French Colonialism in Indochina
French Indochina was established in 1887. The colony included Cambodia, Laos, the Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan, the Vietnamese regions of Tonkin in the north, Annam in the center, and Cochinchina in the south, and Guangzhouwan. Hanoi served as the nation’s capital from 1902 to 1945; From 1887 to 1902 and again from 1945 to 1954, Saigon served as the capital. In 1862 and 1863, respectively, the Second French Empire annexed Cochinchina and established a protectorate in Cambodia. In 1887, the various protectorates were merged into a single entity after the Tonkin campaign by the French Third Republic took over northern Vietnam. The union also included the following two additional entities: the protectorate of Laos and Guangzhouwan, a Chinese province. During their time in power, the French not only took advantage of the region’s resources but also contributed to the development of the region’s healthcare and education systems. However, there remained deep divisions between the native people and the colonists, which occasionally led to rebellions by the former.
The arrival of the Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes marked the beginning of relations between France and Vietnam at the beginning of the 17th century. Vietnam had just begun its “Push to the South,” or “Nam Tin,” at this point, which involved taking control of the Mekong Delta, a region that belonged to the Khmer Empire and, to a lesser extent, the kingdom of Champa, which they had defeated in 1471. During the 18th century, European involvement in Vietnam was limited to trade.
The Nguyen dynasty in Vietnam viewed the Catholic missionaries as a threat. The Nguyen dynasty was the last Vietnamese dynasty which ruled a united Vietnam. The Nguyen dynasty’s Emperor was an absolutist ruler, which meant that he was also the government’s head. In 1812, the Gia Long Code made the Vietnamese monarch the supreme ruler of all of Vietnam; utilizing the Mandate of Heaven idea from Confucius which granted monarchs complete authority.
In theory, the Mandate of Heaven gave the ruler complete authority, but this also meant that the ruler had a very important responsibility to care for the people. Ho described the concept of the Mandate of Heaven as follows: “In order to be worthy of heaven and to fulfill his supreme duty, the king must be the first to suffer the hardships of his people and be the last one to share in their happiness. He has to obey the orders of heaven, and these orders are transmitted by the voice of the people. If he does not obey, he will be dismissed by heaven, abjured by his ancestors and disowned by his people.”
With the successful attack on Tourane (present-day Da Nang) by French Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly under Napoleon III’s orders in 1858. As result of the attack, the brief period of Nguyen dynasty unification came to an end. The port of Tourane was attacked by 14 French gunships and 3,300 men, including 300 Filipino soldiers supplied by the Spanish. The attack caused significant damage and occupied the city. De Genouilly sought and received approval for a different attack on Saigon after fighting the Vietnamese for three months and being unable to advance further on land. On February 17, 1859, while sailing to the southern part of Vietnam, de Genouilly took the undefended city of Saigon. But once more, de Genouilly and his troops were unable to take any land outside of the city’s defensive perimeter. Admiral Page was appointed in November 1859 to replace De Genouilly after he was criticized for his actions and told to obtain a treaty protecting the Catholic faith in Vietnam while avoiding territorial gains.
The peace talks fell through, and the fighting in Saigon continued. In the end, the French added more troops to the Saigon campaign in 1861, moved out of the city, and began to take cities in the Mekong Delta. The Vietnamese agreed to legalize the free practice of the Catholic religion by signing the Treaty of Saigon on June 5, 1862. By 1867, all of southern Vietnam came under French control.
Norodom, the king of Cambodia, had requested that France establish a protectorate over his country in 1863. In exchange for the control of Battambang and Siem Reap provinces, which later became officially a part of Thailand, Siam, now known as modern-day Thailand, renounced its suzerainty over Cambodia in 1867 and acknowledged the French protectorate on Cambodia established in 1863. In 1906, France and Siam signed a border treaty that gave Cambodia back these provinces.
Following its victory over China in the Sino-French War (1884–1855), France took over northern Vietnam. On October 17, 1887, the Kingdom of Cambodia, Annam, Tonkin, and Cochinchina merged to form French Indochina, which is now known as Vietnam. After the 1893 Franco-Siamese War, Laos was added.
All of this forms a bit of the background for the French conquest and control of Indochina. Resistance against French rule began early into the French administration. The Can Vuong Movement emerged as a resistance movement which sought to install Ham Nghi of the Nguyen dynasty as the leader of Vietnam. The movement was successful at first because there were only a few French garrisons in Annam. However, after the French were surprised by the insurgency and sent troops into Annam from bases in Tonkin and Cochinchina, the movement was unsuccessful. In 1886, the Annam insurrection spread and flourished, reached its zenith the following year, and eventually died out by 1889.
