This chapter connects the French introduction of fast-growing, exotic hard timber species in Vietnam to the intensive search for mine timber to support the coal mining industry. The filao tree known scientifically as Casuarina equisetifolia, and the eucalyptus were introduced in Vietnam by the French in 1896 for the dual purpose of harvesting their hard timber for mine props and using them to reforest the shifting sand dunes along the coast of Annam, a French protectorate in what is now central Vietnam. Through a long and complex process of growing and acclimating the trees to Annam’s coastal sand dunes, French foresters were able to successfully grow the filao in industrial-style plantations and nurseries. Their success helped establish the filao as a popular exotic hard timber species for the reforestation of coastal sand dunes, not just in Vietnam but also in other French colonies, such as Senegal and Madagascar. Overall, the stories of the filao shed light on transnational connections between coal mining and the environment during the age of the empire, when the mining-driven search for hard timber commodities transformed the landscapes of both Vietnam and Africa.

Drawing from ca dao vùng mỏ (the lesser-known writings of anonymous Vietnamese miners), the vibrant Vietnamese print press of the 1930s, and other archival sources, this chapter offers insights into the internal workings of large-scale coal mining enterprises, which were founded on racial, professional, and gendered power structures. In addition, this chapter describes the formation of a strong oppositional and distinctive Vietnamese miner subculture, forged both within and beyond the mines. Outside the mines, far from company surveillance, miners engaged in collective acts, such as theft, fraud, and illicit recreational activities, such as opium smoking, gambling, and smuggling, to supplement their wage income or to simply decompress after a hard day at work in the company of their workmates. The relative autonomy and strength of this miner subculture reveal the failure of the internal working regime of coal mining companies to impose uniform working patterns on their employees. Instead, workers banded together and utilized their networks and autonomous culture to contest and exploit the limitations in French labor management for their own personal gains.

This Introduction provides an overview of the main arguments and contributions of the book to the literature on the environmental and economic history of French colonial Vietnam and the larger French colonial empire. It emphasizes how the book pays special attention to the significance of local networks and the role of diverse indigenous actors as it explores the formation of a regional and transnational coal regime of French colonial Vietnam. The Introduction also offers outlines of all chapters as well as the book’s key sources.

This chapter documents the conflicts among Đông Triều Coal Company (also known as SCDT), the city of Hải Phòng, and the French colonial government in Tonkin over the protection of potable water at a time when uncontrolled mining expansion in the Đông Triều highland, where SCDT was based, threatened to pollute the Hương River – Hải Phòng city’s source of potable water. This chapter argues that the French colonial state’s environment-centered attempts to safeguard the Hương River and public health, such as the creation of a massive water protection zone, were primarily driven by French concerns about the lack of hygiene and infectious diseases circulating within the indigenous communities located close to the Hương River rather than the industrial pollution caused by SCDT. The chapter also underlines issues pertaining to environmental laws, such as the logistical challenges of surveying and protecting water sources, and the lack of compliance with environmental regulations by big coal companies such as SCDT. More importantly, the chapter underscores the complex impact of mining expansion and environmental regulations on local ethnicities, such as the Dao communities.

This chapter documents the development of urban mining centers along the coal frontier of Quảng Yên and their impact on the landscape and its people. It examines the French vision of turning coal towns into orderly landscapes where spatial and racial segregation, as well as medical and hygiene surveillance, could be applied. The architects of these emerging mining towns expected their newly designed urban spaces to stabilize the restless and highly mobile indigenous migrant mining workforce while also protecting the towns’ tiny European population from epidemic diseases and security threats. However, several factors reduced these urban visions to a patchwork of modernity. Racial divides, security and medical concerns, coupled with strained resources, led to the unequal distribution of living space and public resources between the European and indigenous quarters. Infectious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, and plague, spread rapidly across the overcrowded dormitories of mine workers. In addition, crime and illicit activities flourished on the commercial streets of these towns and cities.

This Epilogue documents the colonial coal regime’s struggle for survival during the twilight of French colonialism in Indochina. It also examines the closure and decolonization of large-scale coal mining enterprises and discusses the legacy of coal mining in postcolonial Vietnam.

