Vietnam and the West

Wilcox, Wynn

Published by Cornell University Press

Wilcox, Wynn.
Vietnam and the West.
Cornell University Press, 2010.
Project MUSE. muse.jhu.edu/book/59406.

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 DANG Dtrc TUAN AND THE
COMPLEXITIES OF
NINETEENTH-CENTURY
VIETNAMESE CHRISTIAN IDENTITY

Wynn Wilcox

How should nineteenth-century Vietnamese Christians be understood? Over the

past thirty-five years, both in Vietnam and in the West, scholars investigating
nineteenth-century Vietnamese Christianity have explored this question in some
detail. Vietnamese scholarship, for example, has generally reminded us that we
should not assume that all Vietnamese Christians were collaborators with the French.
This scholarship has emphasized the role of Vietnamese Catholics who were
involved in resisting French aggression in both the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.1 In contrast, beginning with Milton Osborne's 1970 essay on Trtfcmg Vlnh
Ky and Phan Thanh Gian and continuing with Mark McLeod's reading of Nguyen
Trircmg To, Western historians have reminded us that Vietnamese Christians cannot
be seen as nationalist defenders of Vietnamese sovereignty. At the same time, this
scholarship has suggested that Vietnamese Christians also cannot be dismissed as
proto-French automatons, mindlessly and weakly collaborating with the enemy to
destroy their country.2 In recent years, Australian-based scholars Nola Cooke and
Jacob Ramsay have produced sophisticated accounts of the role of Christians in the
1
Phan Khac TO, "Nhin lai t6 clitic va phong trao yeu nnorc cua nguM cong giao Viet nam"
[An Examination of the Organization and Patriotic Movements of Vietnamese Catholics], Tap
chi cong sdn [Journal of Communism] 86 (2005). Retrieved March 13, 2006, from
www.tapchicongsan.org. vn/show_contentpl?topic=4&ID=2915; Htfu Hop and To Thanh,
"Cong giao Viet nam trong cupc chien chong thuc dan Phap xam lutfc [1945-1954],
[Vietnamese Catholics in the War against French Imperial Aggression], Nghien ctfu lich srir 238,1
(1988): 61-65.
2
See: Milton E. Osborne, "Truong Vinh Ky and Phan Thanh Gian: The Problem of a
Nationalist Interpretation of Nineteenth Century Vietnamese History/' Journal of Asian Studies
30,1 (November 1970): 81-93; and Mark W. McLeod, "Nguyen Truong To: A Catholic
Reformer at Emperor Tu-Duc's Court/' Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 25,2 (September 1994):
313-31.
72 Wynn Wilcox

complex regional political relationships underlying such issues as the southern

rebellion of Le Van Khoi (1833-35), and uncovered the voices of Vietnamese
Christians in published accounts in the French journal Annales de la Propagation de la
Foi.3 In her article, Cooke reminds us not to repeat the problematic assumptions of
earlier historiography on nineteenth-century Vietnamese Catholics, which either
"marginalized local Catholics by treating them as a footnote to the larger European
economic and political expansion" or, in the case of missionary narratives, turned
their stories into parables for "the struggle for truth and enlightenment against
falsehood and barbarism/'4
This scholarship has done an excellent job of demonstrating the complexity of
the struggle over identity and loyalty that nineteenth-century Vietnamese Christians
faced and has shown the important limitations of both colonial and postcolonial
interpretations of Vietnamese Christians. However, since some of this research has
yielded contradictory results, scholars might still feel at a loss as to how to interpret
those findings. Most Vietnamese scholarship tends to emphasize the important role
of Vietnamese Christians in resisting the French, while most Western scholarship
describes those Christians' motivations for capitulating to the French or even their
rejection of the Nguyen in favor of the French. Yet surely nineteenth-century
Vietnamese Christians could not have been rejecting French imperialism and
embracing it at the same time.
Of course, as many of these scholars point out, part of the solution to this
problem lies in reminding ourselves that not all nineteenth-century Vietnamese
Christians acted alike. The flaw in lumping personalities as diverse as Trurcmg Vlnh
Ky, Phan Thanh Gian, Nguyen Trttcmg To, and Dang Dux Tuan together under a
unified mantle of nineteenth-century Vietnamese Christianity is apparent. Moreover,
it is important to recognize that many of these figures changed their opinions over
time, were internally conflicted about both the French and Nguyln positions, and
had mixed feelings not only about how to reconcile their religious and national
identities but also regarding whether such a reconciliation was necessary, or even if a
conflict in identities existed at all. From this vantage point, we can see that, for many
Vietnamese Christians in the late nineteenth century, taking a stand on the current
issues of their time, from French aggression to Nguyen persecution, involved a
complex personal struggle, a negotiation of one's identity such that one's view might
change drastically over time or have contradictions that are seemingly difficult to
resolve.
The cleric, poet, diplomat, writer, and historian Dang Dux Tuan (1806-1874)
exemplifies this struggle. At different periods in his life, this descendant of several
well-known Catholic officials who themselves served the Nguyln dynasty was
arrested by the Nguyen for being a subversive Catholic priest, served the Nguyln as
a translator and mediator for the treaty of Saigon, and became a critic of French
policies, even though he had been a student or apprentice to several French
missionaries who were instrumental in formulating those policies.
3
See Jacob Ramsay, "Extortion and Exploitation in the Nguyen Campaign against Catholicism
in 1830s-1840s Vietnam," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35,2 (June 2004): 311-29; and Nola
Cooke, "Early Nineteenth Century Vietnamese Catholics and Others in the Pages of the
Annales de la Propagation de la Foi," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35,2 (June 2004): 261-86.
4
Cooke, "Early Nineteenth Century Catholics/' p. 261.
 Dang Dtic Tuan 73

