What does a bánh mì have to do with empire? Recorded while traveling in Vietnam, this episode of Politis follows the word COLONY from its Latin roots to French Indochina and Japanese-ruled Taiwan, with the International Booker Prize–winning novel Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (translated by Lin King) as our guide. "Colony" comes from the Latin verb colere, to till or cultivate, the same root that gave us "culture" and "cult." That makes it a gardener's word used to describe conquest. We follow it through two empires that both claimed to be cultivating the places they ruled. In Vietnam we look at French colonialism in detail: the civilizing mission (mission civilisatrice), the opium, salt, and rice-alcohol monopolies, forced corvée labor, the rubber plantations, Côn Đảo prison, and the 1945 famine. We also cover how the Vietnamese alphabet, chữ Quốc ngữ, went from a colonial tool to the script of independence. In Taiwan we look at Japanese rule, the "model colony," through Taiwan Travelogue. It's a 1938 story about a Japanese novelist and her Taiwanese interpreter who eat their way across the island. Along the way we cover the kōminka campaigns, the Japanese-language and name-change policies, and Hōrai rice, which was bred for Japanese tastes. We also get into the novel's famous fake-translation twist. This one's for anyone interested in world politics, colonial history, Southeast and East Asian history, translated fiction, or the history of words. Book mentioned: Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King (National Book Award for Translated Literature 2024, International Booker Prize 2026) Related episodes: GRAMMAR, VERNACULAR Politis is the podcast about the language of politics and the politics of language. Every episode starts with one word. Follow the show so you don't miss the next one.
