French Indochina, officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1947 as the Indochinese Federation, was a grouping of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia until its demise in 1954. It comprised Cambodia, Laos, the Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan, and the Vietnamese regions of Tonkin in the north, Annam in the centre, and Cochinchina in the south. The capital for most of its history (1902–1945) was Hanoi; Saigon was the capital from 1887 to 1902 and again from 1945 to 1954.
The First Indochina War was fought between France and Việt Minh, and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 20 July 1954. Việt Minh was led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.
The State of Vietnam was a governmental entity in Southeast Asia that existed from 1949 until 1955, first as a member of the French Union and later as a country. The state claimed authority over all of Vietnam during the First Indochina War, although large parts of its territory were controlled by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
The kip is the currency of Laos since 1955. Historically, one kip was divided into 100 att (ອັດ).
The Banque de l'Indochine, originally Banque de l'Indo-Chine, was a bank created in 1875 in Paris to finance French colonial development in Asia. As a bank of issue in Indochina until 1952, with many features of a central bank, it played a major role in the financial history of French Indochina, French India, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Djibouti, as well as French-backed ventures in China and Siam. After World War II, it lost its issuance privilege but reinvented itself as an investment bank in France, and developed new ventures in other countries such as Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
The piastre de commerce was the currency of French Indochina between 1885 and 1954. It was subdivided into 100 cents, each of 2~6 sapèques.
Phạm Hùng was a Vietnamese politician and the 2nd Prime Minister of the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam from 1987 to 1988.
The Generals' Affair was a political-military scandal that happened under the French Fourth Republic during the First Indochina War. It lasted from September 1949 to November 1950.
The Henri Martin affair was a political-military scandal that occurred under the French Fourth Republic during the First Indochina War in the early 1950s. Henri Martin, a French communist (PCF) activist, was arrested by the military police in 1950 for sabotage, convicted and imprisoned until 1953.
The Provisional Central Government of Vietnam was a French-associated entity proclaimed in Vietnam during the First Indochina War. It was created as a transitional government replacing the French protectorates of Tonkin and Annam, until Cochinchina could be reunited with the rest of the country under a unified French-associated administration.
Between 1878 and 1885, the Cochinchina piastre was the currency of the French colony of Cochinchina. It was replaced by the French Indochinese piastre after the creation of a unified administration for Cochinchina and the other French protectorates and colonies in the Far East on 22 December 1885.
The cash, also called the sapek or sapèque, is a cast round coin with a square hole that was an official currency of Vietnam from the Đinh dynasty in 970 until the Nguyễn dynasty in 1945, and remained in circulation in North Vietnam until 1948. The same type of currency circulated in China, Japan, Korea, and Ryūkyū for centuries. Though the majority of Vietnamese cash coins throughout history were copper coins, lead, iron and zinc coins also circulated alongside them often at fluctuating rates. Coins made from metals of lower intrinsic value were introduced because of various superstitions involving Vietnamese people burying cash coins, as the problem of people burying cash coins became too much for the government. Almost all coins issued by government mints tended to be buried mere months after they had entered circulation. The Vietnamese government began issuing coins made from an alloy of zinc, lead, and tin. As these cash coins tended to be very fragile, they would decompose faster if buried, which caused the Vietnamese people to stop burying their coins.
The 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment was an airborne regiment of the Foreign Legion in the French Army which dated its origins to 1948. The regiment fought in the First Indochina War as the three-time reconstituted 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion, the Suez Crisis and Algerian War, but was dissolved along with the 10th Parachute Division and 25th Parachute Division following the generals' putsch against part of the French government in 1961.
Émile Raymond Georges Marius Boudarel was a French academic and militant communist who was accused of torturing French prisoners for the Viet Minh during the First Indochina War.
The Tirailleurs indochinois were soldiers of several regiments of local ethnic Indochinese infantry organized as Tirailleurs by the French colonial authorities, initially in Vietnam from 15 March 1880. The most notable, and first established, of these units were the Tonkinese Rifles.
Jean Letourneau was a French lawyer and politician. He was a lifelong Christian Democrat. During World War II (1939–45) he was active in the French Resistance. After the war he was a deputy in the national legislature from 1945 to 1956, and held various ministerial posts. His most important office was that of Minister, or Minister of State, for Relations with Associated States. He held office between 1950 and 1953. In this role he was responsible for policy in French Indochina during the struggle of the people of those countries for independence. He was strongly anti-communist and in favor of maintaining French authority in the region.
Christopher E. Goscha is an American-Canadian historian specializing in the history of the Cold War in Asia, decolonization, and the wars for Vietnam. He teaches the history of international relations, the Vietnam Wars, and world history at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada since 2019.
The Khải Định Thông Bảo was a French Indochinese sapèque coin produced from 1921 until 1933, the design of the coin was round with a square hole that was used for stringing them together. Khải Định became Emperor of Annam in 1916 the funding for the production of new cash coins was reduced by the Hanoi Mint which lead to the demand of the Vietnamese market for low value denominations to not be met, furthermore, after Hanoi reduced funding for the Thanh Hóa Mint, which until that time was producing enough low denomination cast cash coins to meet the market's demands, which caused most, but not all, of the production of cash coins at the mint to cease in 1920. In response a new committee was formed in Hanoi which ordered the creation of machine-struck Khải Định Thông Bảo cash coins, these are the first machine-struck four character Thông Bảo (通寳) coins in Vietnam with the reigning emperor's name as the French government had prior tried to introduce a Cochinchinese 2 sapèque coin that continued under French Indochina that weighed 2.05 grams and had a nominal value of 1⁄500 piastre, later the colonial government of the French Protectorate of Tonkin had unsuccessfully tried to introduce a zinc milled sapèque produced by the Paris Mint with a nominal value of 1⁄600 piastre from 1905 until 1906. Unlike the earlier attempts at producing machine-struck cash coins by the colonial French authorities the Khải Định Thông Bảo proved to be much more successful as the first series had a production of 27,629,000 coins while the second series greatly exceeded this with around 200,000,000 coins produced in Huế, Haiphong, and Hanoi. The Khải Định Thông Bảo continued to be produced long after the death of Emperor Khải Định under his successor Bảo Đại until it was phased out by the Bảo Đại Thông Bảo (保大通寳) in 1933.
Raymonde Dien was a French communist activist. She became known for being imprisoned for ten months in 1950 after a protest against the Indochina War.
The Institut d'Émission des États du Cambodge, du Laos et du Viet-nam, also known as the Institut d'Émission des États Associés, was a short-lived currency board operating in French Indochina in 1952–1954.
