Economy of Vietnam
Until the French colonization in the mid-19th century, Vietnam's economy had been mostly agrarian, subsistence-based and village-oriented. French colonizers, however, deliberately developed the regions differently as the French needed raw materials and a market for French manufactured goods, designating the South for agricultural production as it was better suited for agriculture, and the North for manufacturing as it was naturally wealthy in mineral resources. Though the plan exaggerated regional divisions, the development of exports—coal from the North, rice from the South—and the importation of French manufactured goods stimulated domestic commerce.
Cochinchina Campaign
The Cochinchina Campaign (; ; ; ); is the common designation for a series of military operations between 1858 and 1862, launched by a joint naval expedition force on behalf of the French Empire and the Kingdom of Spain against the Vietnamese Nguyễn dynasty. Initially a limited punitive action against the persecution and execution of French (and to a lesser extent Spanish) catholic missionaries in Indochina, the ambitioned French emperor Napoleon III however, authorized the deployment of increasingly larger contingents, that subdued Annamese territory and established French military and economic dominance. The war concluded with the founding of the French colony of Cochinchina and inaugurated nearly a century of French colonial dominance in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.