Evolutions

The remains of the Indochina’s alcohol regime dot the landscape of today’s Indochina today. From the Revolutionary Museum in Hanoi, housed in the former headquarters of the reviled Department of Customs and Monopolies, to the French embassy that occupies the SFDIC’s former headquarters, to the Khmer Distilleries Company producing “Super Whisky” at US$1.00 per bottle, legacies of the long-ago monopoly endure. Yet while colonial rule has long since ended and the SFDIC is a footnote to French economic history, the same convergence of science, state, and industry that drove the creation of the monopoly a century ago continues to operate in the present day.

The Political Economy of Alcohol

When A.R. Fontaine arrived in Tonkin in 1886, he was quick to see the potential of applying new technologies to a traditional industry, and to grasp the importance of state protection for the success of his fledgling enterprise. From modest origins, he built a business empire that included everything from distilleries to coal mines to bicycle factories. Fontaine’s was one of the colonial conglomerates that played a central role in the economy’s “Indochinese moment,” introducing new technologies and familiarizing Indochinese with new ways of working, consuming and being. However, the downturn that began in Indochina in 1928 exposed the weakness of many of these enterprise groups. When A.R. Fontaine was forced to step down as President of the SFDIC in 1932, it signified the start of a new era of economic development directed not from Hanoi or Saigon, but rather from Paris.

The Great Service

Driven by the attempt to create a centrally planned market in alcohol, the Department of Customs and Monopolies expanded rapidly after 1897, employing thousands of European and indigenous agents who staffed not only large urban offices but also some of the state’s most far-flung outposts. The Department enforced two very different types of legislation: the first entailed techniques of regulation and management, while the second required direct and often violent intervention that saw tens of thousands of ordinary Indochinese searched, fined, and incarcerated. Indigenous Customs agents were central to the Department’s operations. The stories of these indigenous agents illustrate the complex and overlapping ways identities were articulated in colonial Indochina, and how they evolved under the impact of education, increasing professionalization, new forms of association, and new habits of consumption and leisure.

Oppression, Resistance, Rebellion

The alcohol regime provoked resistance at almost every level of Indochinese society. Popular resistance was shaped by various contexts. One was the corruption, abuse, and violence that were endemic to the alcohol regime. Another was its perceived illegitimacy. And a final context was the economic opportunity created by the highly taxed, unfamiliar tasting alcohol. The result was multiple forms of “everyday resistance” made possible by the complicity and collusion of broad swaths of colonial society, from village mayors to French infantry officers. Not all resistance can be characterized as everyday, however. Overt resistance, or what the colonial state labeled “rebellions,” occurred in response to particular events in the larger context of the state’s aggressive interdiction of contraband. With these acts of resistance, villagers acted to defend the integrity of their community, the sanctity of cultural norms, or basic notions of justice.

Fiscal Logics

Indochina’s alcohol regime is inseparable from the creation of the fiscal state. The origins of the fiscal state flowed from multiple sources: the modernizing, centralizing impulses of French officials, the civilizing mission to promote economic and social development, and new demands that colonies be financially self-supporting. Yet the particular revenue source the state chose—a state-supported private monopoly on production—was not only inequitable, but also failed to generate revenue efficiently. Nevertheless, the monopoly was created and maintained despite its flaws and in the face of resistance at almost every level of the French state. In part, this was due to powerful French statesmen like Paul Doumer, Paul Beau, and Albert Sarraut and their vision of a powerful, modern Indochinese state. Yet an even more important role was played by mid-level administrators like Antonin Frézouls and Paul Simoni, who worked with A.R. Fontaine to turn this vision into a very warped reality.

Introduction

Indochina’s alcohol monopoly was financially unproductive and politically disastrous. Making sense of this seemingly senseless policy requires placing the monopoly in both global and local contexts. Global contexts include advances in microbiology, the consolidation of the distilling industry, and the spread of new fiscal and administrative technologies. Local contexts include Indochina’s complex physical and human geographies, the contested and incomplete nature of French rule, the dominant position of ethnic Chinese in the Indochinese economy, and widespread popular resistance to the monopoly. As a result, Indochina’s alcohol regime simultaneously transcends and confirms its colonial setting: made possible by developments in industry and government worldwide, at the same time the alcohol regime was indelibly marked by the people and spaces of Indochina and by the authoritarian and racist nature of colonial rule.

Epilogue

On the corner of Tran Quang Khai and Trang Tien Streets in Hanoi, just to the north of the Opera House, sits Vietnam’s Museum of the Revolution. Until it closed a few years ago, the bia hoi (fresh beer) restaurant that leased a corner of the museum’s expansive grounds was the main reason people came to the site. Today, only the odd school group or particularly hardy traveler ever ventures inside, where they are treated to an exhaustive and highly didactic account of the struggle to overthrow French colonialism, defeat American imperialism, and build today’s socialist republic. No doubt a few visitors appreciate the irony that only a stone’s throw away, the children of Vietnam’s revolutionaries can enjoy champagne brunch at the renovated Métropole hotel, or shop for Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and Jaeger-LeCoultre at the district’s many upscale shops. Even fewer would understand the symbolism of housing the museum in the former headquarters of one of the colonial regime’s most hated institutions, the Department of Customs and Monopolies....

The Limits of Sovereignty

Rather than serve as the foundation for the territorially sovereign state, the alcohol regime undermined and then redrew many of Indochina’s administrative boundaries. The most obvious example is the alcohol Régie of Tonkin and Northern Annam, which reconfigured one of Indochina’s basic administrative boundaries, that of its five consitutent “countries” (pays). More remarkable is the way much of Indochina remained outside the reach of the alcohol economies. In broad expanses of Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia and Laos, interactions of geography, history, and people limited the penetration both of the SFDIC’s alcohol and of state systems of control. The result was three distinct political-industrial economies: one a reconfigured Tonkin, another a reconfigured Cochinchina, and a third “near beyond” subject to very different and more flexible regimes of economic exploitation and State control. These regimes generated very different experiences of colonial rule, economic development, and state-building, with important implications for the post-colonial states to come.

A Scientific Monopoly

Today, Albert Calmette is remembered as a pioneer of modern medicine for his work on the BCG tuberculosis vaccine, still in use today. Yet in 1891 he was an inexperienced naval doctor, recently arrived in Saigon and tasked with creating Indochina’s new bacteriological institute. While in Indochina, Calmette would carry out research crucial for the industrialization of rice alcohol production, and after his return to France he would work closely with the industrialist A.R. Fontaine to turn their vision of an alcohol monopoly into a reality. Yet while Calmette’s research promised increased yields at lower cost, the alcohol that resulted bore little resemblance to traditional liquor. Selling the factory liquor would thus require heavy-handed state intervention to encourage consumption. Calmette’s story sheds light on the political economy of innovation and highlights the place of colonialism in the history of science and technology.

Inheritances

Indochina’s alcohol regime was shaped by two crucial inheritances. One was the institution of the tax farm, which allowed officials to raise revenue while consolidating a co-dependent relationship between the colonial state and ethnic Chinese enterprise. The resulting Chinese monopolies provided both a model and a target for French officials in the years to come as they created their new alcohol regime. Another inheritance was the Department of Customs and Monopolies. From the earliest days of the French presence, the Department played a central role in establishing and consolidating French control. It operated not just to actualize Indochina’s borders by implementing French customs laws, but also, by enforcing the alcohol monopoly, to actualize French rule in the lives of Indochina’s people. Much like the tax farms that preceded it, violence was a crucial part of enforcing the new alcohol regime and establishing a new French order.