The Treaty of Sai-gon and the Vietnamese response to French intervention, 1862-1874

The problem addressed in this dissertation is that of the "Franco-centric" interpretation of nineteenth-century Vietnamese history. Specifically, French officials, missionaries, and contemporary historians of the French conquest of Vietnam have accused the Vietnamese government of failing to abide by the terms of the 1862 Franco-Vietnamese treaty, known as the Treaty of Sai-gon. These historical actors and authors accused the Hue court of supporting anti-French rebellions in the occupied southern part of the country, of continuing to "persecute" the Catholics in the regions still under Hue's authority, and of "deceitful" behavior during the "Francis Garnier Affair" of 1873-1874. Since most subsequent research by Western scholars has been based on the accounts of, and the documents provided by, the early French scholars, these original interpretations of the behavior of the Vietnamese court have yet to be subjected to a serious and critical challenge based on indigenous documentation. This dissertation is therefore based on an extensive research in primary Vietnamese sources to supplement the more usual French-language documentation. I examined the imperial records of the Vietnamese Nguyen dynasty as well as the writings of Vietnamese resistance figures, officials, and monarchs. These were compared with the arguments of the early French scholars and their historiographical heirs. This dissertation is therefore an "Asia-centric" interpretation based on primary Vietnamese sources. It argues that, during the period under consideration, the Hue court, consistent with a "policy of peace" which it developed in reaction to the Franco-Spanish invasion of 1858-1862, faithfully executed the provisions of the 1862 treaty of Sai-gon in the hope of thereby obtaining a peaceful retrocession of provinces occupied by France.