French Indochina was a French colony in southeast Asia. It was federation which consisted of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Kouang-Tchéou-Wan. Vietnam was made up of three provinces: Tonkin (North), Annam (Central), and Cochinchina (South). France obtained control over northern Vietnam following its victory over China in the Sino-French war (1884-1885). In 1887 French Indochina was formed from Annam, Tonkin, Cochinchina, which together constituted Vietnam, and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added after the Franco-Siamese War of 1893.
In 1902, the capital of French Indochina was moved from Saigon, in Cochinchina, to Hanoi in Tonkin. When World War II broke out, the colony was administered by Vichy France and was under Japanese occupation. Beginning in May of 1941, the Viet Minh, a communist army led by Ho Chi Minh, initiated insurgent operations against the Japanese, and from 1946 against French rule. This was known as the First Indochina War. In Saigon, the anti-Communist State of Vietnam, led by former Emperor Bao Dai, was granted independence in 1949. Following the Geneva Accord of 1954, the Viet Minh became the government of North Vietnam, but the Bao Dai government continued to rule in the South. The colonial administration of Annam was dissolved in 1955 and the region was split between North and South on the 17th parallel, as provided for in the Geneva Accord.
[...] Corps was a colonial expeditionary unit which belonged to the French Army. It was sent to French Indochina in 1945 at the end of World War II. Its name in French was "Corps Expéditionnaire [...]