Sainteny agreements
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 France |
 Vietnam |
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French–Vietnamese relations started as early as the 17th century with the mission of the Jesuit father Alexandre de Rhodes. Various traders would visit Vietnam during the 18th century, until the major involvement of French forces under Pigneau de Béhaine from 1787 to 1789 helped establish the Nguyễn Dynasty. France was heavily involved in Vietnam in the 19th century under the pretext of protecting the work of Catholic missionaries in the country. France progressively carved for itself a huge colony, which would form French Indochina in 1887. France continued to rule Vietnam as a colony until France's defeat in the First Indochina War and the proclamation of Vietnam's independence in 1954.
One of the first Frenchmen to visit Vietnam was the Jesuit father Alexandre de Rhodes, who arrived there in 1620. While he was in Vietnam, he wrote the first Vietnamese Catechism and he went living
Alexandre de Rhodes returned to Europe in 1650, to advocate the dispatch of bishops in order to better accompany the development of Roman Catholicism in Vietnam (at that time around 100,000 converts), and the dispatch of bishops in order to create a strong native clergy and avoid in Vietnam a catastrophic eradication of Christianity, as seen in the case of Christianity in Japan around 1620:
"We have all reason to fear that what happened to the Church of Japan could also happen to the Church of Annam, because these kings, in Tonkin as well as in Cochinchina, are very powerful and accustomed to war... It is necessary that the Holy See, by its own mouvement, give pastors to these Oriental regions where Christians multiply in a marvelous way, lest, without bishops, these men die without sacrament and manifestly risk damnation."
The efforts of Alexander de Rhodes led to the creation of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, marking the involvement of Catholic France as a new missionary power in Asia. From 1660 a base was established in Ayutthaya, Siam, by Mgr Pallu and Mgr Lambert de la Motte, from where numerous attempts were made to send missionaries to Vietnam.
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