Father Dang Dtfc Tuan is a complex individual who authored several intriguing
texts written in six-eight nom verse. These texts concern the history of Christianity in
Vietnam, the nineteenth-century history of Vietnam, and the recounting of his own
involvement in the negotiations over the Treaty of Saigon in 1862. This chapter
presents an analysis and commentary on selected passages of the only one of Father
Tuan's texts that is available in its original nom form at the Sino-Nom Institute (Vien
Han Nom) in Hanoi: "Thuat tich viec niro^c nam" (A Narrative of Events in the
Southern Country).5 This text displays Dang Dtfc Tuan's complex anticolonial, but
pro-Christian, views. It valorizes early European missionary activity while, in the
end, condemning French imperialism as anti-Christian. This paper will argue that
Father Tuan used his narrative of Vietnamese history to justify his position as a
strong supporter of Catholic missionaries in Vietnam while becoming an opponent
of French aggression. He portrays the best Catholic missionaries and the most
effective of Vietnamese emperors as being motivated by the same fundamental
values: creating peaceful and orderly communities and fostering tranquility and
stability. By making this the theme of his historical narrative, Father Tuan is able to
portray Catholicism as something positive for the Vietnamese state and, at the same
time, is able to condemn the Franco-Spanish expedition of 1858-62 as the cause of
chaos and war.
"Thuat tich viec nttcxc nam" appears to be an earlier version of another work
attributed to Dang Dire Tuan under the title "Viet nam giao sir dien ca" (Ballad of
Vietnamese Religious History), one of several manuscripts by Dang Dire Tuan that
were apparently discovered in southern Vietnam in the 1960s.6 While this version of
the text is not to my knowledge currently available in nom form and is not listed
under that title in Di San Han Nom (Han-Norn Heritage), Professor Lam Giang and
Father V6 Ngoc Nga transliterated the text quite accurately into quoc ngft and
provided substantial commentary on the meaning and possible significance of the
text in their (now rare) 1970 publication, Dang Dtic Tuan: Tinh hoa cong gido ai quoc
Viet Nam (Dang Du'c Tuan: A Vietnamese Catholic Patriot Genius). The text of Viet
nam gido sie dien ca does differ in several places from the version of "Thuat tich viec
ntfcyc nam" kept at the Sino-Nom Institute, but these differences, which include
occasional reversals of word order and substituted vocabulary, are minor.7 This
chapter will chiefly discuss the interpretation of the text as a whole rather than dwell
on difficulties in interpreting specialized vocabulary or rare characters, since those
interested in such esoteric elements may consult the very similar text in Professor
Lam Giang's book. Before examining the text itself, however, I will turn first to
5
Dang Dtic Tuan, 'Thuat tich viec nircyc nam" (Hanoi: Sino-Nom Institute, n.d.), ms. AB 196;
see also Tran Nghia and Francois Gros, Di sdn Hdn-Nom thu muc deyeu, quyen HI (Hanoi: Khoa
hoc xa hoi, 1993), p. 278.
6
Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Dire Tuan: Tinh Hoa Cong Giao Ai Quoc Viet Nam (Saigon:
Tac Gid Tvr Xuat Ban, 1970), p. 5. The authors do not provide any additional details on the
circumstances of the discovery of Dang Dtfc Tuan's manuscripts.
7
To cite just two examples early in the text that are representative of the minor discrepancies
between the two versions: "Thuat tich viec mro'c nam" records the following: "nude nha thanh
tri mudn dan an hoa" (our country was prospering and the many people were at peace),
whereas Viet nam gido su diin ca, in an interesting deviation, has the sentence as "thai bmh thanh
tri nhdn dan an hoa" eliminating the direct reference to the nation. Similarly, "Thuat tich viec
mro'c nam" asks us to "&8i an Chua Ca nghin van" (give thanks to God ten million times) where
the Viet nam gido su diin ca is transliterated as "Dpi an Chua Ca cao quang" (to give thanks to
God on High).
74 Wynn Wilcox

explaining some historical background about the predicaments that faced

Vietnamese Christians in the 1860s, and then to discussing Dang Dtfc Tuan's
fascinating background and life.

CHRISTIANITY AND FACTIONALISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY VIETNAM

In 1858, a joint Franco-Spanish expedition, led by Charles Rigault de Genouilly,
attacked the port of Da NSng. This expedition was approved by the Pope in order to
stop the persecution of Catholic missionaries as well as the persecution of
Vietnamese who had converted to Christianity. Vietnamese Catholics were deeply
divided regarding the military operation. Contrary to the expectations of many of the
missionaries and of the conservative faction of the Ttr Dire emperor's supporters, not
all Vietnamese Christians sided with the French. Many Vietnamese Christians,
despite having taken French names, did not see why they should be loyal to France,
since, after all, "God is not a Frenchman/'8 Others, however, faced with the
persecution of their communities by the Nguyen, did, in fact, welcome the
expedition.
Vietnamese Catholics were not divided only on the political issue of the Franco-
Spanish invasion. They also differed in their regional and class backgrounds. In the
nineteenth century, the majority of Vietnamese Catholics remained in the northern
part of the country. Many Catholics in this group had been converted during or after
the seventeenth century by Dominican or Jesuit priests from Portugal or France.
Vietnamese Catholics in Vietnam's central and southern regions tended to be
migrants who generally arrived well after 1600. During the nineteenth century,
Catholic families looking for opportunities in the south settled in the Mekong Delta,
and many of them became powerful landholders.9 Finally, many Catholics settled in
central Vietnam around the capital, at Hue. Ironically, some of these Catholic
families actually were civil servants of the Nguyin at the time of the invasion, when
anti-Catholic persecutions were being carried out. These different backgrounds
contributed to the diverse responses of Vietnamese Catholics to the Franco-Spanish
expedition.
In order to understand the position in which Vietnamese Catholics found
themselves in 1858, it is first necessary to understand how Catholicism interacted
with political events in nineteenth-century Vietnam. An examination of the
nineteenth century, however, really must begin in the 1780s. During that era, the
scattered remnants of the Nguyln dynasty had been forced into exile by the
advances of the Tay Stfn armies. They were led after 1777 by Nguyln Anh, a nephew
of Nguyln Phiic Thuan, the last Nguyln lord. In 1785, Nguyln Anh gathered a small
coterie of advisors and sought protection in Bangkok. By this time, most officials
from the former Nguyln bureaucracy in Phu Xuan were either dead or in hiding.
Moreover, in a move to consolidate his influence, Nguyln Anh had ordered the 1780
assassination of the most powerful military holdover from the old Nguyln regime,
General D6 Thanh Nhcm.10
8
Etienne Vo Due Hanh, La Place du Catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le Viet-Nam de
1851 a 1870 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), p. 52.
9
Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign ofMinh Mang (1820-1841): Central Polities
and Local Response (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2004).
10
Ibid., p. 26.
 Dang Dire Tuan 75

