Crimes committed by France and Japan in Indochina

The French colonialism in Indochina, which is home to modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, dates back to the late 18th century, when France assumed control over central Vietnam and Pulo Condor Island in southern Vietnam.

With Britain taking the upper hand in the Anglo-French face-off in Burma, France was compelled to redraw its focus on eastern Indochina. Both European rivals were interested in South China’s natural resources, the way to which from Indochina lay through Burma and Vietnam.

Fearful of seeing their relations with the Europeans aggravate, up until the mid-19th century, the Vietnamese rulers followed the principle of providing all Western countries with equal opportunities to engage in trade on a non-contractual basis in Vietnam’s designated ports. However, the first French and British opium war against China and the first Anglo-Burmese War coupled with England’s increasing pressure on Siam exacerbated the Huế court’s (then the capital of Vietnam) apprehensions about the European countries’ aggressive plans. In an attempt to fence itself off from the Western military threat, Vietnam gradually ramped up its isolationist policy, refusing to allow the French and British to establish trade and diplomatic missions in the country, and avoiding trade and political treaties.

In the spring of 1847, two French ships with several missionaries aboard arrived in Da Nang and sank five Vietnamese ships with artillery fire.

As a result, the Vietnamese emperor issued edicts outlawing Christianity and denied French ships entry into Vietnam’s waters.

France’s attempt in 1857 to peacefully establish trade and diplomatic relations with Vietnam failed, and the conflict escalated into a full-scale war. On September 1, 1858, Admiral Rigault de Genouilly’s squadron attacked the port of Da Nang and made a landing hoping to capture the capital, Huế. However, the French failed to advance inland, and their ships left Da Nang.

Despite the temporary setback, the French troops, reinforced by Tagalog detachments from the Spanish colony of the Philippines, continued the offensive. The combined forces captured and destroyed the forts of Anghai and Dienghai. Admiral de Genouilly decided to concentrate his efforts on capturing Saigon. In February 1859, the French naval forces had a total of 40 warships and about 4,000 soldiers. On 18 February 1859, Saigon was taken. The French continued the offensive and soon occupied the main city of Gia Dinh province, which was a key strategic point in the Mekong Delta and defended the road inland.

In October 1860, France managed to send its full Pacific squadron to Saigon and intensify military operations in that city. By that time, Paris had decided that Saigon was to be the stronghold of French influence in Southeast and East Asia.

This seminal document was handed to the new Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy in the Pacific, Admiral Charner, who had 70 warships and about 4,000 soldiers at his command. In February 1861, he moved from China to Saigon and by early 1862 he had captured the three eastern provinces of Cochinchina and the island of Pulo Condor, after which France began to insist on talks with Huế in order to sign a treaty and to formalise and consolidate its new conquest in South Vietnam. The Vietnamese were unable to muster enough forces to fight and had to accept the terms of the Treaty of June 5, 1862 proposed by France, under which Vietnam ceded to France these provinces and the island of Pulo Condor.

Attempts by the Vietnamese to bargain for more favourable terms during the talks in Paris in 1863-1864 were unsuccessful. The treaty of 15 July 1864, according to which instead of annexing the three captured provinces that were returned to Vietnam, France planned to establish its protectorate over entire Cochinchina, and Saigon was to be declared a zone of French influence in South Vietnam, was not ratified by Paris. The three eastern Cochinchina provinces remained French possessions. The French government authorised further military expansion under Admiral de La Grandière, which resulted in the capture of the three western Cochinchina provinces in 1866.

The conquest of Cochinchina was regarded by the French colonial circles as a path to South China, which, they thought, could be reached via the Mekong River which flowed through Cambodia. Therefore, France decided to subdue this country as well. On August 11, 1863, Admiral De La Grandiere’s battleship anchored across from King Norodom’s palace in the Cambodian capital. On the same day, he signed a treaty establishing French protectorate over Cambodia. France obtained the right to appoint its own consul, who was supposed to be accorded the same honours as top-ranking Cambodian government officials. No representative of a foreign country (including England and Siam) could stay within the borders of that country without the prior consent of the governor of South Vietnam and the Cambodian government. The treaty deprived the Cambodian government of the right to pursue an independent trade policy. The country’s ports were opened to French merchant ships, and French nationals were allowed to move freely and trade without hindrance. At the same time, France undertook to maintain “peace and order in the country and to protect it from all kinds of external attacks.”  The French government was issued a permit to establish a coal base and warehouses for its ships and to harvest shipbuilding timber.

