Writing History from the Margins

In Down and Out in Saigon: Stories of the Poor in a Colonial City, Haydon Cherry reconstructs the lives of six individuals who experienced poverty and hardship in Saigon during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Rather than approaching colonial Vietnam primarily through the histories of political movements, nationalist intellectuals, or colonial administrators, he turns his attention to people who rarely appear as protagonists in conventional historical narratives: prostitutes, migrant laborers, orphans, rickshaw pullers, disabled individuals, and impoverished Europeans. Through their experiences, Cherry presents a history of colonial urban life grounded in everyday struggles over employment, mobility, health, family, and survival. 

The book draws extensively on French colonial administrative archives, particularly the surviving records of the Government of Cochinchina, including police reports, individual dossiers, correspondence, petitions, medical records, and administrative investigations. As Cherry explains, the original archives of Saigon's municipal police appear to have been lost. However, copies of many police reports survived because municipal authorities forwarded them to the Government of Cochinchina when dealing with matters such as the expulsion of vagrants, the confinement of prostitutes, or the recovery of medical expenses. Some police interviews were conducted in Vietnamese and transcribed into French, occasionally preserving the words of individuals who otherwise left little written testimony. Other records incorporated statements from relatives, neighbors, and employers. Cherry also traces the institutional history of these archives, from the establishment of the Direction of the Interior in 1868 to the centralization and reorganization of colonial records in the early twentieth century. Their preservation allows him to reconstruct fragments of lives that would otherwise have disappeared. Yet these are not neutral records: they were produced through colonial surveillance, policing, and administrative control. Cherry's approach therefore requires reading the archives not simply for the information they contain, but also against the assumptions and interests of the authorities who created them.

Six Lives, Six Perspectives on Colonial Saigon

At the center of the book are six individuals from different ethnic, social, and occupational backgrounds. Their stories reveal both the diversity of Saigon's population and the shared vulnerabilities of those struggling to survive in the colonial city.

- Lương Thị Lắm: A Vietnamese woman from Biên Hòa Province who worked as a prostitute. Her story centers on repeated departures from home, police surveillance, and confinement in a municipal dispensary.

-Trần Dưỡng: A Hakka laborer who migrated from southern China. His experiences involve labor disputes, accusations of membership in the prohibited Heaven and Earth Society, and eventual deportation.

-Aimée Lahaye: A woman born in Saigon and raised in an orphanage operated by the Holy Childhood Association. Her life was marked by employment, migration to France, the loss of her savings, and eventual return to Indochina.

-Nguyễn Văn Thủ: A Vietnamese migrant and rickshaw puller who described himself as a “human horse.” His story illuminates the physically demanding work of urban transport laborers and the colonial regulation of migration and personal identity.

-Trần Văn Chinh: A Vietnamese man living with a severe, incurable disability. His experiences reveal the consequences of illness, unemployment, and dependence on charitable institutions.

-Félix Colonna d’Istria: An impoverished Frenchman who sought professional opportunities in colonial Indochina. His life was marked by unstable employment, addiction, and eventual dependence on charitable assistance.

The decision to juxtapose these six lives is one of the book's strengths. Although their circumstances differed significantly, their experiences overlapped through the institutions, streets, markets, and social hierarchies of colonial Saigon. Their stories challenge an overly rigid division between colonizer and colonized, while remaining attentive to the unequal privileges associated with race, legal status, and class.

Lương Thị Lắm: Mobility, Prostitution, and Colonial Surveillance

The story of Lương Thị Lắm is particularly revealing of the tensions between individual agency and colonial regulation. Originally from Biên Hòa Province, Lắm repeatedly left her family and moved between provincial communities and Saigon. Her movements brought her into conflict with authorities responsible for regulating prostitution.

In September 1905, after being removed from the official register of prostitutes, she was returned to her father, Lương Văn Sang. Yet within two months, she secretly departed again, moving to Tân Linh. She briefly returned home in 1906 before leaving once more for Saigon, where she resumed prostitution after finding herself without employment or a place to live.

On July 22, 1906, the police arrested Lắm for clandestine prostitution. Following a medical examination, she was diagnosed with a venereal infection and confined to the municipal dispensary at Chợ Đũi. She remained there for 200 days, until February 7, 1907, substantially longer than the average stay of approximately 45 days. Although her father petitioned for her release, his efforts were unsuccessful during her confinement.

The incident subsequently produced an administrative dispute over the 80 piastres incurred for her treatment. Neither Lắm nor her father could pay, and municipal officials attempted to recover the amount from Biên Hòa Province. Provincial authorities resisted, questioning whether the province remained responsible for a woman who had spent considerable time elsewhere.

This episode reveals the extraordinary bureaucratic consequences that could follow a poor woman's movement across administrative boundaries. A personal history involving family conflict, the search for income, and prostitution became a dispute over registration, medical confinement, and jurisdictional responsibility.

