General Discussion

The age of New Imperialism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries began an unprecedented pursuit and acquisition of colonies all over the world, as colonial powers that included most of Western Europe, the United States, and Japan began to scramble for territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. There were several reasons for the French invasion of Vietnam. First, there were incidents where European missionaries were expelled and even killed. In the name of defending the church and Europeans in Vietnam, Napoleon III ordered his navy to invade Vietnam in July 1857. Modern historians understand this as a convenient excuse to expand France's colonial power. Second, as France was competing against other European powers for economic and military superiority, they wanted to secure more strategic geographic positions to promote their international trade and capitalism. Because the Vietnamese lacked the weapons and technology to effectively resist the new western invaders, its leaders had little choice but to sign peace treaties with France in 1862. This treaty gave control of southern Vietnam to France, which was then renamed Cochinchina. However, it would take another 21 years before the French were able to finally conquer northern Vietnam. After doing so in 1883, they renamed that region Tonkin and combined with Cochinchina and central Vietnam (renamed Annam), Vietnam officially became a French colony, known as Indochina. As a colonized nation, Vietnam's natural resources were exploited, its people were treated with disdain and impoverished, and its leaders were rendered powerless. Resistance movements began to develop almost immediately.