THE INDEBTED SOUL: CONFUCIAN SCHOLARS, DAOIST PRIESTS, AND THEIR SURVIVAL STRATEGIES UNDER THE MONETARY ALGORITHM OF COLONIAL TONKIN (1885-1945)

Abstract

  This article examines the profound collision between Western financial capitalism and the traditional spiritual-educational architecture of colonial Tonkin (1885–1945). Through the theoretical lenses of educational sociology and cultural history, this study analyzes how the "monetary algorithm" enforced by the Bank of Indochine (BIC) dismantled the indigenous subsistence economy, thereby reconfiguring foundational ideological axiologies. Confucian scholars and Daoist priests—who historically monopolized symbolic and cultural capital within the native social hierarchy—were abruptly ensnared in a complex web of colonial taxation, systemic indebtedness, and the commodification of public rituals. Following the abolition of the civil service examinations and the spatial contraction of traditional spiritual domains, these elites were forced to orchestrate alternative survival strategies. Confucian literati shifted from classical moral metaphysics to pragmatic vocationalism or lower-tier colonial bureaucracy, while Daoist practitioners commodified spiritual services to navigate the emerging market economy. Drawing upon French colonial archives and contemporary vernacular religious texts, this research elucidates the process of "disenchantment" and the colonization of the native psyche. Ultimately, it demonstrates that colonial financial hegemony extended far beyond the extraction of material resources; it fundamentally restructured the educational identity and spiritual epistemology of the colonized subject.