The Montagnards and the State in Northern Vietnam from 1802 to 1975: A Historical Overview

Abstract. This article provides an overview of the recent interactions between the highlanders of northernVietnam and the successive powers that controlled the state between and: Imperial Vietnam until , the French colonial state until , and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam after that date. Ignored for a long time, courted during wartime, subject to strong acculturation policy since the in-dependence of the North, these highland societies are facing a constant challenge to their cultural survival. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a land of human diversity. Today ethnic Kinh, the lowland Vietnamese majority, account for approximately percent of the national population. The remaining percent belong to one or another of the remaining forty-eight ethnic denominations regis-tered in the country in the census.1 These are grouped under the ap-pellation of National Minorities. Of these National Minorities twenty-four different groups are found in northern Vietnam, amounting to percent of the National Minority population and percent of the national popula-tion (Table ). Their habitat is part of the northern reaches of the Annam Cordillera and includes a large portion of the southern part of the mainland Southeast Asian Massif (Figure ). This article provides an overview of the recent interactions between the montagnards of northern Vietnam and the successive lowland powers that controlled the state between and .2 The written documen-tation used in this article comes from secondary sources, either in French or English, or is translated into one of these languages from, chiefly, Viet-namese and Chinese. This documentation is in the form of archives, pub-Ethnohistory : (spring ) Copyright © by the American Society for Ethnohistory