A Dragon Apparent

Norman Lewis

3 ideas

1. Cao Dai's Holy See and Private Army

   At Tay Ninh, Lewis visited the Holy See of Cao Dai, a recent syncretic religion. It combined Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Catholicism, had its own pope, and revered saints including Victor Hugo, with messages received through spirit séances. The sect also kept a private army and a semi-autonomous territory, and the French tolerated and armed it as a counterweight to the Viet Minh, so a colonial power ended up relying on an armed millenarian church to hold its countryside.

2. Colonial Labour Demands Strain Highland Communities

   Lewis describes the highland peoples the French called 'Moi' living in communal longhouses with ritual rice-wine sharing, among whom valuable jars circulated through negotiators who took large profits. He records compulsory plantation labour and other colonial obligations pulling men away from these communities, and presents this as a disruptive pressure on their way of life.

3. Judging Societies Outside the Productivity Frame

   Lewis measured the Lao and the highland tribes by their contentment, leisure and social cohesion rather than by Western standards of industriousness and development. Seen that way, the 'idleness' colonial officials complained about looks like a working equilibrium, and 'improvement' looks like the imposition of scarcity and anxiety on people who had not lacked them.

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