Cherry also leaves room for the complexity of family relationships. Lắm's father repeatedly sought her release from colonial institutions, suggesting continuing familial ties despite her departures from home. The chapter ends with uncertainty over her whereabouts, raising the possibility that she had run away once again.

Rather than reducing Lắm to a victim of colonial oppression, Cherry presents a woman whose attempts to shape her own life repeatedly brought her into contact with the coercive institutions of the colonial state.

Trần Dưỡng: Migrant Labor, False Accusations, and Colonial Justice

The story of Trần Dưỡng, a Hakka migrant from Guangdong Province in southern China, reveals how labor disputes, ethnic associations, and colonial administrative authority intersected in early twentieth-century Cochinchina. Having settled in the region around 1903, Dưỡng lived in Tân Lai village in Biên Hòa Province, where he worked as a mason. He married Khưu Thị Tâm, and the couple had three children. His occupation involved quarrying and cutting granite for construction, roads, and gravestones, contributing to the material development of Saigon and its surrounding areas.

The central conflict in Dưỡng's life began as a labor dispute. He and several fellow Hakka masons worked for a stone-cutting enterprise owned by influential members of the local Hakka congregation, including its headman, Trương Thất. When their employers failed to pay their wages while demanding increasingly long working hours, the workers protested and were dismissed. Rather than accept their circumstances, Dưỡng and his colleagues established their own stone-cutting business, successfully competing with their former employers.

In April 1916, Trương Thất accused the workers of establishing a clandestine branch of the Heaven and Earth Society, an organization that colonial authorities associated with criminality and threats to public order. Although the Justice of the Peace in Biên Hòa found no evidence of wrongdoing and ordered their release, the accusations continued to have consequences. Dưỡng subsequently pursued legal action against one of his accusers, Khưu Phước Trường, who was found guilty of slander. The court imposed a fine of 100 francs and awarded damages of 100 piastres to each of the accused masons.

Yet this legal victory did not protect Dưỡng from colonial administrative power. Following further accusations and investigations, the authorities ordered his deportation in August 1916. He was sent back to China, leaving behind the family and livelihood he had established over thirteen years. His wife, Khưu Thị Tâm, petitioned the colonial government, protesting his unjust expulsion and explaining the suffering of their three children. Her appeal went unanswered.

Dưỡng's experience exposes the precarious position of Chinese migrant laborers in colonial Cochinchina. Although their labor was essential to the region's economic development, they remained vulnerable to administrative decisions that could override judicial findings. His case also demonstrates how influential employers could exploit colonial anxieties about secret societies to transform a labor dispute into a matter of public security. Particularly revealing is the contradiction between the colonial legal system, which initially recognized the injustice committed against Dưỡng, and the administrative apparatus, which ultimately expelled him.

Through this episode, Cherry illustrates how economic competition, ethnic community hierarchies, and colonial authority combined to shape the lives of migrant workers. The inclusion of Khưu Thị Tâm's unanswered petition also restores a personal dimension to what might otherwise appear to be a bureaucratic dispute, revealing the consequences of deportation for an entire family.

Aimée Lahaye: Orphanhood, Work, and the Fragility of Financial Security

Aimée Lahaye's life reveals a different form of vulnerability, one shaped by orphanhood, institutional upbringing, and the instability of the international financial system.

Born in Saigon in 1887, Aimée grew up in an orphanage operated by the Holy Childhood Association. After leaving the institution in 1905, she supported herself through a succession of occupations. She worked for a pottery merchant, in a millinery shop, and later as an orderly at a French military hospital, where she was employed from 1916.

In 1921, hoping to recover from poor health, Aimée traveled to France. Her journey represented an opportunity for convalescence, made possible by money she had accumulated through years of work. She carried a letter of credit for 13,000 francs, issued by the Industrial Bank of China.

Yet while she was traveling, the bank collapsed on June 30, 1921. When Aimée reached Marseille on July 4, she discovered that her letter of credit could no longer be honored.

In an instant, years of savings became inaccessible.

Unable to support herself, Aimée relied on the generosity of acquaintances from Saigon, the Merle family, who accommodated her in Vence in southern France. She remained there for more than two years, struggling to find employment.

By December 1923, her situation had become desperate enough that she appealed directly to the French minister of colonies, Albert Sarraut, requesting assistance to return to Saigon. Following an administrative investigation, colonial authorities agreed to pay for her passage home.

The last archival glimpse of Aimée places her in Phnom Penh in March 1928, employed as a hospital laundress. The administration approved an extension of her employment contract to allow her a six-month holiday.

Aimée's story is especially compelling because her financial ruin resulted not from a lack of work or personal irresponsibility, but from the collapse of an institution connected to international finance. Her experience demonstrates how the forces of global capitalism could transform the fortunes of an ordinary person thousands of kilometers from Saigon.

