| Summary/Abstract |
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Vietnamese were confronted with the harsh realities of French colonialism, while simultaneously engaging with a flood of new concepts and the language that came with them. Among these concepts was that of ‘society’, whose import was enhanced by its linkages with the discourse of social Darwinism. This article explores the Vietnamese neologistic project of the early twentieth century through a close examination of the ways in which the concept and labels for ‘society’ were brought in and understood. I argue that the arrival of ‘society’ in conjunction with social Darwinism profoundly shaped the Vietnamese understanding of the term, implicating it in a notion of struggle and contestation. By illustrating the introduction of ‘society’ through early modernist school textbooks I suggest the ways in which Vietnamese conceptualized it as they embarked on their own struggle with the threats posed by colonialism.
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