A whole generation of Vietnamese children had been raised under French rule. The people continued to look to the scholar-gentry class for guidance in dealing with French imperialism and the loss of their nation’s independence, just as they did in pre-colonial times. The majority of academic officials did not work with the French. A number of hundred academics who became actively involved in the anticolonial movement were among those who refused. Phan Boi Chau, a scholar from Nghe An Province who was educated in the Confucian tradition by his father and other local teachers, is the most well-known of them all. Phan Boi Chau witnessed from a close distance in 1885 how French troops crushed scholar-gentry resistance to the colonial rulers. He devoted himself to his studies for the next ten years, passing the regional exam in 1905 with highest honors. He traveled the country for the next five years, meeting other anticolonial scholars and looking specifically for Can Vuong movement survivors with the intention of starting a rebellion against the French. Additionally, he sought to identify a member of the Nguyen ruling family who was in favor of the cause and would act as the independence movement’s titular leader and serve as a rallying point for moral and financial support. Cuong De, a descendant of Gia Long, was selected to play this role.
The first of Phan Boi Chau’s numerous revolutionary societies, the Duy Tan Hoi (Reformation Society) was established in Quang Nam in 1904 by twenty other individuals. He went to Japan the following year to meet with Chinese and Japanese revolutionaries and ask for financial help for the Vietnamese cause. The various Asian anticolonialist movements had been very excited about the Japanese defeat of the Russian fleet at Tsushima a month before his arrival. In 1906, Cuong De and a number of Vietnamese students were brought to Japan by Phan Boi Chau. He persuaded Phan Chu Trinh, another prominent Vietnamese nationalist leader of the time, to pay him a visit in Tokyo in the same year. However, they were unable to resolve their fundamental tactical differences after two weeks of discussions. Phan Chu Trinh wanted to primarily abolish the monarchy in order to establish a foundation upon which to build national sovereignty, whereas Phan Boi Chau advocated for maintaining the monarchy as a popular ideological symbol and a means of attracting financial support. In addition, he was greatly influenced by the works of French political philosophers Rousseau and Montesquieu. He also believed that the French colonial administration could be a progressive force that could use peaceful reform to establish a Western democratic political structure. In contrast, Phan Boi Chau desired to restore Vietnamese independence and immediately drive out the French through armed resistance.
To bring together the roughly 100 Vietnamese students studying in Japan at the time, Phan Boi Chau established the Viet Nam Cong Hien Hoi (Vietnam Public Offering Society) in 1907. The students’ ability to collaborate and think in Vietnamese, as opposed to Cochinchinese, Annamese, or Tonkinese, as the French referred to them, made the organization significant. However, the Japanese expelled the students the following year under French pressure, requiring the majority of them to return home. Phan Boi Chau was also expelled from Vietnam by the Japanese in March 1909. He started out in Hong Kong and continued on to Bangkok and Guangzhou. His writings influenced nationalist activities in Vietnam even while he was abroad. To educate nationalist political activists, the Dong Kinh Nghia Thuc (Free School of the Eastern Capital, Hanoi) was established in 1907. Phan Chu Trinh gave lectures at the school, and the writings of Phan Boi Chau were studied. The French, on the other hand, closed the school in less than a year because they were concerned that Phan Boi Chau was involved. Phan Boi Chau was also blamed by the French for starting anti-tax demonstrations in Hue and the provinces of Quang Nam and Quang Ngai at the beginning of 1908. The demonstrators forcibly cut off the traditional long hair of men as a sign of the movement. Phan Boi Chau was also blamed for the failed June 1908 uprising and poison plot in Hanoi. Phan Chu Trinh was one of hundreds of scholar-patriots sent to prison on Poulo Condore (now Con Dao) as part of the French response to the uprising, which saw the execution of thirteen of the participants and the beginning of a crackdown on Vietnamese political activists. In 1909, a significant expedition was also launched against De Tham, a leader of the resistance who was a part of the Hanoi uprising. De Tham, who had waged a thirty-year war against the French in the mountains surrounding Yen The in the northeastern part of Tonkin, was killed in 1913. He managed to survive.
