Imperial Heights

by Jennings, Eric T.

• ISBN13: 9780520266599
• ISBN10: 0520266595
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-04-08
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

The French built the city of Dalat in the alpine hills of southern Vietnam as a reminder of home. This book uncovers the strange 100-year history of a colonial city that was conceived as a center of power and has now become a kitsch tourist destination. Eric T. Jennings finds that from its very beginning, Dalat embodied the paradoxes of colonialism. It was a city of leisure built on the backs of thousands of laborers, a supposed paragon of hygiene that offered only questionable protection from disease, and a new venture into ethnic relations that ultimately backfired. Jennings' fascinating history opens a new window onto virtually all aspects of French Indochina, from architecture to violence, labor, meacute;tissage, health and medicine, gender and ethnic relations, and more.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Escaping Death in the Tropics

Murder on the Race for Altitude

Health, Altitude, and Climate

Early Dalat, 1898-1918

Colonial Expectations, Pastimes, Comestibles, Comforts, and Discomforts

Situating the "Montagnards"

A Functional City? Architecture, Planning, Zoning, and Their Critics

The Dalat Palace Hotel

Vietnamese Dalat

Some Colonial Categories: Children, European Women, and Métis

Divine Dalat

The Maelstrom, 1940-1945

Autonomous Province or Federal Capital?

Dalat at War and Peace, 1946-1975

Epilogue

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.