The Study On Sino-Vi(?)t Frontier Vicissitude And Sino-Vietnamese Border Demarcation Between China And France

Why should we in the early 21th century pay particular attention to the historical relationship between the regions now ruled as the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam? The important reason is the Sino-Vietnamese boundary nowadays has relations with the Sino-Vi?t frontier in the history. The Sino-Vi?t frontier before 1885 is the traditional borderline in the system of Sino-Vi?t tribute relations, which is not so clear. The Sino-Vietnamese land border was demarcated for the first time from 1885 to 1897 as a result of the Sino-French War, which led to the placement of Indochina under French protection. It took eleven years to delineate the boundary, not without much hard bargaining and diplomatic tussles, final agreement was reached by 1897 with the conclusion of at least ten separate conventions, and more than three hundred markers were erected to indicate the boundary. In this dissertation, the author tried her best to pursue truth with diligent fair-mindedness.In addition to the preface and the conclusion, the whole dissertation is made up of three parts. The first part unfolds the narratives of the Sino-Vi?t frontier vicissitude before 1885. The second part is about the administrative prefecture in the Sino-Vi?t frontier during the Qing Dynasty. The last part studies on the problems of the Sino-Vietnamese boundary delimitation between China and France from 1885 to 1897. All in all, from the birth of Vietnam to the end of the Sino-Vietnamese border demarcation, the Chinese frontier had always been forced to curve inwardly by aggressive powers. The land lost had been immense. The author explains how those tragic events came about and analyses how the character of the Sino-Vietnamese borderline changed from the traditional frontier to the boundary in the modern sense, which is delimited by treaties in the dissertation.