Chambre de commerce de Saïgon. Situation commerciale. Statistiques. Importations et exportations. Mouvement général maritime et commercial dans les différents ports de la Cochinchine, pendant l'année 1884 [-1910]

Saigon, Imprimerie coloniale, followed by Imprimerie Rey, Curiol & Cie, Imprimerie commerciale Rey, Ménard & Legros, L. Ménard and F.-H. Schneider, 1886-1911. Twenty-seven separately issued reports bound in six quarto volumes, covering the years 1884-1910.

A rare complete annual run for the twenty-seven years from 1884 to 1910 of the Situation commerciale issued by the Saigon Chamber of Commerce, one of the principal printed statistical sources for the study of the colonial economy of Cochinchina.

The set contains 78 folding tables recording imports, exports, and maritime and commercial traffic through the various ports of the colony. One folding table in the second volume is detached.

Contemporary tan half calf, smooth spines with triple gilt rules, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns.

The twenty-seven reports were printed between 1886 and 1911 and successively record the years 1884 to 1910. The series itself had a much longer history: the title Situation commerciale. Statistiques. Importations et exportations. Mouvement général maritime et commercial de la Cochinchine is bibliographically recorded from 1879 to 1938, while commercial statistics issued by the Chamber are known from at least 1868. The present collection is therefore not an almost complete set of the publication as a whole, but a remarkable uninterrupted sequence extending over more than a quarter of a century.

The essential substance of these volumes is numerical. Year after year, the Chamber recorded goods entering and leaving the colony, their value, origins and destinations, shipping movements and activity in the various ports. The 78 large folding tables allow commodities, tonnages, values and individual years to be compared and, where retrospective series are supplied, place each year's results within a longer development. The annual report thus converts the colony's commerce into a sequence of measurable and comparable data.

These statistics were far more than a descriptive exercise. The Chamber represented the interests of the Saigon mercantile community in its dealings with the colonial administration and intervened directly in major economic debates, particularly those concerning customs policy. Its figures provided merchants and officials alike with an essential instrument for observing markets, measuring changes in trade and supporting arguments over tariffs and commercial policy. The Chamber's direct involvement in the customs controversy of 1888 is itself well documented.

Rice lay at the centre of this economy. Its trade structured not only Cochinchina's exports but much of Saigon's banking and port activity. The history of the Banque de l'Indochine shows that the business of its Saigon branch depended essentially upon the production and export of rice throughout the period represented by these volumes; the disastrous harvests of 1904-1906 were immediately reflected in a decline in its operations.

Yet the tables themselves make it possible to look beyond the image of an economy dependent upon a single commodity. Alongside rice appear the many flows of imported and exported goods, the movements of French and foreign vessels, and the redistribution of merchandise between Saigon, the other ports of Cochinchina and the major trading centres of Asia. From the early decades of French rule, Saigon concentrated most of the foreign commerce of Cochinchina and Cambodia; by the end of the century its activity formed part of a commercial network extending from metropolitan France across the ports of East and Southeast Asia.

The period 1884-1910 gives this continuous record particular documentary value. It accompanies the consolidation of French Indochina, the expansion of locally established trading houses, the development of infrastructure and the increasing integration of Asian maritime and financial networks. Cochinchina's business community also had a distinctive character: its permanent local presence and specialised knowledge of Asian economies allowed it to defend interests that did not always coincide with those of metropolitan French commerce.

The physical composition of the set preserves another history. From the Imprimerie coloniale through Rey, Curiol, Ménard and finally F.-H. Schneider, the succession of imprints over more than twenty years accompanies the development of commercial printing in Saigon. Beneath the uniform contemporary bindings, each annual report thus retains the mark of the printing house entrusted by the Chamber with organising and publishing its statistics.

A rare complete run of twenty-seven consecutive years, containing 78 folding statistical tables in uniform contemporary bindings. More than a succession of administrative reports, the Situation commerciale forms an annual economic portrait of Cochinchina: for over a quarter of a century, the colony translated its ships, commodities, harvests and trade into figures in order to measure, administer and develop its economy.