The few advisors who remained with Nguyln Anh in Bangkok, whom
Vietnamese historians sometimes call the "Bangkok honor roll," were not from
typical scholarly backgrounds.11 Among their ranks were Chinese pirates,
Cambodian and Siamese mercenaries, and several very young Vietnamese
strategists, the latter of whom were frequently descended from Southern families.12
This diverse group represented a clear departure from the earlier Nguyin court at
Phti Xuan. Even though the earlier courts of the Nguyen lords were unorthodox by
Northern standards, they were nevertheless integrated into a relatively organized
bureaucracy, with regular examinations administered by the turn of the eighteenth
century.13 Yet, after Nguyln Anh retook the Saigon area in 1788, several of these
military men from nontraditional backgrounds became the key military strategists
for the Nguyln. One of these men was Le Van Duyet, a eunuch who had previously
run the internal affairs of the Nguyen royal household until his talent for military
strategy was discovered.
In addition to these nontraditional figures who became powerful in the 1790s
while the Nguyen regime was headquartered in Gia Dinh, Europeans also had some
influence on military and civil policy at this time. Prime among these was Pierre
Pigneaux de Behaine, a Catholic bishop who had helped negotiate a treaty with
France on Nguyen Anh's behalf. In order to guarantee the success of that mission,
Pigneaux brought Nguyen Anh's young son, Prince Nguyen Phuc Canh, as a
"hostage" to prove to European nations that there were surviving descendants of the
Nguy§n house. That treaty was signed by Louis XVI in 1787, but was never enacted.
Nevertheless, Bishop Pigneaux managed to recruit several mercenaries to aid the
Nguyln cause. When Pigneaux arrived in Gia Dinh with these mercenaries and
Prince Canh, he immediately became part of the social fabric of the loosely organized
conglomeration of people involved in decision-making for the regime.
It is important not to overstate the importance of Pigneaux and the influence of
European mercenaries, strategists, cooks, and doctors who participated in the
Nguyen regime during the Gia Dinh period. These figures were not singularly
responsible for the success of the regime.14 But they were not insignificant, either.
Many of them played a crucial role in strategic decision-making at both the military
and civil levels.15 Pigneaux's involvement in the temporal affairs of the Gia Dinh
regime was enough to attract criticism from other missionaries, who argued that his
11
John Whitmore, "An Outline of Vietnamese History before the French Conquest/' Vietnam
Forum 8 (Summer/Fall 1986): 6-7.
12
Wynn Wilcox, "Transnationalism and Multiethnicity in the Early Nguyen Anh Gia Long
Period/' in Vietnam: Borderless Histories, ed. Nhung Tuyet Tran and Anthony Reid (Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p. 197.
13
Li Tana, Nguygn Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1998), pp. 46-47.
14
Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University,
East Asia Center, 1988), p. 17.
15
Frederic Mantienne, "The Transfer of Western Military Technology to Vietnam in the Late
Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: The Case of the Nguyln/' Journal of Southeast
Asian Studies 34,3 (October 2003): 519-35.
76 Wynn Wilcox

presence with the troops in the important battle to hold Dien Khanh in 1794 made
missionaries seem like political figures rather than religious ones.16
Thus, by the 1790s, two groups that would prove to be sympathetic both to
Vietnamese Christians and to foreign missionaries had established their influence in
the Nguyln regime: the diverse, of ten-military strategists associated with the
"Bangkok honor roll/' who were undereducated relative to other traditional elites
(e.g., scholars and officials); and the European missionaries and mercenaries
surrounding Pigneaux de Behaine. After Nguyln Anh defeated the remaining Tay
Scm forces and retook the traditional Nguyen capital at Phu Xuan in 1802, and
subsequently declared himself the Gia Long emperor, these two groups created what
for a time would be two safe havens for Vietnamese Christians and, to an extent, for
foreign missionaries, too.
Le Van Duyet developed a reputation among missionaries and Vietnamese
Catholics as a protector of Catholic interests after 1812. In that year, following a crisis
in the Cambodian monarchy, Gia Long officially appointed Le Van Duyet the
Protector of Gia Dinh (Gia Dinh Tong Tran).17 In that capacity, Duyet controlled
Saigon as well as the Mekong Delta, and he stayed in that position for two decades
until his death, in 1832. During this period, Duyet developed a reputation for
protecting Vietnamese Christians as well as foreign missionaries. Missionaries
reported that his tendency to shield Christians from several waves of anti-Christian
edicts coming from Gia Long's successor, the Minh Mang emperor, could be
attributed to his affection for Pigneaux, with whom he had a close relationship.18
In the meantime, the first fifteen years of Gia Long's reign in the rebuilt capital at
Hue saw a gradual erosion of the power and influence of the old-guard groups that
had dominated Nguyln politics in the Gia Dinh era (e.g., the military strategists and
European mercenaries and missionaries). While those nontraditional elites remained
for a time, they were gradually crowded out by the Nguyen regime's strategies for
attracting northern scholars and Le loyalists back into the fold early in Gia Long's
reign.19 These strategies reflected the fact that the Nguyen regime's focus, upon
winning the Tay Scm wars, was to facilitate "integrating north, center, and south into
one polity."20
Similarly, while some of the European mercenaries who had come to Gia Dinh
and were associated with Bishop Pigneaux remained, their influence was waning by
1815. After Pigneaux died of dysentery, in 1799, several of those Europeans returned
to France or moved on to other Asian locations. Only two officials, Phillippe Vannier
and Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau, and a doctor, Jean Marie Despiau, maintained a
presence in Hue.21 The remaining Europeans supported Catholic missionaries in the
16
See letter of Boisserand to Letondal, June 7, 1796, Archives des missions etrangeres de Paris
(hereafter AMEP) 801: 660; and Adrien Launay, Histoire de la mission de Cochinchine 1658-1823,
vol. Ill (Paris: Indes Savantes, 2000), p. 308.
17
Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam, p. 53.
18
Letter of Monsignor Taberd to the Superiors, June 16,1825, AMEP 747:927-32.
19
Nola Cooke, "Southern Regionalism and the Composition of the Nguyln ruling elite/' Asian
Studies Review 23,2 (June 1999): 211. Cooke notes, however, that, in general, the Nguyln
dynasty in the nineteenth century practiced "systematic discrimination" against northerners
and that "only a minority crossed the promotion barrier to join the political elite" (p. 227).
20
Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, p. 135.
21
See C. Michele Thompson's contribution in Chapter Two of this volume for more
information on the influence of foreigners in Hue.
 Dang Dtic Tuan 77

