How brutal was French colonial rule in Indochina? Was it as bad as say, the British Raj?

Hello, I wrote a small essay for my Vietnam-US history class that went over French Indochina. I hope this can help you.

The French colonization of Vietnam (which was part of French Indochina) was part of a larger trend of western countries in an age of imperialism. Holding colonies in a place such as Asia or Africa was a sign of success and power amongst European powers. It was also argued that there was a need to civilize people who were deemed primitive, or did not meet European standards. This was typically called the white man’s burden, as it was up to civilized white people to “modernize” these various people and cultures. For the French, they had their own version of this, which was called mission civilisatrice, or civilizing mission.

The impression was given that imperialist powers such as the French colonized parts of Southeast Asia and Africa in order to spread and further “civilization”. While one of the reasons was to indeed spread their own values over indigenous peoples, this was not the main purpose. The main purpose of the French in places such as Indochina was to economically exploit its land and people through the extraction of natural materials and resources, and reap large profits from it.

There was a need for economies to expand in places such as Europe, and one of the ways for an economy to easily expand was to take over other places, and use their resources for the other country’s gain. This was readily enacted in places such as French Indochina. The French colonial bureaucracy initially gained revenue through the heavy taxation system imposed upon the Vietnamese people. The French also soon gained almost state monopolies on household staples such as salt, rice, and rice alcohol, and made it compulsory for each household to buy these goods. This revenue gave the French bureaucracy in Vietnam a foothold, and encouraged further exploitation by French capitalists.

French authorities later moved on to diversifying the Indochinese economy towards other various goods. Some of these goods were household items such as rice, pepper, coffee, and tea. Others were resources and materials that were needed by European powers or had high prices on the global market, such as rubber, tin, zinc, and coal. Through irrigation works and infrastructure development by the French and Vietnamese (partially through corvée, which was basically unpaid labor), the amount of land that was being opened up to farming for goods such as rice greatly rose. However, these lands were not distributed collectively to people such as Vietnamese peasants. These lands were sometimes sold to French colonists and Vietnamese collaborators at exceptionally low prices, or would otherwise go towards the highest bidder.

The French, with the help of local leaders and officials who collaborated, displaced millions of Vietnamese people from the land that they owned, either through legal or illegal means. If one was unable to pay the heavy taxes imposed, for example, then their land would be forfeited to the government or creditors. Through bureaucratic means, the land could be easily taken. However, land could also be taken through means such as of intimidation, by corrupt leaders who were backed by the French. Ultimately, there were various ways that most Vietnamese people lost their land, and were forced to become peasant farmers that toiled on plantations or on small land holdings.

The French, of course, were simply unable to fully control and colonize Vietnam without help. Since France never had a large amount of soldiers or administrators in Indochina, the French depended upon a small amount of local village leaders and mandarins to control not only the cities, but the countryside. These Vietnamese collaborators were despised by their own people, as these people legitimized and supported the French bureaucracy that was exploiting their country. By currying favor with the French and readily adopting their culture by doing things such as switching to Catholicism, they gained and held lucrative positions in the bureaucracy or being associated with it.

Collaboration with the French was done out of self-interest (strengthening one’s social position or their family’s, or simply for profit) or because they saw the French as benevolent people that would help Vietnam. By giving some pro-French Vietnamese people positions of power that could also be easily controlled, the French (mostly) gained social and institutional legitimacy in their colonization of Indochina, and would show off the collaborators as an example that the purported French goal of mission civilisatrice was a success. Some of these collaborators or their families were given education at French institutions in Hanoi or even Paris, where they were taught the values and supremacy of French culture and traditions. Bao Dai, one of the final emperors of Vietnam, was himself educated at elite French schools and institutions, and helped the French control Annam, a province of Indochina. The effort of Vietnamese collaborators led to sharp polarization between the peasant class and the wealthy landowning elite during the occupation, and long after.

Over time, Vietnamese culture started to become uprooted. Places of education taught French, and businesses of significance conducted trade in this language. Traditional Vietnamese temples or monuments that had historical value would be razed, with the buildings replacing them being styled after French architecture. Places were extensively given French names. If one wanted to enter the government, converting to Catholicism was preferable over Buddhism, which constituted a majority of the country. Not only was there economic exploitation, but cultural values were being eroded, and replaced with French ones almost overnight.

Taxes under the French bureaucracy were heavy and extensive. Not only were common goods taxed, but there was also a tax on wages paid, a voting tax, stamp taxes, etc. If Vietnamese peasants were unable to pay these various taxes (and they typically were unable to), wealthy village landowners or creditors would give them loans at usurious interest rates. The goal of this was to either gain whatever the peasant held in terms of property, to put them into perpetual debt, or both. If unable to pay colonial taxes, peasants were made to sell precious goods such as family heirlooms, their land, or even had to sell off their children for labor. Even with these things being done, peasants were exploited by the Vietnamese collaborators and the French, with frequent physical punishment such as beatings, and jail time.

I apologize for the lack of professional citations, but I obtained this information from Ngo Vinh Long’s book, Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants Under the French.