Historically, Indigenous communities like the Êđê and M'nông in the Central Highlands of Vietnam actively managed fire in the deciduous dipterocarp savanna. However, since 1992, Yok Đôn National Park, which covers 115,000 hectares, has taken over fire management. The park's current policy of spatially extensive and annual prescribed burning has resulted in the topkill of seedlings and hindered sapling recruitment, suggesting that the savanna is not adapted to this regime. What did the fire regime at Yok Đôn use to look like, and what were the historical precedents that led to the park’s fire management policy? Using an interdisciplinary methodology that applies archival research to disturbance ecology theory, I demonstrate the key differences in the fire regimes adopted by Indigenous communities, colonial French foresters, and Vietnamese foresters. While fire was considered a life force by swidden-practicing Êđê and M’nông communities, it has been problematized in different ways by the exogenous administrators that have set foot on the Central Highlands throughout history. I argue that this problematization of fire has its roots in the French civilizing mission, which viewed fire – and in particular, fire practiced by Indigenous people – as a barbarity in need of taming.