Mekong expedition of 1866–1868

The Mekong expedition of 1866–1868, conceived and promoted by a group of French colonial officers and launched under the leadership of captain Ernest Doudard de Lagrée, was a naval exploration and scientific expedition of the Mekong River on behalf of the French colonial authorities of Cochinchina. Its primary objective, besides scientific documentation, mapping, and the mission civilisatrice, was an assessment of the river's navigability in order to link the delta region and the port of Saigon with the riches of southern China and upper Siam (modern day Thailand). Ambitions were to turn Saigon into a successful commercial center in the model of Shanghai, which was partially controlled by several Western powers. The expedition's objectives were heavily influenced by broader French geopolitical thought, namely the consolidation and expansion of the French colonial empire, the containment of British Burma and the countering of British economic influence in the Southeast Asia.

Over the course of two years the expedition, which came to be known as the Mekong Exploration Commission, traversed almost 9,000 km (5,600 mi) from Saigon through 19th century Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar into China's Yunnan Province, finally arriving in Shanghai and mapping over 5,800 km (3,600 mi) of previously unknown terrain. Despite its explicit political and economic connotations, long after the classic Age of Discovery and the disappointment over the river's unsuitability as a trade highway, the expedition gained highest acclaim among scholars, in particular the Royal Geographical Society in London and "holds a special place in the European annals of discovery" as the first to reveal the Mekong valley region, its people, and southern China to Europeans.

Background

Having relieved the Siege of Saigon, Admiral Léonard Charner proclaimed the formal annexation of three provinces of Cochinchina into the French Empire on 31 July 1861. The event marks the beginning of the colonial era of France in Southeast Asia, followed by the founding of French Cochinchina in 1862 and the French protectorate over Cambodia in 1863. The government in Paris maintained a more realistic idea on these acquisitions than most of its colonial entrepreneurs as it became clear that Cochinchina was "...not to be a jewel in the French colonial empire." It had rather become a liability and the Ministry of the Colonies pondered options of retreat, strictly based on scholars' reports in French Indochina who measured Saigon's commercial success against the British dominated territories of Singapore and Shanghai. Contrary to these sober official conclusions, the lucrative trade of these two ports and the economic links to China via the Yangtze motivated the French colonial community in Saigon to speed up surveying the Mekong.