ABSTRACT
Indo-China is obviously not a geographical unity. It divides into three dissimilar regions, each demanding a different policy. All of the south, the region centring on Saigon, is entirely agricultural and practically limited to rice-production, and to 1901 was the only developed region. Cultivation is still practically limited to the deltas of Cochin-China and Tonkin, with a little by primitive means round the Cambodian lake and the coastal districts of Annam. Plantation-rubber in Cochin-China absorbed twenty million francs of capital by 1920, and other crops followed,—sugar-cane all over the south, cotton in Cambodia, coffee in Tonkin. The north of the peninsula has been literally transformed by the growth of industry, the result being that Tonkin is to-day the most industrialized possession the French have. Indo-China’s next difficulty was perhaps even more pressing,—the intricate currency question, which also was more urgent here than in any other French colony.
