Notes&Summaries

The Impact of French in Indochina
The Impact the French had on Indochina was something no one was about to forget soon. It took France about 35 years to complete its takeover of Indochina. In 1858, the French captured Tourane (Da Nang). The region of Saigon was taken over 1862 and a protectorate was declared over Cambodia in 1863. The southern region of Cochin-china was annexed in 1867 and Annam (central region) and Tonkin (northern region) became protectorates in 1883. Laos became a French protectorate in 1883.
The fundamental aim of the French in Indochina was economic exploitation. In the decade of the 1980s, Daumier came in and introduced a series of tax and revenue reforms. He established taxes on key consumer items that the people need such as salt, rice-wine and opium. The Vietnamese needed all these products to continue their traditional life such as rituals. By 1935 France’s collective sales of rice wine, salt and opium were earning more than 600 million francs per annum. Imperialism involves powerful states seeking to expand their power by taking control of economic, political and cultural affairs in weaker, undeveloped countries. The people of the colony become subject to the imperial power and part of its empire. This is what the French saw their influence as one of the civilising missions in Indochina.
After 1936, when the French extended some political freedoms to the colonies, the party skilfully exploited all opportunities for the creation of legal front organizations, through which it extended its influence among intellectuals, workers and peasants.
The French were changing their lives around and brining in French culture and trying to make the Vietnamese adapt to the different life style. French policy was to encourage the educated to serve in the army or civil service and to assimilate into French society. Excluded from political, administrative or managerial positions, the educated Vietnamese became disillusioned with the French revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.
Peasants were yearning for land reform, grew stronger and French landlords took over the best land. Peasants were forced into share cropping often having to pay 40% of their crop output to their landlords.
Millions of Vietnamese no longer worked to provide for themselves; they now worked for the benefit of their French overlords. The French seized vast layers of land and re-organised them into large plantations. Small land-holders were given the option of remaining as labourers on these plantations or relocating elsewhere. Where there was labour shortfalls, Viet farmers were recruited en masse from outlying villages. Sometimes they came voluntarily, lured by false promises of high wages; sometimes they were conscripted at the point of a gun. Rice and rubber were the main cash crops of these plantations. And eminent thinker argued that the purpose of acquiring colonies was to “make profits”. “If the economy was developed and the standard of living of the people improved, they would buy more goods. Historian Paul Bernard.
The amount of land used for growing rice almost consisting of 4 parts in the 20 years after 1880, while Cochin-china (southern Vietnam) had 25 gigantic rubber plantations. By the 1930s, Indochina was supplying 60,000 tons of rubber each year, 5% of total global production. The French also constructed factories and built mines to tap into Vietnam’s deposits of coal, tin and zinc. Most this material was sold abroad as exports – and most of the profits lined the pockets of French capitalists, investors and officials.
Not only were the rubber plantations, mines, and industrial enterprises in foreign hands – French, where the business was substantial, all other business was well, from local trade to the great-export-import houses. The social consequence of this policy was that, apart from the landlords, no property-owning indigenous middle class developed in colonial Vietnam. Thus, capitalism appeared to the Vietnamese to be a part of foreign rule; this view, together with the lack of any Vietnamese participation in government, profoundly influenced the nature and orientation of the national resistance movements.
The workers on these plantations were known as ‘coolies’ (a derogatory term for Asian laborers). They worked long hours in debilitating conditions, for wages that were pitifully small. Some were paid in rice rather than money. The working day could be as long as 15 hours, without breaks or adequate food and fresh water. French colonial laws prohibited corporal punishment, but many officials and overseers used it regardless, beating slow or reluctant workers. Malnutrition, dysentery and malaria were rife on plantations, especially those producing rubber. It was not uncommon for plantations to have several workers die in a single day.
Conditions were particularly poor on plantations owned by French type manufacturer Michelin. In the 20 years between the two world wars, one Michelin-owned plantation recorded 17,000 deaths. Vietnamese peasant-farmers who remained outside the plantations were subject to the corvee, or unpaid labor. Introduced in 1901, the corvee required male peasants of adult age to complete 30 days of unpaid work on government buildings, roads, dams and other infrastructure.
