The Highlands during the French Colonial Era: Periodic Markets, Military Posts, and Mountain Roads
There are regions that cannot be understood through a single beautiful photograph. The highlands of Vietnam are one of them.
Today, when mentioning the northern mountains, many travelers instantly think of terraced rice fields, morning mist, embroidered costumes, spectacular mountain passes, and colorful markets. But if you look a little deeper, behind this beauty lies a complex history: that of the French colonial period, during which the highlands were not just a homeland for numerous ethnic minorities, but also a strategic space at the crossroads of trade, the military, borders, and colonial power.
In those days, the mountains were not just mountains. There were periodic markets. There were military posts. There were mountain roads. And above all, there were local communities who, silently, learned to adapt, resist, negotiate, and preserve their identity amidst these upheavals.
According to research dedicated to the Tonkin highlands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the French administration progressively sought to frame and control the mountainous zones near the Chinese border through administrative organization, military presence, ethnographic surveys, roads, and commercial circuits. In 1891, the mountainous regions of Tonkin were organized into “military territories,” a sign that they were perceived not merely as distant spaces, but as sensitive zones requiring close surveillance.
1. Before Colonial Maps, the Highlands Already Possessed Their Own Order
A frequent mistake when looking at the highlands of the past is to imagine them as “wild,” “isolated,” or “undeveloped” spaces.
In reality, long before the French introduced their maps, military posts, and administrative roads, the highlands already possessed their own organization. It was the order of villages, lineages, local chiefs, customs, matrimonial alliances, trade goods, and ancient trails cutting through the mountains. The Hmong, Dao, Tày, Nùng, Thai, Giáy, Hà Nhì, and many other communities did not live cut off from the world. They had their own exchange networks, markets, and ways of managing land, rice paddies, cornfields, forests, water, and community relations.
To lowland dwellers or Europeans of the era, the mountains might have appeared difficult to access. But for local populations, it was a familiar territory, a reservoir of knowledge—a world where every slope, every stream, every pasture, every field, and every medicinal forest carried an essential meaning.
Thus, when the French entered the highlands, they did not step into a “vacuum.” They arrived in a world that already had its own history, rules, memory, and way of functioning.
2. The Periodic Market: Far More Than a Simple Place of Trade
To the eyes of many travelers today, a mountain market is a magnificent experience: vibrant costumes, bursts of voices, corn wine, traditional dishes, wild herbs, forged knives, hemp cloth, brocades, buffaloes, horses, pigs, and chickens.
But if we view these markets solely as “places to visit,” we miss their cultural depth. The periodic market is, first and foremost, a social institution.
It is a place where people bring corn, rice, honey, medicinal plants, fabrics, horses, buffaloes, pigs, chickens, salt, knives, and agricultural tools. But it is also a place where you reunite with relatives, hear the news, sometimes meet a future spouse, share a glass of alcohol, and discuss business, harvests, roads, taxes, and changes coming from the border.
In historical observations of the Tonkin highlands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mountain markets appear not only as sites of economic exchange but also as spaces where social bonds, traditional forms of barter, and information circuits were maintained—even as currency was gradually introduced and enforced by the colonial administration.
What is interesting is that for the French authorities, the market was also a point of observation and control. Who came to the market? Which goods were circulating? What routes did salt, fabrics, opium, cattle, silver, and agricultural products take? These questions were not just economic; they were highly political.
Yet, for the highland populations, the market retained a much more human and emotional significance. It was the day you descended the mountain. The day you wore your finest clothes. The day you caught up with acquaintances. The day you drank a bowl of alcohol to warm up. The day the sounds of the khèn (panpipe), the voices, the laughter, and the bargaining reminded everyone that they belonged to a community far larger than their own village.
A market, therefore, does not just sell goods. It circulates time. It preserves memory. It connects human beings separated by multiple mountains.
3. Military Posts: Traces of Power Atop the Mountains
If the periodic market represents the living, flexible rhythm of the highlands, the military post is its harsher mark: that of colonial power.
During the French era, the mountains of Tonkin occupied a particularly strategic position due to their proximity to China, border importance, commercial routes, resources, and the colonial administration’s need to control access. Following the military campaigns in Tonkin at the end of the 19th century, the French gradually established posts, garrisons, military administrative units, and local auxiliary forces to monitor the mountainous regions. A map of Tonkin from 1891 already shows a network of military posts and indigenous civil guard stations.
A military post was not just a place where soldiers were stationed. It was an observation point. A tool for road control. A border surveillance outpost. An information-gathering hub. A fiscal instrument. A symbol of the colonial state’s presence in a space that, until then, had operated largely according to local customs and community relations.
Seen from afar, a post might have looked modest: a few stone walls, a sentry, a flag, a few armed men. But symbolically, it spoke volumes. From that point on, the mountain began to be recorded, measured, classified, taxed, and integrated into a broader system of power.
This does not mean, however, that the highland inhabitants were entirely passive. Numerous studies show that these communities did not simply “endure” colonial control. They also knew how to adapt, bypass, negotiate, or take advantage of certain transformations imposed by the colonial state. They could continue trading according to their ancient practices, maintain kinship ties across borders, take alternative paths, alter the rhythm of the markets, or adjust their livelihoods to survive in this new context.
This is the quiet strength of the highlands: a silent resistance, rarely found in grand official narratives, but as tenacious as tree roots clinging to stone.
