ABSTRACT
Along with Cochinchina, Annam, Tonkin, Cambodia and Kouang Tcheou-Wan, Laos was one of six French possessions in Indochina, each holding a distinct, independent civil personality within the Indochinese Union. French sentiment by the 1880s was that as colonies were expensive, then they should pay for themselves. The other side of the coin, according to the logic, was that the colonies should be reserved exclusively as French markets. This was codified by the law of 11 January 1892 and which provided that the products of the mother country could enter the colony duty free while those of other countries were subject to the same tariffs as France. From the outset of the French conquest of Laos, colonial policy was directed towards helping private metropolitan commercial advantage. Colonial development policy thus sought, first, to establish the potential preconditions for capitalist expansion and, second, to expand the general conditions of production by fostering basic economic infrastructure.
