FROM DAOIST "CONTENTMENT" (ZHI ZU-知足) TO COLONIAL CONSUMERISM: THE IMPACT OF FINANCIAL CAPITALISM IN EARLY 20TH-CENTURY COCHINCHINA

Abstract

This article investigates the violent epistemological shift from the Daoist philosophy of "Contentment" (Zhi Zu-知足) to colonial consumerism under the pervasive impact of French finance capitalism in early 20th-century Cochinchina. Utilizing critical discourse analysis juxtaposed with the archival records of the Banque de l'Indochine and vernacular Daoist texts, this study elucidates how colonial monetary algorithms and credit mechanisms aggressively penetrated the Cochinchinese social fabric. The ontological concept of Zhi Zu—historically functioning as a core ethical anchor that venerates existential self-sufficiency and the restraint of material desires to maintain cosmological harmony—was severely destabilized by the expansion of Western capital. Under the dual pressure of fiscal extraction denominated in the colonial Piastre and the manufactured allure of colonial commodity networks, Cochinchinese subjects were forcefully integrated into an infinite cycle of debt and consumption. This paper argues that French finance capital did not merely expropriate material resources; it systematically restructured the indigenous interiority and religious subjectivity. The survival strategies executed by the populace during this era reflect a profound ontological paradox: a coerced, voluntary subjection to the market logic to secure baseline biological survival. Ultimately, this article offers a unique socio-philosophical contribution to the study of colonial Daoism, demonstrating how financialization operated as a destructive agent of disenchantment against traditional spiritual axioms.