Terres communales et pouvoirs villageois à la fin du XIXe siècle. Le cas du village vietnamien de Quynh Lôi

Communal Lands and Village Power in Viêt-Nam at the End of the 19th Century. P. Papin. Communal lands in Viêt-Nam have a long history and, what is moreover exceptional in Asia, continued to exist well into the 20th century. The case of the village of Quynh Lôi allows for a step by step, level by level inquiry, so that we can understand a bit better how collective land and individual ownership were articulated. In violation of repeated juridical ordonnances from the State, communal lands were, in fact, not largely distributed among the inhabitants (10 %). A detailed study of family names and lineages nevertheless make it apparent that the disguised privatisations did not ultimately lead to concentrations of landed property. Major land owners did not exist and it was rather in terms of authority and political prestige that the question should be posed: in the village, real power consisted not in the accumulation of land, but, on the contrary, in giving the land away (to the inhabitants) or in selling it.Papin Philippe. Terres communales et pouvoirs villageois à la fin du XIXe siècle. Le cas du village vietnamien de Quynh Lôi. In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 51ᵉ année, N. 6, 1996. pp. 1303-1323