ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the argument by looking at the ethnography proposed by and practised in the context of the established Ecole Francaise and explains the ethnographic and administrative oeuvre by Leopold Sabatier, and his representation of Rhade culture and tradition. The interest of the colonial administration and the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient alike in the codification of the ‘coutumiers’, was aroused by the oeuvre of Leopold Sabatie. The chapter deals with the fierce debate triggered by Sabatier’s controversial policies in the context of the Rubber Boom of the 1920s and the consequent land rush in the Central Highlands. It also explains the contradicting economic and political interests governing the Central Highlands, and their sublimation into a policy of isolation with respect to the Montagnards. The fault line between evolutionists and relativists converged with the fault line between the economic interests of the mise en valeur through plantations, and the political interest of appeasing the indigenous population through the action civilisatrice.
