The Khmer Lands of Vietnam: Environment, Cosmology and Sovereignty

Chapter 3: Freshwater Rivers: Displacement and Refuge along the Rivers of the Central Delta

102 The Khmer Lands of Vietnam 102 3 Freshwater Rivers: Displacement and Refuge along the Rivers of the Central Delta Midway between the Vietnam–Cambodia border and the South China Sea, and extending to the north and the south of the Bassac River, is a distinct Khmer culture area, which I call the freshwater river zone. Settlement patterns, livelihoods, communications, and religious practices of the Khmers of this region bear the imprint of its most prominent natural feature, a multitude of small freshwater rivers or prek. This Khmer culture area is encompassed by the presentday provinces of Vinh Long, Can Tho and Hau Giang, and extends into Tra Vinh and Soc Trang provinces. However, only around 60 wat-based villages are found within it, comprising approximately one eighth of the actively identifying Khmer communities in Vietnam. This Khmer-settled area lies within the central Mekong Delta, a natural sub-region where water and soil conditions and riverine linkages combine to create one of the most favourable environments in Indochina for human habitation (Map 3.1). Defining this subregion are the delta’s two main distributaries, the Mekong and Bassac rivers, which flow in a southwest direction roughly parallel to each other some 30 kilometres apart. Alluvium carried downriver and over the banks during floods has been deposited in a broad strip between and to either side of these rivers. This oblong-shaped tract of fertile soil is pressed between areas to the north and the south where acid sulphate and saline soils predominate. The water in the central delta is fresh year round and flooding is moderate. To the northwest is the delta’s high floodplain, which floods annually to a depth in excess of three metres. To the southeast is the coastal zone, affected by lengthy Displacement and Refuge along the Rivers of the Central Delta 103 saline incursions. Permanently inundated depressions stretch north to the Cambodian border and south into the Ca Mau Peninsula. The two big rivers that run through the central delta are major thoroughfares and connect localities in this region to the Cambodian heartlands and the ocean. The central delta is prosperous, with an economy based on rice, fruit orchards and fishing. It is renowned for its cosmopolitan horticultural civilisation that, according to Vietnamese historians, was developed by pioneer migrants from present-day Central Vietnam, who are said to have encountered a wilderness when they settled there in the 1700s (Son Nam 1992: 49, 51). The region is densely populated, although the population is not evenly distributed. Most people live along river levees where the land is higher. The population falls rapidly as one moves away from the riverbanks.1 Although Map 3.1 The central Mekong Delta 104 The Khmer Lands of Vietnam not usually acknowledged by its Vietnamese-identifying residents, the central delta has long been an important Khmer culture area. It is home to a substantial Khmer population with a unique riverbased civilisation and a network of temples, many of which were established long before Vietnamese arrived in the region. Visiting in the late 1890s, one French scholar reported 20,000 Khmers in the province of Can Tho alone (Aymonier 1900: 143). However, competition over the freshwater rivers at the heart of the delta has been intense and Khmers have ceded much of this favourable and strategic location to others. Historical research shows that in the nineteenth century, Khmers still lived to the north of the Mekong River but they were subject to assimilation and displacement (Choi 2004). Today no Khmer temple-based villages are to be found in the provinces of Long An, Tien Giang, Ben Tre or Dong Thap, whose contemporary residents identify almost exclusively as Kinh. Khmer villages are concentrated in the south and east of the central delta, on either side of the Bassac River. In a number of localities to the north and south of the Bassac, elderly Khmer people tell stories about how, generations past, their predecessors were driven away from the banks of the main rivers. They resettled and reconstructed their temples in their present locations, along the smaller tributaries of the interior. During the First and Second Indochina wars (1945–75) this region was a theatre of fierce conflicts, which caused the massive displacement of its remaining Khmer population. Thriving Khmer settlements along the freshwater rivers disintegrated, their inhabitants fled, and their land was taken over by newcomers. Contemporary Khmer residents struggle...