Treaty of Tientsin (1885)

The Treaty of Tientsin, signed on 9 June 1885, officially ended the Sino-French War. The unequal treaty, in ten articles, restated in greater detail the main provisions of the Tientsin Accord, signed between France and China on 11 May 1884. As Article 2 required China to recognise the French protectorate over Annam and Tonkin established by the Treaty of Hue in June 1884, implicitly abandoning her own claims to suzerainty over Vietnam, the treaty formalised France's victory in the Sino-French War.

In December 1884, alarmed by Japanese ambitions in Korea, Empress Dowager Cixi ordered her ministers to extricate China from the undeclared war with France that had broken out on 23 August. Important French victories in Tonkin and Formosa in February and early March 1885 stengthened her desire to end the Sino-French War, and although the Chinese won an unexpected victory in Tonkin in late March, defeating General de Négrier's 2nd Brigade at Bang Bo and reoccupying Lang Son, this success was counterbalanced by the simultaneous French capture of the Pescadores Islands. Despite the fall of Jules Ferry's ministry in France at the end of March in the wake of the retreat from Lang Son, China's position in early April 1885 was critical. Seizing the opportunity offered by the fall of the Ferry ministry, the Chinese agreed to implement the provisions of the May 1884 Tientsin Accord, which recognised France's protectorate over Vietnam. In return, the French dropped their longstanding demand for an indemnity for the Bac Le Ambush. After a flurry of negotiations in Paris in the first days of April 1885, peace was made on this basis.

Preliminaries of peace between France and China were signed on 4 April 1885. The preliminary peace protocol provided for an immediate ceasefire in both Tonkin and Formosa. The French agreed to lift their blockade of Formosa immediately, and the Chinese agreed to withdraw their armies from Tonkin by the end of May 1885. As a surety for Chinese good faith, the French maintained their 'rice blockade' of the Yangtze River and the Chinese ports of Chen-hai (镇海) and Pak-hoi (北海), and continued to occupy Keelung and the Pescadores Islands.

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