James Thomas
Pronouns: he/him
Research Mentor(s): Anthony Marcum
Co-Presenter:
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Program in International and Comparative Studies / LSA
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Oral5
Session: Session 4 – 2:40pm – 3:30 pm
Room: Breakout room 5
Authors: Anthony Marcum
Presenter: 4
Abstract
How did the French pursue their preferred peace in the Tonkin Region? In order to establish control, France used military occupation as a way of taking the Tonkin region in cities such as Hue, Hanoi, and Nam Dinh to name a few. To help better clarify the criteria necessary to be considered as an occupation, the state must use its military to threaten force and/or defeat an opponent’s military. It must then capture territory from another government, ranging from a small portion to its entire set of territorial possessions. The state must displace the ability of another state to act as sovereign, and assume some level of governance to administrate the foreign territory. The occupying state must demand, or impose, that the occupied territory fulfill a goal, or set of goals, in order for the occupation to terminate. Based on mostly secondary sources, it appears that the French government were successful in using their military to first force the Chinese vassal state of Vietnam by forcibly occupying the Tonkin region and then defending their occupations against the Chinese army and the Black Flag, a group of insurgents that was used by both the Vietnam Kingdom and later the Chinese to try and destabilize and have removed the French from Tonkin. The French would go on to implement their own vassal state in Vietnam with the Vietnamese monarch, fulfilling their war goals of expanding their colonial presence in Southeast Asia and removing the influence of the Chinese in the region’s political systems. The research today provides some idea of the occupations of territories in the Tonkin region during the during of the campaign, however the details of which are not all exactly clear or known since so few primary sources were available while the actual campaign in Tonkin occurred.
Interdisciplinary, Social Sciences
