SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This study queries the validity of the stereotype ‘rice monoculture’ about Vietnam from the colonial period to the present and clarifies that Vietnamese agriculture was developed with diversification by local Vietnamese in the colonial period.　In addition, we confirm the significance of their market adaptability and entrepreneurship in agricultural development. We indicate that many materials in the colonial period were unevenly distributed to Cochinchina, which is the present southern Vietnam including the Mekong Delta, the largest breadbasket in Vietnam, as one of the reasons that Vietnam is regarded a ‘rice monoculture’.　Additionally, we clarify that the concept of monoculture, which focuses only on agricultural products with a large share of exports, obscures various activities of agriculture in a northern and central area called Tonkin, Annam in the colonial period, and the development of natural rubber cultivation and exportation in the southern area. Based on this, we indicate that various agricultural products were cultivated and exported in the northern and central area and evaluate the market adaptability and entrepreneurship of the local Vietnamese who supported them. The progress of natural rubber cultivation and exportation since the late 1920s in Cochinchina, which was the main rice exporter, is a phenomenon that breaks stereotypes such as the ‘rice monoculture’. We confirm the increase of small-scale plantations as an appropriate response by the local Vietnamese to the development of the international rubber market.　Considering that the plantation is a new production system introduced from Europe, we can evaluate the entrepreneurship of the local Vietnamese who operated small plantations with a risk-taking attitude.