area and maintained contacts with Vietnamese Catholics around the capital, many of
whom were members of elite families. Several mercenaries had also married into
Catholic families, creating an effective but waning pro-Christian faction at the court.
By the second decade of the nineteenth century, there were functionally three
significant groupings of Christians in Vietnam. First, the majority of Christians were
northerners who had been converted by Dominican or Jesuit missionaries in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during the dominance of the Trinh clan. In
addition to this majority, there were two other politically significant groups:
Southern Christians concentrated in the Saigon area, who would increasingly
depend on the protection of Le Van Duyet for their continued existence and
prosperity, and Christians in central Vietnam, particularly in the Thvra Thien/Hue
area, who were often associated with the factional interests of the remaining and
weakening European mercenaries and members of the so-called Bangkok honor roll.
These two latter groups held considerable authority in the Gia Dinh era and in the
first few years of the Nguyen dynasty, but by 1815 their authority was also
decreasing.
The stage was set for a conflict between scholars and officials from elite family
backgrounds, on the one hand, and a loose conglomeration of members of the
Bangkok honor roll and Vietnamese Christian elites, on the other. The conflict
between these groups came to the surface in 1816, when the Gia Long emperor made
the decision to name his concubine's son, Nguyln Phuc Dam, the next crown prince.
In making this decision, Gia Long effectively passed over My Dircmg, the
"legitimate" son of Prince Canh, the nominally Christian previous crown prince,
who had died in 1801. Up until 1816, My Dtfcmg had been Gia Long's presumptive
choice to be the next emperor.22
Gia Long's decision to elevate the future Minn Mang emperor to the status of
Crown Prince was intensely political. This decision further entrenched the division
between scholar-elites, particularly those from the North, and those groups that had
wielded power in the Gia Dinh era. At the center of the succession crisis of 1816 was
Le Van Duyet, who publicly supported Minh Mang's candidacy as a political tactic,
but who, in reality, was likely opposed to Minh Mang becoming the next emperor.23
Other members of the Bangkok honor roll, such as the powerful general Nguyen Van
Thanh, were more outspoken in their opposition to the future Minh Mang. Later on,
Nguyln Van Thanh would be forced to drink poison, supposedly due to his son's
alleged treason, but his opposition to Minh Mang's candidacy may well have been a
factor leading to Nguyen Van Thanh's demise.
22
See Agathe Larcher-Goscha, "Prince Cuong De and Franco-Vietnamese Competition for the
Heritage of Gia Long/' in Viet Nam Expose, ed. Gisele Luce Bousquet and Pierre Brocheux (Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002), p. 204; and Tran My-Van, A Vietnamese Royal
Exile in Japan: Prince Cuong De, 1882-1951 (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), p. 21.
23
While Le V3n Duyet may have lent overt public support to Nguyen Phuc Dam, his covert
opposition to Gia Long's choice is evidenced by documentation that indicates that he initially
reacted to the choice with a great deal of fear, and by his historically strong support for
Christians. See Nguyln Phan Quang and V6 Xuan Dan, Lich sti Vietnam tu nguon goc den ndm
1884 [The History of Vietnam from its Origins to 1884] (Ho Chi Minh City: NXB Thanh phoHo
Chi Minh, 2000), p. 337; and Nguyen Phan Quang, Le Van Khoi vd su bieh Thanh Phien An
(1833-1835) [Le Van Khoi and the Revolt at the Phien An Citadel] (Ho Chi Minh City: Van hoc,
2002), pp. 33-34. Choi Byung Wook is not convinced that Le V2n Duyet opposed Minh Mang's
succession, but he is willing to concede that some evidence supports this view. See Choi
Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam, p. 56.
78 Wynn Wilcox

Although Le Van Duyet retained a cordial relationship with the new emperor
through the early 1820s, by the middle of that decade the Nguyen court was not a
friendly place for either the old generals who had helped Nguyln Anh obtain power
or for foreign missionaries and members of Christian families who had allied with
them. The once-powerful military leaders now found themselves less powerful than
civil officials who had traditional scholar-official backgrounds.24 In part because of
this shift toward scholar-officials, who generally regarded Christianity as dangerous
and heterodox, missionaries and Vietnamese Christians alike were faced with anti-
Christian harassment from the elites who now held power.
To avoid these problems, missionaries and Christians, in the southern areas of
Vietnam at least, increasingly relied on the protection of Le Van Duyet, who still
enjoyed considerable independent authority as the official Protector of Gia Dinh in
southern Vietnam. In 1832, however, Le Van Duyet passed away, leaving more than
20,000 Christians previously under his control without protection. Predictably, in the
aftermath of his death, in January 1833, the court promulgated an edict banning
Christianity throughout Dai Viet.25 It was not long before this brewing conflict would
come to a head. In the summer of 1833, Le Van Duyet's adopted son, Le Van Khoi,
organized a militia and rose up in revolt. His army successfully retook Gia Dinh with
relative ease and managed to control the Gia Dinh citadel until 1835.
By the time Nguyen forces were finally successful at breaking the seige in
September 1835, conflict between Christians and the court had solidified into a
reality. Those found to be supporting the rebellion were led to a Christian village
near Hue and sentenced to death by slicing. Among them was Father Joseph
Marchand, whom Nguyen troops found hiding in a ditch in Gia Dinh. While the
extent of Marchand's actual participation in the revolt is debatable, it is without
question that his participation was treated by the court as an indication of the threat
posed by Vietnamese Christians and by European missionaries. As a result, in 1836
any Christian activity by either group was thereafter prohibited.26
The Nguyen repression of Christianity after the Le Van Khoi rebellion set in
motion a series of events that would lead to a full-fledged armed conflict with
Franco-Spanish forces in 1858. Although Minh Mang's son Thieu Tri was regarded
by some missionaries as being more benign than his father, he nevertheless allowed
proscriptions of Christianity to remain in place.27 As a result, missionaries continued
to be arrested. For reasons related to domestic politics, in 1843 the French king Louis-
Philippe authorized military force to be used to protect the interests of French
missionaries.28 In February that year, the French vessel Heroine arrived at Cfta Han,
and its captain, Favin Leveque, presented a letter addressed to the Nguyen Foreign
Ministry demanding the release of five missionaries imprisoned in Nguyln jails, a
request that was eventually agreed to by the Nguyln court.29 This incident, however,
24
Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam, p. 59.
25
Ramsay, "Extortion and Exploitation/' p. 51.
26
Ibid., pp. 60-61.
27
Georges Taboulet, La geste Frangaise en Indochine (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1955), p. 334.
28
Mark W. McLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French Intervention, 1862-1874 (New York, NY:
Praeger, 1991), p. 35
29
Phan Phat Hubn, Viet nam gido su [Vietnamese Religious History] (Saigon: Cu'u The Tung
Thu, 1965), pp. 272-73.
 Dang Dtic Tuah 79

