| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Peter Zinoman. The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2001. Pp. xix, 351. $48.00.

Peter Zinoman has written a path-breaking book. Stunning in its research and highly sophisticated in its analysis of the colonial prison in Vietnam, it is that rare work that will make us revise much of our thinking. 1

Zinoman fundamentally reshapes our understanding of carceral institutions, in particular within colonial relationships. He argues convincingly that the colonial prison had a more profound impact on the development of nationalist discourse in Vietnam than it did on French civilizing efforts. He challenges the work of Michel Foucault, Partha Chatterjee, and others who have seen the colonial prison as the center of the hegemonic enterprise. Instead of laboratories of modernity or symbols of power, Zinoman sees the chaotic and ill-disciplined prison system as contributing to the decline of French power in Vietnam and adding significantly to the rise of anticolonial activity. What is most impressive about this book, however, is that it takes us inside colonial prisons through Vietnamese and French memoirs and official source material. . . .

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