In a now largely forgotten episode of the First Indochina War, the Việt Minh charged the French with the use of biological weapons after similar allegations had been made against the US military in North Korea and China. This path explores the work the Việt Minh did to map knowledge of imperialistic germ warfare onto Northern Vietnam. 

Mapping is a way to bound local space in a particular time. In response to fears of biological warfare, Vietnamese leaders sought to map emotional geographies of concern and care through surveys of countryside. Such mapping drew on older Sinosphere, borderland, and national geographies as well as newer aerial geographies. During the colonial era, airplanes were a source of mobility, and terror, as they were used to map Indochina as well as to rain bombs down on those protesting colonial injustice. During the 1940s, airplanes potentially transported deadly microbes. Moreover, airplanes and microbes resulted in compounding mobilities—mobilities whose velocity and outcomes were augmented, unpredictable, and threatening.

First consider the Việt Minh's investigations of biological warfare through its Committee to Prevent Germs. You can also explore a side path that looks at the life and work of one of the Committee's leaders, Tôn Thất Tùng. Then, look at the rural surveys conducted by the Việt Minh and consider what their results tell us about germ warfare in northern Vietnam and rural society of the 1950s more generally.

Show Viet Bac, Viet Minh hospital?