The Debate on a Legal Code for colonial Cochinchina: The 1869 Commission

Historians have long recognised the fundamental importance of the withdrawal of Vietnamese mandarins from Cochinchina following the French colonial invasion. The departure of these scholar officials, first from the eastern provinces in the initial phase of the French advance which ended in 1862 and then from the western provinces after these were occupied in 1867, forced the French colonial administration to adopt a policy of direct rule. There has been some confusion over the nature of this rule, not least because various French officials in the eighteen sixties were able to convince themselves that the use of Vietnamese names for the positions filled by French administrators somehow represented a continuation of the Vietnamese pattern of administration. In particular the impression has remained that Vietnamese officials continued to play an important part in the administration of justice in Cochinchina until the advent of civil government for the colony in 1879.