Abstract
In pre-modern Southeast Asian states the control of people mattered more than the control of territory. There was no central administration, centralized power, but rather a network of elites managing the people. The states were indirectly governed by vassals, the sovereignty wasn't unified. Indirect rule means here decentralized.
In the early European colonies, the colonizers implemented indirect rule. Indirect means here that the country wasn't ruled directly by the colonizers but by local people only "supervised" by the colonizers. The colonizers signed treaties with local elites and kept the institutions of the country. In the new colonial states, the colonizers removed the existing institutions and created new ones, meaning they conquest the states, they didn't just control them like before.
This example of Vietnam shows the switch from indirect to direct rule, which is the main difference between the new colonial states bureaucracies. When they established their protectorate in Vietnam in 1885, the French implemented a mix of direct and indirect rule. In Northern and Central Vietnam, the system was one of indirect rule as the French didn't remove the Vietnamese monarchy and nobility from power. The French also implemented this system of indirect rule in Cambodia and Laos. The executive power was in the hands of French administrators, but each territory was divided into provinces, ruled by local officials under the control of the administrators.
