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| 1885–95 |
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| The French carried out a program to pacify Tonkin and Indochina generally. There were countless revolts in the interior; those in Tonkin were led by the formidable guerrilla insurgent De Tham (Hoang Hoa Tham, d. 1913). | 1 |
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| 1887, Oct |
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| Cochin China, Cambodia, Annam, and Tonkin were administratively united as the Union de l'Indochine française, or the Indochina Union, which continued in place until 1945. | 2 |
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| 1893 |
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| France acquired a protectorate over Laos, the interior region along the Mekong River that had long been in dispute between Annam and Siam, after a British armada confronted the Siamese king. In lands under their control, the French colonial administrators pursued a policy of “assimilation,” whereby French-speaking Vietnamese would enter the French cultural sphere, ruling at the lower levels of their own society. | 3 |
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| 1897–1902 |
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| Paul Doumer (1857–1932) served as governor-general of French Indochina. He inaugurated the first far-reaching reforms and administrative and fiscal arrangements for the modernization of the region. He resided in Hanoi, ruling Cochin China through its governor and the four protectorates (Cambodia, Annam, Tonkin, and Laos) through French résidents supérieurs. The government held monopolies on salt, opium, alcohol, and all public facilities. Coal mines and rice plantations were opened with French funding. The École Française d'Extrême-Orient was established (1898 in Saigon; moved to Hanoi in 1900) as an elite institution for the study of all East Asian cultures and civilizations. (See Vietnam, 1902–1945) | 4 |
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