only heightened the suspicions of the Thieu Tri court toward foreign missionaries
and set a precedent for French naval intervention in Nguyen affairs.
Throughout the 1840s, French naval officers approached Nguyen officials with
demands to release missionaries from captivity, or, if there were no one to release,
the French officers demanded the ability to trade freely with the Nguyln. At the end
of May 1845, the French commandant Fournier du Plan arrived in Da NSng harbor
and demanded the release of the imprisoned bishop of Isauropolis, Monsignor
Dominique Lefebvre. The Nguyln again conceded to this request, and Lefebvre was
transported back to Singapore, only to reenter the country and be re-arrested several
times in the late 1840s.30 In March 1847, French ships again entered Vietnamese
waters and officers insisted that a letter be delivered directly to the Thieu Tri
emperor. The letter demanded complete freedom for missionaries and Vietnamese
Catholics to practice their faiths, a demand that was eventually rejected.31
The level of conflict among the Nguyln court, French missionaries, and the
French navy reached a crescendo after the ascension to the throne of the Ttr Du'c
emperor. Through the first year of Ttr Dtfc's reign, missionaries actually felt that
conditions for Christians were "constantly becoming better" amid rumors that the
emperor had promulgated a secret order for Nguyln officials to refrain from
persecuting missionaries and Vietnamese Christians. However, in August 1848, Ttr
Du'c published an edict entirely prohibiting "foreign religions/'32
Any animosity that Tu Du'c may have had toward the Christian cause was only
intensified when the emperor was faced with a rebellion initiated by his elder half-
brother, Prince Hoang Bao.33 Faced with evidence that Hoang Bao was reaching out
to Vietnamese Christians to support his efforts to gain the throne, Ttr Du'c reacted by
arresting the French missionary Augustin Schoeffler and ordering his execution. His
beheading on May 1, 1851, was publicized in France as a major incident, and
conveyed to Schoeffler posthumous glory and fame. As a result, other priests who
survived the persecutions expressed a "martyr envy" that they had not been the ones
to sacrifice their lives for the faith.34 As Mark McLeod has noted, Schoeffler's
execution also provided "France with the pretext it needed for the launching of the
1858 invasion" of Vietnam, which led to Vietnam's ceding three southern provinces
to the French in the 1862 Treaty of Saigon.
While the actual number of missionaries who were executed in the Nguyen
persecutions during the first half of the nineteenth century was relatively small,
nearly one hundred Vietnamese Christians were also executed. Given those
executions, one could expect that Vietnamese Christians would have been
unanimously in favor of the Franco-Spanish invasion of 1858. In fact, however,
rather than being a homogenous group, Vietnamese Christians were divided by
geography, occupation, and class. Even the scholar-officials differed widely in their
reactions to the Franco-Spanish invasion, with unexpected results. The well-known
Catholic reformer Nguyln Trircmg To, for example, illustrates how difficult it could
be to categorize the actions of Vietnamese Catholics at this time. Despite his deep
30
See Taboulet, La geste, pp. 362-65; and "Notice Biographique," retrieved October 10, 2008,
from http: / / archivesmep.mepasie.net/ recherche /notices.php?numero=0418&nom=Lefebvre
31
Mark W. McLeod, The Vietnamese Response, pp. 35-36.
32
Etienne Vo Due Hanh, La place du catholicisme, pp. 294-95.
33
Phan Phat Hubn, Viet nam gido sit, pp. 286-87.
34
Nola Cooke, "Early Nineteenth Century Vietnamese Catholics/7 p. 266.
80 Wynn Wilcox

connections to Hue politics, Nguyln Trircmg To decided that the most prudent
course of action was to seek the protection of French troops, and he even "briefly
entered the service of French occupation forces in southern Vietnam."35 Nevertheless,
despite this decision, he continued to petition the emperor and was even invited to
court, and on one occasion, in 1871, he counseled the emperor to attack French
positions.36
The example of Nguyln Truc/ng To exemplifies the kind of complexity involved
in tracing Vietnamese Catholic attitudes, as it shows that these individuals could
change their positions radically over short periods of time. Some Christians,
motivated by strong bonds to missionaries whom they saw as their "benefactors,"
supported the French "obsequiously."37 Others, fearing for their safety and their
access to resources, supported the French for material reasons. Still others supported
the French for intellectual reasons relating to the "common cause" of Christians.38 A
final group attempted to reconcile as best as possible their dual identity of being
"members of the ecclesiastical community," on the one hand, and "citizens, members
of a national community," on the other.39 In an era in which ecclesiastical interests
and Vietnamese national policy appeared to be at loggerheads, what could
Vietnamese Christians who wished to be loyal to the Nguyen do? By examining
Dang Du'c Tuan's writing, we might find an answer to this question.

DANG DLTC TUAN'S BIOGRAPHY

Dang Du'c Tuan is not the most significant figure in the history of the Dang Dtfc
clan. That honor goes to his great-grandfather, Dang Dtfc Sieu (1750-1810), from
Bong Scrn district, in Binh Dinh province, who became a mandarin at the Han-lam
Academy in Phu Xuan under the reign of Lord Nguyln Phuc Thuan (1765-77).40 In
the late 1780s, after Nguyln Phuc Anh reestablished himself at Gia Dinh, Dang Dtfc
Sieu fled south to serve him, taking with him knowledge of the Tay Scrn military
strategy that he had acquired in the north. He was later appointed to the Board of
Rites, where he became the major transcriber of royal proclamations for Nguyin
Phuc Anh. Dang Dtfc Sieu also became an assistant to Crown Prince Nguyen Phuc
Canh (1779-1801 ).41 It is likely that, in this capacity, he became well-acquainted with
the bishop of Adran, Pierre Pigneaux de Behaine (1740-99), who, in the early 1790s,
was still recognized as a "governor" for the young crown prince.42 (On the occasion
35
Mark W. McLeod, "Nguyen Truong To," pp. 313-31.
36
Ibid.
37
Etienne Vo Due Hanh, La place du Catholicisms, pp. 259-60.
38
Ibid., p. 261.
39
Ibid., p. 250.
40
See JSfguyen Huyen Anh, Viet nam dank nhan tti dim (Saigon: Khai tri, 1967), p. 56; and
Nguy§n Q. Thang and Nguyln Ba The, Tie dien nhan vat lich sti Viet nam (Hanoi: Van hoa,
1997), p. 132.
41
Lam Giang and Vo Ngpc Nha, Dang Dire Tuan, p. 11.
42
For evidence of the bishop's role as "governor" and Nguyen Phuc Anh's requirement that
his son pay homage to the bishop, see Charles B. Maybon, Histoire moderne du pays d'Annam
(1592-1820) (Paris: Plon-nourrit, 1919), p. 314. Though there is no direct evidence for this, we
may speculate that it is through these encounters that the Dang Dtfc clan was converted to
Christianity.
 Dang Dire Tuan 81

