnamese children
and that of the Franco-African children in Frances African colonies.96
Meanwhile, FOEFI and La Mutuelle des Franais dIndochine had a complicated relationship with the Vietnamese government. They were not explicitly
opposed to the DRV, at least until 1950. After all, as one member, Mutiny pointed
out, the Vietnamese government was offering as much [to Eurasians] as the
French in terms of citizenship and political access.97 It was this kind of political
flexibility that the French colonial had long feared in its Eurasian population.
Around 1947, as the First Indochina War continued and the DRV consolidated its political and military power, colonial perceptions of race made a significant shift. As the colonial government faced the prospect of decolonization, their
obsession was no longer on protecting whiteness as had been the case only two
years earlier but rather on preserving the empire. The term French was no
longer limited to white or Eurasian children but now applied to any child born of
one parent who was a soldier from anywhere in the French empire: Africa, India
or the Middle East.98 This shift became evident as the French School for Eurasian
Enfants de Troupes opened its admissions to mixed-race children of one Vietnamese
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parent and one parent from the French empire: Africa, India, or the Middle East.99
The FOEFI sought out white-looking and non-white-looking Eurasian children as well as the Afro-Asian children of African soldiers.100
In 1951, after four years of bitter fighting that included guerilla warfare in the
major cities, it appeared that the French would begin the process of handing over
political power to the DRV.101 The members of FOEFI feared that Eurasian children would be left behind by the French government in the political turmoil of
decolonization. William Baz and FOEFI argued that it was in the best interest of
the French to remove abandoned Eurasian children from Vietnam. Baz warned
LAction Sociale that if the French government failed to so, these children would
become culturally Vietnamese and thus undermine the French colonial legacy.
Baz declared: The progressive and unavoidable assimilation of a group of
Eurasians by the Vietnamese masses signifies nothing less than the definitive loss
of all French influence on Asian soil.102 The implication of Bazs statement was
that if biracial children remained in Indochina, they would become a symbol of
the lost empire. In 1947, FOEFI began sending some of its young Eurasian charges
to orphanages in France.103 By 1956, the organization would extend this policy to
include all biracial children.
During the First Indochina War, the FOEFI gained custody of the colonys
biracial children in one of two ways. Either mothers brought their children to
FOEFI orphanages, or a section of the military, LAction Sociale, sought them
out. Aware that French troops were having sex with local women, LAction Sociale would return to military camps nine months to one year after the military had
left a particular site and offer assistance to the impoverished mothers of the soldiers children. LAction Sociales welfare agent then offered the mothers the option of placing their children in FOEFI orphanages with the understanding that
the children would be educated at Lcole des Enfants de Troupes.
As the French were losing the battle at Dien Bien Phu, the Metropolitan government signed the Geneva Accords, which stipulated that French forces and the
colonial government would leave Vietnam by 1956. The country would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, with the communist DRV in the north and the
non-communists in the South. When it became clear that the French military
and government would pull out of Indochina within a few years, Baz again advised the French government to include Eurasians and Afro-Asians among its
evacuees. He based his appeal on two arguments. First, he said, any Eurasians or
Afro-Asians who remained in Vietnam after the French pullout would be an uncomfortable reminder of the failed French empire: The local population will look
at them and say Voil, heres the work of the French. In extending his concern
to Afro-Asians and Indo-Asians, Bazs statement reflects a slight difference from
the pre-1945 rhetoric on abandoned Eurasian children.104 Now that the French
had begun the process of decolonization, they were less concerned with white
prestige than with imperial prestige. Baz also argued that Eurasians and AfroAsians posed a security threat. After all, the DRV military was actively recruiting youth, including biracial youth, and offering them Vietnamese citizenship. A
603
Eurasian fighting for the DRV would amount to what Baz called a propaganda
line against the French. In other words, Baz warned, the orphans, who could
serve our cause one day, risk becoming the contrary, later our worst enemies.105
In keeping with these arguments, FOEFI resumed its efforts to locate impoverished and abandoned Eurasian and Afro-Asian children, with the intention of
sending them back to France.106 These FOEFI wards would then become eligible
for French citizenship. Speaking in terms of a moral duty, FOEFI explained:
We could not abandon the children, so we took them.107 FOEFIs moral duty
also extended to Afro-Asians and Indo-Asians; it would be unconscionable,
FOEFI members agreed, to leave Afro-Asians and Indo-Asians in the Vietnamese
environment.108 Like FOEFI, the French military continued recruiting Eurasian
and Afro-Asian children for its 1955-1956 school year.109 The older Enfants de
Troupes cadets who did not go to France had the option of joining the U.S. military or the CIA, both of whose presence in Vietnam was increasing.110
