French Imperialism in Vietnam

The average individual in France was unaware of conditions in their African colonies. And the same can be said concerning French rule in Vietnam, where the French were equally oppressive. In the late nineteenth century, the French overthrew a feudal monarchy and fought long, extended armament campaigns against resistance to their rule. Many of Vietnams educated elite opposed French rule and would not work for the French, but the French found a hardly a(prenominal) opportunistic Vietnamese who would. In Vietnam, and elsewhere in Indochina, Frenchmen grabbed lands, and they built plantations that produced refuge and other forest products.In the first decade of the twentieth century, Frances colonial authorities in Vietnam encouraged French commercial enterprises. They built railroad tracks, roads and hydraulic works to serve these enterprises. Vietnam was a thickly populated, predominately peasant society, but projects that would earn served Vietnamese farmers were ignored. Viet nams farmers continued to suffer from the usual droughts and floods. Per capita rice consumption declined. And what had been Vietnams handcraft industry was destroyed.A new class of Vietnamese had come into being population who struggleed for the French as servants, or who labored in French-owned mines, on French-owned plantations, at French construction sites or in French-owned factories. The French paying them as little as they could hardly enough for survival, and sometimes not enough. As in Africa, the French were taxing the Vietnamese and drafting them to labor on public works. On one such project the Hanoi-Yunnan Phu railway 25,000 Vietnamese died. Conditions in Vietnam in general were creating a decline in Vietnams population.The French in Vietnam established a monopoly in the production of salt, wet beverages and opium. They taxed consumption of these. They encouraged Vietnamese to buy their opium, and money gained from their opium trade was an essential part of the colonial administrations income. A French company, Fontaine, held a monopoly in reservation and selling alcoholic beverages in Vietnam, and all other distilling was banned and sternly punished with imprisonment and confiscation of property. And in 1902 the colonial administration make buying alcoholic beverages compulsory, eachVietnamese village having to consume a definite amount in proportion to its population more of the behavior that French trade and government dare not perpetrate on people in France. In 1908, Vietnamese farmers responded to a rise in taxes by marchland to the French administration headquarters. For weeks, thousands of peasants picketed the governors office in Hue and made fervid speeches, not only against taxes but forced labor. The protest spread, and the French countered with ferocity. Demonstrators were gunned down.Whole villages were dismantled to the ground. Thousands were arrested, and two Vietnamese scholars who had spoken against French policies were executed. But in Vietnam and Africa, date French commercial operations were benefiting privately owned French companies, revenues from Frances colonies were not paying the cost of maintenance and administration. Average French taxpayers like British taxpayers were subsidizing their nations colonies. -________________________________________________________________________________________________