Khe\u00a0Sanh\u00a0village existed as a result of the presence of French coffee planters.\u00a0It began with\u00a0Eug\u00e8nePoilane, a son of peasants, born at Saint-Sauveur\u00a0de\u00a0Landemont, France, on March 16, 1888.\u00a0Poilane, by profession an \u201cartillery worker,\u201d arrived in South Vietnam, then the French protectorate of\u00a0Cochinchina, in 1909.<\/p>\n
He worked at the naval arsenal for some years, until he chanced to meet naturalist\u00a0AugusteChevalier, who after the First World War appointed\u00a0Poilane\u00a0as a prospector for the Botanical Institute.\u00a0In 1922\u00a0Poilane\u00a0became an agent of the Forest Service of Indochina.<\/p>\n
Eug\u00e8ne\u00a0Poilane\u00a0first passed through what became\u00a0Khe\u00a0Sanh\u00a0village in 1918, when it consisted of only one house, that of the engineer supervising construction of Colonial Route 9, the first metaled road to Laos.\u00a0Like the Americans who followed, he was captivated by the lush vegetation and thought the red soil as fine as anything in Tuscany.<\/p>\n
He returned in 1926 to start a coffee plantation, importing\u00a0chiaricoffee trees and tending them for the ten years they need to become productive.\u00a0His plantation extended throughout the area subsequently occupied by\u00a0Khe\u00a0Sanh\u00a0combat base.\u00a0In fact, the access road from the base airfield to Route 9 was\u00a0Poilane\u2019s\u00a0private thoroughfare.\u00a0His motorcar was the first vehicle in the region.<\/p>\n
Not only did\u00a0Poilane\u00a0establish the first plantation, he fulfilled his avocation of botanist with aplomb, traveling throughout Indochina, even to the borders of China and Burma, in behalf of the Forestry Service.\u00a0Poilane\u00a0collected specimens that he sent to the museum at Saigon.\u00a0Until 1947 his submissions numbered between fifteen hundred and five thousand a year, for a total of more than thirty-six thousand, and he was credited with having discovered twenty-one species of plants and producing the second known specimens of nineteen others.\u00a0The [genera]\u00a0Poilania\u00a0[in the\u00a0Asteraceae] and\u00a0Poilaniella\u00a0[in the Euphorbiaceae] will forever give homage to this venturesome man.\u00a0Poilane\u00a0began an experimental orchard, attempting to introduce numerous types of fruit trees native to tropical and even temperate climates.\u00a0He imported grafts from France, Japan, and other countries.<\/p>\n
As the trees grew, so did\u00a0the\u00a0Poilane\u00a0family.\u00a0Madame\u00a0Bordeauducq,\u00a0Eug\u00e8ne\u2019s\u00a0formidable first wife, who bore him 3 children, kept her maiden name to show her independence.\u00a0Indeed, when\u00a0Poilane\u00a0divorced her,\u00a0Bordeauducq\u00a0merely moved a kilometer down the road and started a plantation of her own.\u00a0 Then, he then had 2 other children with another vietnamese woman (he did not marry her) and after the 5 other children with his second wife. (*)<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
(*): Jean-Marie grandson of Eug\u00e8ne Poilane<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Khe\u00a0Sanh\u00a0village existed as a result of the presence of French coffee planters.\u00a0It began with\u00a0Eug\u00e8nePoilane, a son of peasants, born at Saint-Sauveur\u00a0de\u00a0Landemont, France, on March 16, 1888.\u00a0Poilane, by profession an \u201cartillery worker,\u201d arrived in South Vietnam, then the French protectorate of\u00a0Cochinchina, in 1909.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coffee-planter","category-eugene-poilane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}