Cochinchina campaign

Cochinchina campaign
Part of the French conquest of Vietnam and Western imperialism in Asia
Capture of Saigon, Antoine Léon Morel-Fatio.
Date 1 September 1858 – 5 June 1862 (3 years, 9 months and 4 days) Location Nam Kỳ, Đại Nam Result Franco-Spanish victory Treaty of Saigon Territorial changes Cochinchina becomes a French colony
Belligerents
France Spain Spanish East Indies	Đại Nam
Commanders and leaders
Charles Rigault de Genouilly François Page Léonard Charner Louis Bonard Carlos Palanca y Gutiérrez	Nguyễn Tri Phương
Strength
~3,000 1 frigate 2 corvettes 2 avisos 9 gunboats	10,000+
Casualties and losses
1,000 killed and wounded	Heavy

The Cochinchina campaign^[1] was a series of military operations between 1858 and 1862, launched by a joint naval expedition force on behalf of the French Empire and the Kingdom of Spain against the Nguyễn period Vietnamese state. It was the opening conflict of the French conquest of Vietnam.

Initially a limited punitive expedition against the persecution and execution of French (and to a lesser extent Spanish) Catholic missionaries in Đại Nam, the ambitious French emperor Napoleon III however, authorized the deployment of increasingly larger contingents, that subdued Đại Nam territory and established French economic and military dominance. The war concluded with the founding of the French colony of Cochinchina and inaugurated nearly a century of French colonial rule in Vietnam in particular and Indochina in general.^[2][3]