According to FOEFI documents, rumors were circulating among the Vietnamese public that the French were abducting children; this, of course, implicated FOEFI. However, records indicate that FOEFI did not knowingly participate
in these actions: indeed, the organization denounced them. It was, instead, LAction Sociale that took the children from their mothers and placed them in FOEFI
orphanages. Specifically, these were the biracial children abandoned by soldiers
serving in the French military. The children arrived at the orphanages without
any identifying documents. As a result, when mothers demanded the return of
their children from FOEFI, it rejected their demands on the grounds that it had
no means of verifying whose child belonged to whom. Baz not only denounced
LAction Sociales seizing of the children; he also went so far as to cut all ties
with that wing of the military. On the other hand, there is no evidence that Bazs
organization ever returned these children to their mothers.111
By 1955, at which point the French government had already lost Indochina
and agreed to decolonization, it continued to care for abandoned biracial children and even sent some to France. Although French administrators knew that
a French departure from Indochina was imminent, a precise date to evacuate the
children was not set until late 1955. Tensions among the older wards at the
School for Enfants de Troupes were, understandably, high. The chief of military
forces in Indochina reported a general feeling of unrest at the school, describing
the cadets as nervous and insecure.112 A few of the cadets ran away but were arrested and returned to the school.113
As the School for Enfants de Troupes prepared its students to go to France,
some of the students were developing distinctly anti-French sentiments.114 The
Eurasian, Jean, was among those who denounced the French. In fact, he claimed
not to be French at all, instead identifying with his Vietnamese family. Jeans attitude distressed the schools administrators, given that he had recently been sent
to spend his holidays with a French family in Indochina as part of a French nationalist program designed to build able-bodied citizens and increase patriotism.115
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Marc, another Eurasian student who posed a discipline problem, was also
scheduled to leave for France.116 As mentioned earlier, Marc had posed a particular problem for the Jules Brvi Foundation. His mother had refused to surrender him to Madame Aumont, but Aumonts forces had nonetheless managed to
seize the boy. In his mothers efforts to reclaim him, she had gone so far as to
strong-arm a priest. Ultimately, FOEFI prevailed and regained custody of Marc.
After being raised in the Jules Brvi Foundation and FOEFI, Marc, like other
wards, was admitted to the School for Enfants de Troupes. Although his teachers believed he was very intelligent, they wrote that he was a deplorable student
with frequent disciplinary problems and a bad spirit. Marc, the military record
explained, was vehemently anti-French to the point of being dangerous ...[his]
presence at the school [was] particularly deadly. The School for Enfants de
Troupes resolved to discharge him; they did not request a reimbursement given
his family situationan allusion to fact that Marc had been effectively been
orphaned by the French protection system.117
On 2 February 1956 the last of the FOEFI wards as well as the cadets from the
School for Enfants de Troupes left Vietnam for France. Three weeks later, on 23
February, their ship landed in Marseille.118 A 1957 article in LEurafricain reflected on the history that had brought Eurasians to this point: The mtis note
that they lost the liberation of Indochina. Now they are either assimilated by
force into Vietnamese [society] (which only suits the Communists) or are forced
to take refuge in France, where life is difficult.119 After decolonization, FOEFI
continued its operation in France, where it lobbied the French government to accept citizenship requests from Eurasians and Afro-Asians through at least 1982.120
Conclusion
Throughout the colonial period, French colonists and colonial authorities in
Indochina placed an inordinate importance on the colonys minuscule population of abandoned Eurasian children. These children were difficult to track, as
they were legally classified as indigne and lived in Vietnamese society. French
colonists, Eurasian protection societies, the colonial government, and the French
military nonetheless went to great lengths to find and remove abandoned European-looking Eurasian children from the native milieu, at times against the will
of their Vietnamese mothers.
Colonial authorities made great efforts to conceal evidence of these actions.
Many of the documents that relate to policies to remove abandoned Eurasian children from their mothers care were labeled secret or confidential. However, as the
colonial archives were declassified during the post-colonial period, stories of removals became available in the archives of H N,i, H+ Ch Minh City, Paris,
Aix-en-Provence, and Chateau-Vincennes. Some of these cases, like that of
young Marc, were important enough to appear in multiple archival collections
spanning various government departments, with documentation spanning more
than a decade. Yet despite the abundance of stories of abandoned Eurasian chil-
605
dren being forcibly removed from their mothers, their collective narrative is absent from the historiography.
It was the hybrid identity of the colonys abandoned Eurasian children that
made them an object of fixation in colonial society. To French colonists, these
children were a troubling racial-cultural paradox. The fact that the children had
physical traits that were visibly European, yet followed Vietnamese cultural norms,
