France

Vietnamese came to France as colonial subjects: students, soldiers in two world wars, and workers requisitioned for the factories. A political generation formed in Paris in the 1920s and 30s, which is why so much of twentieth-century Vietnamese history has a French chapter. The community was enlarged in 1954 and again after 1975, and the Chinese-Vietnamese arrivals of the late seventies built the Asian quarter in the 13th that everyone now thinks of as the center.

The migrations that built it

1. 01 1900s–1930s: students, soldiers and requisitioned workers
2. 02 1954: departures after Điện Biên Phủ and partition
3. 03 1975 onward: refugees, many of them Chinese-Vietnamese