Drunken poets and new women: Consuming tradition and modernity in colonial Vietnam

Abstract

This article uses the lens of alcohol as a means of exploring the experiences and anxieties of Vietnamese ‘colonial modernity’ and the way it was mutually constituted with ‘colonial tradition’. The production, consumption, and meaning of alcohol in Vietnam were all profoundly altered as the state's contested attempts to control the market for rice liquor interacted with the growing availability of imports like wine, champagne, and cognac. While these new products would become ideal symbols of modernity and markers of distinction, at the same time reinvented traditions surrounding what the French called ‘native’ and the Vietnamese called ‘our’ alcohol would become linked to evolving notions of community and nation.