Cochinchina campaign
The Cochinchina campaign[1] was a series of military operations between 1858 and 1862, launched by a joint naval expedition force on behalf of the French Empire and the Kingdom of Spain against the Nguyễn period Vietnamese state. It was the opening conflict of the French conquest of Vietnam.
Initially a limited punitive expedition against the persecution and execution of French (and to a lesser extent Spanish) Catholic missionaries in Đại Nam, the ambitious French emperor Napoleon III however, authorized the deployment of increasingly larger contingents, that subdued Đại Nam territory and established French economic and military dominance. The war concluded with the founding of the French colony of Cochinchina and inaugurated nearly a century of French colonial rule in Vietnam in particular and Indochina in general.[2][3]
Peace[edit]
The expedition had turned out to be longer and costlier than initially thought and from a position of strength the French intended to fully enforce their conditions of military and colonial dominance.[32] Tự Đức's minister Phan Thanh Giản signed a treaty with Admiral Bonard and the Spanish representative Colonel Palanca y Gutierrez on 5 June 1862. The Treaty of Saigon required Vietnam to legalize the free practise of the Catholic faith within its territory, to cede the provinces of Biên Hòa, Gia Định and Định Tường and the islands of Poulo Condore to France, to allow the French to trade and travel freely along the Mekong River, to open the ports of Tourane, Quảng Yên and Ba Lac (at the mouth of the Red River) to trade and to pay an indemnity of one million dollars to France and Spain over a ten-year period. The French placed all acquired territories under the administration of the Marine Ministry, thereby establishing the colony of Cochinchina with its capital Saigon.[30]