Subject: quý ông nobleman as mandarin
Culture: Vietnamese
Setting: French occupation, Nguyen dynasty Vietnam mid 19thc - early 20thc
Evolution:
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
* SarDesai 1997 p188
"Opposition to French rule began almost as soon as they had occupied Cochin China in 1862. It was led by all types of people, including peasants and fishermen, who were not prepared to abandon their time-honored culture for that of people separated from them 'by thousands of mountains and seas.' The resistance movement grew to revolutionary proportions after the French conquest of Annam in 1885. The so-called pacification program, like its British counterpart in Myanmar, was most intense until 1895, but it extended in Vietnam to 1913. In a particularly vicious campaign from 1909 to 1913, the French hounded the resistance leaders and murdered them one by one. The The peasantry harbored and supported the leaders of the resistance movement, known as Can Vuong (aid the king), which included the scholar-gentry, the Vietnamese mandarin class. In the decades before 1900, the mandarins appeared to believe that the French occupation of their lands might spell loss of political control but not a cultural or spiritual loss. By 1900, however, a new generation of maturing mandarins grew apprehensive that the educational and cultural impact of French culture had become pervasive. They were haunted by the image of mat nuoc (losing one's country), not merely in political terms but more seriously in the sense of their future survival as Vietnamese. Mandarins thus fell into three groups: those who withdrew to the villages in a sort of passive noncooperation, and those who struggled desperately through participation in the resistance movement to bring new meaning and ethnic salvation (cuu nuoc) to the populace."
Saber
"In the early nineteenth century another foreign influence affected Vietnamese dao - France. After the French bankrolled the establishment of the Nguyen dynasty in 1802, lion-head pommels began appearing. These sabers are essentially European in design, with 'D' shaded [SIC] knucklebows. This French pattern is overlaid and decorated in the local Vietnamese fashion, usually with embossed silver fittings on the scabbard and hilt and mother of pearl inlay in lacquer or rose wood scabbards. Other examples have plain tortoise shell covered scabbards. This style of saber has a scabbard chape with an usually sharp upward accelerating curve terminating in a sharp end. This is quite different from sabers of European design which tend to have chapes with rounded ends. This pointed chape is most likely a hold-over from Ming Chinese influences."
"Returning to the specific features of the Vietnamese term “kiem” and “guom”, it has to be added that it is also utilized to refer to almost all varieties of European sabers and even Kossack shashkas, as well as local (often ceremonial) sabers showing a French style guard in the form of the Latin letter “D”. The latter are fairly well presented in museum and private collections both in Vietnam and abroad. In Paris Army Museum an illustrative example under number 5206 I is kept, quite a number of them are displayed in Vietnamese museums, the earliest ones dated to the late 19th century when the European intervention was already under way. These sabers grew widespread with the establishment of the Nguyen dynasty in 1802, which rising to power was to a great extent made possible thanks to the French economical support (in particular, with weapons). Their stylized handles quite often capture the flair of Napoleon`s era and Empire style which was in vogue at that time and reflected in a peculiar way in weapon manufacture. In his article, the Russian scholar S. Barchewsky writes in detail about the ceremonial versions of these weapons and their decorative design. Scott Rodell also mentions sabers of French design insistently calling them dao following the Chinese tradition. The French authors call it guom."
Costume
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Baton
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