1859 in Southeast Asia - 1859 in Vietnam, Cochinchina Campaign, Siege of Tourane, Sie1859 in Vietnam, Cochinchina Campaign, Siege of Tourane, Siege of Saigon GE of Saigon (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Cochinchina campaign (185862), fought between the French and the Spanish on the one side and the Vietnamese on the other, began as a limited punitive campaign and ended as a French war of conquest. The war concluded with the establishment of the French colony of Cochinchina, a development that inaugurated nearly a century of French colonial dominance in Vietnam. Map of CochinchinaThe French had few pretexts to justify their imperial ambitions in Indochina. In the early years of the 19th century century some Frenchmen believed that the Vietnamese emperor Gia Long owed the French a favour for the help French troops had given him in 1802 against his Tay Son enemies, but it soon became clear that the Gia Long felt no more bound to France than he did to China, which had also provided help. Certainly, he and his successor Minh Mang flirted with the French. Although the Vietnamese soon learned to reproduce the elaborate Vaubanesque fortresses that had been built at the end of the 18th century by French engineers, and no longer needed French technical assistance in the art of fortification, they were still interested in buying French cannon and rifles. But this limited contact with the French counted for little. Neither Gia Long nor Minh Mang had any intention of coming under French influence. But the French were not prepared to be brushed off quite so easily. As so often during the era of European colonial expansion, religion offered an excuse for intervention. French missionaries had been active in Vietnam since the 17th century, and by the middle of the 19th century there were perhaps 300,000 Roman Catholic converts in Annam and Tonkin. Most of their bishops and priests were either French or Spanish. Most Vietnamese disliked and suspected th... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=19565386