Today in Postal History

Tonkin Expeditionary Corps to France
November 24, 1894

This cover was sent free from a member of the French Tonkin Expeditionary Corps.
The cover went into the mail in Thuan-An in Annam.

Thuan-An is a port city near Hue.
There it received a clear CDS as well as a large CORPS EXPEDITIONNAIRE.

The Expeditionary Corps was needed to maintain a severe
French rule of the protectorates that comprised Indo China.
Indo China (click on The Origins of the Indochina War) was constructed in the last half of the
19th century from conquests of Cochinchina, Cambodia, Annam, Tonkin, and Laos.

The cover then proceeded to Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in the French colony
of Cochinchina where it received a CDS transit mark on the rear.

The cover was addressed to Paris.

The cover has a neat hand stamped anchor on the rear
suggesting that this cover was sent by a sailor.

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