Thuy Linh Nguyen. Childbirth, Maternity, and Medical Pluralism in French Colonial Vietnam, 1880–1945

Childbirth practices represent an important lens through which the historian can interpret the changing cultural and political landscape of a historical context. With this study focusing on French efforts to establish Western obstetrical care in colonial Vietnam between 1880 and 1945, Thuy Linh Nguyen paints a picture of a colonial state struggling to extend its influence and engaged in a continuous process of negotiation with the colonized population. Despite extensive efforts to train and certify midwives, open clinics, and educate the population in matters of pregnancy and child-rearing, the French never reached their goal of relocating Vietnamese childbirth to a clinical setting. What emerged instead was a plural system in which some women chose French clinics, others opted for hybrid French-Vietnamese methods, and the rest remained entirely beyond the reach of colonial health care. With Childbirth, Maternity, and Medical Pluralism in French Colonial Vietnam, 1880–1945, Nguyen contributes to a growing body of scholarship challenging the view that colonies passively absorbed medical practices originating in the West. While many such studies of colonial medicine place primary emphasis on the ideology of the colonial state and its limitations in practice, Nguyen’s focus is more on interactions at the local level. This study draws on a large number of firsthand accounts by mothers, doctors, and midwives to show the quotidian struggles and negotiations that took place as separate medical cultures collided and produced plural forms of maternity experiences for Vietnamese women

Archaeology · Biology · Childbirth · Colonialism · Demographic economics · Economics · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Pluralism (philosophy · Pregnancy · Sociology · Demography · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies