A very rare separately published map of the Mekong Delta and River in the southern part of Vietnam and Cambodia. It is arguably the first large scale map of French Cochinchina. The map extends from the area around Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to the area around Phnom Penh in Cambodia and is published by the French Foreign Ministry. In the 17th and 18th centuries Vietnam as we know it was divided. The north under the Trinh lords was known as Tonkin by the Europeans and the south under the Nguyen lords was known as Cochinchina in most of Europe and Quinam by the Dutch.

The map shows the region shortly after the French conquest which began under the Direction of Admiral Rigault de Genouilly in 1858. Under the orders of Napoleon III of France, his gunships attacked the port of Ðà Nẵng in 1858, imposing substantial damage, but failing to take the city. Genouilly next sailed south, capturing Gia Ðịnh (present-day Ho Chi Minh City). From 1859 to 1867, French troops expanded their control over all six provinces on the Mekong delta and formed a French colony.

The Depot de la Marine is the French governmental body which oversaw and collected the charting of the world. The map is extremely rare, only examples in the British Library, Harvard, the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, and the University de Montaigne (Bordeaux) could be located. Chapius, Olivier (2019) ‘Depot des cartes et plans de la Marine’, in History of Cartography volume 4, part 1, pp. 349-52.