By Monique Chemillier-Gendreau

Chapter IV -

CONCLUSIONS AND BASES FOR A SETTLEMENT OF THE DISPUTE

Almost three centuries have set their stamp on the legal status of these archipelagos.

The bulk of the works hitherto published have made use of verifiable data from the most recent past, the period after World War II. Older historical data have generally been mentioned simply by reviewing documents drawn up by the various States concerned or published by their national research centres. In this respect, there is a considerable imbalance in favour of the Chinese argument, which is the best publicized.

In this book, an effort has been made to take stock of the arguments expounded by the various States concerned and also to verify the historical arguments of the past using documentation in the French National School of Far Eastern Studies and French archives from the colonial period. This redressing of the balance as regards the sources consulted shows the case in a different light.

We will now see what the result of this is by posing the following two questions:

What picture can be given of the rights of each of the parties concerned?

What prospects does contemporary international law offer for settling a dispute of such complexity?

Before French colonialism of Vietnam

Chinese and Vietnamese fishermen lived on the islands according to the season, but no one knows since what time.

Beginning of 17th century: The Nguyen Lord organized exploitation of the islands. The Hoang Sa Company and the Bac Hai Company had the task of stationing on the two archipelagos 8 months each year to exploit the resources: catch fish, collect valuable resources on the islands, collect goods from sunken vessels.

1686: Do Ba Cong prepared Thien Nam Tu Chi Lo Do Thu in Hong Duc Ban Do or Toan Tap An Nam Lo in the volume Thien Ha Ban Do. The map in Thien Nam Tu Chi Lo Do was drawn in contemporary style with very clear notation: “In the middle of the sea there is a long sandbank called Bai Cat Vang (Hoang Sa – Golden Sankbank) up to 400 miles…Each year at the end of winter the Nguyen Lord send 18 boats there to collect goods, the majority of which are gold, silver, money, guns, and bullets…” The map drawn in Toan Tay An Nam Lo contains a very clear notation of a place called Bai Cat Vang in the sea.

Todd C. Kelly

Todd C. Kelly graduated from the M.A. program in Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in August 1999.

There is a tide in the affairs of men[1]

On a string of mere flyspeck islands in the middle of the high seas, the military forces of five nations stand arrayed against one another, each prepared to do battle with the others. The land these potential belligerents seek to control is barely any land at all, but rather a group of tiny rocks, many of which are frequently under water. No humans have ever settled there, and for centuries the only nations that knew of their existence recognized them primarily as a hazard to maritime navigation. How then did this chain of islets, which the nations of Asia and the world considered insignificant for so long, suddenly become so important that battles have been fought over them and countries continue to risk war in order to control the chain? The answers are as difficult to see as are the Truong Sa Islands themselves at high tide.