Tonkin campaign

Tonkin campaign Campagne du Tonkin (French) Chiến dịch Bắc Kỳ (Vietnamese)
Part of French conquest of Vietnam
The Capture of Bắc Ninh, 12 March 1884
Date 1883–1886 Location Northern Vietnam Result French victory Territorial changes French protectorate over Tonkin and Annam
Belligerents
France	Vietnam Black Flag Army (to 1885) China (to 1885)
Strength
17,000 soldiers by August 1885[1]	50,000 Chinese soldiers 10,000 Vietnamese soldiers 3,000 Black Flag soldiers
Casualties and losses
4,222 killed or wounded[1]	at least 10,000 killed[1]

The Tonkin campaign was an armed conflict fought between June 1883 and April 1886 by the French against, variously, the Vietnamese, Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army and the Chinese Guangxi and Yunnan armies to occupy Tonkin (northern Vietnam) and entrench a French protectorate there. The campaign, complicated in August 1884 by the outbreak of the Sino-French War and in July 1885 by the Cần Vương nationalist uprising in Annam (central Vietnam), which required the diversion of large numbers of French troops, was conducted by the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, supported by the gunboats of the Tonkin Flotilla. The campaign officially ended in April 1886, when the expeditionary corps was reduced in size to a division of occupation, but Tonkin was not effectively pacified until 1896.