(Ebook) Appetites and Aspirations in Vietnam: Food and Drink in the Long Nineteenth Century by Peters, Erica J. ISBN 9780759120754, 9780759120778, 0759120757, 0759120773

(Ebook) Appetites and Aspirations in Vietnam: Food and Drink in the Long Nineteenth Century by Peters, Erica J. ISBN 9780759120754, 9780759120778, 0759120757, 0759120773

EPILOGUE

When the French government interfered tangibly in the daily lives of the Vietnamese, when

it established monopolies that spoiled the taste of ordinary goods such as nước mắm and

rice alcohol, people resented those impositions and began to imagine confronting colonial power.

But Vietnamese and other Asians living in the region happily incorporated new tastes into their

diets. During the relative peace at the turn of the twentieth century, they associated new culinary

possibilities with prestige and personal power. During the coming times of war and social

upheaval, however, the power to collect and distribute food had devastating consequences, just

as it had under the Tây Sơn rebels in the eighteenth century.

The first sign of this came in 1930, when failed harvests in several regions meant a

desperately hungry population, from the town of Yên Bái in the north, through Nghệ An, Hà

Tĩnh, and Quảng Ngãi provinces along the central coast, down to the Mekong Delta. People

across the French colony also began to feel the first effects of the worldwide depression that year,

as export prices for rice and sugar collapsed, leaving many agricultural workers unable to pay

their taxes or feed their families. 

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