French Imperialism in Indochina

Two weeks ago in my history class, there was a project on Imperialism. I was in a group with Elaine, Priscilla, and Grant. We wanted to do British Imperialism in China, but another group got it before us. I was running up to the teacher to the get that topic, but I was not fast enough and before we could decide on our second choice, all the easier topics were already taken. In the end, we had to do French Imperialism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. I was really frustrated because there wasn't much information in the history books on it.

For the project, each group had to present ten components of their topic. It could be on a poster board or for creativeness, it could be on a 3-D object. The topics include a time line, cause and effect chart, top 10 reasons for colonization,etc. I did the cause and effect chart, showed what Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam had that France wanted, a report on the current problems of the region, and I also made a mini pagoda to display the info.

Through this project, I was able to learn a lot about imperialism. In the early 1900s, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam were known as Indochina. The reason that the French wanted this region was because they wanted control of more land; they wanted to rival their enemy, Britain. Also, they wanted valuable resources such as rubber, rice, cotton, oil, and timber that was abundant in the region. With control of Vietnam, they would be able to secure a route to trade with Inner China. The event that sparked the invasion of France into Vietnam was when the Vietnamese killed French missionaries. They killed them because they felt threatened by foreign influence.

The French took over the region and forced them to trade with them. Knowing that what they were doing were wrong,the French tried to back up their actions by using the idea of Social Darwinism. Because of nationalistic values, they believed that they were superior to other ethnicities. They claimed that they were doing a good thing by imposing their "superior" culture and beliefs on the people of Indochina.

The most tiring part of the project was making the pagoda. Luckily, I had access to a cardboard cutter. That was able to save hours of time. I stayed up til 2AM working on it, making sure that it looked realistic and that the pieces were the right size. I was so tired that I woke up late and missed 0 period PE. Priscilla, also tried to make one, but in the end, we used mines. I felt kind of bad because she worked harder that me on it; she stayed up til 4AM and she also started making it a day before me. Also ,she had to buy the Styrofoam materials and it must have been tiring cutting it with scissors.The hard work was worth it though. Our project got a 225/200, so we all got extra credit.