French Imperialism: The French In Indochina

The French in Indochina

Creation
Before French colonization, Indochina was broken up into three independent, separate countries in Asia. They were known as the Khmer Empire (Cambodia), the Laotian Kingdom (Laos), and Vietnam. The Vietnamese were ruled by emperors from neighboring China for hundreds of years before the French took over. The emperors had nominal rule however. One of the old social facts of pre-Indochina included the emperors collecting revenue. But the taxes were extremely modest. According to an old Vietnamese saying, “the edicts of the emperor stop at the edge of the village.” (Ladenburg, p.1) The Vietnamese overthrew their Chinese emperors and became independent because of another social fact—their tradition
of armed struggle against foreign occupation. The French will later come to realize this.
Another old social fact was that the Vietnamese knew very little of what was going on outside of their villages. This might be looked at as a good thing at first because the people weren’t very much affected by the outside world. However, maybe if they knew a little more of what was going on outside, they possibly could’ve prevented the French taking over their villages. At that time, almost every country in Europe was exploring and looking to colonize. To colonize meant to gain more wealth and land for their country. Secondly, it meant to convert the natives to their own religion. Being Buddhist was another old social fact that the French thought wasn’t working for the Vietnamese, since Catholicism, at the time, was so big in Europe. Because the natives of pre-Indochina paid no attention to the outside world, they didn’t see the French coming. The men who ruled each village were carefully chosen based on their wisdom, education, and family-life. Because of this, the villages were peaceful. Another old social fact would be that women exercised a good amount of authority and people in the villages obtained an unusually high level of education. Their human needs were very little. A typical man in pre-Indochina wore home-made clothes, had little need for goods made outside his village, was usually Buddhist, and was also considered well off if he simply had a water buffalo to help him in his farming. (Ladenburg, p.2) The French sneakily made their way into pre-Indochina by offering them human needs that were not being satisfied, such as technical skills and connections to European suppliers of modern weapons and western merchandise.
Pre-Indochina was looked at by the French as “under-developed,” so they claimed that they would introduce modern political ideas, social reforms, industrial methods, new technologies, and anything else pre-Indochina was lacking. The French also helped further the Vietnamese’s education. They taught the Vietnamese math, science, engineering, and of course their language, French. The smartest students were able to go to colleges in Indochina or the university in France, if they were able to afford it.
Pre-Indochina did really need all of these things, and without European intervention, these places would’ve remained backwards, uncivilized, and impoverished. (Llewellyn, alpha history) Though the French helped them gain these human social needs, they had ulterior motives. “The real motive for French colonialism was profit and economic exploitation. French imperialism was driven by the demand for resources, raw materials and cheap labor. The development of colonized nations was scarcely considered, except where it might benefit French interests.” (Llewellyn, alpha
history)
In other words, the French had human needs of their own that were not being fulfilled, so they decided to look for those needs in pre-Indochina. Their human needs were resources, wealth, labor, power, and religion. The French could not get enough power and money. They’d go from country to country sucking them dry of their wealth. Racism was another factor in the French’s need to colonize; they believed that the white European nations, including themselves, were superior to the non-whites of Africa and Asia. Besides that, they had the need to establish a strategic presence in Southeast Asia to further their power. Other than because of being power-hungry, greedy, and racist, the French also felt the need to colonize because they wanted to Christianize any country that was non-Christian.
The resources that the French sought out from the Vietnamese mostly consisted of rice, tea, coffee, and most importantly, rubber.
Before the French, the emperors from China did not allow rice to be sold outside of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. This all changed when the French had the idea of exporting rice to become even wealthier. The French took over the land of those who failed to pay their taxes and used that land to harvest the rice. They hired the farmers, most likely against their own will, that lived on that land to plant and harvest the rice. The increase in rice production caused Vietnam to become the third largest rice exporting country in the world. Rubber plantations also became big in Vietnam because of the French. The French’s famous Michelin tire company bought up thousands of acres of land in Vietnam and the company is still in production to this day, making millions. But, without the Vietnamese’s rubber, the French would’ve never gained this
asset.
One of the social facts of the French was that they were complete tyrants because of their human needs. They’d stop at nothing to gain more power, land and resources, including make the people of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam miserable. They pretty much tricked the native people into becoming their own personal slaves. Another one of their social facts was that they took great pride in what they called their ‘civilization Francais,’ which included their language literature, poetry, religion, music, laws, form of government, educational system, and technological achievements. They thought everything in their ‘civilization Francais’ was better than anyone else’s, so one of their reasons for expanding their empire and colonizing other countries was to spread their ‘superior’ civilization to the ‘inferior’ native civilizations. (Ladenburg, p.2)
They eventually stripped the Vietnamese of their unity and individuality. They did this to keep them in line, and to minimize local resistance. The French called it their “divide and rule” strategy. It consisted of playing local mandarins, communities and religious groups against each other to cause problems within the nation. Last but not least, they took away their nations identity. Instead of unifying them, they continued to split them apart. “The nation was carved into three separate provinces: Tonkin in the north, Annam along the coast, and Cochinchina in the south. Each of these provinces was administered separately. There was no national authority; according to one French colonial edict, it was even illegal to use the name ‘Vietnam’.” (Llewellyn, alpha history)
The French conquered Indochina by doing all of these things. They weaseled their way in, promoting all these new and cool adjustments, but in the end they did it for all the wrong reasons. They didn’t really want to ‘help’ Indochina become more modern and more ‘well-developed’, they just wanted to take them over, claim them for themselves, and make money off of them. The Vietnamese were so blind-sided by France’s pretty little promises of new technology, ways of trade, important resources, etc., they didn’t see the French slowly gaining more and more power over them. Maybe they thought France was sort of like an alliance to them, who knows? But in the end I think they definitely realized that they were never their friends, but only their enemies. And this was the creation of Indochina; far from a revolution, and more like a dictatorship.

Works Cited
Ladenburg, Thomas. "The French in Indochina." Www.digitalhistory.uh.edu.
Www.digitalhistory.uh.edu, n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
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Llewellyn, Jennifer. “French colonialism in Vietnam.” Alpha History. N.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
http:alphahistory.com/Vietnam/French-colonialism-in-vietnam/.