Volta
ConflictAugust 1884 – 9 June 1885

Sino-French War

Also called: Tonkin War

China and France fought over suzerainty in Vietnam. China lost its claim to Vietnam, and in the meantime the Gapsin Coup broke out in Korea.

The Battle of Fuzhou, where the French fleet destroyed China’s Fujian Fleet, 23 August 1884
The Battle of Fuzhou, where the French fleet destroyed China’s Fujian Fleet, 23 August 1884

Joseph Nash · Public domain · Source

Having taken southern Vietnam (Cochinchina) in the 1860s, France pushed into the north (Tonkin) and made Vietnam a protectorate in 1883. China, claiming suzerainty over Vietnam, sent troops to resist. In August 1884 the French fleet destroyed the Fujian Fleet — a product of the Self-Strengthening Movement — at Fuzhou in about an hour and also attacked Keelung in Taiwan. Chinese forces won at Zhennan Pass in March 1885, yet in June China signed a treaty at Tianjin recognising the French protectorate over Vietnam. France formed French Indochina in 1887. When China withdrew half its troops from Korea, radical reformers seized the moment to stage the Gapsin Coup (1884).

Show on the map

The map in 1884

Open the full map

OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors

States and rulers at the time
France · victor
Qing · defeated — Guangxu Emperor
Nguyễn Vietnam

People

  • Li Hongzhang1823 – 1901

    diplomat · Qing viceroy who steered policy toward Korea after 1882 and signed the Tianjin Convention and the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Itō Hirobumi

Before and after

Earlier
1882 Sino-Korean Regulations for Maritime and Overland Trade
Later
1884 Gapsin Coup

Themes that include this event

  • The Opening of East Asia1839 – 1901

    From the Opium War to the Boxer Protocol — sixty years in which China, Japan and Korea, forced open by Western gunboats, each tried to reform and went separate ways