Sino-French War (1884-1885): The Struggle for Tonkin

The Sino-French War was an undeclared conflict fought between France and Qing China from August 1884 to April 1885 over control of Tonkin, the northern region of Vietnam. It brought the destruction of a Chinese fleet at Fuzhou, hard fighting along the Tonkin–China border and a French blockade of Taiwan. France won its protectorate over Vietnam, but a sudden retreat from Lang Son toppled the government of Jules Ferry in Paris.

Background

France had seized the south of Vietnam, which it called Cochinchina, in the 1860s, as described in the French conquest of Vietnam. In the early 1880s French governments, led by the expansionist premier Jules Ferry, turned to Tonkin and the Red River, which they hoped would give access to the markets of southern China.

The Nguyen dynasty of Vietnam was a tributary of the Qing empire, and China regarded the region as part of its sphere of influence. Vietnamese rulers relied partly on the Black Flag Army of Liu Yongfu, Chinese irregulars who had killed the French officer Francis Garnier in 1873 and killed Commander Henri Rivière in another ambush near Hanoi in May 1883. Regular Qing troops from Yunnan and Guangxi also entered Tonkin.

In August 1883 France forced the Vietnamese court at Hue to accept a protectorate. French forces then took the fortresses of Son Tay (December 1883) and Bac Ninh (March 1884), driving back Black Flag and Chinese units.

From truce to war

On 11 May 1884 Li Hongzhang, the leading Qing statesman in foreign affairs, and the French naval officer François-Ernest Fournier signed the Tianjin Accord. China agreed to withdraw its troops from Tonkin and accept France’s treaties with Vietnam, but the text left the timing of withdrawal unclear.

In June 1884 a French column advancing to occupy Lang Son clashed with Chinese troops near Bac Le, who had received no orders to leave. France demanded a large indemnity, China refused, and the French government decided to strike at China’s coast. Neither side formally declared war.

Course of the war

Battle of Fuzhou. On 23 August 1884 Admiral Amédée Courbet, whose squadron had been allowed to anchor in the Min River, opened fire on the Fujian Fleet near Fuzhou. In roughly an hour most of the Chinese warships were sunk or set on fire, at the cost of a handful of French dead. Courbet then shelled the Fuzhou Arsenal, a showpiece of China’s Self-Strengthening Movement, and the forts guarding the river.

Taiwan. Courbet attacked Keelung in northern Taiwan in August and occupied it in October 1884, but a French landing at Tamsui was repulsed on 8 October. A blockade of Taiwan followed, and in March 1885 French troops seized the Pescadores (Penghu) Islands.

Tonkin. On land the fighting was harder. Chinese and Black Flag forces besieged the French garrison of Tuyen Quang from November 1884 to March 1885 without taking it. General Louis Brière de l’Isle captured Lang Son on 13 February 1885. A further advance under General François de Négrier was defeated by the veteran Qing commander Feng Zicai at Zhennan Pass (Bang Bo) on 24 March 1885.

The Lang Son retreat. Négrier was wounded on 28 March, and his successor, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Gustave Herbinger, ordered the abandonment of Lang Son. The retreat was disorderly but the army was not destroyed. Alarming telegrams to Paris, however, suggested a disaster.

Fall of the Ferry ministry and peace

The Chamber of Deputies turned on Ferry, already mocked as “le Tonkinois”, and his government fell on 30 March 1885. Secret peace talks were already under way through Sir Robert Hart, the British head of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs, and a preliminary protocol was signed in Paris on 4 April 1885.

The Treaty of Tianjin, signed by Li Hongzhang and the French envoy Jules Patenôtre on 9 June 1885, ended the war. China recognised the French protectorate over Annam and Tonkin and agreed to open trade on the border; France evacuated Keelung and the Pescadores and claimed no indemnity. Courbet himself died of illness in the Pescadores in June 1885.

Consequences

For France the war secured Vietnam, which was joined with Cambodia in the Union of French Indochina in 1887. Ferry’s career never fully recovered, and the war deepened French arguments about the costs of empire.

For China, the result was mixed. The army had performed better than many expected, but the loss of the Fujian Fleet exposed the weakness of a navy divided between regional commands. Taiwan was made a separate province in 1885, and Beijing created a Board of Admiralty. These reforms did not prevent a much worse defeat a decade later in the First Sino-Japanese War.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1883, 19 May: Henri Rivière is killed by Black Flag forces near Hanoi.
• 1883, 25 August: The Vietnamese court accepts a French protectorate.
• 1884, 11 May: Li Hongzhang and Fournier sign the Tianjin Accord.
• 1884, 23 June: French and Chinese troops clash near Bac Le.
• 1884, 23 August: Courbet destroys the Fujian Fleet at Fuzhou.
• 1885, 13 February: French troops capture Lang Son.
• 1885, 24-28 March: French defeat at Zhennan Pass and retreat from Lang Son.
• 1885, 30 March: Jules Ferry’s government falls.
• 1885, 9 June: The Treaty of Tianjin ends the war.

Why it matters

The Sino-French War decided that Vietnam would become French rather than remain in China’s orbit, laying the foundation of French Indochina. It also showed both the progress and the limits of Qing military reform, and it demonstrated how a colonial setback far from Europe could bring down a government at home.