of the bishop's death, Dang Dire Sieu wrote one of his three famous gravestone
inscriptions.43)
Dang Du'c Sieu established an admirable standard for his descendants, many of
whom also became officials at various levels. Included in this list was Dang Dire
Sieu's grandson Dang Du'c Lanh, a local official in Bmh Dinh province whose wife
gave birth to a son, Dang Du'c Tuan, in 1806. Dang Du'c Tuan and his two brothers
were trained from a young age to study not only the four books and five classics of
the Confucian canon, but also important Christian texts, thus making them widely
and highly educated.44 Dang Du'c Tuan became particularly known in his local area
for his outstanding grasp of poetry. Undeterred from their studies by the edicts of
the Minh Mang emperor proscribing Christianity, or by the harsh and sometimes
arbitrary punishments meted out on Vietnamese Christians during and after the Le
Van Khoi rebellion (1833-35), Dang Du'c Tuan and his older brother, Hoa, sat for the
lower-level tu tai examination.45 Unfortunately, Tuan barely missed passing due to a
minor composition error, so he was forced to retreat to his home district of Bong Scm
to become a teacher.46
In 1841, the new Apostolic Vicar of Cochinchina, Monsignor Etienne Theodore
Cuenot (1802-61), established several programs to boost the number of indigenous
priests in Vietnam, including an effort to recruit talented Vietnamese Christians to
study at the seminary for native clergy in Penang.47 As part of that effort, the
monsignor offered Dang Du'c Tuan a position in Penang, which Tuan accepted.
During nearly a decade in Penang, Tuan learned Latin, English, and French, and
became an expert in teaching both Christian and secular literature in chu hdn
(Chinese characters), as well as canon law and religious history. Upon his return to
Vietnam, he was given a position as an assistant to the apostolic vicar of Western
Tonkin, Monsignor Jean-Denis Gauthier (1810-77). During this time, he was assigned
as a parish priest in the parishes of Chau Me and Trung Tin, in Quang Ngai
province.48
By the late 1850s, as hostilities between the Nguyen and Franco-Spanish
expeditionary forces began, persecutions of Christians in Vietnam reached new
heights. Cathedrals were destroyed, and Christian communities were scattered about
Vietnam.49 Father Tuan was forced to hide in the houses of other native Christians,
and to take circuitous routes whenever he ventured outside. To avoid capture, he
43
See Lam Giang and V6 Ngpc Nha, Dang Dire Tuan, p. 12; and Nguyln Q. Thang and Nguyln
Ba The, Tie dien, p. 132. The other well-known gravestone inscriptions were for V6 Tanh and
Ngo Tung Chau.
44
See Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Dice Tuan, p. 12; and Nguyln Q. Thang, Tit dien tac
gia van hoa Viet nam (Hanoi: Van hoa thong tin, 1999), p. 173.
45
Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Du'c Tuan, p. 13.
46
Jacob Ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early Nineteenth-
Century Vietnam (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), p. 132.
47
"Notice Biographique: Cuenot, Etienne-Theodore," AMEP 365; retrieved March 10, 2006,
from http: / / archivesmep.mepasie.org / recherche / notices.php?numero=0365&nom=Cuenot;
see also Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Dtic Tuan, p. 13. The seminary, officially named
the General College for Native Clergy, is a preparatory seminary run by the Societe des
Missions Etrangeres.
48
Phan Phat Hubn, History of the Catholic Church in Vietnam, Tome I (Long Beach, CA: Cu'u The
Tung Thtr, 2000), p. 647.
49
Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Dtic Tuan, p. 13.
82 Wynn Wilcox

was forced to leave Quang Ngai for Binh Dinh, and then returned to Quang Ngai a
second time. Finally, at the beginning of 1862, Father Tuan was arrested by Nguyln
officials at Nghla Man and imprisoned in the village of Mo Dux, southeast of Quang
Ngai.50
At the time of Father Tuan's arrest, he was found with a six-page pamphlet in
which he defended Vietnamese Catholics against the regime's idea that "Christianity
was a superstitious cult, and [Christians] mocked believers for their understanding
of silly evil spirits, and their intention was to lead the people astray and betray their
country and follow the invaders/'51 After reading this text, the an sat, or provincial
magistrate, Nguyln Hien, suspecting that Father Tuan was a priest and the author of
the text, ordered him to trample an image of Christ with his feet. Father Tuan refused
to do so, and he was put in stocks and chains for his disobedience.52 Shortly
thereafter, two regional inspectors visiting from Hue happened to pass through Mo
Du^c and were shown the pamphlet. They found it interesting and worthy of
presentation to the court at Hue. These court officials ordered Father Tuan to be sent
to Hue, where he was asked to present his ideas to Phan Thanh Gian, who then
forwarded the manuscript to the Tu Du'c emperor. Subsequently, Father Tuan was
made an attache to the delegation led by Phan Thanh Gian and Lam Duy Hiep to Gia
Dinh to negotiate the nham tuat treaty (Treaty of Saigon).53 After the nham tuat treaty
was signed, Dang Du'c Tuan went back to his duties as a priest in various locations,
mostly within Binh Dinh province. Yet he was never fully out of politics. He
petitioned the court on several occasions as an advocate of modernization and as an
advocate for the policies of other reformers such as Nguyen Tnrfrng To (1828-71). He
also penned histories, poems, and other works. He died in the hamlet of Crumh
Khoan, in Binh Dinh province, in 1874.54
In Lam Giang's words, Father Tuan's writing "reveals on the one hand the heart
of a man who suffered the undeserved misfortune of a Catholic but on the other a
person who spoke in the direction of the strength of the unity of a people in
defending the nation."55 These qualities are reflected in the narrative of "Thuat tich
viec nttcrc nam", to which we now turn.

CHRISTIANITY, ORDER, AND PEACE: THE TEXT OF "THUAT TICH VIEC Ntrcrc NAM"
Father Tuan begins his narrative history of Vietnam with a retelling of the
auspicious beginnings of Christianity in Vietnam. He emphasizes that Christianity
came to Vietnam during a time of peace and order, and that in converting the village
of An Vu'c, in Thanh H6a, the missionaries who provided the light of the gospel
improved on an already tranquil and prosperous situation in the area.

