"An important, well-conceived, and original piece of historical synthesis."—Peter Zinoman, author of The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam “Indochina is the first and best general history of French colonial Indochina from its inception in 1858 to its crumbling in 1954. It is the only work to avoid nationalist, colonialist, and anticolonialist historiographies in order to fully explore the ambiguity of the French colonial period. A major contribution to the national histories of France, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.”—Christopher Goscha, Université du Québec à Montréal

At the intersection of literary, cultural, and postcolonial studies, this volume looks at French perceptions of 'Indochina' as they are conveyed through a variety of media including cinema, literature, art, and historical or anthropological writings. The volume is long awaited, as France's memory of 'Indochina' is understudied compared to its relationship with its former colonies in West and North Africa. The book has contemporary urgency as the makeup of France's immigrant population changes and grows to include Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotioan populations.

Framed by political, ideological and historical developments and debates, each chapter of this volume develops a socio-cultural account of France's own understanding of its role in Indochina and its relationship with the colony.

How does a nation come to terms with losing a war—especially an overseas war whose purpose is fervently contested? In the years after the war, how does such a nation construct and reconstruct its identity and values? For the French in Indochina, the stunning defeat at Dien Bien Phu ushered in the violent process of decolonization and a fraught reckoning with a colonial past. Contesting Indochina is the first in-depth study of the competing and intertwined narratives of the Indochina War. It analyzes the layers of French remembrance, focusing on state-sponsored commemoration, veterans’ associations, special-interest groups, intellectuals, films, and heated public disputes. These narratives constitute the ideological battleground for contesting the legacies of colonialism, decolonization, the Cold War, and France’s changing global status.

For over a century French officials in Indochina systematically uprooted métis children—those born of Southeast Asian mothers and white, African, or Indian fathers—from their homes. In many cases, and for a wide range of reasons—death, divorce, the end of a romance, a return to France, or because the birth was the result of rape—the father had left the child in the mother's care. Although the program succeeded in rescuing homeless children from life on the streets, for those in their mothers' care it was disastrous. Citing an 1889 French law and claiming that raising children in the Southeast Asian cultural milieu was tantamount to abandonment, colonial officials sought permanent, "protective" custody of the children, placing them in state-run orphanages or educational institutions to be transformed into "little Frenchmen." The Uprooted offers an in-depth investigation of the colony's child-removal program: the motivations behind it, reception of it, and resistance to it. Métis children, Eurasians in particular, were seen as a threat on multiple fronts—colonial security, white French dominance, and the colonial gender order. Officials feared that abandoned métis might become paupers or prostitutes, thereby undermining white prestige. Métis were considered particularly vulnerable to the lure of anticolonialist movements—their ambiguous racial identity and outsider status, it was thought, might lead them to rebellion. Métischildren who could pass for white also played a key role in French plans to augment their own declining numbers and reproduce the French race, nation, and, after World War II, empire. French child welfare organizations continued to work in Vietnam well beyond independence, until 1975. The story of the métis children they sought to help highlights the importance—and vulnerability—of indigenous mothers and children to the colonial project. Part of a larger historical trend, the Indochina case shows striking parallels to that of Australia's "Stolen Generation" and the Indian and First Nations boarding schools in the United States and Canada. This poignant and little known story will be of interest to scholars of French and Southeast Asian studies, colonialism, gender studies, and the historiography of the family.

*Includes pictures *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "Without Empire France today would only be a liberated country. Thanks to her Empire she is today a victorious country." - French Guianan lawyer and politician, Gaston Monnerville The U.S. Naval Station Argentia, located in Placentia Bay, a sheltered harbor on Newfoundland Island, was the unlikely setting for one of the most pivotal summit meetings of the 20th century. The meeting took place on August 9, 1941. World War II was in its second year, the British had won the Battle of Britain, but were still encircled by German U-Boats, and the British fleet was being decimated in the North Atlantic. In North Africa, a contest of armor was underway as Axis and Allied armies fought for control of Egypt, while Britain and her Commonwealth allies stood alone against the mighty German Wehrmacht. Roosevelt, however, pictured a very different post-war world than his British counterpart, Winston Churchill. When he and Churchill met at what came to be known as the Atlantic Conference, Churchill's pleas for U.S. manpower and aid were accepted, but only under clear conditions. If the United States was to come to the aid of Britain, it would be for the purpose of defeating the Germans and the Japanese and not to support the insupportable institutions of empire. Britain and, by extension, France and Portugal, the only remaining major European shareholders in foreign empire, would have to commit to decolonization as a basic prerequisite of substantial U.S. assistance. Churchill, a vocal and forceful proponent of empire and a man of the generation that had conquered the world, did not receive this news well. On the other side of the world, British and allied European Asian colonies lay very much in the path of the Japanese imperial march into Southeast Asia. However, as the inevitability of war grew daily, the nationalist movement in India was also beginning to gather pace. Without India and Indian manpower, war with Japan would be lost before it could begin. The Indians in a sense could hold the British hostage, and ultimately, in exchange for Indian cooperation in the war, the British would first have to commit to a post-war independence process. Meanwhile, the British were not the only European power to take note of this development. The French too were a major imperial power with a great deal to lose from such a monumental change, but their view of the global chessboard was somewhat different. France lay under German occupation, and an armistice had been signed on behalf of the French nation by Marshall Philippe Pétain, commencing the era of Vichy France. In London, meanwhile, the firebrand French General Charles de Gaulle urged a continuation of the resistance, believing the French mainland to be only a small part of the picture. France was much more than just France. De Gaulle established the Free French movement in Britain, based on the loyalty and the ongoing Free French control of a majority of her overseas territories. The Free French movement and the Free French army based themselves in Francophone Africa. The saga of the Free French movement would impact the war in both North Africa and Europe, but most specifically, it would serve to radically redefine the French view of itself and her relationship with her overseas territories. Most importantly, it would set the tone for a style of decolonization very different from the British, and perhaps not surprisingly, things would not go smoothly, especially with the geopolitics of the Cold War affecting matters. French Indochina: The History and Legacy of the French Empire's Colonialism in Southeast Asia analyzes the colonization of Southeast Asia and what happened as a result of the decolonization. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the French in Southeast Asia like never before.

How colonial governments in Asia and Africa financed their activities and why fiscal systems varied across colonies reveals the nature and long-term effects of colonial rule.