The 1916 Cochinchina uprising was a series of defiant protests and attempted revolts in February against the French authority of southern Vietnam, which had been the colony of Cochinchina since 1862. The organization and motivation of the uprisings were unclear, since many different organizations of Vietnamese revolutionaries with different ideologies were involved. Some were supporters of the mystic and geomancer Phan Xich Long, who had claimed to be a descendant of the boy Emperor Hàm Nghi, who had been deposed by the French for attempting a revolt with the aim of securing independence some three decades earlier. Long had been imprisoned three years earlier after declaring himself Emperor and attempting to storm Saigon with the help some purported magic potion to restore the monarchy. Lo