French Indochina

French Indochina was formally organised in 1887 and eventually brought together the Vietnamese territories of Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina with Cambodia and Laos under French colonial authority. Administration, taxation, plantation agriculture, mining, transport projects and missionary and educational institutions connected the federation to the wider French Empire while preserving different local monarchies and legal arrangements.

Colonial rule produced both collaboration and resistance. Nationalist, reformist and revolutionary movements developed across the region, and the Japanese occupation during the Second World War weakened French authority. The First Indochina War ended with the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva settlement of 1954, bringing the colonial federation to an end.

For historical fiction the setting includes colonial cities, river and rail travel, archaeological interest in Angkor and other Khmer sites, and the unequal political structures of empire. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Jungle Girl uses French Indochina and Cambodian ruins as a real frame around the entirely fictional hidden kingdom of Pnom Dhek.