made them an embarrassment to French colonists. Moreover, because it was assumed that these European-looking children would come to resent their low social status, many colonists feared they would eventually rebel against the colonial
government. The colonists response to the presumed threat posed by abandoned
Eurasian children was as mixed as the identity of the children themselves. On one
hand, the French heritage of abandoned Eurasian children was used by colonists
to justify the removal of these children from their mothers; on the other hand, the
childrens Vietnamese heritage was cited to explain the failure of some of the programs designed to integrate them.
Throughout the colonial period, the French government in Indochina consistently used racial categorization as a means of dominating potentially rebellious
Eurasians. As each of the aforementioned historical exigencies threatened French
control of the colony, the colonial government reacted by removing more abandoned Eurasian children from their native mothers and by stepping up governmental involvement in this process. Colonial officials used orphanages as a
mechanism to shift the racial categorization of abandoned Eurasian children. The
various historical shifts in Eurasian racial categorization corresponded to the political climate, and the French government did succeed in thwarting whatever
Eurasian rebellion might have occurred. The only real Eurasian threat during the
colonial period was the Eurasian identity group known as Les Franais de lIndochine. The colonial government effectively prevented additional young Eurasians
from joining this potentially anti-colonial movement by taking over the Eurasian
protection system and establishing the Jules Brvi Foundation. The governments stepped-up involvement also maintained the image of French prestige by
controlling the childrens cultural influences. The French success in controlling
the colonys population of abandoned Eurasians via enculturation was evidenced
in two ways. First, although abandoned Eurasians did join the revolutionary
movement, for the most part they did not join en masse. Moreover, those who
were expatriated to France through the FOEFI remained loyal to France, and many
still live there.
The growing threat that abandoned Eurasian children were presumed to pose
to colonial security, the colonial patriarchy, and white prestige led the French
colonial public to repeatedly re-imagine the racial categorization of these and
other biracial children. Until World War I, these children were not considered
white; their importance lay in the threat they posed to colonial rule real or not.
As anxieties about depopulation grew during the war, French colonists highlighted
the abandoned Eurasians biological connection to the white race. The Great
Depression heightened earlier fears about a Eurasian security threat, yet colonists
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maintained the belief that Eurasians were white by virtue of their one drop of
French blood. This more inclusive approach to white racial formation was a distinct contrast to the Mtropoles essentialized perception of race throughout the
1930s. During World II, influenced by a Metropolitan concern with white features, the colonists narrowed their definition of whiteness to include only those
Eurasian children with one or more white features. Beginning in 1947, however,
confronting decolonization, the colonial government became less focused on exploiting the perceived whiteness of Eurasian children to protect colonial rule, and
more focused on expanding the definition of Frenchness to protect the imperial
legacy. Colonial officials began to identify all biracial children as French, including those whose fathers came from Africa, India, and the Middle East. Like
their Eurasian counterparts, these children were an uncomfortable reminder of
French imperial defeat, and so they were removed from the native milieu and sent
to France. French identity thus became more rooted in imperial ancestry than in
whiteness.
Department of History
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
ENDNOTES
1.
For the most part the fathers were French and the mothers were Vietnamese. Eurasian children,
who lived with both parents, or with a single European parent, did not raise questions among the colonial French population. It was believed that, with the father present, the native mothers would have
less influence over their children. Eurasians, according to this belief, would be raised as culturally
Frenchwhat French colonists believed to be an appropriate practice for White-looking people.
2.
For the sake of clarity, I will use the colonial era term, abandoned Eurasian children to refer
to these children who were abandoned by their French fathers, though they were not necessarily abandoned by their native mothers.
3.
For example, see Socit de protection des enfants mtis abandonns du Tonkin, Statuts reviss lassemblee gnrale, 18 mars 1904. VNNA 1, Fonds of the Resident Superior of Tonkin (hereafter RST) 5545.
4.
This case was similar to that of the mixed-race children of early twentieth century Australia,
known as the Lost Generations. See for example, Peter Read, The Stolen Generations: The Removal
of Aboriginal Children in New South Wales, 1883-1969. (Canberra, 1981); Barbara Nicholson, Stolen
Generations in A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Thought in English, edited by Prem Po-ar and
David Johnson (NY, 2005) 388-452.
5. Emannuelle Saada, Les enfants de la colonie : Les mtis de l'Empire franais entre sujtion et citoyennet. (Paris, 2007).; Gilles de Gants, "Les mtis franco-indochinois l'poque coloniale. A l'interface des dominants et des domins ou leur marge?" in Actes du colloque Interfaces, ed. Michael Chang
et Chantal Zheng (Aix-en-Provence, 2006).; Pierre Guillaume, Les mtis en Indochine, Annales de
