Intended as a reminder of Europe for soldiers and clerks of the empire, the city of Dalat, located in the hills of Southern Vietnam, was built by the French in an alpine locale that reminded them of home. This book uncovers the strange 100-year history of a colonial city that was conceived as a center of power and has now become a kitsch tourist destination famed for its colonial villas, flower beds, pristine lakes, and pastoral landscapes. Eric T. Jennings finds that from its very beginning, Dalat embodied the paradoxes of colonialism—it was a city of leisure built on the backs of thousands of coolies, a supposed paragon of hygiene that offered only questionable protection from disease, and a new venture into ethnic relations that ultimately backfired. Jennings’ fascinating history opens a new window onto virtually all aspects of French Indochina, from architecture and urban planning to violence, labor, métissage, health and medicine, gender and ethic relations, schooling, religion, comportments, anxieties, and more.

About the Author

Eric T. Jennings, Professor of History at the University of Toronto, is the author of Curing the Colonizers, and Vichy in the Tropics.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Escaping Death in the Tropics
2. Murder on the Race for Altitude
3. Health, Altitude, and Climate
4. Early Dalat, 1898–1918
5. Colonial Expectations, Pastimes, Comestibles, Comforts, and Discomforts
6. Situating the “Montagnards”
7. A Functional City? Architecture, Planning, Zoning, and Their Critics
8. The Dalat Palace Hotel
9. Vietnamese Dalat
10. Some Colonial Categories: Children, European Women, and Métis
11. Divine Dalat
12. The Maelstrom, 1940–1945
13. Autonomous Province or Federal Capital?
14. Dalat at War and Peace, 1946–1975

Epilogue

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

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Reviews

“In the masterly hands of Eric Jennings, the history of Dalat becomes, not just a case study of a colonial holiday site, but a window into the dreams, fears and tensions of colonialism, and the various ways in which different sorts of power could be exercised in such a milieu. . . . A triumph.”
— Canadian Journal Of History

“An outstanding book. . . . In a riveting sequence of chapters, the author develops a multilayered analysis of life in Dalat.”
— American Historical Review

“An excellent work. . . . Jennings’ book testifies to his prominent position in the field of French colonial history.”
— Reviews In History

“[A] remarkable book, which is impeccably researched. . . . Imperial Heights is part of a remarkable series of books . . . that are collectively re-making the colonial and postcolonial histories of Vietnam. . . . This is an eye-opening, eminently readable, highly impressive work.”
— H-Net Reviews

“A much needed history of Dalat.”
— Journal Of World History

“Professor Jennings of the University of Toronto is a specialist in French colonial history and this work reflects his expertise in the subject.”
— Asian Affairs

“In the latest work in this excellent series, Jennings uses the former colonial hill and current resort city of Dalat to examine French attitudes and plans for their Indochinese colony.”
— Choice

"He has shown that a detailed and wide-ranging history of a location, sensitively handled, can be a rewarding addition to the broader history of a country and of colonial endeavour within it."
— Asian Studies Review

“By using both macro and micro lenses, Eric T. Jennings has written a book which is a model of global history under the guise of a monographic study. He convincingly demonstrates that throughout fifty years, Dalat as a climatic resort built by the French colonizers in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, was upgraded to far more than a mere R&R place for white people. Jennings has kneaded together a huge and rich amount of primary and secondary sources that he masters perfectly due to his sound and balanced method of critical analysis. As we say in French: de la belle ouvrage.”

—Pierre Brocheux, author of Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954

“Written in a vivid and engaging style, Imperial Heights is an exceptional piece of scholarship. It is impeccably researched, drawing on private, institutional, and national archives in at least five countries. Making wonderful use of ‘thick description,’ Jennings brilliantly recreates the story of one small town to capture the varied and complex history of French colonialism and its afterlives in Southeast Asia.”

—J.P. Daughton, author of An Empire Divided

About the Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

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