French Studies on the Chinese in Indochina: A Bibliographical Survey

Abstract

It is of some interest for the scholar of Southeast Asian subjects to note the way in which the different interests and cultural biases of the former colonial powers in the region have eventuated in the production of quite distinct historical and sociological literatures relating to their respective territorial possessions. Nowhere better than in the literature on the overseas Chinese is this point illustrated. The literature in English on the Chinese in Southeast Asia (and especially that on what is now Malaysia) is extensive, and a significant number of well-known English-speaking scholars have made their reputations in this field — one thinks of V. Purcell and M. Freedman on Malaysia and Singapore, W.E. Willmott on Cambodia (Kampuchea), William G. Skinner on Thailand and Indonesia, D.E. Willmott on Indonesia, Edgar Wickberg on the Philippines, Jacques Amyot on the Philippines and Thailand, C.P. Fitzgerald, Wang Gungwu, and Lea E. Williams on the region as a whole, and a growing number of other and often younger scholars who have turned their attention to this perennially rich and stimulating field of study. But when one turns to the field of French scholarship, it is intriguing to find that the situation is considerably different — one searches in vain for a major Francophone scholar who has devoted his attention to the Chinese in the former French colonial possessions in Indochina — Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.