Photos taken on colonial rubber plantations via Alpha History.

07 September 2019.
Written by Paul Christiansen
Illustrations by Hannah Hoang.

"Every day one was worn down a bit more, cheeks sunken, teeth gone crooked, eyes hollow with dark circles around them, clothes hanging from collarbones."

According to famous rubber baroness Madame de la Souchère, "the natives of the region have the defect of being unstable." The Micheline Plantation described them as "often depraved (opium addicts, public girls, lazy) having only an idea: desert to go to Cholon."

Data from 11 of the 20 biggest plantations exceeding 700 workers reveals death rates between 12% and 47% in 1926 and 1927. This cruel reality seemed to matter little to the colonial overseers, who viewed the workers as expendable.

When establishing new plantation areas, workers were forced to labor from sunrise to sunset, chopping down gargantuan trees and clearing thorn-strewn brush beset by menacing sun and swarms of biting insects, tigers, elephants and poisonous snakes. Binh claims it was rare for a week to pass without someone being crushed by a tree, while broken limbs were commonplace.

In exchange for such physically devastating labor, workers faced violence and abuse from their overseers. Beatings and rapes accompanied lesser forms of torture, including meager wages and insufficient food. The cramped barracks consisting of little more than wood floors and sheet metal roofs made even leisure time insufferable.

And while ultimately quelled, on several occasions workers overwhelmed their overseers and occupied the fields and mansions, including famously at Michelin’s Phu Rieng Du plantation, as detailed in Binh’s memoir. The earlier murder of Alfred François Bazin, a Hanoi-based labor recruiter for the company, revealed both the resentment plantations had fomented and the lengths at which Vietnamese were willing to go to put an end to them.

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