IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB816275491

Overpopulation, Racial Degeneracy and Birth Control in French Colonial Vietnam (2018)

Nguyen, Thuy Linh (Author)

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
Volume: 19
Issue: 3

URI: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/712081

DOI: 10.1353/cch.2018.0024

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Degeneration Nationalism Demography; population research Science and race Birth control; contraception; sterilization Population control France, colonies 20th century, early Vietnam

This article examines the Vietnamese writings on overpopulation, racial decline and birth control that were published in Vietnamese journals in the 1930s. Navigating between different demographic and sexual discourses, both local and global, Vietnamese birth control activists took a stern and critical look at the compounding problems of overpopulation and racial decline in colonial Tonkin. They identified the Confucian pro-natalist traditions with its laissez-faire approach towards reproduction and childrearing as the roots of the overpopulation crisis in Tonkin. Rejecting the French solution of demographic balancing while stressing the linkages between reproduction and national standing, Vietnamese birth control activists called for cultural changes in the customs of marriage and family building, and a stricter surveillance over procreative and sexual behaviors. In the context of French surveillance and censorship, the Vietnamese debate on overpopulation and birth limitation provided rich fodder for local intellectuals to envision and articulate their aspirations for national revival and racial preservation.

...More

Citation URI

http://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB816275491/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Thesis Sujin Lee; (2017)
Problematizing Population: Politics of Birth Control and Eugenics in Interwar Japan (/isis/citation/CBB518032041/)

Book Erika Dyck; Maureen Lux; (2020)
Challenging Choices: Canada's Population Control in the 1970s (/isis/citation/CBB928803182/)

Article Vann, Michael G.; (2003)
Of Rats, Rice, and Race: The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre, an Episode in French Colonial History (/isis/citation/CBB000660571/)

Thesis Edington, Claire Ellen; (2013)
Beyond the Asylum: Colonial Psychiatry in French Indochina, 1880--1940 (/isis/citation/CBB001567481/)

Book Claire E. Edington; (2019)
Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam (/isis/citation/CBB895433219/)

Book Laurence Monnais; (2019)
The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam (/isis/citation/CBB737196314/)

Article Monnais, Laurence; (2009)
From Colonial Medicines to Global Pharmaceuticals? The Introduction of Sulfa Drugs in French Vietnam (/isis/citation/CBB000932551/)

Article Dyck, Erika; (2014)
Guest Editor 's Introduction: History of Eugenics Revisited (/isis/citation/CBB001420266/)

Article Cassia Roth; (2020)
The Degenerating Sex: Female Sterilisation, Medical Authority and Racial Purity in Catholic Brazil (/isis/citation/CBB353485138/)

Thesis Wood, James Anthony; (cited 2012)
Natural Guardians of the Race: Heredity, Hygiene, Alcohol, and Degeneration in Scottish Psychiatry, c. 1860--1920 (/isis/citation/CBB001567411/)

Book Robert Jarvenpa; (2018)
Declared Defective: Native Americans, Eugenics, and the Myth of Nam Hollow (/isis/citation/CBB668077890/)

Article Gawin, Magdalena; (2008)
The Sex Reform Movement and Eugenics in Interwar Poland (/isis/citation/CBB000831694/)

Article Blom, Ida; (2008)
“How to Have Healthy Children”: Responses to the Falling Birth Rate in Norway, c. 1900--1940 (/isis/citation/CBB000931730/)

Article Berg, Annika; (2010)
A Suitable Country: The Relationship between Sweden's Interwar Population Policy and Family Planning in Post-independence India (/isis/citation/CBB001022035/)

Article Ramsden, Edmund; (2008)
Eugenics from the New Deal to the Great Society: Genetics, Demography andPopulation Quality (/isis/citation/CBB000831720/)

Article Turda, Marius; (2009)
“To End the Degeneration of a Nation”: Debates on Eugenic Sterilization in Inter-War Romania (/isis/citation/CBB000931184/)

Article Sarah Walsh; (2022)
The executioner’s shadow: Coerced sterilization and the creation of “Latin” eugenics in Chile (/isis/citation/CBB396292693/)

Article James J. Harris; (2020)
The “Tribal Spirit” in Modern Britain: Evolution, Nationality, and Race in the Anthropology of Sir Arthur Keith (/isis/citation/CBB950685485/)

Article Filip Herza; (2020)
Sombre faces: Race and nation-building in the institutionalization of Czech physical anthropology (1890s–1920s) (/isis/citation/CBB658558405/)

Article Marina Mogilner; (2021)
Mediterraneanizing Europe: The Project of Subaltern Race and the Postimperial Search for Hybridity (/isis/citation/CBB093397754/)