[Photos] The Wilderness of Suburban Saigon in 1904

 

Special Services Depot, Phan Dinh Phung/Cong Ly, Saigon

In 1904, the entirety of Saigon was confined to the area we know as District 1 today. Apart from the neatly planned city center and Cho Lon’s bustling trade town, the city’s peripheral regions were overrun with swamps and thick swaths of vegetation.

In this collection of black-and-white photo, a turn-of-the-century Saigon appears wild and undisturbed by the forces of urbanization. Still, we see in these shots the early steps in the French administration’s plans to tame the wilderness of southern Vietnam. In some shots, a system of tracks that made up the Hanoi–Saigon train route, which was known then as the Trans-Indochina Railway, was being laid out amidst forests and on the riverside while groups of taut laborers erect utility poles along the railroad.

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