Re-Evaluating Vietnam’s Nghe-Tinh
Soviets (1930-1931) using a
Historical GIS: Some Preliminary
Observations
David Del Testa, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History
Bucknell University
Introduction
• Thanks to the Center for Southeast Asian Studies
• A discussion today of both a technique and the interpretation of the
results
– Along with social network analysis, GIS provides an important new
tool for interpretation
– I am novice in the use of historical GIS and not yet an expert on the
Nghe-Tinh Soviets, so you may be underwhelmed, but much work
– Tried to improve presentation last night and ended up damaging it a
little
• A follow-on to ‘Paint the Trains Red’: Labor, Nationalism, and the
Railroads in French colonial Indochina, 1898-1945
• Long interest in Nghe-Tinh Soviets parallels book project
– A synthetic moment at the 2003 EUROSEAS annual meeting in Paris
– Special issue of South East Asia Research on the Nghe-Tinh Soviets
coming soon
– Seeking support for an in-depth archival and field study
What is a historical GIS?
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At base, the association of data with maps – clear overlays
Now most often associated with computer software
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Developed for use by the military and in the environmental sciences (at Harvard, US Army)
Most people use a GIS without knowing it when they use GoogleEarth or a vehicle’s GPS system (which adds
real-time capability to analytical map)
ESRI’s ArcGIS has the most commercial market share for analytical
A free, open source alternative is the GRASS system
GIS as software offers users a powerful means for displaying maps that they build themselves , but
the most significant power lies in its ability to query the data relative to the maps and build
correlations and associations otherwise invisible to the naked eye or difficult to construct beyond a
small area
Charles Joseph Menard, “Carte figurative des pertes successives…” 1869
Historical GIS
• A historical GIS implies that a user examines events in the
past by adapting historical data
• Developing historical GIS is not revolutionary and has been
underway for many decades
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China Historical GIS
Historical GIS in Britain
Electronic Cultural Atlas sponsored by UC Berkeley
The Spatial History Project at Stanford University
• Some historical GIS work associated with Vietnam
– Brian Zottoli did some early work in 2001/2002 on Hue and Hoi
An
– David Biggs at UC Irvine is developing a historical GIS on canals
in southern Vietnam
– Dr. Mamoru Shibayama at Kyoto developed a GIS of Hanoi
– Joe Hupy at University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire’s many projects
Problems with
Historical GIS
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To capture the historical past and create a
truthful representation of history requires
enormous investments of time and
resources!
– Most GIS data is based on contemporary
boundaries and features (look at San
Francisco Bay as an example)
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Fear of the dominance of ‘ground truth’
and return to a quantitative history
Steps for my own work beyond the idea:
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Making changes to existing data or creating
new outlines takes much time still
One must also access this data and have the
right to use it
One must trust the statistics one is using
finding data (gallica.fr made this possible)
getting permission to use maps
having them digitized ($)
having them matched to current GIS data ($)
learning software
having appropriate equipment
finding the time to implement, etc.
But the rewards are potentially rich and it
has become much easier!
Nghe-Tinh
Soviets History
Data and Layer Sources
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Layers include:
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Rice harvests for Nghe An and Ha Tinh
Non-rice cultivars for Nghe An and Ha Tinh
Handicraft and industry for Nghe An and Ha Tinh
Religiosity for Nghe An and Ha Tinh
Location of important protests and the sites of Soviets
Households susceptible to taxation for 1924, 1930, 1931, and 1932
Data for layers of points and polygons:
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For contemporary administrative district boundaries from National
Geospatial Intelligence Agency for province, district, and commune
– For economic and land use data, Cartes économique de l’Annam (in
1926) from LOC (only other copy at BN) of Ha Tinh, Nghe An, and
Quang Ngai and the Bulletin économique de l’Indochine, Annuaire
économique de l’Indochine (especially a 1930 special issue on Nghe
An agriculture), etc.
• Bucknell University Information Services provided support for
student Max Stiss and others to ‘rubbersheet’ these maps to
contemporary data
– For religiosity, “Carte du vicarat apolostqiue du Vinh” (1880) and
reports of the MEP (1920s)
– For politics, Tran Huy Lieu’s The Soviets du Nghe-Tinh (1961),
Rapport mensuel de l’Ensemble de l’Annam, and other French and
Vietnamese sources
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Data/Layer problems:
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Real need to get down to village level
Lack of unicode entries to display diacritics
As Gilles De Gantès and Magali Barbieri have described, Frenchorigin data sometimes suspect
Observations
• Note that Kim Lien plotting incorrectly – in 10th month rice,
non-Catholic area
• According to the maps, except at Nghen in Ha Tinh, neither
protests nor soviets occurred in areas with two rice crops
• According to the maps, except at Nghen in Ha Tinh, neither
protest nor soviets occurred in an area with a subsidiary
industry
• According to the maps, all protests and soviets occurred in
an area with a subsidiary cultivar
• The Nghe-Tinh Soviets didn’t significantly affect the
collection of taxes
• Only at Nam Dan protests occurs in a Catholic area; many
others adjacent
Some paths to follow for future
research
• Single-crop rice and nonindustry/handicraft areas lack extra
resources at a time of inflation – not
immiseration but monoculture
• Non-rice cultivars do not provide an
economic cushion, perhaps because
of falling commodity prices
• Catholic/Non-Catholic conflict not
significant initially
• Tax collection rate a result of more
vigorous collection
• Need to find village-level data, add
honesty to rice/cultivar/industry
representation, impact of floods of
1926 and 1928, site all conflicts and
begin to conduct spatial analysis
THANK YOU!