Demographie Historique (1995): 185-195.; Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race
and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Los Angeles, 2002).; Ann Laura Stoler, Making Empire Respectable:
607
The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth-Century Colonial Cultures in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella
Shohat (Minneapolis, 1997).; David M. Pomfret, Raising Eurasia: Race, Class, and Age in French and
British Colonies, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51 (2009): 314-343.
6.
French documents of the period use the terms franais and blanche interchangibly when
referring to Eurasians. Franais, in to these documents, refers to someone who is both culturally and
biologically white French. Although most French documents use the term franais rather than
blanche, it is clear that they are referring strictly to white French, not Asians with French citizenship.
7.
Only in the 1940s would there be an increase in female membership; at that point, it was women
who engaged in the face-to-face negotiations with Vietnamese mothers.
8.
For an excellent reportage on Vietnamese women who engaged in sexual relations with western
men in the 1930s see V. Tr/ng Ph%ng, K0 ngh1 l2y ty in K% ngh& l'y ty, c(m th)y c(m c (H N,i,
2004) 7-101.
9.
See for example H thnh Ng* bo, Cu"c s3 c4a h,i tr5 con ty v th6a nh7n, page 2, October 2, 1928.; Ng* Bo, Cu,c s3 s gip tr5 ty-lai v th6a nh7n, page 2, September 28, 1928.; +ngphp, Tr5 con ty-lai v, th6a-nh7n ra xem v8nh H$ Long, page 3, May 29, 1927.; +ng Php, L7p
tr&'ng hu2n luy1n v b8 cho cc tr5 con Php Vi1t v th6a nh7n, page 2, October 18, 1938.; Ng* bo,
Vi1c B9c k:, page 1, March 19, 1928.; +ng Php, M,t ; ki*n v< vn--< hn-nhn c4a ng&'i php
v ng&'i Nam, page 3, January 24, 1937.; +ng php, C ph=i c Ninh b> nh theo 1 ng&'i lnh
ty, m? -*n tm cn hnh hung?, March 4, 1937.; Vi&t bo, Ch+ng l6a -=o! b$n ch+ng l6a -=o! ti<n
m2t, ch+ng c.ng m2t n"t, page 5, August 6, 1937.
10. Gilles de Gants, "Les mtis franco-indochinois l'poque coloniale. A l'interface des dominants et des domins ou leur marge?" in Actes du colloque Interfaces, eds. Michael Chang et Chantal
Zheng (Aix-en-Provence, 2006).
11. For a rich history of the legal status of Eurasaians see Emannuelle Saada, Les enfants de la colonie:
Les mtis de l'Empire franais entre sujtion et citoyennet (Paris, 2007).
12. Robert Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (NY, 1996) 68-82.; Tr@n
VAn Giu, Ch,ng Xm L$ng: L-ch s. Vi&t Nam t/ 1858 01n 1898 (H+ Ch Minh City, 2001) 769-778;
+-a Ch V$n ha Thnh Ph, H2 Ch Minh t3p 1: L-ch S., ed. Tr@n VAn Giu and Tr@n B$ch #Bng (H+
Ch Minh City, 1998).
13. Socit de protection des enfants mtis abandonns du Tonkin, Statuts revises lassemble
gnrale du 18 Mars 1904. VNNA 1, Fonds RST 5545.
14. Note, [no author, no addressee] 29 February 1904. Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer (hereafter
CAOM), Fonds Gouvernor Gnral dIndochina (hereafter GGI) 7701.
15.
Rapport sur le pauprisme Java, 3 October 1903. CAOM, Fonds GGI 54225.
16.
Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Chicago, 1989) 11.
17. La socit de protection des enfants mtis abandonns du Tonkin, Statuts Rviss lassemble
gnrale du 18 Mars 1904. Vietnam National Archives (hereafter VNNA) 1, Fonds RST 5545.; Notice sur la Socit dAssistance aux Enfant Franco Indochinois du Tonkin (H N,i: Imprimerie G. Taupin,
1937). VNNA 1 Fonds GGI 400.; La socit de protection de lenfance au Cambodge. VNNA 1,
Fonds GGI 10329.
18.
Meeting, 7 October 1896, Association for the Protection of and Assistance to Franco-Anna-
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mite Children. CAOM, GGI 7701; Meeting, 28 January 1897, Association for the Protection and Assistance of Franco-Annamite Children. CAOM, Fonds GGI 7701.
19. Kristen Stromberg Childers, Fathers, Families, and the State in France, 1914-1945 (Ithaca, 2003)
23-25.
20. Decree of 7 May 1890, Promulgated by Ruling of 19 September 1890, Nomenclature des textes
relatifs la traite des femmes et des enfants en Cochinchine. Journal Officiel (hereafter JO) (1909)
242. VNNA 2, Fonds Governor de Cochinchine (Hereafter Goucoch), IVA8/286(17).
21. Emmanuelle Saada refers to the date 22 January 1924 when the 1889 law was made applicable
in Tonkin, Annam, Cambodia and Laos. She argues that the law was made applicable within a large
scale change to the colonial legal system resulting from the debates on assimilation and association.
Saada, Emmanuelle. La Question des Mtisdans les coloines Franaises: Socio-Histoire dune catgorie juridique (Indochine et autres territoires de lEmpire Franais; annes 1890-annes 1950), (Ph.D
diss., cole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, 2001) 195, 297, 306.
22.
Charles Gravelle,Enqute sur la Question des Mtis, Revue Indochinois (January 1913): 32.
23. Letter, The Administrator at Nh Nam to RF at B9c Giang, 8 September 1911. VNNA 1, Fonds
RST 5489.
24.
+4i C5(ng L-ch S. Vi&t Nam T3p II, ed. #inh Xun Lm (H N,i, 2004).
25.
N! Gi"i Chung, X= Thuy*t : Nh)a Nam NC Bnh Quy<n l g? February 22, 1918.
26. N! Gi"i Chung, T$p TrD: Bn v< Gio D%c, June 28, 1918.; N! Gi"i Chung, Vi1c NE H/c
July 19, 1918.
27.
N! Gi"i Chung, X= Thuyt : Bn v< Sch d$y -'n b con gi, April 5, 1918.
28. N! Gi"i Chung, M? con ni chuy1n cch tr, 1 February 1918.; N! Gi"i Chung, Cch tr: m?
con ni chuy1n, March 22, 1918; N! Gi"i Chung, H/c ngh1 cch l2y hFi thFm trong cc thG bng,
March 22, 1918.
29. For an excellent discussion of N! Gi"i Chung,, see #Hng Th8 Vn Chi, V'n 06 ph# n! trn bo
ch ti1ng vi&t tr5"c n$m 1945 (H N,i: NXB Khoa h/c x h,i, 2008) 58-82.
30.
N! Gi"i Chung, X= Thuyt: Lng yu n&Ic c4a -'n b php, April 12, 1918.
31. N! Gi"i Chung, Nhi1t thnh tJ ngn, April 26, 1918.

32.
David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial 1920-1945 (Berkeley, 1981) 190-251.
33. The Pronatalist movement had its origins in 19th century French political anxieties about military strength. The 1870 French defeat by the Prussian army surprised the French public. French politicians and military officials made a connection between political-military might and population figures.
The French military attributed the loss to the relatively small French population that had not provided
sufficient military troops; the larger German population, by contrast, had provided ample troops for
battles. French anthropologists and eugenicists warned that the depopulation trend would undermine
the French not only as a military power but as a racial group; William H. Schneider, Quantity and
Quality: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France (Cambridge, 1990) 13-15.
609
34. As Elisa Camiscioli has shown, although Pronatalists supported the Metropolitan initiative to
bring immigrant workers to France and encouraged racial mixing, they were careful to support what
was considered hygienic racial mixing. Asian and African immigrant workers were specifically excluded from the recruitment process and the approved miscegenation. Eliza Camiscioli, Producing
Citizens, Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Demography, and Pronatalism in Early Twentieth Century France, Gender & History 13 (2001) 593-599.
35.
William H. Schneider, 208-229.
36. Memorandum, The Committee of the Society for the Protection of Abandoned Eurasian Children of
Annam (Hu*) to the Representative of the Association of Clerks in Civil Service of Annam, [Undated
World War I, probably 1916]. VNNA 2, Fonds Rsident Superior dAnnam (hereafter RSA) 867.
37. Socit de protection des enfants mtis abandonns, Assemble gnrale du 20 Janvier 1917.
VNNA 1, Fonds RST 5545.
38.
Letter, Gravell to the Governor General of Indochina, 25 May 1920. CAOM, Fonds GGI 15297.
39. The law to legitimate illegitimate children of French fathers killed in war retroactively was enacted on 7 April 1917 in the Mtropole and promulgated in the colony on 3 July 1917. Once legitimated, the children became French citizens and received citizenship benefits, but their mothers were
subject to the 1889 law that regulated unfit parents.
40. On 27 July 1917 the Metropolitan government enacted a second law that established a special
status of state ward for White children of fallen French soldiers called Pupille de la Nation. On 23 September 1918, the law was extended to the colonies to include not only children of French citizens but
of French subjects and protgs.; Olivier Faron, The Age of War Orphans: Construction and Realities of a Group of State Wards between Education and Assistance 1917-1935, The History of the Family 4 (1999): 17-29. ; Oliveir Faron, Les Enfants du Deuil: Orphelins et pupilles de la nation de la premire
guerre mondiale (1914-1941) (Paris, 2001) 50-78.; Letter, Ministry of Colonies to GGI, 23 September
1918. CAOM, Fonds GGI 15294.
41.
Letter, Minister of War to Minister of Colonies, 16 June 1917. CAOM, Fonds GGI 26921.
42. Memorandum, The Committee of the Society for the Protection of Abandoned Mixed-Race
