, , UPSC STUDY MATERIAL, 0
  • 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, small Catholic communities, a fondness for baguettes and croissants, and some pretty colonial architecture are all that remains of visible French influence in Southeast Asia.
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