My last question for a while (money, lol !) but its a bit of a
difficult one... I need information on Tongking, now part of Northern
Vietnam. Particuarly I need the following :-

Before annexation by the French at the end of the Sino-Japanese War of
the mid 1880s, how was Tongking ruled/governed ? Was there a king and
a historical dynasty or did China appoint a governor? I am leaning
towards the former as the French annexation seems to have been viewed
much in the same way as the extension of British power over Nepal
which was also a kingdom previously vassal to the Chinese empire. So,
was Tongking analogous in any way to Korea ? Was there a king who had
his own autonomous government and had relations with foreign powers
off his own back ?

In addition (lol, said this was a difficult one) I need to know how
the government of  Tongking was affected/altered by the French. Maps
of the period show French Indo-China existing as composed of separate
lands, so was Tongking identity retained throughout the period ? I
know that Vietnam's ruling family continued to be of some import, so
would it be right to assume that if Tongking had a king he was more
than a figurehead even under the French ?

And then, to round it off, I need details on the Tongking dynasty
(assuming there was one). From the 1880s to the 1920s who was king,
and was it an undisputed succession ? Any websites with genealogical
information would be appreciated.

I realise this may be a bit obscure, so please do not answer it unless
you can cover the majority of the points above. If in doubt explain
what you have in a request for clarification. I would rather have
nothing than a few discordant facts I can't do anything with but have
paid for. Of course, Digs I am sure you can do this !

Thanks for all the help with my questions all Google Answers
researchers over the last several weeks

Hello again

Since I like dragging things out, we will go all the way back to 500
B.C.E. when the Nam, a southern group of the Viet tribes living near
the Yangtz River began a southward trek in an attempt to escape an
expanding Chinese empire. The attempt failed. The Vietnamese were
conquered by 258 B.C.E. and put under the direct rule of the Chinese
Court where they would remain for the next thousand years.

Toward the middle of the 10th century the T’ang Dynasty declined and
Chinese rule became virtually nonexistent in the outlying provinces.
Then, Vietnam experienced a period of turmoil during which local
warlords battled among themselves for domination. In 1010 C.E., the Li
Dynasty was founded, becoming Vietnam’s first imperial family and
central government. Quartered in Hanoi, the dynasty would survive for
some two hundred years.   This period also ended the status of Vietnam
as a Chinese vassal state.  The comparisons of Vietnam to Korea no
longer apply as their respective histories lead in different
directions.  Vietnam never again needed the blessing of Peking to
enthrone one of its own.

The governmental structure of Vietnam was extremely localized. The
primary authority that most people ever came in contact with was their
own local village elders and maybe a mandarin from time to time. The
Emperor, largely isolated, was a distant figure who rarely became
involved in the everyday lives of his subjects. Primary government was
a council of elders in each village who ruled their own way, laws
differing from town to town. In matters of national concern or
emergency the Emperor could issue an Imperial Decree that would
overrule all other powers, but even many decrees from the Emperor were
taken more as advisories or warnings while urging a suggested course
of action.  In other words, the word of the emperor carried very
little weight at the time.

Vietnam, at this point, was a nation only in a very vague way.  It
possessed a government but it had no subjects.  The Vietnamese did not
recognize the Li Dynasty’s right to govern. In fact, they did not even
recognize themselves as a single nation. Being Vietnamese was more of
a racial identity than a national one. Most Vietnamese identified
themselves with family and village and very little else.

 In the early 10th century the Red River Delta was a prosperous and
growing region, rich in farmland and  positioned for trade carried on
with the rest of Indochina. Before the century’s end, however, the
region reached a point of over population. Faced with China to the
north, the sea to the east, and mountains to the west, the Vietnamese
began moving south in an expansion not wholly unlike our own country’s
westward expansion in the 19th century. This lasted until the late
1700’s.

 The Vietnamese pioneer took with him not only his possessions, but
his culture as well. When he moved south he was not an individual, but
just one member of an entire village or family moving as a whole.

Throughout most of history, when this kind of migration takes place,
there is some assimilation into the culture where the settlers arrive.
 In this case, we find the exception to the rule.  Rather than
blending into, or being assimilated by the local cultures which the
settlers encountered, the settlers violently conquered these cultures
and banished their members.  We see no real change in Vietnamese
culture as the trek continues to the south.

The further south the settler went, the more independent he felt and
the more resentful he became of the Hanoi Court's attempts to control
him. The settler was freer than his brothers in the north. Even the
warlords were fewer in number in the south and they too resented the
power in Hanoi. They wanted almost total autonomy from the imperial
family.