Children of Annam to the Representative of the Association for Clerks of the Civil Service in Annam,
[undated, before October 1916] VNNA 2, Fonds RSA 867.
43.
Letter, Lan to RSA, 7 October 1916. VNNA 2, Fonds RSA 867.
44.
Letter, Charles Gravelle to GGI, 25 May 1920. CAOM, Fonds GGI 15297.
45. CAOM, Fonds Service de Liaison avec les Originaires des Territoires franais dOutre-Mer (hereafter SLOTFOM) XII 1.
46.
Enqute sur les mtis, Response from B*n Tre. CAOM, Fonds FM Guernut 97.
47. NguyKn Th8 Minh Khai founded the womens branch of the Tn Vi1t, which later became the
ICP. Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years (London, 2003) 130-131.; For more information on NguyKn Th8 Minh Khais life see L Qu"c SC, Chuy&n K7 L H2ng Phong v Nguy8n ThMinh Khai (H+ Ch Minh City, 2001).; NguyKn Q. Th9ng and NguyKn B Th*, T/ +i7n Nhn V3t L-ch
S. Vi&t Nam (H N,i, 1999) 644-645.
48. H,i Lin Hi1p Ph% NE T)nh B9c Ninh, L-ch S. Phong Tro Ph# N! T9nh B:c Ninh (1930-2000)
(B9c Ninh, 2000) 40- 56.
610
49.
spring 2010
Ph# N! Tn V$n, Con Chim Con, Con C Con, June 19, 1930.
50. Ph# N! Tn V$n, X H,i Ph=i Khuy*n Khch nhEng Gia #nh #ng Con, October 10,
1929.
51. Ph# N! Tn V$n, X H,i l g?, November 10, 1932.
52.
Ph# N! Tn V$n, Nui Con #( C9y v< Sau January 14, 1932.
53. The article uses the term y*u n&Ic which also means to be patriotic. Ph# N! Tn V$n,
Tnh M? Con, February 13, 1930.; Ph# N! Tn V$n, Tnh M? Con C4a Lo$i V7t, December 1,
1932; Ph# N! Tn V$n, Tnh M? Con C4a Lo$i V7t, December 15, 1932.; Ph# N! Tn V$n, Con
Ph=i SAn Sc Cho Cha M?, April 3, 1930.; Ph# N! Tn V$n, Cng #Gc Cha M?, May 9, 1929.
54. See Christina Firpo The Durability of the Empire: Race, Empire, and Abandoned Children
in Colonial Vietnam 1870-1956 (Ph.D. Diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 2007).
55.
Les Nouvelles du Dimanche, Fait la force, December 8 1935.
56. Blanc et Jaune, Politique Locale: Franais de lIndochine! Prsent!, 11 July 1937. They are represented by the newspapers LAlerte, Les Nouvelles de Dimanche and Blanc et Jaune. Many members of
the orphanage association wrote for these three newspapers.
57.
Les Franais de lIndochine. CAOM, Fonds FM Guernut 25.
59. Les Nouvelles du Dimanche, Fait la force, December 8 1935.; Blanc et Jaune, La Supression
des employs Reserves, July 25, 1937.
60.
LAlerte, Pour les Franais dIndochineLe Droit de Vivre, June 28, 1934.
61.
Blanc et Jaune, Tribune des Lectures: Hommes Heureux Pensez aux Petits Mtis, September 26, 1937.
62.
Les Nouvelles du Dimanche, Editorial, March 22, 1936.
63. Charles Fourniau, "Les Annes 1930 et l'Impasse Coloniale en Indochine" in Rapport de Mission
en Indochine 1 Janvier-14 Mars 1937, eds. Franois Bilange, Charles Fourniau and Alain Ruscio, 20
(Paris, 1994).
64. Rapport de Mission en Indochine 1 January14 Mars 1937, eds. Franois Bilange, Charles Founiau, and Alain Ruscio (Paris, 1994) 157.
65.
Enqute sur les Mtis, Response from B$c Lieu, 1937. CAOM, Fonds FM Guernut 97.
66. Enqute sur les Mtis, Response from the Resident Superior of Tonkin, 1937. CAOM, Fonds
FM Guernut 97. William H. Schneider, 208-229.
67.
See files on Les Franais de lIndochine in CAOM, Fonds FM Guernut 97, 25.
68. Rapport de Mission en Indochine 1 January14 Mars 1937, 159.

