French Indochina lasted from union in 1887 to Dien Bien Phu
French Indochina—officially the Indochinese Union, then after nineteen forty-one the Indochinese Federation—grouped French-dependent Southeast Asian territories from eighteen eighty-seven to nineteen fifty-four. It bundled Cambodia, Laos from eighteen ninety-nine, Guangzhouwan from eighteen ninety-eight to nineteen forty-five, Cochinchina, and Vietnamese Tonkin and Annam.
The Second Empire seized Cochinchina in eighteen sixty-two and made Cambodia a protectorate in eighteen sixty-three. After the Third Republic’s Tonkin campaign, protectorates fused into one union in eighteen eighty-seven; Laos and Chinese Guangzhouwan joined later. Colonial rule extracted resources while building limited infrastructure; missionary contacts had earlier roots—Jesuits reached Vietnam by sixteen fifty-eight, and in seventeen eighty-seven Pigneau de Behaine sought French help for Nguyễn Ánh.
The conquest itself came in stages. Citing the persecution of Catholic missionaries, Napoleon III sent Admiral Rigault de Genouilly against Tourane, today's Da Nang, in eighteen fifty-eight with fourteen gunships and 3,300 men, 300 of them Filipino soldiers lent by Spain. Stalled there, he turned south and took Saigon on seventeen February eighteen fifty-nine. The Treaty of Saigon legalised Catholic worship and opened Mekong trade, and in eighteen sixty-seven Admiral de la Grandière seized three more provinces, placing the whole south under French control. When the federation was proclaimed on seventeen October eighteen eighty-seven, emperors and kings stayed on as figureheads while French officials held the real power.
After France fell in World War II, Vichy administrators ran the colony under Japanese occupation until nine March nineteen forty-five, when Japan toppled the regime and set up puppets including the Empire of Vietnam. Japan’s surrender unlocked the Viet Minh’s August Revolution; Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. France returned Guangzhouwan to China in nineteen forty-five, then in nineteen forty-nine spun anti-communist associated states—Vietnam (with Cochinchina restored), Laos, and Cambodia—inside the French Union.
Reconquest failed. Defeat at Điện Biên Phủ ended the Indochina War and the colonial federation in nineteen fifty-four. What began as a nineteenth-century imperial merger of kingdoms and Chinese leaseholds closed as a Cold War hinge—leaving successor states, and a template of associated-state half-measures that could not outpace nationalist revolution.
Source: French Indochina
