Skip to main content

Paving the Way: Road and Empire Builders

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
  • 200 Accesses

Part of the book series: Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture ((SMLC))

Abstract

This chapter highlights metropolitan re-imaginings of the French as inheritors of both Roman builders of empire and colonized Gauls, after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. On the ground, this translated as a reordering of the colony toward a system of transport of both people and goods, administrators engineering landscapes to pacify regions, using the “civilizing roadway” and “association” to assuage anxieties both at home and in the colony. As roads became integral parts of the new regime, travel writing also became part of the official propaganda. This chapter focuses in particular on the figure of Albert Sarraut, Governor General, instigator of the road-building project, and future Minister of the Colonies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

  • Adas, Michael. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baugher, Peter Frederic. “The Contradictions of Colonialism: the French Experience in Indochina, 1860–1940.” PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  • Betts, Raymond F. Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Betts, Raymond F. Uncertain Dimensions: Western Overseas Empires in the Twentieth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biggs, David. Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brocheux, Pierre, and Daniel Hémery. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954. Translated by Ly-Lan Dill. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conklin, Alice L. A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Nicola. France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters. Oxford: Berg, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cordemoy, Pierre. “Le réseau routier indochinois.” Bulletin de l’agence économique de l’Indo-Chine (September 1934): 333–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Del Testa, David. “Paint the Trains Red: Labor, Nationalism, and the Railroads in French colonial Indochina, 1898–1945.” PhD dissertation, University of California Davis, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Demay, Aline. Tourism and Colonization in Indochina 1898–1939. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dixon, Susan. “De l’invention de la société: l’agent de l’État comme personnage et auteur de romans français d’Indochine.” PhD dissertation, Rutgers University and Paris 8 University, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duncan, James S., and Derek Gregory. Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing. New York: Routledge, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, Penny. Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860–1945. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • El Gammal, Jean. “Les références politiques à la Gaule de 1870 à 1918.” In Camille Jullian, l’histoire de la Gaule et le nationalisme français: actes du colloque organisé à Lyon le 6 décembre 1988, 29–38. Lyon: Société des Amis de Jacob Spon, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freed, Libbie. “Conduits of Culture and Control: Roads in Colonial French Central Africa, 1890–1960.” PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fustel de Coulanges, and Numa Denis. La cité antique, étude sur le culte, le droit, les institutions de la Grèce et de Rome. Paris: L. Hachette, 1864.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis, and Camille Jullian. Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France: La Gaule romaine. Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1888.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groslier, George. La route du plus fort. Paris: éditions Émile-Paul Frères, 1925.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guillemet, Eugène. Sur les sentiers laotiens. Hanoi: Impr. D’Extrême-Orient, 1921.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ha, Marie-Paule. Figuring the East: Segalen, Malraux, Duras, and Barthes. Albany: SUNY, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harmand, François-Jules. Domination et Colonisation. Paris: Flammarion, 1919.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harmand, Jules. Domination et colonisation. Paris: E. Flammarion, 1910.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoang Cao Khai. En Annam. Translated by Jules Roux. Hanoi: Imprimerie Express, 1910.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Empire: 1875–1914. New York: Vintage, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jullian, Camille. Histoire de la Gaule. Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1908.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jullian, Camille. Inscriptions romaines de Bordeaux. Bordeaux: Imprimerie G. Gounouilhou, 1887.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kreitmann, L. Le Service du Génie au Tonkin sous l’Administration de la Marine. Paris: Librairie Militaire Berger-Levraut & Cie, 1889.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lâm, Truong Buu. Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900–1931. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lanessan, Jean-Louis de. La colonisation française en Indo-Chine. Paris: F. Alcan, 1895.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lanessan, Jean-Louis de. Principes de colonisation. Paris: F. Alcan, 1897.

    Google Scholar 

  • Le Myre de Vilers, Charles. Preface to Choses de l’Indochine contemporaine, by Maurice Rondet-Saint, XI–XLIV. Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1916.

    Google Scholar 

  • Munholland, Kim. “Admiral Jauréguiberry and the French Scramble for Tonkin: 1879–83.” French Historical Studies 11, no. 1 (1979): 81–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murray, Martin J. The Development of Capitalism in Colonial Indochina, 1870–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pujarniscle, Eugène. Philoxène ou De la littérature coloniale. Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie., 1931.

    Google Scholar 

  • Régismanset, Charles. Preface to L’Indochine moderne, encyclopédie administrative, touristique, artistique et économique by Eugène Teston and Maurice Percheron. Paris: Librairie de France, 1932.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robequain, Charles. The Economic Development of French Indo-China. New York: Oxford University Press, 1944.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, Christopher. “Lines of communication: Thematics of Direction and Strategies of Narration in Colonial Indochina.” In France and Indochina France and Indochina: Cultural Representations, edited by Kathryn Robson and Jennifer Yee, 49–62. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roubaud, Louis. Viet-Nam. La Tragédie indochinoise. Paris: L. Valois, 1931.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tambiah, Stanley J. “The Galactic Polity: The Structure of Traditional Kingdoms in Southeast Asia.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 293, no. 1 Anthropology (July 1977): 69–97.

    Google Scholar 

  • Teston, Eugène, and Maurice Percheron, L’Indochine moderne, encyclopédie administrative, touristique, artistique et économique. Paris: Librairie de France, 1932.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thévenet-Le Boul, Jean. Les travaux publics et les voies de communication en Cochinchine. Saigon: Imprimerie Nationale, 1880.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, Virginia McLean. French Indo-China. London: G. Allen & Unwin, Ltd. and New York: Macmillan, 1937.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van den Abbeele, Georges. Travel as Metaphor from Montaigne to Rousseau. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, Eugen. Peasants into Frenchmen: the Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yee, Jennifer. Clichés de la femme exotique: un regard sur la littérature coloniale française entre 1871 et 1914. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zinoman, Peter. The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stéphanie Ponsavady .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Ponsavady, S. (2018). Paving the Way: Road and Empire Builders. In: Cultural and Literary Representations of the Automobile in French Indochina. Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94559-0_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics