GREAT HANOI RAT MASSACRE
In the spring of 1902, the French in Vietnam had built a brand-new underground sewer system in Hà Nội demonstrating a key accomplishment in the Mission Civilisatrice in Indochina.
Serving primarily the French Quarter, these new sewers divided the city, privileging those living in the expat enclaves with flushing toilets and running water. However, the underground sewers had the unintended consequence of providing a perfect environment for rats. Sheltered from the heat of the tropics, protected from predators, and having easy access to the well-stocked pantries of the hotels and embassies, the rat population in Hà Nội exploded.
Coinciding with the French discovery of how the Bubonic Plaque was an infection from the bacteria Yersinia pestis, spread by fleas living on rats and rodents, and with imminent outbreaks emerging in the port cities of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, the French saw the threat of having a rat population explosion in Hà Nội, their newly reconstructed capital just before the 1902-1903 Exposition de Hanoi (or the French-Colonial World Fair).
Local labourers , engineers, builders, and rat catchers were immediately ordered into the sewers to kill the rats, but these trained professionals rebelled and demanded better wages for risking their health and wading through filth to essentially protect the French elite. In response, the authorities disbanded these workers, opening up the rat catching enterprise to any Hà Nội local willing to go into the sewers.
A one cent bounty was set on every rat killed. Hoping that this would drive competition and speed up the eradication of rats, the French found themselves with another problem. No anticipating the amount of rotting rat carcasses, they demand that locals only hand in a severed rat tail to receive payment.
Within a few weeks, the authorities started to notice tailless rats ducking in and out of the sewers. The Vietnamese had realised that they needed to maintain a breeding population of rats to keep claiming this unprecedented rat bounty. A little later, a health inspector even discovered a network of rat farms in the countryside just outside of Hà Nội where field rats were being raised for their tails.
Prof Michael G. Vann has done primary researched and published on these events. Establishing a clear example of Perverse Incentive Economics(PIEs) in the French colony. Other perverse Incentive Economics policies have emerged throughout COVID – during a contemporary pandemic. In Australia, an important PIEs was the establishment of a powerful speculative property market and the financial industry in Australia. Taking the form of ‘Negative Gearing,’ these policies have profoundly made home ownership increasingly easier for those with multiple investment properties, whilst making rent and mortgages utterly unaffordable for people unable to enter the Australian property market.
