Whose Identity, Whose Heritage

I'd like to open this article by quoting King (1991), "the political economy of colonialism focused attention on the unequal distribution of power, between Europeans as colonizers and Indians as colonized, in the production of the built environment: a situation in which a cultural division of labour needed to be built into any explanatory model".

It doesn't correspond directly to what I'm thinking now about the cultural heritage in the present (colonialism) Hanoi. However, it does make me consider that somehow the concept of heritage was possibly created under the influence of the economy, society, culture and their relation to building form (copied from p. 107). It is the logic of colonialism itself which can explain the work of this concept. Especially as Cooper (2002) has explained that what actually happened with the practices of urban design and architecture in Indochina was an ambuigity. On one hand, it intended to express French good will in associating local culture to French spatial planning, but on the other hand it intended equally to strengthen the distribution of colonial power in the colonized territory (Lim, 2006). In this context, the role of the "local" cultural heritage was to become the tools to differentiate the European built forms from the indigenous forms.

The next question is how we can explain changes from "local" building forms into French version of historic monument.

In Vietnamese perspectives, the notion of heritage derived from the idea of monument, an establishment constructed with memorial value. This mode of production can be seen at the construction of the Van Mieu Temple by Ly Thai To in respecting the Confucianism (1047). Other establishments such as pagodas (Chua), temples (Den) and communal houses (Dinh) built by people over period were also the expression of this idea. Those places are until now used to remember important people and also as worship place. Furthermore, from the old cartography of Hanoi, we may see that the ensemble of nature and built environment were also treated as monuments (Mangin, 2002).

(Urban) heritage in Hanoi was transfered as a concept during the period of French dominiation (The importation of this term also took place in other colonized countries in south-east asia cities). As concept, according to Choay (1999), its origin meaning was historic monument. This was French invention which emerged at the late of 18^th century. This concept later was formalized with the establishment of the historic monument office in 1830 and some regulations. During the French colonial expansion, this concept was spread over the world including to Indochina along with the religious, military and administrative mission (Mangin, 2002).

To transform this abstract concept into a concrete practices in different territory is not a very difficult task to carry out. Firstly, because this concept was equipped with clear criteria concerning the value of the monument. This variety of value was based on this several issues, for instance (1) the age of the building; (2) architectural value (Mangin, 2002). Secondly, there was already the organisations like the EFEO who were in charge and whose interest relate to cultural heritage.

In 1930s, a list of historic monuments was made by the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO). It showed the emergence of concern to Hanoi's archaeological relics (Pédélahore, 1993). The list included the vestiges of old citadel and religious building: pagodas, temples and communal house. Certain specific buildings from hundred of year’s history were claimed as historic monuments by modifying the vietnamese cultural value into western value (Mangin, 2002) under the French interest. For instance, the Quan Chuong Gate was put in the list since the governor Jean Dupuis first entered Hanoi trough this gate. This gate is the only gate from 13 gates which was decided to preserve whike the other gates were totally demolished.

This concept and definition of urban heritage involved the term of heritage restoration and conservation as the means to protect the monuments from serious damage. The data base was then used to develop a practical and applicable value system (Cooper, 2002) which was at that time officially introduced as heritage regulations.

Different case was the master plan of Hanoi created by Ernest Hébrard, an architect-urbanist which was the director of the service d’urbanisme, manifested an attempt to think carefully in designing an Indochinese metropolitan city. In this master plan, the modernity of Hanoi was overlaid on existing traditional city of Hanoi. The museum of Louis Finot, the museum of EFEO(now museum of history) and the Pasteur Institute were the fruit of Hébrard’s architectural design in incorporating the western technology to the Vietnamese knowledge. The use of indigenouse architecture elements to decorate those buildings can be seen as an attempt to achieve a consolidation between the local and the French culture. Like in other colonial constructs, the physical bodies of this architecture represent the interest of the colonizer. Thus, instead of creating the form of consolidation (this word I borrow from Lim, 2006), this architecture in fact tried to create a definition for itself.

Briefly, those two stories -cultural heritage and Indochinese architecture - seemingly tended to create a condition in which architectural artifact can contains identities of the local culture. On the contrary, as it is argued by Cooper (2002) by using western perspectives, this whole process actually more or less is the way of re-creating the image of Hanoi city for the sake of western interest. Its intention was actually to express the difference between the colonizer and the colonized. The colonizer was represented by its modernity as it was shown in the design of (now) French Quarter while the colonized remained traditional. Urban Heritage, although it was produced from the local architecture, was a manipulation to be a model to divide the colonizer and colonized.

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Bibliography

Cooper, N., 2000, Urban Planning and Architecture in Colonial Indochina : French Cultural Studies

Hung, Tran, Enjeux de la Conservation du Patrimoine Urbain in Hanoi - Enjeux Modernes d’une Ville Millénaire. Paris. Edition Trames, 2002.

Logan, W.L., 1995, Heritage planning in Post-doi moi Hanoi. The National and International contributions: Journal of the American Planning Association, v. 61, no. 3 (Summer 1995).

Papin, Philipe. Hanoi. Histoire de La Ville. Paris: Fayard, 2001.

Pédelahore de Loddis, Ch."Hànôi, miroir de l'architecture indochinoise", Etudes vietnamiennes, n. 107 (1993 / 1).

Phuc, Nguyen Vinh. Ha Noi Past and Presents. Hanoi: The Gioi, 2004.