stablished the Nguyễn Dynasty, ruling under the name Gia Long.
French Vietnam
Vietnam's independence was gradually eroded by France – aided by large Catholic collaborator militias – in a series of military conquests between 1859 and 1885, after which the entire country became part of French Indochina. The French administration imposed significant political and cultural changes on Vietnamese society. A Western-style system of modern education was developed, and Roman Catholicism was propagated widely in Vietnamese society. Most of the French settlers in Indochina were concentrated in Cochinchina – the southern third of Vietnam – based around the city of Saigon.
Developing a plantation economy to promote the export of tobacco, indigo, tea and coffee, the French largely ignored increasing calls for Vietnamese self-government and civil rights. A nationalist political movement soon emerged, with leaders such as Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chu Trinh, Phan Dinh Phung, Emperor Hàm Nghi and Ho Chi Minh fighting or calling for independence. However, the royalist Can Vuong was defeated in the 1890s after a decade of resistance, and the 1930 Yen Bai mutiny of the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang was put down easily. The French maintained control of their colonies until World War II, when the war in the Pacific led to the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in 1941.
With the defeat of France in Europe in 1940, the French Third Republic was replaced by the Vichy Regime, to which the colony remained loyal. Heavily dependent on Nazi Germany, Vichy France was forced to surrender control of French Indochina to Germany's ally, Japan. The natural resources of Vietnam were exploited for the purposes of the Japanese Empire's military campaigns into the British Indochinese colonies of Burma, the Malay Peninsula and India. The Japanese occupation was a key cause of the Vietnamese Famine of 1945, which caused around two million deaths, equivalent to as much as
