Working Conditions

The workers, especially the Khmers, were heavily exploited by being forced to do hard work, resulting in thousands of deaths from fatigue and consequent disease during the canal's construction.^[8] Further, Cambodian nationalists relate that Khmer workers who disobeyed orders were reportedly buried to their necks, with their heads used by the Vietnamese as cooking tripods for boiling tea.^[9] Consequently, the Vinh Te Canal became a symbol of Vietnamese mistreatment of the Khmer and was used later by the Khmer Rouge in anti-Vietnamese propaganda.^[10]

Rebellions

Khmer sources documented the abusive working conditions to have sparked numerous Khmer-led rebellions, including one where several thousand Khmer workers led by a Theravada Buddhist monk ambushed an ethnically mixed Vietnamese military regiment.^[11] While the Khmer soldiers in the unit "refused to fire on the workers", the rebellion was eventually crushed by reinforcements sent by the Nguyễn viceroy in Sài Gòn.^[11]

When the construction was completed in 1824, Emperor Minh Mạng named the canal after Châu Vĩnh Tế, the wife of its builder Nguyen Van Thoai.^[3] Historian David Biggs suggests that the naming of the canal sought to honor her for "[arranging] aid for and [consoling] loved ones of workers killed by disease and fighting" resulting from its construction.^[11]

Biggs further suggests that the rebellions initiated by Khmer workers against the construction of these canals were not solely a product of poor working conditions, but were driven by a broader political consciousness. Given Khmer workers' awareness that projects like the Vĩnh Tế canal facilitated Vietnamese control over the Cambodia frontier, Biggs argues that the uprisings were a form of resistance against further Vietnamese expansion into Khmer territory.^[12]