British government control was soon extended over the Malayan peninsula, where local states were forced to accept British informal suzerainty in 1873, in an attempt to protect trade with China against piracy – also a major factor in prompting the Dutch to extend their control over Indonesia in the 1850s. Like much else in this period, such expansion was largely piecemeal and unplanned. The same can be said of the activities of the French in Indochina, where Napoleon III sent troops at the end of the 1850s after French missionaries had been persecuted and killed; local French officials argued
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