ABSTRACT
A colonial war is always a civil war. Colonised people are both fighting the coloniser and being recruited by him. But this very recruiting can sometimes also be set in conjunction with the colonisers’ internal struggles. The hesitancies, the absence of a firm objective unanimously approved, the prevarications and jolts of French colonial expansion have often been emphasised. But it can also be shown that the constitution of native troops in Indochina-which was a decisive factor in the military conquest of Tonkin and Annam from 1883-was an important issue in internal French rivalries.1 Not only were native troops contributing to the seizing of their country, they also served to expose quarrels among the French.