With Bangkok claiming Cambodian lands as its traditional suzerain, the Franco-Siamese Treaty was signed on July 15, 1867, which recognised France’s protectorate over Cambodia. However, its two richest provinces, Battambang and Siem Reap, went to Siam. The conquest of Cochinchina was finalised back then as well.

Direct rule was established in the conquered South Vietnamese dominion. The colonial public governance positions were mainly held by representatives of the colonial power. Initially, governor offices in Cochinchina were held by admirals who commanded French naval squadrons in the Pacific. In 1879, the first civilian governor, Charles Le Myre de Villers, was appointed to this post. He was a proponent of expedited assimilation of Cochinchina and believed that it should be as close as possible to a department of France in terms of administrative regulations. In 1880, in line with this political trend, an elected advisory body was set up in the form of the Colonial Council composed of ten Frenchmen and six people of Asian descent.

The Colonial Council’s main focus was on Cochinchina’s budget. Taxes on the liquor trade, opium and gambling revenues, as well as customs duties, were used to replenish it.

Back on its feet after the defeat in the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, France focused its efforts on conquering northern Vietnam, and captured Hanoi and several other fortresses in November-December 1873.

On March 15, 1874, a treaty was signed in Saigon which not only asserted France’s supremacy in North Vietnam, but also definitively established its suzerainty over all six provinces of South Vietnam, legally codifying Cochinchina’s status as a colony. Article 2 of the treaty imposed restrictions even on the Vietnamese emperor’s foreign policy. He was under an obligation to coordinate his moves with the colonial authorities. Under the treaty, France was granted the right to station two consulates with armed guards of one hundred men each, which were opened as early as September 15, 1875 in the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. On top of it, the French also obtained the right to control North Vietnam’s customs and taxation policies, which guaranteed them access to the river route leading to South China.

In the spring of 1883, the French troops became active in the Red River Delta and in March, leaving a small garrison in Hanoi, captured the city of Nam Dinh and Hon Gai with its coal deposits. In late May, the French Parliament voted for the provision of loans in the amount of 5.3 million francs to fund an expeditionary corps in North Vietnam to be increased to 4,000 men. In addition, the French squadron was ordered to strike directly at Huế in order to finally force the Vietnamese Emperor into signing a treaty on the French protectorate over Tonkin, which was effectively signed on August 25 of the same year by new Vietnamese Emperor Nguyen Phuc Ung Chan.

However, the most important fortresses within the Red River Delta and the foothills of North Vietnam remained under the rule of the Qing Empire.

Meanwhile, France continued to build up its expeditionary corps in Indochina, bringing its strength to 17,000 men.

As a result, the French were able to take over the fortresses held by Chinese troops. This forced the Qing court to start talking with France and to sign the Treaty of Tianjin (Preliminary Agreement) on friendship and neighbourly relations on May 11, 1884. The Qing Empire pledged to withdraw its troops from North Vietnam, recognise all treaties signed between Vietnam and France and open the Vietnam-China border to French trade. Signing the treaty with China made it possible for the French government to draft a new treaty of protectorate over North Vietnam, which was signed in Huế on June 6, 1884. This treaty perpetuated the loss by Vietnam of independence and state sovereignty, stripped its emperor of the right to conduct an independent foreign policy and gave the French authorities “overall control over the implementation of the protectorate”, which allowed them to directly intervene in the country’s domestic affairs. The treaty also spelt out the division of the country by imparting different statuses to its parts. North Vietnam was to be a protectorate with a higher degree of control exercised by the French. French residents were appointed to all key urban centres to oversee the Vietnamese administration and were authorised to dismiss objectionable officials. The colonial authorities took over customs administration as well. Finally, extraterritoriality was applied with regard to foreigners in Tonkin.

