Tonkin Affair

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Tonkin Affair of 1885 was a major French political crisis, which essentially ended the political career of Prime Minister Jules Ferry and brought down the string of Republican governments which had been created by Leon Gambetta. The fear created (in this case by a temporary military setback) amongst the French public and political classes that French troops would be sent to their deaths far from home for little measurable gain served as a check on adovcates of French colonial expansion, known as the Parti coloniale.

Contents

[edit] Lang Son

The "Affair" (as most French political scandals are still termed) began with news of French colonial forces defeat at the Battle of Zhennan Pass (in what is now northern Vietnam) on March 23, 1885. and was referred to at the time, in Western media, as the Battle of Bang Bo. Following what in retrospect was a minor defeat of an inland expeditionary force, a brigade commander, possibly in a state of panic, ordered a hasty withdrawal of the inland town on Lang Son. This led to a wholesale flight of French forces to the coast, abandoning nearly all French gains made during the 1885 campaign and leading the commander of the expeditionary corps, Louis Briere de l'Isle, to believe that the Red River Delta was in jeopardy.

[edit] l'Affaire Tonkin

Briere de l'Isle's dispatches to Paris, arriving with enough delay for the press to fear that the entire French force was already massacred, caused a political panic. Ferry was attacked in the streets, and his political opponents called assembly meetings to denounce both Ferry and the entire colonial project.[1]

While Ferry tried to begin secret negotiaions with the Chinese, he presented an emergency draft of some 200 million francs for a rescue force to be sent to Tonkin. With Georges Clemenceau leading the parliamentary opposition, the National Assembly balked, bringing down the Ferry government on 28 March 1885.

Within a few days, Briere de l'Isle realized the situation was less grave than it had initially appeared, but it was several weeks before the situation was clear to Paris. The new French government, still fearing their forces would be overrun, gave orders for an evacuation of French troops from the Tonkin region. although this was never carried out.

[edit] Aftermath

The battle's principal effect in France, aside from the significant gain in imperial territory, was to bring down the long-running Ferry ministry. Within a year the government of his successor, Brisson, also fell over the Tonkin budget of November 1885. Ferry would never again serve as premier, and became a figure of popular scorn. The defeat, which the French called the "Tonkin affair", was a major political scandal for the proponents for French colonial expansion that had begun with the ascencion of Leon Gambetta. It was not until the early 1890s that French colonial party regained domestic political support. [2]

The consequences to colonial policy stretched beyond Tonkin, or even Paris. Writes one historian of French colonialism in Madagascar, "There was a general desire to have done with other colonial expeditions still in progress." [3]

That said, the forces which drove French colonial expansion were little slowed by a loss of political popularity. French Indochina was consolidated under a single administration just two years latter, while in Africa, military commanders like Joseph Gallieni and Louis Archinard continually pressured local states, regardless of the political climite in Paris. Large trading houses, such as Maurel and Prom company, continued to expand their overseas operations, and demand military support for this expansion. The formal creation in 1894 of the French Colonial Union, a political pressure group funded by such interests, marked the end of the post Tonkin climate in Paris, and as such was short lived.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Herbert Ingram Priestley. France Overseas: Study of Modern Imperialism. Routlege (1967) pp220-224.
  2. ^ See: Ageron, C.R., France colonial ou parti colonial. Paris, (1978)
  3. ^ Deschamps, Hubert. Madagascar and France, in Desmond J. Clark, Roland Anthony Oliver, A. D. Roberts, John Donnelly Fage eds, The Cambridge History of Africa, The Cambridge History of Africa (1975) p.525

[edit] See also