Indo-China in 1931-1932

ON October 16, 1931, M. Paul Reynaud, French Minister for the Colonies, landed at Saigon. For the first time in the history of the country, a member of the French cabinet was visiting Indo-China for the purpose of devoting a few weeks investigating the situation in these Asiatic lands, some nine thousand miles distant from the mother-country. On his arrival, M. Paul Reynaud was received by the Governor-General, M. Pierre Pasquier, whose address of welcome testified the significance of this official visit and, at the same time, called attention the trying times through which the world was passing. I would have preferred, said M. Pasquier, to greet you in one of those periods of prosperity so favorable for the holding of brilliant gatherings and also for chimerical illusion. The severity of present conditions, however, will serve reveal you the needs of this country with more temperate accuracy and truth. The Minister for the Colonies was, in fact, setting foot in Indo-China at a time when the country was at the height of its development but suffering from a crisis which coincided with that which was being experienced all over the world. The causes of the difficulties besetting the Indo-Chinese Federation, which, in a more or less marked degree, affect its twenty million inhabitants, are simultaneously of a political, economic and social character. A study of some of these outstanding causes will enable the reader form an idea of the complexity of a situation for which certain remedies have already been found and applied. First of all, it should be mentioned that M. Pasquier has reduced the 1932 budget by about 20 per cent as compared with the budget of the previous year. The salaries of Government officials have been reduced in the same proportion

Cabinet (room) · China · Economic history · Geography · Political science · Politics · Prosperity · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · History · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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