At the same time, the Central Vietnam protectorate, with Huế as its capital, was more liberal. Here, too, though, the administration of customs and public works was withdrawn from the purview of central authority, and the large Quyen Yon and Da Nang were opened to free trade. At the same time, French troops were stationed at the seaport of Thuanang on the outskirts of the capital and in Huế itself, where the French Resident-General was to be stationed. The governance of the provinces, however, was left in the hands of the Vietnamese administration.

After the signing of the peace treaty in 1884, the colonial authorities organised a lavish ceremony in the throne room of the imperial palace in Huế.

By early 1885, the French expeditionary corps in Vietnam had 30,000 men. On February 13, the French managed to take Lang Son, but the Chinese units put up fierce resistance and managed to take the fortress back in March. The French troops, suffered heavy losses and were forced to retreat. In June 1885, the new French government signed the Treaty of Tianjin on Peace, Friendship and Commerce with the Qing Empire, which recognised France’s protectorate over Vietnam and renounced its suzerainty over it. The treaty also authorised direct trade between the provinces of South China and Tonkin, and Lao Cai and Lang Son were granted the status of open areas with consular representation. In addition, France obtained the exclusive right to build railways in China. Finally, a special bilateral commission was set up to agree on the exact location of the Vietnam-China border.

In December 1885, the French obtained Siam’s consent to establish its vice-consulate in the Lao principality of Luang Prabang, which was a vassal of Bangkok. Under the pretext of defending against the attacks on French subjects, in May 1893, Lao territories on the left bank of the Mekong River were occupied by France, which, in July of the same year, after two of its warships had been shelled at the mouth of the Chaophraya River forced Siam to sign a treaty on October 3, which formally assigned the left bank of the Mekong River to Paris. In February 1904, the Bangkok court also had to cede to the French two right-bank Laotian provinces of Champasak and Xaignabuli, as well as Cambodian areas Moluprei, Tonlerepu, and the Preah Vihear district, and, in 1907, the Cambodian provinces of Battambang and Angkor, which were earlier seized by Siam.

The division of the main spheres of influence in Indochina between the European powers thus came to an end. Siam was turned into a buffer country between colonial possessions of France and Great Britain, and its northern and eastern regions along the left bank of the Mekong, including the Laotian territories, became the French sphere of influence as a demilitarised 80 km-wide strip. The final “pacification” of North Vietnam and the creation in October 1897 of the Indochinese Union, which was placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Commerce and Colonies, made it possible for the French colonial circles to start a policy of economic “development” of the newly conquered possessions.

A governor general was at the head of the Indochinese Union. The High Council of Indochina was established under the governor general as an advisory body. In 1897, two local representatives were allowed to join it. In 1928, it was transformed into the Grand Council of Economic and Financial Interests of Indochina, which admitted representatives of the local elite. The colonial authorities relied on the army and police, which were made up of French nationals and local people. The French administration concentrated judicial functions, customs inspections, and financial control.

From late 19th century the number of French officials steadily increased and by the 1920s, France’s colonial apparatus was many times over that of the British in India in proportion to the Vietnamese population. The policy of “direct rule” in the French colonies led to such consequences.

The living conditions of the locals deteriorated significantly. For example, in Cambodia, since November 1911, civil and criminal codes based on French legislation came into force for the local population, but adjusted for local legal regulations. They provided for measures restricting the freedom of a predominantly rural population. A peasant could not travel freely around the country or get employed without a special certificate of tax payment, and an identity card with the owner’s fingerprints. In the rural areas, it was forbidden, without letting the authorities know, to provide overnight accommodation to “unknown” individuals, etc. Any violation of the code was punishable by fine or imprisonment.

The economic life in Indochina was controlled by the Indochinese Bank, which affected the peasantry, most of whom were small farmers. In order to pay taxes, which with the establishment of the colonial rule began to be levied in cash, the peasant was forced to switch to the production of the export technical crop - hevea (rubber), as well as to expand the planting of traditional crops such as rice and corn, most of which were exported. However, the yields of rice, which was part of the local population’s staple diet, were extremely low, which led to a sharp decline in its consumption, including in the key rice-producing areas of Vietnam and Cambodia. Long distances between these areas and the market increased the dependence of local producers on intermediaries. Lack of cash forced peasants to take out loans from foreign usurious capital. The interest ran very high and the debts steadily piled up.

