Conflicting conceptions of the state: Siam, France and Vietnam in the late nineteenth century

The first advance of French imperialism in Indochina had by 1867 gained for France the colony of Cochinchina and a protectorate over some two-thirds of present-day Cambodia. The Franco-Prussian war and events in Europe briefly distracted French attention from the Far East, but not for long. Once the expedition of Doudart de Lagree and Francis Garnier had shown conclusively that the Mekong could never serve as "a river road to China," interest shifted to the Red River. Hanoi was seized in November 1873. Attempts by Vietnamese Emperor Tu Due to reactivate Vietnam's tributary dependence on China (1879) only provided an excuse for further French encroachments. Tonkin was occupied and brought under French control (1883-1885), though resistance of one form or another continued well into the 1890s. The seizure of Tonkin and imposition of French protection over the Court of Hue (Annam) marked the second phase in the advance of French imperialism in mainland Southeast Asia, a phase which included the seizure of Lao territories east of the Mekong in 1893 plus later extensions in 1904 and 1907 comprising two Lao areas west of the Mekong plus the western provinces of Cambodia. The territories that came to constitute French Laos were surrendered to France through a series of treaties with Siam, which implicitly at least recognized prior Siamese suzerainty. Moreover they were claimed in the name of Vietnam, on the basis that these territories had at some time in the past paid tribute to the court of Hue. What is interesting about these developments is that the actors involved-rulers and statesmen of Siam, France, and Vietnam-held very different notions of sovereignty, territoriality, the nature of the state, and interstate relations. Most of the maneuverings and misunderstandings occurred because these different conceptions-Siamese, deriving ultimately from India; European; and Vietnamese derived from China-came into contention and were manipulated by the parties involved, either deliberately in order to gain advantage, or through igno-