4. Mountain Roads: When a Path Transforms the Destiny of a Region
In the history of the highlands, the road is a character in its own right.
Before the colonial era, travel was done mainly via footpaths, mule tracks, porterage trails, and crossings through streams, mountain passes, and forests. These routes were neither straight nor fast, but they were intelligent. They followed the topography, the memory of the inhabitants, the seasons, the markets, water sources, and safety logics.
When the French began opening roads, their objective was not solely to ease travel. Mountain roads served military, administrative, commercial, economic, and strategic interests. They connected the highlands to the plains, but they also allowed colonial power to penetrate deeper into valleys and villages.
The example of Sapa is particularly revealing. The region caught the attention of the French for its cool climate and strategic position near the border. In the early 20th century, Sapa gradually developed as a mountain hill station: a sanatorium appeared in 1909, a military post in 1912, a tourism bureau in 1917, and French villas were built starting in 1918. When the Hanoi – Lào Cai railway line was completed in 1920, Sapa became a favorite holiday destination for French officials and residents in Indochina.
But a new road never brings just comfort. It brings taxes. It brings officials. It brings merchants. It brings soldiers. It brings foreigners. It alters the rhythm of village life.
The road makes certain places more bustling, but it also opens up spaces that were once more preserved, often too quickly. It allows goods to circulate further, but it also allows external power to plunge deeper into the mountains. It eases access for lowlanders to the highlands, but it sometimes forces local populations to confront changes they did not choose.
Thus, when crossing a mountain pass today, one should not only ask: “Is the scenery beautiful?” One should also ask: “Did this road change someone’s life?” This simple question makes the journey far more profound.
5. The Highlands Are Not a Backdrop, but a Living World
One of the great misunderstandings when talking about mountainous regions is turning them into a backdrop: a backdrop for beautiful photos, a backdrop for colorful costumes, a backdrop for terraced fields, a backdrop for smiles.
But the highlands are not a backdrop. They are a living world, with its difficult choices, historical tensions, highly adaptable communities, and sometimes silent memories.
During the French colonial era, mountain populations found themselves at the intersection of several forces: local customs, colonial authority, cross-border trade, religion, the army, taxes, currency, roads, and political upheavals. Some communities were more heavily controlled than others. Some regions changed faster. Others maintained their old rhythm of life for longer. But everywhere, one fact remains: the highland inhabitants never disappeared from history. They were present, they made choices, they adapted, they preserved.
Thus, when you visit a market in Bắc Hà, Cán Cấu, Mèo Vạc, Đồng Văn, Mường Hum, or a village in Sapa, Hà Giang, Cao Bằng, Lai Châu, or Điện Biên, you are not just entering a beautiful location. You are stepping into a space made of many layers of memory.
An indigo-dyed hemp skirt is not just a piece of clothing. A forged knife is not just an item for sale. A pack horse is not just a means of transport. A bowl of corn wine is not just a drink. A periodic market is not just a stopover for travelers. All of this bears the trace of a way of life that has weathered many storms.
6. Traveling the Highlands Today: How to Avoid Superficiality?
To understand the highlands, you must not go too fast.
Do not just come to the market to take a few photos before moving on. Observe how people greet one another, choose products, sit down to eat, how the elders look at the younger ones, or the gesture of a woman adjusting her scarf before entering the market space.
Do not just ask: “What is beautiful here?” Instead, ask: “How do people live here?”
Do not view a mountain pass solely as a spectacular viewpoint. Remember that it may have been a trade route, a military axis, a migration path, a way of control, and a link between villages and the outside world.
Do not see a rammed-earth house, a yin-yang tiled roof, or a stone fence merely as decorative elements. Understand that this architecture was born from the climate, available materials, security needs, living habits, and how humans organize their lives in the mountains.
A beautiful trip to the highlands is not one filled with too many stops. It is a journey that leaves enough time to feel.
Feel the cold of the morning mist. Feel the sound of hooves on the way to the market. Feel the smell of smoke in a wooden house. Feel the silence of the mountains. Feel that every region possesses a past, and that this past still whispers in the present.
7. Why History Makes Travel Deeper
History does not make a journey heavier. On the contrary, it gives a soul to landscapes.
When you understand that the periodic market was once a hub of exchange, information, and social bonds, you look at it with greater respect.
When you know that a military post was an instrument for controlling mountainous regions, you better understand why certain border areas carry a more complex memory than their apparent tranquility suggests.
When you know that a mountain road was not just a tourist route, but also a military, commercial, and administrative axis, you walk more slowly, you listen more closely.
And when you understand that the highland populations have lived through numerous periods of change while preserving their languages, clothing, rituals, markets, music, craftsmanship, and local knowledge, you stop viewing them as mere “photo subjects.” You recognize them as the true cultural guardians of these territories.
This is how travel becomes more human.
Conclusion
The highlands during the French colonial era form a multi-layered historical chapter: there was the opening of roads, but also control; commerce, but also militarization; change, but also a remarkable cultural resistance.
Periodic markets, military posts, and mountain roads are three seemingly very different images. Yet, placed side by side, they help us better understand the highlands.
The market reveals the rhythm of life. The military post reveals power. The road reveals transformation.
And at the heart of it all are the men and women: those mountain communities who lived, adapted, preserved their culture, and continue to make the mountains of Vietnam one of the most fascinating cultural spaces in the country.
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