The imperial court increased taxes to compensate the government for
the revenues spent in the southern campaigns. Young men were taken
from their families to serve in those same wars, often at sword point.
 All this was blamed on the unruly southerners.

This is the situation as it existed by the early 17th century.

Then came a civil war between the Trinh family sitting on the dynastic
throne in Hanoi, and the Nguyen family in Hue, the strongest of the
south’s provincial lords. This was not the same as the provincial
uprisings in the past, this conflict constituted a full blown civil
war. It lasted fifty years, ending in 1674 with an agreement between
the two sodes roughly dividing Vietnam along the 17th parallel.

This division did not last long. Vietnam was again politically united
in 1786 at the culmination of a war begun in Saigon by three brothers
calling themselves the Tay-son. Upon defeating both, the Nguyen and
Trinh families, the eldest brother crowned himself the Quang-Tring
Emperor. Twelve years later, Quang-Tring was overthrown by Nguyen-Anh,
a member of the dethroned Nguyen family along with the help of a few
hundred French troops and a French trained native Vietnamese army and
the Nguyens remained as the last Imperial family.

By 1883 France had conquered and occupied all of Vietnam. In the north
and central regions, Tonking and Annam respectively, France
established protectorates where the emperor and warlords were allowed
to maintain their positions privided that they maintain at the same
time a proper attitude toward French rule. Southern Vietnam became a
direct colony, Cochinchina, under the administration of a French
Governor-General.   Due to this arrangement, the Tonking identity was
not lost under French rule.  The Nguyen Dynasty tried to be a friend
to France, starting with the "Great Conqueror" Emperor Gia Long. The
last Son of Heaven, the august Emperor Bao Dai was educated in France
and spent much of his life there, both before his reign and while in
exile.

Since you said this is your last question (at least for a while ) I'm
going to take the chance and editorialize about this answer a little
bit.  It has to do with the relationship of France to Vietnam.  French
rule in vietnam had to be one of the great mistakes in history. 
Conquest, for the most part, leads to hatred, but the
French/Vietnamese relationship is one which broke the rules.  Even the
anti-French fighter Emperor Duy Tan was a known lover of the French
people and culture, he simply did not want them ruling his country.
That is the point that is important to make: France and Vietnam could
have easily been fast friends if Vietnam had been allowed to govern
itself independently.   In short, the conflict between the French and
Vietnamese nations was unneccessary and truly unfortunate. It is
important for Vietnamese not to judge all of the French based on the
cruelties of a few, and it is important for the French to remember
that the Nguyen Dynasty and Vietnam itself has always wished to be
friends with France, in a relationship that is equal and beneficial to
both. It should be remembered that the last Empress of Vietnam, the
second wife of His Imperial Majesty Bao Dai was French and the founder
of the Nguyen Dynasty might not have lived to unite Vietnam had it not
been for the kindness of a certain French Bishop.  Today, France and
Vietnam do have a good relationship.  I just wanted to bring it up
because it is one of the few conflicts in history where an actual
"liking" for the other side survived even during the roughest of
times.  It may be of no interest to you, but to me, the relationship
between the French and Vietnamese has been sort of a historic
'watershed.'

Now back to the basic story. 

Under colonial law, the south had much greater political and
organizational latitude than their ethnic brothers in Tonking and
Annam. Native political parties were allowed and legally formed. The
French promised to grant the Cochinchinese independence and western
ideology and a spirit of cooperation became the cornerstones of the
nationalist movement in the south. Envisioned was an independent
Vietnam (in the south) governed by a western style parliamentary
government.

Legally, the inhabitants of Tonking and Annam were already
independent, being only protectorates. It is important to note that
nationalism in the south encompassed no greater an area than
Cochinchina alone. For the South Vietnamese, this growing national
identity extended no farther than the colonial boundaries.

Things were viewed quite differently in the north where an imperial
family supported by a French army decreed political parties illegal
and dealt harshly with potential political adversaries. Denied a legal
outlet for political expression, nationalists in the north joined the
forcefully expanding philosophy of communism during the 1920’s, while
in the freer south, nationalists adopted the democratic views of Sun
Yat-sin.

The last of the royals were:
Emperor Gia Long (1802-1820)
Emperor Minh Mang (1820-1841)
Emperor Thieu Tri (1841-1848)
Emperor Tu Duc (1848-1883)
Emperor Duc Duc (1883)
Emperor Hiep Hoa (1883)
Emperor Kien Phuc (1883-1884)
Emperor Ham Nghi (1884-1885)
Emperor Dong Khanh (1885-1889)
Emperor Thanh Thai (1889-1907)
Emperor Duy Tan (1907-1916)
Emperor Khai Dinh (1916-1925)
Emperor Bao Dai (1925-1945 and 1949-1955)
Crown Prince Bao Long (1997-)
These were all members of the Nguyen dynasty and there was little
controversy over the succession.

