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The French built the city of Dalat in the alpine hills of southern Vietnam as a reminder of home. This book uncovers the strange 100-year history of a colonial city that was conceived as a center of power and has now become a kitsch tourist destination. Eric T. Jennings finds that from its very beginning, Dalat embodied the paradoxes of colonialism. It was a city of leisure built on the backs of thousands of laborers, a supposed paragon of hygiene that offered only questionable protection from disease, and a new venture into ethnic relations that ultimately backfired. Jennings' fascinating history opens a new window onto virtually all aspects of French Indochina, from architecture to violence, labor, metissage, health and medicine, gender and ethnic relations, and more.
List of contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Escaping Death in the Tropics 2. Murder on the Race for Altitude 3. Health, Altitude, and Climate 4. Early Dalat, 1898-1918 5. Colonial Expectations, Pastimes, Comestibles, Comforts, and Discomforts 6. Situating the "Montagnards" 7. A Functional City? Architecture, Planning, Zoning, and Their Critics 8. The Dalat Palace Hotel 9. Vietnamese Dalat 10. Some Colonial Categories: Children, European Women, and Metis 11. Divine Dalat 12. The Maelstrom, 1940-1945 13. Autonomous Province or Federal Capital? 14. Dalat at War and Peace, 1946-1975 Epilogue Notes Select Bibliography Index
About the author
Eric T. Jennings, Professor of History at the University of Toronto, is the author of Curing the Colonizers, and Vichy in the Tropics.
Summary
The city of Dalat, located in the hills of Southern Vietnam, was built by the French in an alpine locale that reminded them of home. This title uncovers the strange 100-year history of a colonial city that was conceived as a center of power and has now become a kitsch tourist destination.
