Zeng Jize

Marquis Zeng Jize (曾紀澤), one of China's earliest ministers to London, Paris and Saint Petersburg, played an important role in the diplomacy that preceded and accompanied the Sino-French War (August 1884–April 1885).

Marquis Zeng's diplomacy

Zeng Jize (1839–90), a native of Hunan province, was the eldest son of Zeng Guofan (曾國藩), a leading reformist minister at the Qing court, and inherited his father's title of Marquis in 1877. Zeng received a traditional Chinese education, but was also one of the very few Chinese officials who learned English and took an interest in European affairs. With these advantages he was persuaded to represent China's interests abroad as a diplomat.

Zeng was appointed minister to Britain and France in 1878, and lived in Europe for seven years (1879-1885). He made his name as a diplomat in 1880 and 1881, by renegotiating the infamous 1879 Treaty of Livadia with Russia. The resulting Treaty of Saint Petersburg (February 1881), which reversed most of the Russian gains of 1879, was generally considered a diplomatic triumph for China.

Zeng's duties as minister to Paris were dominated by the confrontation between France and China over Tonkin that eventually culminated in the Sino-French War. Zeng's denunciations of French policy in Tonkin began softly enough in April 1882 after the capture of the citadel of Hanoi by Henri Rivière, grew more insistent as French ambitions became clearer in the summer of 1883, and reached a climax immediately after the Son Tay Campaign in December 1883.

In July 1883 Zeng's optimistic assessment that the French government had no stomach for a full-scale war with China influenced the Qing government's decision to terminate the Shanghai negotiations between Li Hongzhang and Arthur Tricou over the future of Tonkin. The failure of the Shanghai negotiations stiffened France's resolve to confront the Black Flag Army to entrench its protectorate in Tonkin, and arguably made war between France and China inevitable. [Eastman, "Throne and Mandarins", 76–84]

In January 1884, in the wake of Admiral Amédée Courbet's capture of Son Tay (16 December 1883), Zeng unwisely arranged for an article to be published in a German newspaper that made wounding references to the Franco-Prussian War ('The bravery of the French soldiers has been so widely praised that one might almost think that they had captured Metz or Strasbourg rather than Son Tay'). [Lung Chang, "Yueh-nan yu Chung-fa chan-cheng", 214–19] This and other provocations goaded the French government into demanding his replacement in April 1884. The Qing court, dismayed by the rout of China's Guangxi Army in the Bac Ninh campaign (March 1884), complied with this demand, paving the way for the conclusion of the Tientsin Accord between France and China in May 1884. Zeng was replaced as minister to Paris by Xu Jingcheng (許景澄), an emollient career diplomat.

Notes

References

* Chere, L., "The Diplomacy of the Sino-French War (1883–1885): Global Complications of an Undeclared War" (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1988)
* Eastman, L., "Throne and Mandarins: China's Search for a Policy during the Sino-French Controversy" (Stanford, 1984)
* Lung Chang [龍章] , "Yueh-nan yu Chung-fa chan-cheng" [越南與中法戰爭, Vietnam and the Sino-French War] (Taipei, 1993)