Phan Boi Chau and other Vietnamese nationalists in exile in Guangzhou formed a new organization in 1912 to replace the defunct Duy Tan Hoi, inspired by the 1911 Chinese Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen. Expulsion of the French, restoration of Vietnamese independence, and the establishment of a “Vietnamese democratic republic” were the primary objectives of the newly formed Viet Nam Quang Phuc Hoi (Vietnam Restoration Society). Cuong De was given the presidency by the organization’s provisional government, despite the fact that Phan Boi Chau had resigned from his monarchist position by this point. In 1913, Phan Boi Chau carried out a number of terrorist bombings and assassinations in an effort to garner support and financial backing for the new organization. The French responded harshly to these actions. Phan Boi Chau and other Vietnamese exiles in China were imprisoned at the request of the French by the counterrevolutionary government of Yuan Shi-kai by 1914.
Phan Boi Chau was released from prison in 1917. He studied and wrote for the next eight years while living in China, but he had little direct influence over the Vietnamese nationalist movement. He was kidnapped by the French in Shanghai in 1925 and brought back to Hanoi, where he was tried and given a life sentence of hard labor. Until he passed away in 1940, the sentence was later changed to house arrest. Phan Boi Chau’s contribution to Vietnam’s independence, according to historians, is incalculable. He called for the French to be driven out of France by force, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. While recognizing that only the Vietnamese would ultimately be able to achieve independence, he suggested drawing lessons from other Asian independence movements and leaders. Phan Boi Chau served as a forerunner to Ho’s revolutionary struggle to liberate Vietnam from French rule.
Approximately 50,000 Vietnamese workers and troops were sent to Europe during World War I. In order to support France’s war efforts, the Vietnamese also had to pay additional hefty taxes. During the war, Vietnam saw a number of anticolonial revolts, all of which were quickly put down by the French. Duy Tan, a sixteen-year-old king, broke out of his palace in May 1916 to join an uprising of Vietnamese troops. The plan was revealed to the French, and the leaders were detained and executed. In the Indian Ocean, Duy Tan was removed from power and exiled to Reunion. The Thai Nguyen uprising in the north of Vietnam was one of the most successful during this time period. 200 political prisoners were freed by 300 Vietnamese soldiers, who also armed several hundred locals and released 200 political prisoners. In the hope of receiving assistance from Chinese nationalists, the rebels occupied the town of Thai Nguyen for several days. However, no one showed up, so the French retook the town and went after the majority of the rebels.
Vietnam saw an increase in nationalist sentiment, particularly during and after World War I. However, no uprising or tentative effort was successful in obtaining sufficient concessions from the French. Ho himself had hoped that following the victor of the Allies in 1919 that the colonized people of the world would be freed from colonial domination and be given the right of self-determination. He wrote in 1919: “The Annamite people, in presenting the above-mentioned requests, count on the justice of all the Great Powers and command themselves in particular to the benevolence of the Noble French People who hold our fate in their hands and who, France being a Republic, are supposed to have taken us under their protection.” As it would turn out, Ho’s plea to France would be in vain. France had no intention of relinquishing control of Indochina.
Ho himself pointed out that in the time that France maintained control over Indochina, France failed to develop a real Indochinese policy. French rule also failed to establish trust between the colonial government and the colonial subjects. Ho wrote: “Colonial publications, books and newspapers are filled with violent attacks against the conquered people and are loaded with insults thrown in the face of these same people — with all the more ‘bravery’ because their authors know in advance that since the masses are unable to respond, they can only swallow these insults while grinding their teeth.” These publications expressed views such as domination by force was the only way to govern the Annamite people or comparing the education of the Annamite people to training “skilled dogs”. Such views demonstrated the contempt which the French colonial administration had towards the people of Indochina.
Ho gave the following description of French colonial administration in Indochina: “The European enjoys all sorts of liberties and reigns as an absolute master, while the native, muzzled and kept on a leash, has only the right to submit without complaining: if he allows himself to protest, he will be declared a rebel or a revolutionary and treated accordingly. Even more unfortunate is the native person who tries to escape this most pleasant regime by moving abroad: the members of his family will be persecuted and he, if arrested, will be sent to prison or put to death. […] Whenever a European kills, murders, or rapes a native person and the case has not been completely covered up, the court before which the perpetrator is supposed to appear almost certainly acquits the latter.”
—
Dwayne is the author of several books on the history and experiences of African people, both on the continent and in the diaspora. His books are available through Amazon. You can also follow Dwayne on Facebook and Twitter.