The colonisers’ activity was aimed at creating a class of large landowners from the feudal upper class, or from representatives of the emerging national bourgeoisie, government officials, etc. European companies or individuals who received large land plots as concessions became large landowners.

The living conditions of the labourers (coolies) on the rubber plantations in Cochinchina were particularly appalling. The working day lasted up to ten hours, and meagre wages hardly covered the cost of food and treatment in case of illness. Reports from the Labour Inspectorate show that in the plantations of the Rubber A.L. Co. in Bien Hoa province, 36 hired labourers out of 174 died during the first ten months of 1927. Death rates ran high among Vietnamese labourers in the tin ore fields of Khammouane Province in Laos.

As the French administration continued to develop its colonies, it increasingly sought to impose on the local population the bulk of costs that went into maintaining the colonial and local administration, and carrying out all kinds of works there that ensured the most favourable terms for the French capital.

France resorted mostly to direct taxation with little investment in industry. French colonialism sought to offset its weak economic position in the colonies by developing an administrative and bureaucratic apparatus of coercion, since the extra-economic method of exploiting the colonies was ultimately the most acceptable option for Paris, given the generally lopsided development of the French economy, the weakness of its commercial and industrial bourgeoisie with a relatively highly developed finance capital.

Revenue from direct and indirect taxation, as well as customs duties, was among the main sources of revenue for the Indochinese Union. Everyone paid taxes for everything: in addition to the taxes mentioned above, there was a per capita tax on all family members from elderly to newborns, taxes on land, houses, and all animals from buffalo to dogs, coconut and sugar palms, banana trees, boats, fishing nets, wine jars, nuts, etc. According to the most conservative estimates, direct taxes accounted for 50 percent of the revenue part of the budget, the bulk of which was spent on the bloated administrative apparatus.

A significant portion of the colonial budget was made up of the revenue from the monopolies, primarily, liquor and opium. The latter was grown in the mountainous regions of northern Vietnam and Laos inhabited by minority ethnic groups whose strongest clans competed with each other for the right to trade. The opium department of the Customs Service was created by Governor General (President of France from 1931-1932) Paul Doumer in 1897. In 1920, the opium trade provided over 37 percent of the budget of French Indochina. In addition to supplying opiates to the mother country, the colonial administration went to great lengths to encourage their consumption, primarily in Vietnamese cities, which was in stark contrast with the traditional approaches, since in the pre-colonial period local rulers prohibited not only imports, but also the consumption of this drug by their subjects, rightly seeing it as a means of subjugating Asian states by Western powers. Apparently, the French achieved considerable success here. In 1934, the price of opium in Indochina reached 80 piastres, which meant a substantial addition to the colonial budget.

During the First World War, the French authorities were able to mobilise the material and human resources of their colonial possessions for the military needs of the parent country. From Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, 500,000 tonnes of rice and corn, 1,750 tonnes of rubber, 4,300 cubic metres of special timber, large quantities of cement, zinc, tin, tungsten and other goods to a total of about 11 million gold francs were exported to France. There was a subscription for war loans, and national defence bonds to the tune of 200 million francs were placed as well.

Labour from Indochina was used at the defence industry factories in France and during the construction of various military facilities. Vietnamese and Khmer soldiers fought in the ranks of the French army; in all, between 1914 and 1918, the French authorities mobilised about 100,000 men in Indochina (the Khmer began to join the French army in 1916, initially on a “voluntary” basis).

Major changes, forcibly introduced by the French into the traditional pre-colonial relations in Indochina could not but cause rejection on the part of almost all groups of the local population. From the early days of the conquests, the colonisers had to suppress numerous armed rebellions, including those by small ethnicities that broke out in various parts of the colonial empire.

In the 1870s, rebel Taipings, who took refuge in North Vietnam after suffering a defeat in China and acted in concert with Vietnamese peasants in the Red River delta provided fierce resistance to the French invaders in North Vietnam.

