French Indochina

French Indochina was the federation of French colonies and protectorates in mainland Southeast Asia, formed in 1887 and dissolved in 1954. It included the three regions of Vietnam, Cochinchina in the south, Annam in the centre and Tonkin in the north, along with Cambodia and Laos, and briefly a territory leased from China at Guangzhouwan.

French Catholic missionaries had worked in Vietnam since the seventeenth century, and French adventurers helped Nguyễn Ánh found the Nguyễn dynasty in 1802. When the Vietnamese emperors persecuted Catholics in the nineteenth century, France used this as a pretext. In 1858 a French and Spanish fleet attacked Đà Nẵng, and in 1859 the French took Saigon. By 1867 they controlled the six provinces of the south, which became the colony of Cochinchina. In 1863 Cambodia's King Norodom accepted a French protectorate, seeking protection from Siam and Vietnam.

In the 1870s and 1880s, French expeditions entered Tonkin, fighting Vietnamese forces and the Black Flags, Chinese irregulars. After the Sino-French War of 1884–1885, China gave up its claims to overlordship of Vietnam, and Annam and Tonkin became French protectorates. The young emperor Hàm Nghi fled the capital Huế in 1885 and called for resistance in the Cần Vương movement, "Save the King", until he was captured in 1888. The Indochinese Union was formed in 1887, and Laos was added in 1893 after a crisis in which France forced Siam to give up its claims east of the Mekong.

Indochina was governed by a governor-general, based in Saigon and from 1902 in Hanoi. The Nguyễn emperors at Huế, the kings of Cambodia and Luang Prabang remained as figureheads. Governor-General Paul Doumer, from 1897 to 1902, built the administration, imposed state monopolies on opium, alcohol and salt, which caused great hardship, and began the railway from Hanoi to Saigon and to Yunnan. Hanoi was rebuilt with French boulevards, an opera house and the Long Biên bridge.

Rice exports from the Mekong delta and rubber plantations, such as those owned by Michelin, made fortunes for French companies and landowners. Plantation workers, recruited from northern Vietnam, worked under brutal conditions, with high death rates. Coal was mined in Tonkin. Most Vietnamese peasants became poorer, many losing their land to large landowners. French scholars of the École française d'Extrême-Orient studied and restored Angkor.

Vietnamese resistance continued. Phan Bội Châu sought help from Japan and China, and Phan Châu Trinh called for reform. The Vietnamese Nationalist Party led the Yên Bái mutiny in 1930, which was crushed. In 1930 Hồ Chí Minh founded the Indochinese Communist Party. The Nghệ-Tĩnh soviets, peasant uprisings in 1930–1931, were suppressed.

In 1940 Japan occupied Indochina, leaving the Vichy French administration in place. In March 1945 Japan overthrew the French and declared Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos independent. A famine in 1944–1945 killed about a million people in northern Vietnam. In August 1945 the Viet Minh took power, and on 2 September Hồ Chí Minh proclaimed independence. France returned, and the First Indochina War began in December 1946. After the French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ in May 1954, the Geneva Accords ended French Indochina, recognising Cambodia and Laos and temporarily dividing Vietnam.

Our maps show French Indochina from 1878 to 1914. Its largest outline, about 750,000 square kilometres on the 1900 map, is split among today's Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh lie inside it. On later maps the basemap uses the spelling French Indo-China.