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French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in
Southeast Asia, consisting of a federation of protectorates of Tonkin and
Annam and one directly ruled colony, Cochin China. The capital of French
Indochina was Hanoi.
Cochinchina, from Cochin China (known locally as Nam Ky, meaning
Southern Region) is a name for the southernmost part of Vietnam, lying
southeast of Cambodia. During the French colonial period, it was called
Cochinchine in French and its capital was at Saigon. Annam formed the central
region and Tonkin the northern region, however these were fairly arbitrary in
their geographical extent.
The
reigning emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam, Tu Duc, had been on the
throne since 1847. The persecution of foreign
missionaries and native Christians, on the rise since 1820, came to full
flower under Tu Duc and led inevitably to clashes with the West. The emperor
feared that Christians in Vietnam might act as a fifth column and deliver Vietnam
to the British or the French. There was also the very real possibility that
Vietnamese Christians would unite behind one of Tu Duc's dynastic rivals. He
had already been faced with one such rebellion in the north.
In the late 1850s, under Napoleon III and the Second Empire,
Paris was showing renewed interest in overseas expansion. France was driven
both by a self-proclaimed "civilizing mission" and by a nagging
fear within Parisian diplomatic and commercial circles that Britain, which
already had acquired Singapore and Hong Kong, would snatch up Vietnam if the
French didn't beat them to it. In this atmosphere, Napoleon III proved a
receptive audience for French missionaries who insisted that Vietnam was ripe
for the taking.
The bishop of Tonkin (northern Vietnam), Monsignor Jose Sanjurjo
Diaz, was arrested and executed on July 20th 1857. Triggered by the bishops
death and ongoing missionary propaganda, the decision to invade Vietnam was
made by Napoleon III in July 1857.
The naval commander of French forces in the Far East, Vice
Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly, long an
advocate of French military action against Vietnam, was ordered to attack the
harbour and city of Tourane (modern Da Nang) and to
turn it into a French military base. Tourane was the principal
trading port on Vietnam central coast. Genouilly
sailed into the Bay of Tourane on August 31st 1858 with a flotilla of 14
ships of the French China Seas Naval Division. This was accompanied by two
Spanish naval vessels (Jorge Juan and Elcano) originating from Manila under
the command of Colonel Oscariz; consisting of 500 soldiers, all of whom were
of Philippine origin other than the officers who were Spanish. The following
day, Genouilly ships shelled and neutralised the gun positions that guarded
the city, and on September 2nd 1858, a Franco-Spanish force of 2,500 troops
landed.
It was to prove a far more difficult operation than the French
anticipated. After six months of inconclusive fighting, they found themselves
short of food and suffering from cholera, malaria and dysentery. In February
1859, a frustrated Vice Admiral de Genouilly decided to leave a garrison at
Tourane and sail south to seize Saigon and Cochinchina's much-needed stores
of rice.
On February 16th 1859, Genouilly's ships took station opposite
the Gia Dinh Citadel. This large earth-and-masonry fort, the most important
in Cochinchina, was located about 800 meters from the Saigon River and on the
south side of Thi Nghe Creek. What transpired was brief and decisive. There
was an exchange of fire between de Genouilly's ships and the cannon at the
Citadel. When Vietnamese fire began to slacken, French and Spanish troops
went ashore. Under the cover of continued shelling from naval guns and of
small-arms fire from riflemen stationed in the ships' topmasts, two companies
of marine infantry and naval landing parties, all under the command of
General Charles-Gabriel-Felicite Martin des Pallires, formed up in column and
attacked the Citadel's northeast wall. Des Pallires was supported by a group
of engineers and a troop of Spanish light cavalry from the Philippines. By
10am, they had scaled the walls of the Citadel and put the Vietnamese
defenders to flight.
Before Genouilly could take advantage of his victory, he
received word that his forces in Tourane were in desperate straits. The
admiral left a garrison of about 1,000 men at Saigon and sailed north again.
What he found was discouraging. The French and Spanish troops were dying from
disease at a rate of about 100 per month. Any hope of reinforcements was
dashed when word reached the French fleet that Napoleon III had declared war
on Austria in May 1859. Disgusted by the lack of support, Genouilly asked to
be relieved of command in October. In March 1860, the French finally
abandoned Tourane and sailed north to join the British, who had resumed the
West's war with China.
The thousand-man French garrison left at Saigon was strong
enough to defend what the French had thus far gained, including the Chinese
commercial centre of Cholon. Without reinforcements, however, they were
unable to capitalize on their position and expand into the hinterland of
Cochinchina. Vietnamese forces to the west of the town steadily pushed trench
works toward the French lines and conducted increasingly costly raids.
When the Treaty of Peking ended the war in China in January
1861, Vice Admiral Leonard Charner, the new commander of the China Seas Naval
Division, was ordered to relieve the French garrison at Saigon and complete
the conquest of Cochinchina. In mid-February 1861, Charner sailed south from
Shanghai with the 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment and six detached companies
from the 4th Regiment (a total of 1,200 men under the command of a Lt. Col.
Favre and Lt. Col. Jules Marcelin Albert Testard); the 2nd Light Infantry
Battalion (600 men under a Major Comte); 200 artillerymen (commanded by Lt.
Col. Pierre Franois Crouzat) manning ten 30mm and 80mm field howitzers, as
well as 12-pounder and 4-pounder cannons; a detachment of engineers; and 800
sailors organized as naval infantry and another 100 formed into boarding
parties (both elements commanded by naval Captain Franois Theodore de
Lapelin). These forces rendezvoused at Saigon with a Spanish force (under
Colonel Carlos Palanca y Guttierez) consisting of 200 infantry and 70 mixed
cavalry (Filipino, African chasseurs and Cochinchina spahis) commanded by
Captain Charles-douard Hocquard. Including the men available from the Saigon
garrison, Charner's small army now numbered about 3,500 men.
The Vietnamese attempts to re-conquer the occupied area failed
and on April 13th 1862, the Vietnamese government was forced to cede those
territories to France. Anti-French agitation continued however until 1866,
when the western provinces of Nam Bo (Chau Doc, Ha Tie, and Vinh Long) were
also occupied by the French.
In 1860, most of the Spanish expeditionary force under the
command of Admiral Bernardo Ruiz de Lanzarote was withdrawn on French
request. All that then remained was a small garrison at Saigon, Commander and
Plenipotentiary for Indochinese Affairs, lead by Col. Carlos Palanca y
Gutierrez. This garrison was soon abandoned by the Spanish government and
became completely dependent on French supply. Likewise the Spanish
authorities showed no interest at all for the attempt to obtain some of the
Vietnamese territory and all Spain eventually got in 1862 were some
commercial concessions. On April 4th 1862, the Filipino soldiers withdrew
from Cochinchina, while the French continued to expand their control of this
area. The last Spanish troops returned to the Philippines in 1863.
In 1864, all the French territories in Southern Vietnam were
declared to be the New French colony of Cochinchina. In 1867, the provinces
of Chau Doc, Ha Tien and Vinh Long were added to the French controlled
territory. In 1887, Cochinchina, which had formally been proclaimed a French
colony in 1864, became part of the Federation of French Indochina.
In 1933 the Spratly islands were annexed to French Cochinchina.
On July 28th 1941, imperial Japanese troops were based in French Cochinchina
under defacto occupation, followed on March 9th 1945 by formal Japanese
occupation until August 15th 1945. Between 1945 and 1946 Cochinchina was
nominally part of the Empire of Vietnam. On June 14th 1949, it became part of
the (Associated) State of Vietnam.
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