Tonkin (Tongking), French Protectorate of

The French proclaim the Union Indochinoise, or Indochina Union, comprising Cambodia and the three constituent regions of Vietnam—Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina—in October 1887. (Laos will be added to the Indochina Union after being separated from Thai suzerainty in 1893.)

Cambodia's chief colonial official, responsible to the Union's governor general and appointed by the Ministry of Marine and Colonies in Paris, is a resident general (resident superieur).

Residents, or local governors, are posted in all the principal provincial centers.

French conflicts with China over Indochina climax during the Sino-French War (1884–1885).

Admiral Courbet destroys the Chinese fleet anchored at Foochow.

The treaty ending the war puts France in a protectorate over northern and central Vietnam, which it divides into Tonkin and Annam.

France intervenes militarily in Tonkin, creating a French Protectorate in 1882.

France and China had begun to fight an undeclared war in Tonkin in late 1883.

The French had defeated the Black Flag Army and captured the town of Son Tay in December 1883, in the Son Tay Campaign.

In the Bac Ninh campaign of March 1884, they defeat China's Guangxi Army and capture the strategically important town of Bac Ninh on the Mandarin Road.

The Tientsin Accord, concluded on May 11, 1884, provides for a Chinese troop withdrawal from Tonkin in return for a comprehensive treaty that will settle details of trade and commerce between France and China and provide for the demarcation of its disputed border with Vietnam.

Fournier is not a professional diplomat, and the Tientsin Accord contains several loose ends.

Crucially, it fails to explicitly state a deadline for the Chinese troop withdrawal from Tonkin.

The French assert that the troop withdrawal is to take place immediately, while the Chinese argue that the withdrawal is contingent upon the conclusion of the comprehensive treaty.

In fact, the Chinese stance is an ex post facto rationalization, designed to justify their unwillingness or inability to put the terms of the accord into effect.

The accord is extremely unpopular in China, and provokes an immediate backlash.

The war party calls for Li Hongzhang's impeachment, and his political opponents intrigue to have orders sent to the Chinese troops in Tonkin to hold their positions.

Li Hongzhang hints to the French that there might be difficulties in enforcing the accord, but nothing specific is said.

The French assume that the Chinese troops will leave Tonkin as agreed, and make preparations for occupying Lang Son and other cities up to the Chinese border.

The defeat at Bac Ninh, coming close on the heels of the fall of Son Tay, had strengthened the hand of the moderate element in the Chinese government and temporarily discredited the extremist 'Purist' party led by Zhang Zhidong, which is agitating for a full-scale war against France.

Further French successes in the spring of 1884, including the capture of Hung Hoa and Thai Nguyen, has convinced the Empress Dowager Cixi that China should come to terms, and an accord is reached between France and China in May.

The negotiations take place in Tianjin (Tientsin).

Li Hongzhang, the leader of the Chinese moderates, represents China; and Captain François-Ernest Fournier, commander of the French cruiser Volta, represents France.

French troops advancing to occupy Lang Son, in accordance with the terms of this agreement, clash near the small town of Bac Le with a detachment of the Chinese Guangxi Army on June 23, 1884.

The Chinese open fire on the advancing French, precipitating a two-day battle in which the French column is seriously mauled.

This incident, the Bac Le Ambush, is the proximate cause of the Sino-French War.

There had been fury at what is perceived as blatant Chinese treachery when news of the Bac Le Ambush reached Paris.

Jules Ferry’s government has demanded an apology, an indemnity, and the immediate implementation of the terms of the Tianjin Accord.

The Chinese government has agreed to negotiate, but refuses to apologize or pay an indemnity.

The mood in France is against compromise, and although negotiations continue throughout July, Admiral Courbet is ordered to take his squadron to Fuzhou (Foochow).

Courbet is instructed to prepare to destroy the Foochow Navy Yard, fifteen kilometers downriver from Fuzhou at Mawei, and to attack the Chinese fleet in Mawei harbour.

Ironically, the Foochow Navy Yard represents a substantial French investment in China's future, having been built several years earlier under the direction of the French administrator Prosper Giquel.

During the second half of July and the first half of August, Courbet gradually concentrates his squadron in Mawei harbour, at the Pagoda Anchorage—named for a conspicuous Chinese pagoda, the Luoxingta, which stands on a hill above the harbor.

Negotiations between France and China break down in mid-August, and on the evening of August 22, Courbet is authorized by the French government to commence hostilities.

He duly notifies the foreign consuls, the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, and the commanders of several neutral warships moored at the Pagoda Anchorage (the British gunboats Vigilant, Champion and Sapphire and the American corvette Enterprise).

The losses of the French squadron in the course of the operations before Fuzhou and in the Min River are relatively light (ten dead and forty-eight wounded).

Most of these casualties are inflicted not by shellfire during the engagement of August 23 but by sniper fire from Chinese infantry during the squadron's descent of the Min River.

The French dead include lieutenant de vaisseau Bouët-Willaumez, second-in-command of the gunboat Vipère and son of the noted French admiral Louis-Édouard Bouët-Willaumez (1809–71), who is shot dead on Vipère's bridge during an exchange of fire with the defenders of Fort Kimpai on August 27.

With the exception of La Galissonnière and Torpedo Boat No. 46, none of Courbet's vessels suffer serious damage.

