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Essay on Account for the French conquest of Vietnam in the second half of the nineteenth century
France conquered Vietnam in the second half of the nineteenth century, the great age of European colonialism. The course of conquest was not as trouble-free as it was in most colonies; Vietnamese confrontation was significant, and the French had to take Vietnam a piece at a time rather than all at once. Nevertheless, by 1885 it was clear that France was going to conquer all of Vietnam, and by 1895 the French had stamped out all serious resistance. They administered Vietnam in three sections: Cochinchina, the area around the Mekong River Delta at the south end of Vietnam, was the most prosperous section because land was so bounteous.
The Vietnamese had only conquered this area a few generations before the French arrived, and not enough settlers had as yet come down from the North to put together a very impenetrable population, such as existed in most villages of central and northern Vietnam. Cochinchina was the first area in Vietnam that the French had conquered, and French influence there was very strong. The number of French colonial administrators, and the amount of rice land actually owned by Frenchmen, was higher in Cochinchina than in other areas of Vietnam.
Tonkin, centering on the Red River Delta in the North, was more compactly populated and as a result less affluent. Its administration enclosed more Vietnamese and fewer Frenchmen than that of Cochinchina. Annam occupied the long stretch of coastline between the two great river deltas. Its people lived more often than not in very crowded villages right along the coast; few Vietnamese lived in the hills and mountains further inland. Colonial rule in Annam was indirect; the French maintained a puppet emperor in the city of Hue, and the emperor's officials administered the countryside under French supervision. Traditional institutions survived longer in Annam than in Tonkin and Cochinchina........
