Léopold Sabatier
Léopold Sabatier (died c. 1929) was a French colonial administrator in the province of Darlac (now Đắk Lắk Province). He was province chief and later résident of the province from 1914 to 1926, after serving temporarily in Kontum.Gerald Hickey, Sons of the Mountains: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands to 1954, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982: pp. 297, 308
Sabatier died soon after his return to France in 1929.Boudet, Léopold Sabatier, pp. iii-iv, quoted in Gerald Hickey, Sons of the Mountains, p. 308
Personal life
Sabatier had relationships with several E De women, which led some E De elders to complain that he slept with too many E De girls. His daughter H'ni was born in 1923. She later followed him to France.Gerald Hickey, Sons of the Mountains: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands to 1954, p. 308
Policies
During his time in Kontum (at least), Sabatier had serious doubts about missionary influence and sometimes had disputes with missionaries who used coercion to enforce rules or convert locals to Catholicism.James Patrick Daughton, An empire divided: religion, republicanism, and the making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 114-116
Under Sabatier's rule of Đắk Lắk, the Franco-Rhadé School opened and there were efforts to create an alphabet for the E De language. In 1923 an E De court was established, which incorporated elements of E De legal procedureGerald Hickey, Sons of the Mountains: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands to 1954, pp. 297, 298
Sabatier tried to keep outsiders, especially French business groups and Vietnamese (Kinh) migrants out of Đắk Lắk to protect the interests of the locals. At the same time, improvements in infrastructure made the province more accessible.Gerald Hickey, Sons of the Mountains: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands to 1954, p. 303