The ‘Last’ Friendship Exchanges between Siam and Vietnam, 1879–1882: Siam between Vietnam and France—and Beyond

Abstract

AbstractStudies of Siam's diplomatic relations from the mid-nineteenth century have been focussed on its troubled relations with Western colonial powers, often within a bilateral framework. While highlighting issues such as territorial losses and treaty revisions, scholarly interest tends to have overlooked Siam's relations with its neighbouring countries. Based on archival records at the National Archives of Thailand, this article aims to fill this gap by examining diplomatic exchanges between the Siamese and Vietnamese courts that took place between 1879 and 1882. In April 1879, a royal mission from the Vietnamese court bearing gifts and a royal letter from Tự Đức to Chulalongkorn arrived in Bangkok. It was allegedly the first formal mission from the Vietnamese court in almost half a century after the two countries had come into conflict in the 1830s. By examining how Siam and Vietnam sought to maintain and manipulate ‘traditional’ interstate relations in the face of treaty arrangements that France enforced upon Vietnam, this article reveals complex issues involved in the process of negotiations, such as the questions of maintaining the equality between the two monarchies and of the ‘translation’ of the concepts of sovereignty between Thai and Sino-Vietnamese languages, and suggests the necessity to pay more attention to historical and broader regional contexts in Asia.