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A scarce large-format road map of northern Vietnam, covering the Red River Delta, Hanoi, Hải Phòng, and the adjacent coastal zone of the Gulf of Tonkin, compiled under French colonial authority. This is a joined example of the two sheets that make up Feuille No. 4 of the Carte routière de l’Indochine, the most comprehensive French mapping of Indochina’s road infrastructure undertaken during the late colonial period.
The present copy is from an unidentified edition. While the Carte routière series is known to have been first issued beginning in the 1930s, and a complete April 1945 edition was lithographed in Paris following the Japanese overthrow of French civil authority in March 1945, this sheet bears no visible printing date. Its symbology, dual-language legend (French and English), and updated administrative boundaries suggest it belongs either to the wartime 1944–45 issues.
This sheet offers especially fine coverage of the Hanoi–Haiphong axis and its arterial connections through Bắc Ninh, Thái Bình, and Nam Định. Densely plotted with paths, dikes, canals, and administrative posts, it presents a critical snapshot of northern Vietnam’s transport geography at a time when French rule was collapsing, Japanese control was strained, and American-led strategic planning in the Pacific theater was accelerating.
A compelling artifact of transitional French military cartography in Indochina, straddling the end of colonial infrastructure and the threshold of war.