The Chinese loss nine of the eleven ships of the Fujian Fleet.

Some of the Chinese ships founder where they are struck, sinking off the Pagoda anchorage and the Foochow Navy Yard.

Others drift downriver and either run aground or sink between Losing Island and the Min'an pass.

French officers aboard Châteaurenault, anchored near the entrance to the Min River, see three Chinese warships drifting downriver on the evening of August 23, abandoned by their crews and blazing from stem to stern.

One of the Chinese ships explodes in front of their eyes.

Courbet estimates Chinese casualties at between two thousand and three thousand dead.

The commemorative tablets in a shrine erected shortly after the war at the Pagoda Anchorage to honor the Chinese dead list the names of 831 sailors and soldiers killed on August 23, but this list does not include the hundreds of Chinese soldiers killed by the French during their descent of the Min River.

The Chinese imperial commissioner Zhang Peilun, who makes no serious attempt to coordinate the resistance of the Fujian fleet, is degraded after the battle and replaced by the veteran general Zuo Zongtang.

He Jing, the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, Zhang Zhaotong, the governor of Fujian, and He Ruzhang, the director-general of the Foochow Navy Yard, are also degraded.

The Manchu General of Fuzhou Mutušan, who had directed the defense of the Jinpai pass on August 27 and 28 with skill and energy, keeps his job.

The Cantonese naval officer Zhang Cheng, a graduate of the Foochow naval college and captain of the Chinese flagship Yangwu, had abandoned ship as soon as the battle started and is later beheaded for cowardice.

The final engagement of the Sino–French War takes place on April 14, 1885, with a French victory at Kép.

China withdraws its forces from Tonkin.

Jules Ferry, in a speech before the Chamber of Deputies on July 28, 1885, championing the establishment of a French colonial empire, declares that "it is a right for the superior races, because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races."

Ferry had directed the negotiations which led to the establishment of a French protectorate in Tunis (1881), has prepared the treaty of December 17, 1885 for the occupation of Madagascar; has directed the exploration of the Congo and of the Niger region; and above all, has organized the conquest of Annam and Tonkin in what becomes Indochina.

The last endeavor has led to a war with the Manchu Empire, whose Qing Dynasty has a claim of suzerainty over the two provinces.

The excitement caused in Paris by the sudden retreat of the French troops from Lang Son during this war had led to the Tonkin Affair: his violent denunciation by Clemenceau and other radicals, and his downfall on March 30, 1885.

Although the treaty of peace with the Manchu Empire (June 9, 1885), in which the Qing Dynasty had ceded suzerainty of Annam and Tonkin to France, is the work of his ministry, he will never again serve as premier.

Born in Saint-Dié, in the Vosges département, France, Ferry had studied law, and had been called to the bar at Paris in 1854, but had soon entered politics, contributing to various newspapers, particularly to Le Temps.

He had attacked the Second French Empire with great violence, directing his opposition especially against Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine département.

A series of his articles in Le Temps had been later republished as The Fantastic Tales of Haussmann (1868).

Elected republican deputy for Paris in 1869, he had protested against the declaration of war with Germany, and on September 6, 1870, had been appointed prefect of the Seine by the Government of National Defense.

In this position he had had the difficult task of administering Paris during the siege, and after the Paris Commune had been obliged to resign on June 5, 1871).

From 1872 to 1873 he had been sent by Adolphe Thiers as minister to Athens, but had returned to the chamber as deputy for the Vosges, and had become one of the leaders of the republican party.

When the first republican ministry was formed under W.H. Waddington on February 4, 1879, he had been one of its members, and continues in the ministry until March 30, 1885, except for two short interruptions (from November 10, 1881 to January 30, 1882, and from July 29, 1882 to February 21, 1883), first as minister of education and then as minister of foreign affairs.

A leader of the Opportunist Republicans faction, he has twice been premier (1880–1881 and 1883–1885).

He is a Freemason and a member of the Alsace-Lorraine Lodge founded in Paris in 1782.

Two important works are associated with his administration, the non-clerical organization of public education, and the beginning of the colonial expansion of France.

Following the republican program, he had proposed to destroy the influence of the clergy in the university and found his own system of republican schooling.

He had reorganized the committee of public education (law of 27 February 1880), and proposed a regulation for the conferring of university degrees, which, though rejected, had aroused violent polemics because the 7th article had taken away from the unauthorized religious orders the right to teach.

He had finally succeeded in passing his eponymous laws of 16 June 1881 and 28 March 1882, which have made primary education in France free, non-clerical (laïque) and mandatory.

The education policies establishing French language as the language of the Republic play an important role in unifying the French nation-state and the Third Republic, but also nearly cause the extinction of several regional languages.

After the military defeat of France by Germany in 1870, Ferry had formed the idea of acquiring a great colonial empire, principally for the sake of economic exploitation.

The incumbent resident general in Cambodia complains to Paris in 1897 that Norodom is no longer capable of ruling and receives permission to assume the king's authority to issue decrees, collect taxes, and appoint royal officials.

Norodom and his successors are left with hollow, figurehead roles as head of state and as patron of the Buddhist religion.

The colonial bureaucracy expands rapidly.

French nationals naturally hold the highest positions, but even on the lower rungs of the bureaucracy Cambodians find few opportunities because the colonial government prefers to hire Vietnamese.