Coal Mining, Forest Management, and Deforestation in French Colonial Vietnam

Abstract

Abstract No industry had a more profound impact on the environment and communities of northern Vietnam than coal mining. Following the French discovery of the vast Quảng Yên coal basin in the early 1880s, Tonkin, a small French protectorate in northern Vietnam, rose to become one of the world's largest coal exporters. Large-scale coal mining denuded forests, fashioned massive open-pit wastelands, and created some of Vietnam's most enduring environmental problems. This article explores one of those issues: the transformation wrought by the coal boom of the 1920s on Tonkin’s forests. As the demand for mine timber soared during that decade, an illicit timber-trading network built upon the collusion of coal-mining enterprises and indigenous loggers managed to operate under the radar of the French forest surveillance. The rise of mining-driven, illicit logging activities in French colonial Vietnam provides a useful lens for examining not only the intense ecological consequences of unchecked capitalist development but also the ingenuity and adaptability of indigenous networks and the limits of French colonial authority.