Nguyen Truong To and His Cahiers Revisited

Abstract

There are still different judgments on both Nguyen Truong To and the "possibility"/"impossibility" of his cahiers in the context of Vietnam history during the second half of the nineteenth century.

One of the Nguyen Truong To's points of view was: "provisional ceasefire" with the French invaders to "reform" the country in order to defeat the latter and liberate the country when appropriate time allowed Vietnamese people to do so.

Many people believe that this point of view was by no mean far-fetched and illusive. Yet, it also seemed unworkable because of the feeble and backward Hue Court. The others are of the opinion that Nguyen Truong To's cahiers of a ceasefire with the French only came out in 1871 while, much earlier, in 1862 and 1867 Emperor Tu Duc had signed the treaties which conceded six provinces of southern Vietnam to the French (between 1874 and 1884 the Hue Court continued to sign three other surrendering treaties, namely, Giap Tuat, Harmand, and Patenôtre). Therefore, the Nguyen Dynasty was not hesitant to hold peace talks with the French. Yet, the more peace talks were held, the more land the Nguyen conceded to the French. Yet, the more peace talks were held, the more land the Nguyen conceded to the French which eventually led to the complete loss of the national independence.

Furthermore, Nguyen Truong To insisted that "once the French had come, they would never leave". The question is then what was the "opportunity" for the Nguyen Dynasty to "reform" the country in order to "defeat" the French colonialists?

Therefore, more careful researches on Nguyen Truong To and his cahiers need to be done, especially a study of his position in the complex history of Vietnam during the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century.