Formation
France acquired its territories in Indochina piece by piece. It took the southern Vietnamese provinces of Cochinchina between 1862 and 1867 and made them a colony. In 1863 the king of Cambodia, Norodom, threatened by Siam and Vietnam, accepted a French protectorate. In 1883–84 France made Annam and Tonkin, the centre and north of Vietnam, protectorates under the Nguyen emperors. In 1887 these were joined in the Indochinese Union under a governor-general. Laos was added in 1893 after the Franco-Siamese crisis, and the small leased territory of Guangzhouwan in southern China in 1898.
Colonial rule
Under governors-general such as Paul Doumer, at the turn of the century, the French built railways, roads, ports and a centralised fiscal system financed by state monopolies of opium, alcohol and salt. Rubber plantations in Cochinchina and Cambodia, worked by labourers often recruited under harsh conditions, and rice exports from the Mekong delta became the main sources of wealth. A small French-educated Vietnamese elite grew up in the cities. The École française d'Extrême-Orient, founded in 1900, studied the region's history and restored Angkor, which France had obtained from Siam in 1907.
Nationalism and war
Vietnamese resistance continued from the Can Vuong movement of the 1880s through the nationalist and communist movements of the twentieth century. In February 1930 Vietnamese soldiers of the colonial army mutinied at Yen Bai under the leadership of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party, and the mutiny was crushed and its leaders executed. The Indochinese Communist Party was founded the same year by Ho Chi Minh, and peasant risings it supported in central Vietnam in 1930–31 were also suppressed. New religious movements, Cao Dai and Hoa Hao, gained large followings in the south. In 1940 Japan occupied Indochina, leaving the Vichy French administration in place until March 1945, when it took full control. After Japan's surrender Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 2 September 1945.
The end
France returned and fought the Viet Minh in the First Indochina War from 1946. The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 led to the Geneva accords of July 1954, which ended French rule, recognised the independence of Laos and Cambodia, which had been granted in 1953, and divided Vietnam temporarily at the seventeenth parallel. The division led to the Vietnam War.
Further reading
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Higham, Charles. The Civilization of Angkor. University of California Press, 2001
- Metcalf, Barbara D. A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press, 2012
See also
- Nguyen dynasty — The Nguyen dynasty ruled a united Vietnam from Hue from 1802, under the emperor Gia Long and his successors, until the French conquest of 1858–1885 reduced it to a protected monarchy, which ended with the abdication of Bao Dai in 1945.
- Lao kingdoms — The Lao kingdoms of Luang Prabang, Vientiane and Champasak were the three states into which Lan Xang divided between 1707 and 1713, which fell under Siamese overlordship from 1779 and passed to French rule after 1893.
- Khmer Empire — The Khmer Empire was a Southeast Asian state centered on Angkor in present-day Cambodia that flourished from 802 to 1431 CE, building its political and religious order on Indian Hindu and, later, Buddhist models.
- Angkor Wat — Angkor Wat is a 12th-century temple complex near Siem Reap, Cambodia, built by the Khmer king Suryavarman II as a state temple dedicated to Vishnu and now the largest religious monument in the world by area.
- Siam — Siam, the Rattanakosin kingdom of the Chakri dynasty founded at Bangkok in 1782, was the one state of Southeast Asia to keep its independence through the colonial era, through diplomacy, reform and territorial concessions, and took the name Thailand in 1939.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.