Pacification of Tonkin

The Pacification of Tonkin (1886–96) was a slow and ultimately successful military and political campaign undertaken by the French Empire in the northern portion of Tonkin (modern-day north Vietnam) to re-establish order in the wake of the Sino-French War (August 1884 – April 1885), to entrench a French protectorate in Tonkin, and to suppress Vietnamese opposition to French rule.

Following their colonisation of Cochinchina in the 1860s, the French attempted to extend their influence into Tonkin. A first, abortive attempt to intervene in Tonkin was made by Francis Garnier in 1873. Nine years later, in April 1882, Henri Rivière seized the citadel of Hanoi, inaugurating the second French intervention. Although Rivière's career ended in disaster a year later, with his defeat and death at the hands of the Black Flag Army at the Battle of Paper Bridge (19 May 1883), Jules Ferry's expansionist government in France sent strong reinforcements to Tonkin to avenge this defeat. Although it would take many years before Tonkin was truly pacified, the second French attempt to subdue Tonkin was ultimately successful.

In August 1883, in the wake of Admiral Amédée Courbet's victory at the Battle of Thuan An, the Vietnamese court at Huế was forced to recognise a French protectorate over both Annam (French protectorate) and Tonkin. Efforts by the French to entrench their protectorate in Tonkin were complicated by the outbreak of the Sino-French War in August 1884, which tied down large French forces around Hung Hoa and Lang Son, and later by the Can Vuong uprising in southern Vietnam in July 1885, which required the diversion of French forces from Tonkin to Annam. When the Sino-French War ended in April 1885, there were 35,000 French troops in Tonkin, but the area of French control was restricted to the Red River Delta. Between April 1885 and April 1886 French troops closed up to the Chinese border, raising the tricolour and establishing customs posts at Lao Cai and other frontier crossings into Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, but large swathes of Tonkinese territory remained under the control of insurgent groups.

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