We may not have heard of the last of them.  There is a movement to
return the Nguyen family to the throne.
"Imperial Vietnam: A Website for the Restoration of the Nguyen
dynasty."
( http://www.geocities.com/imperialvietnam/mainpage.html ) - it is
also a good general source for history, geneaology, Imperial trivia,
and much more.  In fact, I probably could have answered this question
by simply pointing you to it.  But I would rather have fun and look
around a little bit.

"In truth, the Nguyen Dynasty was on the whole a truly upstanding,
thoughtful, hard-working and resourceful royal family who did what
they could do in extreme situations from the begining of Gia Long's
reign to the end of Bao Dai's. They never lost faith in Dai Nam and
never stopped trying to make the best of the bad situation brought on
by the ravages of colonialism and the culture clash between east &
west." - Quote from the "Imperial Vietnam" website.

As well as the website included above, I found these books to be of
great help.

"The End of the Vietnamese Monarchy" - by Bruce McFarland Lockhart
(1993)
"The Last Emperors of Vietnam: From Tu Duc to Bao Dai" - by Oscar
Chapuis (2000)

Search - Google
Terms - royal vietnam, imperial vietnam, vietnamese kings, tonking
history

Looking forward to any clarification requests.

Cheers
digsalot

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Request for Answer Clarification by wolvies-ga on 29 Nov 2002 01:24 PST

Thanks again for an answer that provides a very clear background.
Would you mind adding some clarification on a couple of points for me
?

1. I was under the (possibly false) impression that the Sino-French
War of c1886 was fought because of additional French penetration into
Tongking, and although the Chinese court was willing to allow this
after protest the forces on the ground were not aware of this. Could
you clarify what happened, and whether Chinese army forces were in
Tongking ?

2. The imperial Nguyen family was based in Hanoi in the later
nineteenth century and not in Saigon ? Thus they had direct rule over
Tongking, whilst French colonial rule was direct over the South ? Was
not Annam further away than ever from the emperor with the French in
between - I vaguely thought Annam had its own king, though perhaps
under the emperor...

Thanks as always !

---

Clarification of Answer by digsalot-ga on 29 Nov 2002 10:41 PST

Hi again

I'll start with the second question first.  There was no such place as
a historic Annam before the French.  "Annam" was the name the French
gave the region which was roughly the area of the ancient Kingdom of
Champa.

When the Vietnamese began their move south from the Red River Valley,
Champa was the first to fall.  It was easily conquered by the
Vietnamese who systematical settled the area, forcing the remnants of
the Cham civilization into the mountains to the west.  The rule over
the area known as Annam has been Vietnamese ever since.

If the Chams had any later kings (and they may have had on a local
basis), the area in the mountains where they relocated would now place
them in Laotian rather than Vietnamese history.

Since Annam was 'central Vietnam' it was closer to the Hanoi Court
than was the French colony in the south.

Question 1 -  That was exactly why it was fought.  In the mid 19th
Century, France began to invade Vietnam,  with the ultimate aim of
invading China and Vietnam was merely the road to get there. Having
captured the city of Hanoi, the French army then looked toward China's
Yunnan. Invited by Vietnam, the Chinese army sent troops in to assist
its resistance against French invasion. At the end of 1883, the French
army attacked a Chinese garrison in Vietnam and the Sino-French war
began.

 In 1885, the French army attacked Liangshan in northern Vietnam. The
garrisoned Qing army abandoned the place and escaped back to Guangxi. 
The Qing government reinstated the senior general Feng Zicai, who made
preparation for the battle. The vietnamese and Chinese won and went on
to recover Liangshan and other areas.

This victory by the Chinese and Vietnamese troops against the French
invasion caused the downfall of the French cabinet. However, (that
word again) the Qing government was in such a hurry to sign a treaty
with the French, agreeing to various conditions including setting a
port for commercial activities on the border between China and Vietnam
and building railways in China by French, etc, that China pretty much
gave away the store in the process.

Thanks - I think I am going to study this in depth! Its a whole lot
more complicated than I thought at first... btw if you want to contact
me in my absence use your Google skills lol. I'll be back sometime in
the new year with more questions once the monetary drain of Christmas
is over. Thanks to all your help and should I ever become published in
my endeavour you'll be sure of a mention...though to be honest its not
likely with the current endeavour. Thanks again !