Indochina Federation
인도차이나 연방
Indochina Federation refers to two distinct things. First, from 1941 it was the official name of the French Indochinese Union, established in 1887, the colonial administrative unit combining present-day Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with Guangzhouwan. Second, it denotes the project of integrating the three Indochinese states under Vietnamese leadership, rooted in the Indochinese Communist Party's line of a united Indochina and, after 1975, an object of Cambodian-Vietnamese rivalry and of international controversy in the 1980s.
In depth
The French colonial name
The French Indochinese Union was formed on 17 October 1887 from Annam, Tonkin, Cochinchina and the Kingdom of Cambodia. Laos became a French protectorate after the Franco-Siamese crisis of 1893 and was added to the union on 19 April 1899, the first time the three present-day countries formed a single administrative grouping. From 1941 the official name was the Indochinese Federation. It was a federation of French colonies from 1887 to 1949 and a confederation of French associated states from 1949 to 1954; France formally left local rulers in place as figureheads while gathering all powers in its own hands. Its capitals were Saigon (1887–1902, 1945–1954) and Hanoi (1902–1945). Colonial rule involved resource exploitation and only limited, uneven health and education improvements, while the Sûreté générale indochinoise ran large-scale surveillance and repression of anti-colonial activists even abroad. The Japanese coup of 9 March 1945 ended the colonial administration; Laos and Cambodia gained independence in 1953 and Vietnam with the Geneva Accords in 1954. The remnants of the Indochinese Federation were abolished on 30 December 1954.
The integration project
The idea of binding the territories of present-day Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia together grew out of the colonial period but emerged as an independent political line within the anti-colonial movement. In October 1930 the Vietnamese Communist Party was renamed the Indochinese Communist Party under Comintern directives; that party held to the unity of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and stressed a united Indochina in the anti-colonial struggle. After it was dissolved de jure on 11 November 1945, its lineage continued in the Communist Party of Vietnam, the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party.
After 1975 the project became an axis of conflict. The Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot feared that the Vietnamese communists were planning a Vietnam-dominated Indochinese federation and, as recorded with citation to Stephen J. Morris, Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia (1999), the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea 'believed the Vietnamese communists had never given up their dream of creating an Indochinese federation with Vietnam as the leader'. On that basis they attacked Vietnamese territory from May 1975. Vietnam's invasion in December 1978 toppled the Khmer Rouge and ended a Cambodian genocide that had killed 1.2–2.8 million people, but brought a decade of Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, international isolation and a Chinese punitive invasion in February 1979.
Vietnam-Laos relations were read in the same frame. On 18 July 1977 in Vientiane Phạm Văn Đồng and Kaysone Phomvihane signed a 25-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation (in force 31 October 1977), described as 'a key strategic component in Vietnam's conception of establishing an "Indochina Federation"'. A US Library of Congress country study records that the treaty defined a 'special relationship', legitimating the presence of Vietnamese soldiers in Laos and establishing preferential trade terms for Vietnam. The two countries set up the annual Vietnam-Laos Cooperative Commission, and from 1980 biannual foreign-minister meetings of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam were held.
Controversy and evidentiary caveats
During the 1980s Vietnam's regional opponents attributed to it a neo-colonial ambition to create an 'Indochina Federation', a phrase traceable to early pronouncements of the Indochinese Communist Party against French colonial structures. The same source states the charge was exaggerated and lost its currency after Vietnam withdrew its troops from Cambodia in 1989 and subsequently from Laos. The Third Indochina War (25 December 1978 – 23 October 1991) is described as interconnected military conflicts among communist factions over strategic influence in mainland Southeast Asia, not as a war for an Indochina Federation. The Cambodian fear rests on a secondary citation, and no evidence is offered that Vietnam adopted federation-building as official policy.