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The experience of race in the colonies has traditionally been regarded as a question of dualism: colonizer versus colonized, oppressors versus oppressed, or black versus white. In the Francophone world, the work of prominent intellectual critics of empire, such as Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, and Jean-Paul Sartre, utilized this dualism in support of the nationalist and anti-colonialist cause.(2) Often, historians have adopted this reductionist sketch of colonial life and reproduced a colonial bi-polar disorder in their own work. This paper, which discusses the different ways in which people of color were classified in Indochine Française, takes issue with the classic texts of colonial theory. I argue that the model of colonial versus indigène is an oversimplification of the racial experience in Indochine. Colonial racism did not operate by homogenizing the non-whites into a single entity. Instead, there were several distinct categories into which the various non-whites fit. While these variations and differences in the construction of "race" reflected an understanding of real and important ethnic distinctions, they were also an expression of racist prejudices in the dominant mentalité of the French of Indochine. The patterns of French racism present an insight into the construction of white identity. In broad strokes, the French gaze placed non-whites into several categories. Due to the thorny issues of citizenship in the colony, much weight was placed upon distinguishing between indigènes and asiatiques étrangères. The first group included Annamites, Laotiens, Cambodgiens, and Moïs (a catch all term for a variety of "hill-people" and "savages").(3) In the second group we find Chinese and Japanese. Throughout the colonial era, the two categories of a third group, the Chetty of French India and the Métis or mix-bloods, posed serious obstacles for clear and coherent administrative classification.(4) Racial thinking was not limited to legal concerns, economics and culture also shaped French perceptions of the others. I will explore the clusters of stereotypes surrounding each of the main racial groupings with the intention of illustration the various ways that racial oppression operated in colonial Indochine. For the sake of time I will limit myself to three major groups: Annamites, Chinese, and Japanese. Vietnamese In the colonial lexicon, an Annamite was a Vietnamese. The French use of the term, which is drawn from the derogatory Chinese term "pacified south", was designed to counter nationalist resistance and grated upon the nerves of many Vietnamese. Following a classic divide and rule strategy, the French banned the term Vietnam and divided the nation into three colonies. Annamites were labeled Cochinchinois, Annamites, and Tonkinois, following the administrative divisions of Vietnam. These officially sanctioned terms influenced the way in which colonials thought about the colonized. Rather than dealing with some 20 million members of a nation with an autonomous history, the French belittled the indigène as a mere regional native, not part of a larger entity. The very act of defining and naming was bound up with the French strategy of domination by creating differences.(5) In their quotidian experiences, the French encountered the Vietnamese not as individuals but as representatives of certain types. The most common were the mandarin, the boy, the congaï, and the nha-que. During the conquest and pacification of Tonkin, the pirate was an inescapable image but this faded after the turn of the century. These stereotypes were found in both the official mind and the popular sphere of French colonialism. The figure of the mandarin entered the French colonial collective consciousness early in the history of the French penetration of Southeast Asia. Explorers and conquerors were the first to interact with these much maligned and poorly understood local officials. Adventurers who returned to France and published their stories, such as Jean Dupuis, presented the mandarin as an Asiatic despot only concerned with his own interests.(6) Few of these heroic narratives observed that the white interlopers were muscling in on the mandarins' legal domain. The martyrdom of missionaries added to the unfavorable image of the mandarin by invoking deep cultural memories of the crusades. Despite being a fairly rational act undertaken by indigenous leaders concerned with the obviously disruptive impact of Catholicism, this form of resistance cast the Vietnamese leaders as wicked and cruel villains engaged in a fight against Western values and beliefs. In addition to their violent barbarism, these men were presented as unnaturally vain. Their fondness of ritual and costume indicated moral flaws and a childish desire for self-glorification; a curious critique from the land of Louis XIV and Napoleon. Finally, they were condemned as decadent for their corruption and opium use (vices not unknown to the French). Republican France's overthrow of the anachronistic mandarins was a central component of the mythic mission civilisatrice. Colonists, who saw themselves as representatives of a universal and rational modernism, never felt at ease with these medieval holdouts. French reliance on the mandarins after the pacification and the willingness of many mandarins to cooperate with the new rulers resulted in an interesting paradox. While the popular anti-colonial movements of the inter-war years, be they nationalist or communist, fought against the mandarin class as an aspect of the colonial order, the French still viewed their closest collaborators with racist contempt.(7) The most common contact between whites and non-whites was in the employment of domestic help.(8) While the institution slowly died in France after the Great War, throughout the colonial era it was unusual for a colonist not to have servants. Even the lowest level official in the state bureaucracy was expected to budget a portion of his income for the employment of a boy and a bêp (a cook).(9) Widespread domestic employment revived atavistic social patterns which resonated with contemporary racism.(10) Boys were often seen as dishonest or of limited intelligence, supposedly due to their deraciné background.(11) Cartoons from the period lampooned the boy as the source of petty thefts. According to general consensus (and the daily papers), they were likely to go through an employers' pockets, steal watches while one slept, or make off with other household items.(12) The rare and extreme cases where boys were suspected of murdering their patrons fed the paranoid French community's collective neuroses.(13) Nonetheless, employment of Vietnamese in the home was a necessary risk of colonial life.(14) The temptations that would naturally arise from the dramatically different levels of wealth between master and servant was an issue explored by few. Rather, the view of the boy as criminal reinforced existing white suspicions of the indigène's moral character.(15) Vietnamese were considered too mysterious and hypocritical to understand. To the French, the native's mind was impenetrable and malin. At best, one might get used to the natives but a real connection was impossible.(16) The lack of tact among Annamite boys was another widespread stereotype. Numerous jokes circulated in which the naive boy let slip some indiscreet detail about Madame or Monsieur's private life. On other occasions, the boy was far too literal and failed to understand the nuances of French culture.(17) The similarity between this form of humor and jokes about children is inescapable. That the Vietnamese mind was childlike and immature was the conclusion drawn from such popular vignettes. On the positive side, Vietnamese boys were considered to be very eager to please. Despite their suspect déraciné identity(18), many white observers praised their skills at imitation, suggesting Homi Bhabha's concept of the "mimic men".(19) After the boy, the next most frequently encountered type was the congaï. Thanks to the romanticization of colonial sexual relations and to the changing nature of the institution, an exact definition of congaï is difficult.(20) Suffice it to say, the congaï was a young Vietnamese female somewhere between a prostitute and a mistress. While the experience could range from a cash for sex exchange to a long-term relationship with real emotional bonds, the common image was that of a professional live-in girlfriend; sort of a domestic employee for sexual service. However, following World War One, the French community evolved as a wave of inter-war immigration shrunk the colonial gender gap.(21) With more white women about, it became less common and less acceptable for Frenchmen to be openly encongaïé.(22) Both demographics and social attitudes were responsible for this socio-sexual shift and the increase in social distance between white men and native women. Nonetheless, throughout the colonial era the Vietnamese woman was associated with complacent sexuality and a lack of agency.