At the same time, Cherry's reconstruction reveals the precarious position of women who had grown up without familial support. Despite spending much of her adult life working, Aimée remained vulnerable to events beyond her control and dependent on personal networks and administrative intervention when crisis struck.

Félix Colonna d’Istria: Poverty Within the Colonial European Community

Félix Colonna d’Istria provides an important counterpoint to the Vietnamese and Chinese figures in the book. Born in Avignon in 1878 and connected through his family to Corsican nobility, Félix arrived in Indochina after military service in Algeria, hoping to establish a successful career.

His ambitions were initially consistent with the opportunities associated with European residence in the colonies. He worked in colonial administration and private businesses and, in 1924, established a newspaper titled L’Express du Commerce et de l’Industrie, intended to promote commercial activities in Cochinchina.

Yet his professional life was marked by instability, unsuccessful ventures, and legal difficulties. Over time, he became increasingly vulnerable to unemployment, financial hardship, and opium addiction.

One of the most striking incidents in his life occurred in April 1929, when Félix formally recognized a Vietnamese boy, Diệp Ngọc Danh, as his son and gave him the name Jean André Colonna d’Istria.

Félix was not the child's biological father. Cherry explains that the boy's actual father, Diệp Ngọc Huồn, a merchant from Gò Vấp, wanted his son to obtain the advantages associated with French citizenship. Félix agreed to acknowledge the child in exchange for opium.

This arrangement illuminates the contradictions of colonial citizenship. Even as Félix's own social and financial position deteriorated, his legal identity as a Frenchman remained a valuable resource that could be exchanged for material benefit.

By the 1930s, Félix was receiving charitable assistance through the Committee for Assistance to the Unemployed. The committee distributed meals to unemployed people at a refectory located in Saigon's Botanical Gardens. After 1937, Félix disappears from the surviving documentary record.

His experience complicates the assumption that Europeans in colonial Indochina necessarily enjoyed prosperity. Although Félix retained racial and legal privileges unavailable to most Vietnamese residents, these advantages did not guarantee economic security.

Beyond Individual Biography: Poverty and the Colonial City

Although the book is organized around individual experiences, Cherry's broader objective is to understand the social and economic structures that shaped the lives of Saigon's poor.

The prologue opens with the crisis surrounding the 1904 typhoon, which devastated agricultural production and disrupted the regional rice economy. This establishes an important connection between Saigon and its rural hinterland. The city was not an isolated colonial administrative center, but part of an interconnected economic landscape shaped by agricultural production, commercial exchange, migration, and labor.

The experiences of the six protagonists reveal the consequences of these relationships at an individual level.

For rural migrants, Saigon promised employment and greater independence, but also exposed them to homelessness, uncertain wages, and intrusive regulation. For Chinese laborers, migration created opportunities while introducing new forms of legal and social vulnerability. For orphaned or disabled individuals, the absence of reliable family or institutional support made survival particularly uncertain.

Illness constitutes another recurring theme. Venereal disease, disability, epidemics, and addiction were not merely matters of individual health. They shaped people's ability to work, move, maintain relationships, and avoid institutional confinement.

One of Cherry's most significant contributions is to demonstrate that seemingly insignificant incidents—a police arrest, an accusation, a medical examination, the collapse of a bank, or a dispute over residence—could profoundly alter the course of a person's life.

In this respect, the book challenges historical narratives that privilege major political events while overlooking the everyday experiences through which people encountered larger structures of power.

Reading Against the Colonial Archive

The book is also an instructive example of how historians can recover marginalized lives from institutional records.

Cherry acknowledges the paradox of his sources: many of the individuals featured in the book appear in the historical record precisely because they were poor, unemployed, ill, suspected of wrongdoing, or otherwise subject to administrative attention.

Their experiences were preserved not because colonial authorities considered their lives intrinsically important, but because they became objects of investigation, surveillance, and regulation.

This creates both opportunities and limitations for historical reconstruction.

Police reports often contain unusually rich biographical information, recording movements, occupations, family relationships, and personal statements. At the same time, such documents reflect the categories and prejudices of officials who could misunderstand, simplify, or deliberately misrepresent the people they investigated.

The historian must therefore distinguish between what the documents establish and what remains uncertain.

Cherry's account of Lương Thị Lắm, for instance, raises questions about her motivations for repeatedly leaving home, but it cannot fully recover her thoughts or intentions. Similarly, the disappearance of Félix Colonna d’Istria from the archive after 1937 does not reveal what ultimately became of him.

These silences are not incidental shortcomings. They point toward a fundamental difficulty in writing the history of marginalized people: their lives are often documented most extensively at moments when they lose control over how their stories are recorded.

Rather than treating these limitations as reasons to abandon the project, Cherry uses fragmentary evidence to reconstruct the social worlds surrounding his subjects, drawing attention to both what can be known and what remains inaccessible.

Read more about the book on Yale University Press.