At the turn of the 20th century, the growing automobile industry in France resulted in growth of the rubber plantations were built throughout the colony, especially in Annam and Cochin-china. These results had an increase in investment in the colony as well as mines and rubber. Indochina begun to industrialize as factories opened in the colony. These new factories produced textiles, cigarettes, beer and cement which were then exported throughout the French empire.
The entire system exploited the traditional Vietnamese farmer, destroyed cultural values and stimulated poverty. The motives of the French were straightforward: an export market for Vietnam’s agricultural activities would pay for new colonialist’s investments, all at local expenses.
French colonialism was more haphazard, improper and brutal. French never articulated a clear and coherent colonial policy for Indochina – so long as it remained in French hands and open to economic interests, the French government was satisfied. The political management of Indochina was left to a series of governors, appointed by the French. More than 20 governors were sent to Indochina between 1900s and 1945; each had different attitudes and approaches. Colonial governors, officials and bureaucrats and significant self-governing and authority, so often used more power than they had thought to have.
For 5 years during the WWII, Indochina was a French-administrated possession of Japan. On September 22, 1940, Jean Decoux, the French governor-general appointed by the Vichy government after the fall of France to the Nazis, concluded an agreement with the Japanese that permitted the stationing of 30,000 Japanese troops in Indochina and the use of all major Vietnamese airports by the Japanese military.
During WWII, some anti-communist Indochinese nationalist movements collaborated with the Japanese, who they regarded as potential allies against French rule. In contrast, Ho Chi Minh formed the Viet-Minh in 1941 to unite many Vietnamese nationalists along with the communists in a movement to help fight and overthrow Japanese rule and French rule. Japan had no more concern for the independence and welfare of the Indochinese people than it had for other Asian people whose lands it occupied. This situation encouraged self-interest, corruption, motive of liability and heavy-handedness.
The French were the real rulers of Vietnam but they allowed emperors from the Nguyen Dynasty to remain with them. One of them, emperor Bao Dai who before Ho Chi minh had also was also part of this foreign ruling. He had cooperated with the French and became a Francophile. He accepted French society and eventually spent more time in France tan in Vietnam. Many of which would say that Bao Dai was a “French puppet” living a corrupt playboy lifestyle. Vietnamese saw him as a “traitor”. Bao Dai further alienated himself from the people of Vietnam by leaving the major political decisions to his French advisers.
Later the Japanese occupation forces and was ousted only toward the end of war (in March 1945), when the Japanese begun to fear that the French force might turn against them as defeat approached. After the French had been disarmed, Bao Dai, the last French appointed emperor of Vietnam, was allowed to proclaim the independence of his country and to appoint a Vietnamese national government. However, all real power remained in the hands of the Japanese military commanders.
Meanwhile, in May 1941, at Ho Chi Minh’s urging, the Communist Party formed a broad nationalist alliance under its leadership called the League for Independence of Vietnam, which subsequently became known as the Viet Minh. As President Roosevelt has quoted in 1944 when he stated “France has milked it (Indochina) for 100 years. The people of Indochina are entitled to something better than that”.
The Viet Minh was recognised as the legitimate representative of Vietnamese nationalist aspirations. When the Japanese surrounded in August 1945, the communist-led Viet Minh ordered a general uprising, and, with no one organized to oppose them, they were able to seize power. Bao Dai declared a few days later his resembling to the newly proclaimed Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Vietnam fought for many years in order to gain back their independence. Gaining back their independence wasn’t as an easy task. Vietnam not only had to gain their independence from the French but also the Japanese by using a variety of different ways. Even though it took a very long time, Vietnam finally accomplished its goal. The Viet Minh had done to their power to confine the French to the cities. Eventually the French came to the conclusion that Vietnam wasn’t worth the money or the lives to continue fighting for, so they had fled the country. Due to many contributions from the Vietnamese people, Vietnam was finally able to restore and maintain their independence.