How valuable is Indochina?

I’ve been playing around with the idea of the French controlling all of Indochina, including Thailand and Malaysia (Northern Borneo and Brunei included), but excluding Singapore.

My question is: how valuable would this colony be? Could it rival India?

I guess it depends on the PoD, but this could also probably lead to expansion into Indonesia (perhaps at least Borneo, not sure about other islands).
 
I’ve been playing around with the idea of the French controlling all of Indochina, including Thailand and Malaysia (Northern Borneo and Brunei included), but excluding Singapore.

My question is: how valuable would this colony be? Could it rival India?

I guess it depends on the PoD, but this could also probably lead to expansion into Indonesia (perhaps at least Borneo, not sure about other islands).
Is Burma included?
 
Actualy, I am interested in it too. I have got an idea for a timeline in which France gains most of India, while England ends up with Indo China.
 
Actualy, I am interested in it too. I have got an idea for a timeline in which France gains most of India, while England ends up with Indo China.
I guess what we have to ask here is what made India so extremely profitable and if a unified Indochina could provide the same. I am unfortunately not very well versed in the topic. What comes to mind is the trade in goods such as tea, cotton, indigo, saltpetre and spices. The other it being a huge market for British goods. So the question is: can Indochina do somewhat the same? As for tea, I think yes, along with some other goods, like cotton or tobacco. Spices are a good question, to my knowledge the main regions for spices were India and Indonesia. And then there’s opium, which can be exported to China. That could probably be produced in Indochina as well.
 
This is a rather awkward conglomeration. How would the French even gain many of these lands without a base? The Dutch, English, and independent states would be sure to take Malay and north Borneo or to keep them independent (not as if the French had companies that had the competitive edge to make themselves appealing trade partners) while getting Myanmar would mean fighting multiple states without a base to go from. They could hardly go from Indochina, as that would mean eternal conquest over jungles and Thailand, then over mountains to get there. Rikishi Inida would naturally move into Arakan, as it was Bengali leaning to an extent. Been doing something in vollge on the Rhohinga lately so been reading up on the area. Anyways, what is the business model for this? Will it all be a royal monoply? Taxation, forced labor, etc? There would need to be a lot of local support for it to be doable. Maybe Catholic missionaries who somehow make everyone do what the French say rather than have it reinforce their own national consciousness and unity against French aethiests/Sun King worshippers, etc? But yes, need something to keep down costs.
 
This is a rather awkward conglomeration. How would the French even gain many of these lands without a base?
Well, I wasn't really thinking of a PoD for this, just a general brainstorming. How about this: the Seven Years War goes better for the French against Britain. They still lose their Indian holdings, but sign a treaty that grants them Indochina, or at least a foothold there which they can use to gradually expand. As for the other questions in terms of solidifying the rule: whichever works :)
 
This is a rather awkward conglomeration. How would the French even gain many of these lands without a base? The Dutch, English, and independent states would be sure to take Malay and north Borneo or to keep them independent (not as if the French had companies that had the competitive edge to make themselves appealing trade partners) while getting Myanmar would mean fighting multiple states without a base to go from. They could hardly go from Indochina, as that would mean eternal conquest over jungles and Thailand, then over mountains to get there. Rikishi Inida would naturally move into Arakan, as it was Bengali leaning to an extent. Been doing something in vollge on the Rhohinga lately so been reading up on the area. Anyways, what is the business model for this? Will it all be a royal monoply? Taxation, forced labor, etc? There would need to be a lot of local support for it to be doable. Maybe Catholic missionaries who somehow make everyone do what the French say rather than have it reinforce their own national consciousness and unity against French aethiests/Sun King worshippers, etc? But yes, need something to keep down costs.
Pondicherry can effectively serve as a base.
 
A fully united Indochina cannot match India as a market for manufactured goods or source of natural resources.

That being said, it would however give France a fantastic source of certain resources. Anthracite, Coffee Beans, Rice, and Rubber would all be major exports, and later on it will have some of the largest gas/petroleum reserves in East Asia thanks to Burma and Malaysia respectively.
 
My question is: how valuable would this colony be? Could it rival India?

Not much could rival India. Do bear in mind that India made up one-fourth of the world's GDP in 1700. Naturally, as the British dismembered local manufacturing, this went down substantially, but India was still hugely profitable for the British as they didn't dismember the growing of raw goods. I don't think Indochina alone could rival that.

I guess it depends on the PoD, but this could also probably lead to expansion into Indonesia (perhaps at least Borneo, not sure about other islands).

The people best-poised to conquer Indonesia barring the Dutch are the British (with a POD that France wins the French Revolutionary Wars and puppetizes the Netherlands, you would see Britain conquer Indonesia). So, it would require a POD in the eighteenth century for France to conquer Indonesia.
 
Indochina wouldn't be comparable to India in value. Mainly because not enough people. From what I know, per capita GDP divergence / investment return wasn't really very significantly different between the two regions, but less people and less population density in Indochina.

That said, colonization India was not *that* valuable to Britain anyway, as a part of the composition of its trade, or a source for textile industry raw materials, etc, and didn't have much to do with why industrialization happened. It would likely result in a slightly weaker Britain and stronger France, but either power colonizing one region or the other wouldn't really have too much likely effect on the overall economic trajectories and power of Britain vs France.
 
Come to think of it, wasn't one of the main things about India that it was simply such a large market? That and being useful to produce things to sell to China to get tea, silks, ceramics, etc from. Plus the Brits then started making tea in India, once their industrial spies discovered the Chinese were using a toxic dye to change the color of their tea since they thought it would make it more attractive.
 
A fully united Indochina cannot match India as a market for manufactured goods

IIRC, India was not that important of a market for Britain to sell manufactured goods to, as they were too expensive for most people there to buy. Despite their huge colonial empires, the European industrial powers ended up selling most of their goods to each other.

India was certainly a lucrative source of resources, though.
 
IIRC, India was not that important of a market for Britain to sell manufactured goods to, as they were too expensive for most people there to buy. Despite their huge colonial empires, the European industrial powers ended up selling most of their goods to each other.

India was certainly a lucrative source of resources, though.
Textiles was imported en mase to india from Britain.

Kind of bottom tier manufactured goods but mass production is relevant.
 
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