British relations with Vietnam, 1822–1858
Nicholas Tarling’s 1966 article traces British diplomatic and commercial engagement with Vietnam from the Crawfurd mission of 1821–22 to the French seizure of Tourane and Saigon in 1858, arguing that the Nguyen dynasty’s consistent policy of avoiding European entanglement—reinforced by the disruptive presence of French missionaries and American naval aggression—prevented Britain from establishing any meaningful relationship with the country, ultimately ceding the field to France.
Summary
The article covers the full arc of British attempts to open relations with Vietnam across three and a half decades, examining the Crawfurd mission of 1821–22, the Phlegethon visit of 1845, the Davis mission of 1847, the Brooke mission of 1850, and the Wade/Bowring mission of 1855–56. The central historical problem is why a country that posed no military threat to Britain, offered limited commercial opportunity, and lay far from the sphere of Indian politics nonetheless attracted repeated diplomatic attention—and why every attempt failed. Tarling shows that Vietnamese policy was not merely commercial protectionism, as Gutzlaff and other contemporaries assumed, but a deliberate strategy of non-involvement with all European powers. The Crawfurd mission itself, by alerting Minh-mang to the possibility that French influence might provoke British intervention, “put the seal on the Nguyen policy of avoiding all European entanglements whatsoever” (p. 5). Subsequent French and American aggression—the 1845 Constitution incident and the 1847 Lapierre attack on Tourane—only confirmed this policy rather than moderifying it. British officials repeatedly misread the situation, assuming that commercial liberalisation or the example of China’s capitulation at Nanking would induce Vietnamese openness.
Tarling draws on Foreign Office dispatches, India Office records, the Crawfurd journal, Davis’s published account, and the correspondence of Bowring, Wade, and various Singapore and Hong Kong officials to reconstruct the sequence of missions and the Vietnamese responses to each. A recurring structural contrast runs through the article: Siam, which shared some initial wariness with Vietnam, ultimately accommodated British power under Mongkut, while Vietnam did not. Tarling attributes this divergence to Siam’s longer history of adjustment to shifts in regional power and to Britain’s deeper political and commercial stake in Siam, for which Vietnam was merely a pendant (pp. 7–8).
The article closes with the French expedition of 1858, which Tarling shows was in part a consequence of the failure of earlier British missions. Bowring, whose own Wade mission had been rebuffed, actively fostered the French venture, and the British Government—preoccupied with the Indian Mutiny and the Elgin mission to China—took no countermeasure. The result was the creation of the colony of Cochin-China, a development that Tarling notes had the paradoxical effect of strengthening British interest in northern Borneo as a counterweight (p. 34).
Key Findings
- The Crawfurd mission of 1821–22 secured a nominal opening of Vietnamese ports, but in practice trade developed only via Singapore; in 1830–31 some thirty-five junks and topes (aggregating approximately 2,225 tons) came from Cochin-China and Cambodia to Singapore, and by 1835–6 fourteen topes came from central Vietnam alone (pp. 5–6).
- The Phlegethon visit of 1845, a purely complimentary mission thanking the Emperor for rescuing shipwrecked crews of the Mellish and Allowie, was met with obstruction at Nha-trang; the Vietnamese insisted on communicating with the British Crown rather than the Governor-General of India, and no capital audience was granted (pp. 12–14).
- Davis’s 1847 mission, carrying full powers from Queen Victoria, was denied a royal audience at Tourane; the Vietnamese cited the inundated state of the country and the absence of precedent for receiving an envoy at Hue, and the exchange of presents broke down (pp. 16–18).
- The French attack on Tourane in April 1847 (Lapierre’s seizure and destruction of Vietnamese junks) led to an edict excluding Europeans and putting a price on missionary heads; Emperor Tu-duc subsequently ended the royal trade to Singapore, and by the mid-1850s no square-rigged Cochin-Chinese vessel was seen at Singapore (pp. 15–16).
- Wade’s 1855–56 attempt to deliver Bowring’s letter to Hue was rebuffed at the Hue river bar; he was confined to a village hall under armed guard for six days before being extracted by H.M.S. Rattler, and concluded that the country was “exclusive,” “thoroughly despotic,” and commercially unattractive (pp. 26–28).
- The joint Franco-Spanish expedition of 1858 seized Tourane in August and subsequently Saigon, creating the nucleus of the future French colony of Cochin-China; the British Government took no countermeasure, and the episode was viewed in the local press with equanimity (pp. 31–33).
Conclusion
Tarling’s definitive historical takeaway is that Vietnam’s isolation was a product of its own deliberate policy, not merely of British failure or indifference. The Nguyen court’s consistent refusal to engage—driven by the precedent of Pigneau’s aid to Nguyen-Anh and reinforced by French and American aggression—meant that Britain, despite repeated and increasingly formal missions, never established the prior relationship that might have checked French expansion. The article’s final word is given to King Mongkut of Siam, who in an 1865 letter to Norodom of Cambodia observed that the Vietnamese “were stubborn and determined to hold on to their old policy. They did not know the real strength of the maritime powers and there was nobody to tell them of the real might and custom of these distant lands” (p. 34).
Context
- Primary archival collections explored include the Foreign Office (F.O.17 series), the India Office Library (Board’s Collections, Political Consultations), and the John Rylands Library, Manchester (Bowring papers, English Mss. 1228).
- The article extends Alastair Lamb’s 1961 documentary study of earlier British missions (1778–1822) into the post-Crawfurd period and provides the first systematic account of British-Vietnamese relations in the 1840s–1850s, situating them within the broader framework of British policy in Southeast Asia and the competitive dynamics with France.