Drawing from the economic, political, and security records of the Kế Bào Coal Company – one of the first two large-scale French coal mining companies established in Tonkin – this chapter tracks the rise and fall of the company and offers a labor, social, and racial history of the many pioneers of the coal frontier, such as the Chinese and Vietnamese migrant coal mine workers, the Vietnamese convicts, and the French personnel. By situating the history of large-scale coal mining in Kế Bào within the regional context of the Sino-Vietnamese borderland and the global coolie trade of the nineteenth century, this chapter illustrates the risks and precarities of coal mining along a remote maritime coal frontier in the early days of French colonialism in Tonkin. Specifically, it highlights the perils of financial miscalculation, labor mismanagement, overoptimistic and incomplete geological surveys, and the environmental and ecological challenges of extracting coal in a tropical landscape unfamiliar to Europeans, all of which contributed to the company’s downfall.

This chapter provides a geographical, ethnic, and economic overview of the coal mining frontier of Quảng Yên in northern Vietnam during the precolonial period, before large-scale coal mining began in the late nineteenth century. The first part of this chapter highlights the ethnic diversity, political volatility, rampant piracy, cross-border smuggling, and illicit trade that characterized this porous Sino-Vietnamese borderland, where state surveillance was often absent. The chapter also examines precolonial mining patterns, the Nguyễn dynasty’s mining policies, and the role of the Chinese in precolonial mining exploitation in Vietnam. Notably, the chapter attributes the decline of the precolonial mining economy in Vietnam to several environmental, political, and technological factors. The last part of this chapter documents the French struggle to stabilize and pacify this complex and volatile mining frontier in the late nineteenth century, paving the way for the region’s first large-scale coal mining enterprises and mining settlements.

This chapter explores the transformations caused by the 1920s coal boom in Tonkin, especially with respect to forests and the ways in which they were exploited. Demand for mine timber soared during this period, since coal mining enterprises required a large number of mine props to support their underground tunnels. With hard timber becoming a highly sought-after commodity, illicit timber exploitation and trading networks began operating under the radar of French colonial surveillance. Taking advantage of this mining-driven high demand for timber, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Dao loggers and traders exploited and sold hard timber to large-scale coal mining companies, often without permission. Forest rules were flouted in a frenzied search for mine timber. This chapter underscores how capitalist developments, such as coal mining, were the main perpetrators of the destruction of timber forests in Tonkin, as opposed to indigenous swidden farming practices. This story of coal mining and deforestation also demonstrates the adaptability of indigenous networks, the internal weakness of colonial rule, and the ecological consequences of unchecked capitalist developments.

This chapter examines the formation of a liberal mining regime in Tonkin, which fueled a mining frenzy in the 1920s. To encourage prospectors and capitalists to invest in and exploit the mining resources of remote colonies, such as Tonkin and Annam, a colonial mining regime that granted mine explorers extensive rights to control and develop mining concessions as they saw fit was formulated in 1897. This chapter also explores how the liberal mining regime in Tonkin enabled the rise of big coal companies, such as the French Coal Company of Tonkin (SFCT) and Đông Triều Coal Company (SCDT). Their rapid growth and illicit mining expansion subsequently led to increasing conflicts among the two companies, the colonial government, and local communities over the use of natural resources, such as timber forests, public land, and maritime zones. Overall, this chapter highlights how the bubble created by mining deregulation led to the wasteful use and arbitrary division of land, rampant prospecting fraud, widespread destruction of preexisting forests at mining perimeters, and the illegal tactics employed by the big coal companies to encroach upon public resources.

Drawing from the memoirs of Edmond Fuchs and Emile Sarran – two French geologists sent by the French government to Tonkin in the 1880s to conduct mining expeditions – this chapter reconstructs their geological mission and examines their ecological and geological findings about the Quảng Yên coal basin in Tonkin. The chapter also underscores several limitations and inconsistencies in the French geological findings, including Fuchs’ overoptimistic assessment of the industrial and military applications of Tonkinese coal, Sarran’s inflated estimates of Tonkin’s coal reserves, and their omission of the impact of environmental factors on future large-scale coal mining activities in Tonkin. It argues that these scientific limits resulted from logistical and topographical challenges encountered by the geologists in Tonkin. It further posits that the immense pressure imposed by both the French government and the French Ministry of the Navy and Colonies was likely a contributing factor, since it was necessary for the geologists’ missions to demonstrate how the discovery of Tonkinese coal could help strengthen French industrial might and imperial ambitions in Asia.