Dao thien chiia giang truyen nam tho,

Le Hoang trieu vlnh to oiu nien.
50
Phan Phat Hubn, Viet nam giao su, p. 329; Phan Phat Hubn, History of the Catholic Church in
Vietnam, p. 647.
51
Phan Phat Hubn, Viet Nam Giao Su, p. 328.
52
Etienne Vo Due Hanh, La Place du Catholicisme, pp. 250-52.
53
Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Due Tuan, p. 15.
54
Ibid., p. 16.
55
Ibid., p. 15.
 Dang Dtic Tuan 83

Thai hoa ngui bau dac yen,

Phieu nhan van tieng vien bien khong tran.
Ntra nghin gap hoi phong van,
NtfcVc nha thinh tri muon dan an hoa.
Cac thay nu^c But Tu Ga,
Vang lenh toa thanh trai qua Dang Ngoai.
Giang truyen Dao chiia thien thai,
Vet may ven ngtit phat gai tim dang.
Dpi o^n Chua Ca nghm van,
Kiem tim chien lac mcV mang dao lanh.
Lang An Vtrc tnrc/c danh tho giao,
Dau het da huo^ng dao hoi tarn
Tfr xua neo lac dirc/ng lam,
Dieu ran da tac Phiic Am ghi long.
Non cao bie?n tham may trung,
Ngtjra minh yen sang khap trong bau trfri,
An Viic sang truo^c moi no^i
Ray con bia tac de dc/i hau lai.

The Christian Path was spread on the Southern ground,

In the ninth year of the perpetual blessing [reign] of the Le Dynasty [1628].
The realm had reached a state of great peace and tranquility,
And a drifting bird surveying the land would find its distant borders
free of dust.
Five hundred thousand could gather together with the wind and the clouds,
Our country was flourishing, and its many people were at peace.
Priests from Portugal followed the sacred order to come to Dang Ngoai.56
Preaching the gospel of the Lord of Heaven,
The wind whipped up the mist and blew down the roots on the path.
Ten million thanks be to God,
The Christian sword quickly opened up the way.
The village of An Vvrc57 was empty before it received the Word,
In the end, it took the Lord into its heart.
In the past the way had been lost and difficult,
But now, the gospel was preached, cherished, and recorded.
From the lofty mountains to the churning oceans,
The light of heaven shone completely on everyone.
An Vtrc established this before every place,
And then chiseled it in stone for the generations to come.58

In this passage, Father Tuan takes the time-honored strategy of equating

Confucian conceptions of order, prosperity, and peace with similar Christian beliefs
about the importance of peace and justice. This strategy of searching for
56
Portuguese priests had arrived in Cochinchina by 1614. For more information, see Peter C.
Phan, Mission and Catechesis (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998).
57
The village of An Vtic is in the district of Hoang Hoa, Thanh Hoa province.
58
Dang Dtfc Tuan, "Thuat tich viec ntfo'c nam," fo. 1; see also Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha,
Dang Dire Tuan, p. 31.
84 Wynn Wilcox

equivalencies between literati culture and Christianity had been one frequently used
by Jesuits in converting literati in China, and had been one of the major ways in
which missionaries in Vietnam had tried to "inculturate" Christian beliefs as well.59
Just as a Confucian scholar who had passed the tien si examination or who had
conducted himself nobly as an official might have a stele engraved with his name
and accomplishments, so, too, were steles erected in An Vtrc to record the coming of
the missionaries and the conversion of the village to Christianity. Just as Confucius
sought to return Spring and Autumn period China to the peace, prosperity, good
government, and tranquility of the reigns of the Sage Kings Yao and Shun, so
Christian missionaries valued peace and tranquility as well, and only increased it—
according to Father Tuan—by shining the light of the gospel on Vietnam.
To Father Tuan, the success of the mutual Christian/Confucian project of
maintaining peace and tranquility can be shown by the fact that, in the more than
two centuries after the introduction of Christianity, Vietnam experienced relative
peace (the division of Dang Trong and Dang Ngoai is entirely glossed over by the
text). Moreover, when chaos broke out, the perpetrators of the disharmony, the
leaders of the Tay Scm rebellion (1773-1802), proscribed Christianity. In the
meantime, the forces of peace and good government, the Nguyln, teamed up with
Christians to restore order, thus establishing that both the Nguyen and the Christians
were in the right. First, Father Tuan establishes that in this time Christianity had
been doing well:

On thay, nghia Chua nao phai,

Lan hoi mcV dai trong ngoai khap ncri.

Thanks to God, the righteous religion had flourished,

In this time the path had soared out everywhere.60

But the coming of the Tay Scm upset the apple cart both for good government and
for Christians:

Hai tram nam da co hem,

Chieu Thong ke vi Tay Scm day loan.
Cho hay thien van tuan httcm,
Thanh suy, bien diec, nguy an ctoi dcri.

After more than two hundred years,

Chieu Thong [Illustrious Government] had been on the throne, [but] the Tay Scm
created chaos.
And so heaven's will came full circle,
Abundance was transformed to decline, peace to danger,
changing and shifting.61
59
See Lionel Jensen, Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 31-76; David E. Mungello, The Great
Encounter of China and the West (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), pp. 20-67; and
Peter Phan, Mission and Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes and Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century
Vietnam (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998).
60
Dang Dire Tuan, Thuat tichf fo. II; Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Dire Juan, p. 38.
61
Ibid.
 Dang Dtic Tuan 85

Here, Father Tuan uses the double meaning of the reign title of the last Le
emperor, Chieu Thong (r. 1787-89), to emphasize that good government had, in fact,
been the norm in Vietnam for more than two hundred years. The span of time that
Father Tuan gives shows the association between Christianity and good government,
since the period of slightly more than two hundred years also coincides with the
establishment of Christianity in Vietnam. The connection becomes even more
apparent when Father Tuan emphasizes that a Christian missionary, Bishop
Pigneaux de Behaine, was responsible for saving the country and restoring unity and
order:

Dao truyen co chiia gay nen,

Lang sa npi giang khap mien Viet nam.
Ba Da Loc lam giam muc,
Chan chien lanh duo^ng due khi song.

