Group of Children, with Baskets, Posed under Palm Tree

Description

This photograph of a scene in Saigon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam is from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. Frank G. Carpenter (1855–1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography, whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Consisting of photographs taken and gathered by Carpenter and his daughter Frances (1890–1972) to illustrate his writings, the collection includes an estimated 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives. Vietnam was at this time part of French Indochina, and French settlement and administration were concentrated around the city of Saigon, in southern Vietnam, then known as Cochin China. The French developed a plantation economy that specialized in the export of tobacco, indigo, tea, and coffee.

Last updated: May 29, 2013