Vietnam French Influence

Despite Vietnam being considered a developing country, the CIA released an estimate that over 93% of the total population, 15 years or older, can both read and write ("Field Listing :: Literacy"). Vietnam is a country in Southeast Asia that lies on the eastern border of the Indochina. The relations between Vietnam and France began as early as the 18th century. But the French officially formed French Indochina in October 1887 which included current day Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. With the French came imposition of French ideals, implantation of a French based government and exploitation of Vietnam’s natural’s resources. Eventually as time went by, many political and nationalist parties started to take form to oppose the French rule. These resistance …show more content…
To be able to take advantage of Vietnam for its resources in full potential, the French had to insert itself with their own governmental system. The online encyclopedia Encyclopædia Britannica exclaims that because the French took the role as the “new government”, “After several periods of reforms and concessions to local nationalist sentiment, Vietnamese officials were employed only in minor positions and at very low salaries, and the country was still administered along the lines laid down” (“Vietnam” Encyclopædia). To ease arising conflicts between nationalist and French rule, the French placed very few natives into the law system to look as though the Vietnamese still had some say of what happens to their country. This was however was a grand illusion .The Vietnamese now had very little control of their own country because the Vietnamese officials were so lowly ranked in their government that they couldn’t manage to produce any change. Once in full governmental control of Vietnam, the French placed in their own Governor who would represent the values of the French over the people of Vietnam. From 1897 to 1902 Paul Doumer was Governor-General of French Indochina. Mintz & McNeil’s excerpt from Digital History supports, while governing, Doumer purposed introducing opium into the Vietnamese market. Once enough were addicted, Doumer significantly increased the taxes …show more content…
Over the years of reign, the French had little to no regulation in relations to factories. Alpha History’s Llewellyn says that, “Conditions were particularly poor on plantations owned by French tire manufacturer Michelin. In the 20 years between the two world wars, one Michelin-owned plantation recorded 17,000 deaths” (Llewellyn). Due to the fact there were little to no labor rights in Vietnam, many companies could set up HQ with very little restrictions on what safety laws were required to its employees. Because of this, many people died since the companies did not care about hazards in their plantation for there were very little repercussions that large companies had to face. Once the Vietnamese saw how their country was falling apart, World Book’s own Patricia Pelley stated, “Various nationalist associations and societies emerged, as did a number of political parties. These parties included the Vietnamese Nationalist Party, Indochinese Communist Party, and the New Vietnamese Revolutionary Party” (Pelley). The groups formed form a common understanding between many individuals that their way of living was below their expectations. All these parties had one common goal; overthrow the discordant colonial rule. Though these parties differed greatly on their ideas on how to rid Vietnam of this disease, they all genuinely wanted to restore the