69. Enqute sur les Mtis, Response from B*n Tre, 1937. CAOM, Fonds FM Guernut 97.
70.
Enqute sur les Mtis, Response from B*n Tre, 1937. CAOM, Fonds FM Guernut 97.
71.
611
72.
73.
Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism 1925-1945 (Ithaca, 1982) 233-238, 251.
74.
Gregoir Kherian, Extrait de la Revue Indochinoise Juridique et Economique (Hanoi, 1937) 1-33.
75. P. Huard and Do Xuan Hop Recherches sur limportance numrique des europens et des
eurasiens, Bulletin de lInstitut Indochinois pour lEtude de lHomme, 1942 Part V section I (Hanoi,
1943).
76. Eric Jennings, From Indochine to Indochic: The Lang Bian/Dalat Palace Hotel and French Colonial Leisure, Power and Culture, Modern Asian Studies 37 (2003): 159-194.
77.
Indochine Hebdomadaire Illustr, La Naissance de Dalat, February 10, 1944, 23-24.
78. For a rich discussion of the relationship between orientalists, colonial administrators, and protection institutions see Saada and Pierre Singaravlou.; Emmanuelle Saada. 112-126; Pierre Singaravlou, LEcole franaise dextrme-orient ou linsitution des marges (1898-1956): Essai dhistoire sociale
et politique de la science coloniale (Paris, 1999) 142.
79. Propositions relatives lducation et au placement des mtis, procs verbal du protectorat du
Cambodge, report of the Resident Superior of Cambodge, 24 September 1938. VNNA I, RST 71816.
80.
Eric Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics (Sanford, 2001) 166.
81. Letter, Governor of Cochinchina to Governor General of Indochina, 14 December 1943. VNNA
I, GGI 10349.
82. Letter, Governor of Cochinchina to Governor General of Indochina, 14 December 1943. VNNA
I, GGI 10349.
83. Municipal Police, city of Hanoi List of abandoned Eurasian children and those whose mothers
consent to relinquish jurisdicton, 6 April 1939, VNNA I Fonds Mayor of H N,i 5917.
84. Circular, Resident Superior of Tonkin [hereafter RST] De Tastes to Head Residents of Provinces,
Commanders of Military Territory, Mayors of H N,i and Ha) Phng, 18 March 1939. VNNA 1, Fonds
Mayor of H N,i 5917.
85. Note 2440/AIS, The Director of Legislation and General Administration in H N,i from Paul
Chauvet, the Director of Political Affairs, 17 November 1942. VNNA 1, GGI 89.
86.
Notes au sujet du problme des Eurasiens by R.P. Dupont, 1942. VNNA I, GGI 89.
87.
Letter, M. Aumont to Mayor of Hanoi 28 October, 1942. VNNA 1, Fonds GGI 495.
88. The author has deliberately left out the last names of Eurasian wards in order to protect
their privacy.
89.
Letter, M. Aumont to Mayor of Hanoi 28 October, 1942. VNNA 1, Fonds GGI 495.
90. Cch M4ng Thng Tm (1945) (H N,i,1970), 99-125. ; Cch M4ng Thng Tm T;ng Kh<i
Ngh=a < H-N>i v cc +-a Ph5(ng, quy7n I, ed. Tr@n Huy Li1u (H N,i, 1960) 32-60.
91.
See citizenship cases in CAOM, Fonds Du Gouvernement du Fait 9.
612
spring 2010
92.
Le Depart de M. William Baz, LEurafricain, 10 (undated, preumably 1951): 42.
93.
Position juridique des mtis. LEurafricain, 101 (1949): 11.
94. Jules Brvi, the Foundations namesake, had returned to the Mtropole during World War II and
worked under the Vichy government. By a decree of 13 June 1946, the Jules Brvi Foundation officially became the Federal Eurasian Foundation (Fondation Fderale Eurasienne, or FEF).
95. Fderation des Oeuvres de lEnfance Franaise dIndochine: Exercice 1952, Assemble Gnral
Ordinaire des 10, 11, 12 Septembre 1953 (Imprimerie Franaise dOutre Mer: 1953). The foundation
changed its name many times before May 1949 when it settled on The Federation of Foundations for
French Children of Indochina (La Fderation des Oeuvres de lEnfance Franaise de lIndochine, or
FOEFI). Une Oeuvre Humaine. Le Populaire, 24 July 1947. SHAT, Fonds Indochine 10H1108.
96. In addition, FOEFIs members were politically and socially linked to other organizations in the
greater French Union as well as Indochina, which aimed to secure rights for bi-racial children. There
was, for example, a frequent correspondence between Baz and the African group LEurafricain, which
had published Bazs articles in its journal LEurafricain. The close relationship and frequent correspondence among groups concerned with mixed-race children in other colonies reveals the emergence
of a transnational French imperial identity among mixed-race individuals. The groups found solidarity among peoples with familial ties to the French colonies. The metaphor of family and neglected children were frequently employed when discussing mixed-race children in the empire. See for example
Retour vers le pass, LEurafricain 10 (1950): 18.
97.
Mutiny, Discours de M Mutiny dun Groupe des Jeunes Eurasiens, LEurafricain, 101 (1949): 23-24.
98. For an excellent study of North African soldiers who started a family with Vietnamese women,
see Nalcya Delanoe, Poussires dEmpires (Paris, 2002).
99. In 1948 the school abandoned the word Eurasians and officially became The School for Enfants de Troupes, perhaps to reflect its policy to admit admissions policy. Note from the High Comissioner of France in Indochina, 18 July 1951. SHAT, Fonds Indochine 10H1108.
100. Fdration des Oeuvres de lEnfance Franaise dIndochine: Exercice 1952, Assemble Gnrale
Ordinaire des 10, 11, 12 Septembre 1953 (Imprimerie Franaise dOutre Mer, 1953).
101. In the context of civil unrest, a top Eurasian politician was assassinated. On 12 January 1951,
two men in a jeep stolen from the U.S. consulate lobbed a grenade into Henri De Lachevrotiers car
and killed him. The crime was attributed to the Vi1t Minh. M Henri de Lachevrotiere, Avocat Honoraire Prsident dHonneur de la Mutuelle des Franais de lIndochine, Journaliste Assassin Saigon
Coup de Grenade, LEurafricain 11 (1951): 35.
102. Letter, President of the FOEFI to Mr. Head of the Central Service of the Social Action, 11 October 1951. SHAT, Fonds Indochine 10H327.
103. Ns de pres franais et de mres asiatiques 350 jeunes eurasiens ont retrouv, en France, une
famille. LEurafricain, 12 (1951): 18.
104. FOEFI: Exercice 1953, Assemble Gnrale Ordinaire des 13, 14, 15 Septembre 1954,
(Saigon, 1954).
105. FOEFI: Exercice 1953, Assemble Gnrale Ordinaire des 13, 14, 15 Septembre 1954,
(Saigon, 1954).
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CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE IN COLONIAL

