Southeast Asia—Politics, Meaning, and Memory. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016. xi, 260 pp. (Illustrations.) US$55.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-4757-9.
“Uprooted” refers to the métis (mixed race) children born out of wedlock from Indochinese mothers and foreign fathers, who were forcibly removed from their mothers by French colonial authorities with the intent of cultivating their loyalties to France and curtailing indigenous cultural influences. Christina Firpo has been working on this topic for more than a decade using data she gathered from various archives and protection society programs. The collected data enabled her to create a database of more than four thousand métis children, which, according to her estimate, constitute approximately 40 percent of all métis who were put in the care of protection societies. The Uprooted is based on her 2007 dissertation and later research; the book goes beyond her previous work, however, in that it is more comprehensive in detail and stretches the timeframe through the period of decolonization until 1980.
Firpo addresses two main ideas in the book. First, she examines why the colonial government and protection societies intensively searched for métis children and claimed their custody. Second, she investigates the development of the métis protection societies and the shifts in attitude by the French. Firpo suggests that colonial authorities were motivated by their fear that female métis might become prostitutes, as this would have led to degeneration in the prestige of the “white race” and the status of the European bourgeois class. Moreover, French authorities worried about the possibility of rebellion by métis adolescent males because they were denied recognition as French citizens. The book is structured chronologically, guiding the reader through the history of changes in policies and French attitudes towards métis children throughout the colonial regime.
Chapter 1 discusses the early years of French colonial rule when métis children, unrecognized by their fathers and abandoned by their mothers, were put in Catholic orphanages. From the 1880s, French permanent residents of Indochina began forming child protection societies as civilian-led organizations independent of Catholic orphanages. Intolerance toward mixed-race relationships and anxiety about métis children as potential rebels constantly remained in the minds of colonial rulers. However, there was a change in approach toward métis children during World War I and its aftermath, as discussed in chapter 2. Their biological connection to the French was recognized and highlighted because of the need for more soldiers to fight the war.
In 1936 the colonial government decided to end the activities of private welfare organizations and centralized the métis children protection system (73). As discussed in chapter 3, the Jules Brévié Foundation, a unified protection society, was established to provide complete state control of activities related to métis children. In chapter 4, Firpo shows that during World War II, métis were recognized for their French blood because the colonial government wanted to use them to solve some of the colony’s demographic problems. Protection society officials sought out métis who looked “white” to educate and train them to become members of the French elite in Indochina and to use them as the colony’s administrators (91).
During the French Indochina War (1946–1954), the colonial government returned the protection system back to civilian control. Chapter 5 discusses the creation of the Fédération des Oeuvres de l’Enfance Francaise d’Indochine (FOEFI) led by influential adult métis leaders, with the goal of forming citizens loyal to France who would support the French colonial regime in Indochina. The last chapter reveals a new finding: from the end of French colonial rule until 1980, French civilians working for FOEFI continued to remove métis children from Indochina and send them to France without parental consent.
In reading the mostly sad stories of métis children born from “prostitutes” and French soldiers, one wonders if there were any genuine feelings involved in the histories of such couples during colonial times. Firpo mentions in the introduction that the stories of fatherless métis children remained unknown to both French and indigenous audiences, yet she also states that “Vietnamese language women’s newspapers published extensively … on the subject of the colony’s new child-care institutions … perhaps a veiled reference to fatherless métis children” (63). This makes me wonder if indeed the existence of more than ten thousand métis children remained unnoticed. Furthermore, Firpo writes, “the phenomenon of father’s involvement in the removal process indicates a cultural change in the role of fathers who had abandoned métis children” (99). What I learned from this book is that the fathers never recognized or admitted their paternity throughout the colonial period; instead, the colonial authorities formally privileged “father power” to provide the protection societies with the right to remove the children from their mothers. This was therefore not “a cultural change in the role of fathers” but was rather a legal strategy to achieve the same goal.
Overall, the author portrays colonial rule as mostly stable throughout its history and as though the colonial administrators always knew what to do. The whole of colonial and postcolonial history is divided into six periods and discussed in six chapters, with each chapter emphasizing changes in policies and attitudes toward métis children. But was there always such a clear distinction between policies adopted in consecutive periods? The author seems to have assumed that the colonial administration almost from the beginning had the capacity to create efficient policies and laws related to métis children. One may conjecture, however, that there would have been rather complex negotiations between colonial authorities and the local society concerning a number of relevant matters. Firpo suggests that the colonial authorities and protection societies systematically removed métis children from their mothers, thus raising questions not only about the consistency of the colonial state but also about the relationship between colonial authorities and the protection societies. As Firpo illustrates, they did not always work together, and the protection societies did not always share information with one another. Thus one may wonder about the degree of continuity in the treatment of métis children from 1870 to 1980, as one would expect ruptures, conflicts, and negotiations over the course of this history.
In conclusion, The Uprooted is a well-researched and well-written book on an important historical phenomenon that has remained practically invisible for a long time. The history of métis children as a potential threat but also a potential asset during colonial times was convincingly presented by Firpo and should be of interest not only to readers of Indochinese colonial history but to those in gender studies, Asian history, and colonial studies more generally.
Mai Bui Dieu Linh
Concordia University, Montréal, Canada
pp. 868-870