Frenchmen Philippe le Failler and Olivier Tessier - co-editors of the re-published book “Techniques du Peuple Annamite” (Skills and Crafts of the Annamites) one of the earliest documentation of industrial development in Northern Vietnam in the early 20th century, hope they will be able to safeguard this valuable Vietnamese bibliographical treasure.

Philippe le Failler first became interested in Vietnam when he entered university to study history in France in 1986.

As part of a project on Southeast Asia, Philippe visited Vietnam for the first time in 1994 and stayed for a few months before leaving for Australia to continue with his Vietnamese studies.

He has been studying 19th and 20th century Vietnamese history at the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient (The French School of Oriental Studies) ever since he returned to the Southeast Asian nation in 1996.

Le Failler has written a number of books on the history of Vietnam’s northern mountainous provinces of Lai Chau, Lao Cai and Dien Bien and worked with the Lao Cai provincial authorities to complete a record of Sa Pa’s ancient stone ground while restoring a number of the old books belonging to the ethnic Dao people.

He said he also plans to document the Phong Hoa magazine and a collection of President Ho Chi Minh’s writings.
 
For his part, Olivier Tessier did his PhD thesis on Vietnam’s ethnology after his first visit to the country about 13 years ago. “Rural Vietnam is my main interest and I have gained a lot of valuable experience in the field from conducting fact-finding tours of the more remote and mountainous areas of Vietnam such as Lai Chau and Hoa Binh provinces,” he said.

Before working at the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient, Tessier said he has been involved in a number of research projects, including one to publish the second edition of the book “Techniques du Peuple Annamite”, carried out by the French embassy in Hanoi.

“Over the past one and a half years, myself and my colleagues have searched for original versions of the book and have reintroduced “do” (poonah) paper that was used over a hundred years ago,” said Tessier.

The second edition of the book was published on May 20 in Hanoi, but the two Frenchmen continue to work at a number of the world’s universities that they think are interested in preserving the book’s original manuscripts for the reprint./.