Michitake Aso's Rubber and the Making of Vietnam begins with the story of Alexandre Yersin, a Swiss-French medical researcher trained in Paris, who in 1895 founded the Pasteur Institute in Nha Trang. Establishing a farm just outside of town, Yersin experimented with cultivating plants that were not endemic to the region, among them the highly successful Amazonian rubber tree Hevea brasiliensis. This scene sets the stage for the major themes explored in Aso's meticulously researched and insightful book, which outlines the role of rubber production in the history of modern Vietnam, linking medicine, agriculture, economic development, and nation building. With a cast of characters that includes Hevea trees, scientists, laborers, planters, government officials, social activists, and malaria-transmitting Anopheles mosquitoes, Aso demonstrates that the rubber plantation existed at the intersection of powerful forces shaping the development of colonial and postcolonial Vietnam.
Positioning rubber plantations as central to the project of...