INDOCHINA: THE REMOVAL OF ABANDONED EURASIAN

California Polytechnic University

journal of social history

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

journal of social history

From colonization to 1914: The founding of Eurasian protection societies

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

Before the founding of the Eurasian protection societies in the 1890s,

journal of social history

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

Indochina was partly responsible for the French reconsideration of abandoned

The presidents words mark a subtle shift in discourse on abandoned Eurasian

journal of social history

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

journal of social history

The flurry of articles encouraging women to teach their children nationalist

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

journal of social history

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

journal of social history

French fathers. Government administrators searched areas of former military

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

journal of social history

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

journal of social history

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

journal of social history

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

journal of social history

31. N! Gi"i Chung, Nhi1t thnh tJ ngn, April 26, 1918.

David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial 1920-1945 (Berkeley, 1981) 190-251.

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

William H. Schneider, 208-229.

Letter, Lan to RSA, 7 October 1916. VNNA 2, Fonds RSA 867.

journal of social history

Les Nouvelles du Dimanche, Fait la force, December 8 1935.

Les Franais de lIndochine. CAOM, Fonds FM Guernut 25.

Les Nouvelles du Dimanche, Editorial, March 22, 1936.

68. Rapport de Mission en Indochine 1 January14 Mars 1937, 159.

CRISES OF WHITENESS AND EMPIRE

Indochine Hebdomadaire Illustr, La Naissance de Dalat, February 10, 1944, 23-24.

Eric Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics (Sanford, 2001) 166.

See citizenship cases in CAOM, Fonds Du Gouvernement du Fait 9.

journal of social history

Le Depart de M. William Baz, LEurafricain, 10 (undated, preumably 1951): 42.

Position juridique des mtis. LEurafricain, 101 (1949): 11.

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