ABSTRACT
L’affaire du Tonkin, which constituted the most important part of the French seizure of Eastern Indochina, was the biggest colonial undertaking engaged in by France before the First World War. This chapter focuses on why did contemporaries and historiography have a blurred view of a set of events which played a considerable role in France and a decisive one in Indochina? The colonial war, as far as it can be defined from the Annam-Tonkin affair of the 19th century, is characterized by the almost general absence of battles, the rarity of large-scale movements and as having mostly the appearance of police actions. It combines the use of force with political means. And this use of force leaves but little room for unregimented units, giving wide scope to means of repression where the employing of natives combines the worst violence with political pressure.
