Persecution of Christians in Cochinchina

Background. Cochinchina is a historical exonym usually denoting Southern Vietnam, and the French colonial unit of that name, inaugurated in 1862, became a constituent territory of French Indochina from 1887. The Cần Vương movement, a large-scale Vietnamese insurgency between 1885 and 1896, sought to expel the French and reinstate the deposed emperor Hàm Nghi. It lacked a coherent national structure, consisting mainly of regional leaders who attacked French troops in their own provinces.

Violence Against Christians. Although specific numbers remain disputed, it seems likely that between the end of July and the end of September 1885, Cần Vương fighters killed around 40,000 Vietnamese Christians. This figure represents nearly a third of Vietnam's Christian population. The violence was part of the broader insurrection in Annam, which spread and flourished in 1886, reaching its climax the following year.

Political Context. Matters came to a head in June 1885, when France and China signed the Treaty of Tientsin, in which China implicitly renounced its historic claims to suzerainty over Vietnam. Thousands of Vietnamese patriots responded to appeals in Annam itself, and the appeal also strengthened indigenous resistance to French rule in neighbouring Tonkin, much of which had been brought under French control during the Sino-French War of August 1884 to April 1885. The cited passages do not explicitly connect this resistance to the killings of Christians.