Cochin China

   Nam Ky`, the southernmost region of contemporary Vietnam, was named Cochinchine by the French, who in 1858 occupied Da Nang on the coast to the north and from there moved southward. By early 1859, French forces occupied Saigon, and in 1862 the emperor of Annam ceded his provinces around the Mekong Delta. In 1867, these new possessions became officially France’s new colony of Cochin China. In the wake of the sudden absence of the Annamite officials, French naval officers were forced to improvise an administrative apparatus, so they established a school for training staff from France in the customs of the country. After France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, however, the Third Republic abolished this system and replaced the naval staff with civil governors who made no attempt to learn the local language. French republican law was also imposed with ideological fervor, and its stress on individual liberty in a society constructed around the family unit was highly, and unnecessarily, disruptive.

   In 1881, Cochin China was given the authority to elect a local deputy, but some of the administration and much of the commerce in the province were conducted by subject peoples of other French colonies. Despite the offense given to a local population thus doubly subjugated, Cochin China’s fertile soil enabled the colony to generate sufficient revenue to make it financially independent of France.

   See also <>; <>.

   FURTHER READING:

    Chapius, Oscar. A History of Vietnam: From Hong Bang to Tu Duc. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995;

    Power, Thomas F. Jules Ferry and the Renaissance of French Imperialism. New York: King’s Crown Press, 1944;

    Wesseling, H.L. The European Colonial Empires 1815-1919. New York: Pearson Education, 2004.

   CARL CAVANAGH HODGE