urge towards conquest and more assertive colonialism. It is within this
framework that France appropriated Cambodia (making it a protectorate
from 1863), Vietnam (then divided into Tonkin, Annam, and Cochin
China; theWrst two protectorates from 1884, the third already a colony
from 1862) and Laos (a protectorate from 1893) (map 3). For this diverse
group of countries the name, Indochine, had been invented in 1810 by a
French geographer, Conrad Malte-Brun (Malleret 1969: 43). It was thought to
encompass the historical essence of the region formed by migrants from India
but then dominated by the Chinese. The study of antiquities came as part and
parcel of the colonial mission of understanding the colonial subject. It was
part of France’s eVort to obtain a basic knowledge of her colony, based on
mapping and the study of the native populations, their customs and lan-
guages. The concern with the ruins, inscriptions, and coins of the Khmer and
the Cham ancient civilizations had an obvious place in the formation of this
understanding of the subaltern.
In a nutshell, two main phases can be distinguished in French archaeology
in Indochina before the First World War. In the earliest period French colonial
activities centred on Cambodia and Cochin China. Expeditions with the
purpose of creating a topographical and cultural knowledge of the territory
started when the situation allowed, mainly from the early 1860s, and covered
areas either colonized or soon to be colonized. In Cambodia the re-discovery
of the Khmer monuments and inscriptions of Angkor (which had beenWrst
reported by the Portuguese in the 1580s) stirred admiration. In Vietnam those
interested in antiquities centred their attention on Cham ruins and coins.
There were no archaeologists as such to begin with. In the early days of the
colony the bulk of the eVort devoted to monumental archaeology, epigraphy
and numismatics was undertaken by individuals linked to the army and the
colonial administration. It would only be in the second phase, from the 1880s,
that a timid institutionalization started in the metropolis with the creation of
the Muse ́e Indochinois in the Trocadero, Paris, in 1882. At the turn of the
century the foundation of the E ́cole Franc ̧aise d’Extreˆme Orient (French
School of the Far East, EFEO), and almost immediately thereafter of the
Directorate of Museums and Historical Monuments of Indochina, would
mean that the most important institutions dealing with the study of Indo-
china’s antiquities were no longer in France, but in the colony. A clear
distinction was made in this period between monumental archaeology—the
archaeology of civilization—and prehistoric archaeology. None of the insti-
tutions so far mentioned in this paragraph dealt with prehistoric archaeology.
Until the First World War, studies of prehistoric material were undertaken by
adiVerent set of scholars, and were connected to their geographical and
ethnographic interests (Chapter 10).
South and South East Asia 231