Yet it was not lost on any of the protagonists of the war(s) that Indochina" was largely shorthand for only one of its constitutive components: the epicenter, the irreducible crux of the conflict was Vietnam(cf Régis Wargnier's 1992 film Indocbine, which deals with and takes place only in Vietnam). Considering the centrality in the regional drama of this, from 1954 to 1975, artificially divided nation-state--the land and the people, the"geo-body" (Winichakul 1994) and the"social space" (Condominas 1980) that it represents Vietnam's crucial role was fully deserved. But it was a role that owed much to the effects of the French expansionist project on the discursively constructed notion of"region". In a sense, the projected"Greater Mekong Subregion" is still conceived on a colonial regime designed grid, only supplanting but not obliterating the grand vision of the"French Indochina construct. This short essay focuses on the explorations of the Mekong territories between 1866 and 1895 underwritten by the French state, and their intended or unintended consequences for the concept of an ideologically homogenous region.