It was founded on 20 January 1900 with headquarters in Hanoi in what was then Tonkin protectorate of French Indochina.

After the independence of Vietnam, its headquarters were transferred to Phnom Penh in 1957, and subsequently to Paris in 1975.

[2] Its main fields of research are archaeology, philology and the study of modern Asian societies.

[3] Paul Mus was a member of EFEO since 1927, and "returned to Hanoi in 1927 as a secretary and librarian with the Research Institute of the French School of the Far East until 1940.

The differences between the three romanization systems are shown in the following table: The catalog of EFEO Publications, of some 600 titles, includes works on a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (archaeology, history, anthropology, literature, philology, etc.