Although France sought an extensive colonial empire in Asia, its defeat in the Napoleonic Wars left it with just a handful of Asian territories.
Those included Pondicherry, Mahe and Chandranagar in India and the 20th-century mandates of Lebanon and Syria, and more especially the key colony of French Indochina, what is now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
The population of Indochina was not very great but its area exceeded that of France.
In 1844,France acquired the right to intervene on behalf of the Christian people in China.
In 1858, France virtually got a protectorate over the Chinese catholic converts.
In 1893, when the French tried to extend their influence from Indo-china to Siam, Britain objected to a French naval blockade of Bangkok and the result was an agreement which preserved the integrity of Siam.
French attitudes about colonial subjects were, in some ways, quite different from those of their British rivals.
Some idealistic French sought not just to dominate their colonial holdings, but to create a “Greater France” in which all French subjects around the world truly would be equal.
French colonizers also felt the “White man’s burden” of bringing so-called civilization and Christianity to barbaric subject peoples.
On a personal level, French colonials were more apt than the British to marry local women and create a cultural fusion in their colonial societies.
As time went on, social pressure increased for French colonials to preserve the “purity” of the “French race.”
In French Indochina, unlike Algeria, the colonial rulers did not establish large settlements. French Indochina was an economic colony, meant to produce a profit for the home country.
Despite the lack of settlers to protect, France was quick to jump into a bloody war with the Vietnamese when they resisted a French return after World War II.
Today, smallCatholic communities, a fondness for baguettes and croissants, and some pretty colonial architecture are all that remains of visible French influence in Southeast Asia.