What was the impact of French colonisation in Vietnam?
This is not a cut and paste from Wiki. The French originally colonised Vietnam in order to have a naval base from which to protect/enhance trade with China. Natural resources were an element but the French did not originally plan a huge occupation: in fact the rubber industry did not exist at all until much later. Catholic priests- because religious types were always on the vanguard of colonisation- moved there. The French took advantage of the ethnic divisions in the country, and its lack of communications. They wanted a colony also to counter the influence of the British and Dutch in the region. The French assisted communications and agricultural development, for instance building a railway connecting Tonkin in the north to Annam in the South, and building vast works to control flooding of the Red River Delta and allow vastly increased agricultural output. A Frenchman translated the language into a written form, which is why Vietnamese is usually rendered in Western-style characters.