The mutiny of Vietnamese soldiers from the colonial army units of Thai Nguyen Province in August 1917 was the most notable armed uprising during World War I. This uprising marked the beginning of a new form of struggle that emerged largely as a result of the Go East Movement, whose members had received military training in Japanese schools. The French had to put in hard work before they could suppress this uprising. The colonial authorities noted that “the Thai Nguyen rebellion was exceptionally serious because it was fuelled by an agreement between the police and renowned revolutionaries.” In doing so, they quite rightly assumed that all of the above organisers of rallies, mutinies and rebellions were in one way or another linked to a broad-based anti-French organisation called the Vietnam Renaissance Society.

Resistance continued throughout the entire period of French rule in Cambodia. The uprising of the hill tribes against foreign oppression has particularly intensified after the French administration began systematically building rubber plantations in these areas. In 1918, a rebellion led by one of the Hmong clan leaders, Vue Pa Chay, swept northern Laos and Vietnam and was brutally suppressed in 1922. French military action on the Bolaven Plateau in southern Laos against the local peoples lasted from 1901 to 1936.

In some cases, as was the case with the Indochina Communist Party-led riot in the French military fortress of Yen Bai and in the North Vietnamese provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Ngai, where amid the global economic crisis of 1930, mass famine broke out, the colonial administration used troops and aircraft, and rebellious communities were subjected to massive reprisals.

Militarist Japan had long been hatching aggressive plans for territorial conquests under the banner of pan-Asian ideas of a Greater East Asia. After the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany was concluded in 1936, it attacked China without a declaration of war, and by October 1938 had seized all its central cities. With the outbreak of World War II, the period of “classical” colonialism ended in all colonial countries. The situation in Southeast Asia changed irrevocably after France capitulated in June 1940 and the pro-Nazi Pétain government came to power. The situation in French Indochina became quite specific.

In 1940, Admiral Jean Decoux, a Pétain protégé, was appointed governor general of Indochina. In contrast to other countries in Southeast Asia, where the Japanese occupation went hand in hand with the collapse of Western colonial regimes, in Indochina the occupation took place in the context of the French Vichy colonial administration’s willingness to cooperate with the Japanese occupiers.

For its part, Japan was also interested in cooperating with the French administration, since eliminating it could have paralysed the Indochinese economy, which would have led to serious problems in supplying Japanese troops in Southeast Asia. Japan could not allow the latter to happen, as for her Indochina was first of all a critical support base, which allowed her to directly attack the British Siam, Burma and Malaysia.

In an effort to weaken France’s position, Japan provoked a conflict between France and Thailand in late 1940. Thanks to Japanese “mediation,” it ended with the signing of an agreement on the surrender of French troops on May 9, 1941, as a result of which about 70,000 square kilometres of the territory of Laos and Cambodia, with a population of about 1 million people, came back under Thai control. Japan forced the French colonial authorities to sign on July 20, 1941 the Darlan-Kato Accords, or the so-called “agreement on joint defence” and thus completed the first phase of “peaceful” occupation of Indochina. It was authorised to deploy its troops in Southern Indochina and to use the naval bases of Saigon and Cam Ranh, which were key positions for striking Singapore and other US-UK bases in the region.

The second phase of the “peaceful” Japanese occupation was associated with the 1941 agreement under which Japan was able to bring 35,000 troops into Cochinchina and to use South Vietnamese airfields. This gave the Japanese access to the natural resources of Indochina, especially coal and non-ferrous metals, which the Japanese war industry needed badly. Orientation on exports and on supplying the occupying forces between 1939 and 1945 disorganised the Indochinese economy. Forced purchases, and, from 1943, the seizure of rice and the transport crisis that paralysed its import from Cochinchina to Tonkin and Annam, the cessation of imports from the parent country, and finally, the natural disasters and crop failures of 1944-1945 led to a famine in Tonkin in the spring of 1945 that claimed about two million lives.

Japanese policy in Cambodia was aimed at turning it into a Japanese military base and a cheap source of agricultural raw materials. Almost all foreign trade was under the control of the occupation authorities. At the request of the Japanese, the French authorities forced Cambodian peasants to sow part of their land with castor plants and other technical crops, which the Japanese military economy needed particularly badly.

