Cochinchina

Lower Cochinchina (Basse-Cochinchine), whose principal city is Saigon, is the newest territory of the Vietnamese people in the movement of Nam tiến (Southward expansion).

So during the French colonial period, the label Cochinchina moved further south, and came to refer exclusively to the southernmost part of Vietnam.

It is called Nam tiến (Chinese characters: 南進, English meaning "South[ern] Advance") by Vietnamese historians.

Vietnam (then known as Đại Việt) greatly expanded its territory in 1470 under the emperor Lê Thánh Tông, at the expense of Champa.

[7][8] They appended the "China" specifier to distinguish the area from the city and the princely state of Cochin in India, their first headquarters in the Malabar Coast.

[citation needed] In 1600 after returning from Tonkin, lord Nguyễn Hoàng built his own government in the two southern provinces of Thuận Hóa and Quảng Nam, today in central Vietnam.

In 1623, lord Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên established a trading community at Saigon, then called Prey Nakor, with the consent of the king of Cambodia, Chey Chettha II.

Over the next 50 years, Vietnamese control slowly expanded in this area but only gradually as the Nguyễn were fighting a protracted civil war with the Trịnh lords in the north.

In hopes of negotiating commercial treaties, the British in 1822 sent East India Company agent John Crawfurd,[11] and the Americans in 1833 sent diplomatist Edmund Roberts,[12] who returned in 1836.

[14]In 1867, French Admiral Pierre de la Grandière forced the Vietnamese to surrender three additional provinces, Châu Đốc, Hà Tiên and Vĩnh Long.

[16] The French authorities dispossessed Vietnamese landowners and peasants to ensure European control of the expansion of rice and rubber production.

[17] As they expanded in response to the increased rubber demand after the First World War, the European plantations recruited, as indentured labour, workers from "the overcrowded villages of the Red River Delta in Tonkin and the coastal lowlands of Annam".

[27] Under the slogan "Land to the Tillers, Freedom for the workers and independence for Vietnam",[28] in November 1940 the Communist Party in Cochinchina instigated a widespread insurrection.

After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the Communist-front Viet Minh had declared a provisional government (a Southern Administrative Committee) in Saigon.

In Saigon, the violence of a French restoration assisted by British and surrendered Japanese troops, triggered a general uprising on September 23.