33.6 The far east: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 6/6)

French crisis and some gunboat activity and blockades, the Siamese yielded and abandoned all claim to territory east of the Mekong. In 1897 the King of Siam paid an extended visit to the European capitals. (Ref. 8 , 276 )

Vietnam: french indochina

At the beginning of this l9th century most of present day North and South Vietnam and Laos, at one time all together called French IndoChina, was ruled by the Emperor of Annam and the region was predominantly Chinese in culture, with the empire acknowledging the suzerainty of the Chinese emperor. After a long period of dynastic struggles, the domain had been re-united by Gia Long (1802-1820) and he had been supported by the French missionary, Pigneau de Behaine. The French Catholics had freedom of action until after 1820 when a series of anti-Christian emperors came to power and they were then persecuted for 60 years. Because of that the French, with some Spanish, bombarded Tourane on the coast in 1858 and soon the French occupied Saigon in what was then called Cochin China. Subsequently the French explored both the Mekong and the Red rivers. About 1873 Francis Garnier, with a handful of men, attacked and took Hanoi and most of the Red River delta. In 1874, by a treaty signed at Saigon, the Annam emperor was forced to give a promise that his foreign policy would coincide with that of France and that he would recognize the French possession of Cochin China in exchange for the return of Hanoi. But the emperor appealed to China for aid and by 1885 France was at war with China. In the end France won control of all Annam and protective power over Cambodia and by 1893 had acquired a protectorate over Laos, which had long been in dispute between Siam and Annam. Paul Doumer, as governor-general over the vast French Indo-China, inaugurated far-reaching- reforms which modernized the region, but there was continued resistance to the westerners. The opposition in Annam was led by De Tham from after 1895 until well into the 20th century and there were revolts in Cambodia and Saigon in the 1885-1887 period. (Ref. 119 , 8 )

Malaya

When Holland fell to French revolutionary troops in Europe, the British usurped Malacca and various southeastern Asian islands from the Dutch. Lt. Governor Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founded Singapore in 1819 and it was soon to become a strategic and commercial center of the region. The Dutch, of course, were unhappy and all was not settled until the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, drawing a line through the straits of Malacca, with the English holding Singapore and Malacca, but giving up a west Sumatran settlement. There was a steady influx of Chinese laborers into the peninsula after 1850, with some working in the tin mines and some turning to piracy. The British abolished import duties on tin in 1853 and by 1900 Malaya furnished nearly 1/2 the world's supply. The rule of the British East India Company ended in 1867 and thereafter the Malayan Straits settlements had the status of a crown colony. Rubber was first grown there experimentally in 1894. (Ref. 8 )

Indonesia and adjacent islands

The British took Java from the Dutch in 1811, although after the fall of Napoleon in 1815 they restored many of the Dutch possessions, as noted above, retaining chiefly Singapore. It was during the English occupation in 1814, however, that the governor of Java, Thomas Raffles, learned of the ruins of Borobudur (see pages 501-2,531 and 567) and he initiated some minor cleaning work that was carried on later on a small scale by the Dutch for the remainder of the century. The first real reconstruction work was not carried out until the 20th century. (Ref. 286 ) In 1825 the Javanese revolted against the Dutch under the native leader, Dipo Negora, and it took 5 years for the Dutch to quiet things down. They then extended their control into the interior, forcing a new culture system, which involved government contracts, crop control and fixed prices, all very lucrative to the westerners. Quinchona plantations were established in Java in 1854, giving Europeans the first reliable source of the right kind of bark to supply quinine to protect them in their world-wide expansion. In 1,886 the Dutch even sent medical teams to the Indonesian colonies to study Beri-beri and they discovered the essence of the vitamin requirements, although the details were not actually clarified until after the turn of the century.

In the 1840s Great Britain again entered this area with a charter for the North Borneo Company which was to have a protectorate over Sarawak, with James Brooke becoming the Rajah of Sarawak. This upset the Dutch, but eventually by a treaty in 1891 the two European countries defined their respective domains in Borneo, with the Dutch retaining the larger part. (Ref. 8 , 140 , 211 )

The Philippines continued under Spanish control through most of the century, with the Spanish having great difficulty subjugating the war-like Moros. Although the growing of tobacco, sugar and hemp had been promoted, Manila was not officially opened to foreign traders until 1834. The Jesuit priests who had been expelled from the island in the last century now returned and gained much power and property. It was in opposition to that clergy that much sentiment arose for independence, with the rebels being led by Emilio Aguinaldo. When the Spanish-American war broke out, the Americans took Manila while Aguinaldo led a new insurrection. At the war's end, to the Philippine leader's great disappointment, the islands gained only American sovereignty, instead of Spanish. He then led still another revolution against the United States in 1899, but this quickly subsided to merely guerrilla warfare, although it cost 7,000 American casualties by the time of its termination in 1902. (Ref. 8 )

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