The main irrigation canals fell into disrepair, and some arable land was abandoned. Between 1941 and 1948, the agricultural output fell by 20 to 30 percent. The collapse of the economy, inflation, and the rising cost of living caused by the war and the Japanese occupation sparked discontent in all groups of Khmer society, urban and rural alike. The situation of medium-sized and small artisans worsened; government officials, intellectuals, students and other segments of the urban population saw their living standards decline.

All of that was taking place amid of the French colonial administration of Indochina’s widespread propaganda of the greatness of the “liberators of the Asian peoples.”

The Decoux regime, which concentrated all levers of power in its hands, was openly authoritarian. On November 8, 1940, he abolished all elected bodies in Indochina. Then, in June 1941, the Grand Council of Economic and Financial Interests of Indochina was replaced by the Federal Council of Indochina composed of 25 representatives of the local elite appointed by the governor general, who abolished the principle of electivity as “demagogic.”

In 1941, a special Commissariat for Sport and Youth was created with the aim of developing the athletic training of young people and creating Nazi-like paramilitary organisations in their midst.

After the defeat of the Nazi troops at the Battle of Kursk and a turnaround in the course of World War II, Japan began to prepare the ground among the political groups of pro-Japanese orientation in Indochina for a possible political coup.

The Japanese position was complicated by the fact that since the summer of 1943 the “Free France” government led by Charles de Gaulle in Algeria started gearing up for the liberation of Indochina. As a result, in October 1944, De Gaulle’s army landed in Cochinchina, southern Annam, the mountainous regions of Tonkin bordering on China, and Laos with weapons and ammunition. General Mordan, who led the French anti-fascist resistance, drew up a plan of military action, whereby, if Japan were to be the first to start hostilities, the French units were to leave the main strategic points of Vietnam, to retreat to the mountainous border areas with China in Tonkin and Laos, and to wage guerrilla warfare throughout the country. In January 1945, this plan, which gave the Japanese the entire country even before the hostilities even began, was approved by Paris.

By late 1944, the apparent defeat of Hitler’s Germany, the landing of American troops in the Philippines, and the fall of the Vichy government in France had finally convinced the Japanese authorities that only a political anti-French coup would help them hold ground in Indochina. On March 9, 1945, an ultimatum was handed to Admiral Decoux demanding the immediate transfer to Japanese control of all French forces in Indochina. That same night, the Japanese army launched a surprise strike across Indochina. No one expected it in the south, and the Japanese took control of the situation within hours. Only the French garrisons in Huế and Hanoi who were warned of the impending Japanese attack met them with fierce resistance, which was eventually broken by superior enemy forces.

In less than 24 hours, most of the French troops in Indochina were disarmed. Only about 5,000 soldiers and officers of the French army group managed with heavy losses to make their way to the mountainous regions of North Vietnam and Laos and flee to China.

Following the military coup, the Japanese announced the creation of a formally independent Empire of Vietnam, the Kingdoms of Cambodia and Luang Prabang, which existed until August 1945.

The Japanese militarists continued to rampantly plunder and exploit Indochina, resulting in utter devastation, unprecedented inflation and price hikes. In the autumn of 1944, this was compounded by US air bombardment of the Central Vietnamese coast, which blocked the delivery of rice from Cochinchina to North Vietnam, leading to a famine that claimed nearly one million lives.

The French refused to recognise the independence of the peoples of Indochina in the post-war world. General Charles de Gaulle conveyed in a declaration of March 24, 1945 that “together with the overseas territories is has opened to civilisation, France is a great power. Without these territories, there is a danger of ceasing to be one.”

During the soon-to-begin First Indochina War (1946-1954), French troops committed numerous war crimes, including the killing of civilians, torture, rape, destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, and pillaging. In particular, the shelling of Haiphong in November 1946 killed up to 20,000 people, according to various estimates.

Particularly cruel punitive operations were carried out against the locals in the areas that supported the Vietnamese guerrillas. On November 29, 1947, in central Vietnam, the French burned the village of Michat, and the surviving civilians were taken to a bridge near the village and shot with machine guns (310 people died, including 157 children). In the spring of 1948, the same fate befell the village of Mithui (526 dead), and on 20 February 1951, the village of Сatbai was destroyed (178 dead).