Unequal colonial treaties in Indochina, overview

International audienceAfter the Franco-Spanish and French military conquest of the empire of Vietnam, some relevant treaty dates indicate the process of colonization: 1862 for Saigon, 1874-1875 for Hanoi and 1883-1884 for Hue. This presentation offers an overview of these various treaties from the beginning of colonization in 1858 to the establishment of the Indochinese Union in 1887 including Cambodia, Laos, and a dismembered Vietnam, divided into three parts, Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina. These two chronological boundaries are practical in delimiting the conquest and the establishment of a colonial administration. However, they remain irrelevant to the extent that there is a “before” 1858 (Traité de Versailles in 1787), and an “after” 1887 in particular with the Vietnamese responses to the colonization they were experiencing. Indeed, we can argue that the colonial situation of Vietnam extended until the end of the Indochina War in 1954.Studying all these official writings and situations, the circulations of the treaties, their intellectual construction and the difference of the interpretations seen through the eyes of the Indochinese and the French should invite us to write a new history of colonization from a more Asian, or at least decentralized, perspective