[When] The way of the Lord had become emaciated,

The French came in to preach throughout all the regions of Viet Nam.
Pigneaux de Behaine became the Bishop,
And he nurtured, reared, and tended his Christian flock like no other.62

As Father Tuan quickly explains, it was not just the Vietnamese Christians who
enjoyed the bishop's tender nurturing, but "all of the weeping areas of Nam Viet/'63
In addition, the Nguyen clan received literal nurturing through the bishop's role as
surrogate father of Prince Nguyen Phiic Canh, the "little crown prince," who went to
France with the bishop in an attempt to seek military reinforcements for the
Nguyln.64 For Father Tuan, Pigneaux's actions brought about unification and peace
in Vietnam. Even though the bishop died in 1799, three years before the Nguyln
were able to win a definitive military victory over the Tay Stfn, the bishop was still
the person ultimately responsible for the reunification and pacification of Vietnam,
as Father Tuan explains when telling the story of the bishop's death:

Long giup nttcrc cuti dan moi,

Viec giang truyen moi noi chtfa an.
Nao hay bien cuoc string tang,
Coi tran ft* ta Thien dircmg nghi ngtfi.
Dtic vua thircmg dec rung riyi
Mat tat ta htfu mat ngircri phuc tarn.

Having a heart to help save the country and its sick people,
Preaching the word everywhere there was not yet peace.
His budding knowledge transformed the circumstances and made things clear,
From dust and decline he nursed the heavenly path back to good health.
The righteous king was stricken with panic,
62
Dang Dtfc Tuan, Thuat tick, fo. IV; Lam Giang and V6 Ngpc Nha, Dang Dtic Tuan, pp. 50-51.
63
Ibid.
64
Dang Dtfc Tuan, Thuat tick, fo. IV-V; Lam Giang and V6 Ngpc Nha, Dang Dtic Tuan, pp. 50-
53.
86 Wynn Wilcox

He had lost his left-hand man, lost the person at the center of his heart.65

Thus, when Nguyen Anh, with the help of the French volunteers, succeeds in
reunifying the country in 1802, it is thanks to the efforts of Bishop Pigneaux,
according to Father Tuan's narrative.66 Once again, the efforts of good Christians and
those of righteous monarchs were one and the same: to restore order and promote
peace, tranquility, and good government in the land.
By the 1830s, as persecutions of Christianity became common, the road to peace
and tranquility was lost, and this would have disastrous consequences for both the
legitimate Nguyln rulers and their Christian subjects. As someone who worked
painstakingly to prove his loyalty to the Nguyen, Father Tuan must discuss the
persecutions without explicitly blaming Emperor Minh Mang (r. 1820-40), who is
doing the persecuting. He manages this by emphasizing that the origins of the
persecutions lay in the Dtttfng San incident of 1831. A land dispute between the
mostly Christian village of Duang Scrn, which lay several dozen kilometers
northwest of Hue, and the neighboring village of Co Lao led to an armed skirmish
for which the court eventually blamed the Christians and punished them with harsh
prison sentences.67 The court also blamed a French missionary, Father Francois
Jaccard (1799-1838), for the violence and sentenced him to death, though the
sentence was not enforced and was effectively commuted to house arrest in Hue.68
By arguing that an ill-considered local dispute was the origin of the Christian
persecutions in nineteenth-century Vietnam, Father Tuan could further develop his
explanation of how the forces of confusion and chaos prevented both Christians and
the Nguyln from seeing the correct path without seeming disloyal:

May thien tao hoa xoay van,

Khon Ittcmg y nhiem, khon phan ly mau.
Ducmg San, Co Lao ca cau,
Kien nhau gicn han, thanh nhau dat lang.

Things were slowly changed and became confused

The world descended and Tightness weakened, the world divided and
reason was lost;
Duong San and Co Lao created
A continuous dispute with each other, their boundary, and their land.69

The unwise and "confused" actions at Dtrcxng San led to the Christian path
being obscured, to the persecution of missionaries and Vietnamese Christians
through the 1850s, and ultimately to the invasion of Vietnam in 1858 by the joint
forces of the Franco-Spanish military expedition, led by Rigault de Genouilly. Even
though this Franco-Spanish expedition was undertaken under the aegis of the pope
65
Dang Dtfc Tuan, Thuat tick, fo. VII; Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Dtfc Tuan, p. 59.
66
Dang Dtfc Tuan, Thuat tick, fo. IX; Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Dtic Tuan, pp. 67-68.
67
See Jacob Ramsay, "Extortion and Exploitation/' p. 315.
68
"Notice Bibliographique: Francois Jaccard/' AMEP 348; retrieved March 10, 2006, from
http://archivesmep.mepasie.org/recherche/notices.php?numero=0348&nom=Jaccard
69
Dang Dtfc Tuan, Thuat tick, fo. XI; Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Dtic Tuan, p. 73.
 Dang Difc Tuan 87

in order to protect Christians in Vietnam from persecution, Father Tuan will not
abide it:

It ngay nghe chuyen ro rang,

Tay Dircmg tau six Cura Han dao chcxi.
Trircyc da bay chuyen bao dc/i,
Ray con tai lai, trctt ai la trc/i!

Only a few days after the message became clear,

Western ships were sent on a mission to overpower Cira Han.
Before all the generations the news was announced,
Now the multitudes all told the officials: Oh no, oh no!70

Rather than regarding the French imperialists as welcome saviors, Father Tuan
saw the French aggression as the disastrous culmination of the cycle of persecution,
violence, and war.

CONCLUSION
Catholic intellectuals of the late nineteenth century, like Father Tuan, were
placed in a difficult position. His actions indicate that he felt some degree of loyalty
to the Nguyln, though surely that loyalty was tempered by the fact that, for decades,
Nguyen emperors had persecuted Christians and even imprisoned him. But, on the
other hand, Father Tuan recognized that the loss of Vietnamese territory to the
French was not a desirable solution to Christian persecution in Vietnam. Given these
complex sentiments, Father Tuan attempted to legitimate his opinions through
recourse to a narrative of Vietnamese history based on the ideals of peace, order, and
harmony that he saw as inherent in both the Confucian and Christian tradition.
When good rulers and good Christians influenced Vietnam, order prevailed; but
when they did not, chaos broke out. Since war with the French was the ultimate
disruption of order and tranquility, it could be seen as the negative consequence of
Christian persecution rather than as a legitimate attempt to stop such persecution.
For Father Tuan, history became the thread that he was able to tease through the
small eye of the needle that he had created for his own complex anti-imperialist
Christian identity.

3
Dang Dtfc Tuan, Thuat tick, fo. XVI; Lam Giang and V6 Ngoc Nha, Dang Dtic Tuan, p. 73.
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