Minh Mạng (Hanoi: [mïŋ˧ maːŋ˧˨ʔ]), also known as Minh Mệnh (Hanoi: [mïŋ˧ məjŋ̟˧˨ʔ], chữ Hán: 明 命, lit. 'the bright favour of Heaven'; 25 May 1791 – 20 January 1841; born Nguyễn Phúc Đảm, also known as Nguyễn Phúc Kiểu), was the second emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam, reigning from 14 February 1820 until his death, on 20 January 1841. He was the fourth son of Emperor Gia Long, whose eldest son, Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh, had died in 1801. He was well known for his opposition to French involvement in Vietnam, completing the final Vietnamese conquest of Champa, temporary annexation of Cambodia, and his rigid Confucian orthodoxy.
Born Nguyễn Phúc Đảm at Gia Định in the middle of the Second Tây Sơn – Nguyễn War, Minh Mạng was the fourth son of lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh – future Emperor Gia Long. His mother was Gia Long's second wife Trần Thị Đang, later known as the empress Thuận Thiên. At the age of three, under the effect of a written agreement made by Gia Long with his first wife the Empress Thừa Thiên, she took Đảm in and raised him as her own son.
Following Thừa Thiên's death in 1814, it was supposed that her grandson, Crown Prince Cảnh's eldest son Mỹ Đường, would be responsible for conducting the funeral. Gia Long however, brought out the agreement to insist that Phúc Đảm, as Thừa Thiên's son, should be the one fulfilling the duty. Despite opposition from mandarins, such as Nguyễn Văn Thành, Gia Long was decisive with his selection.
In 1816, Gia Long appointed Đảm as his heir apparent. After the ceremony, Crown Prince Đảm moved to Thanh Hòa Palace and started assisting his father in processing documents and discussing country issues.
Gia Long's death coincided with the re-establishment of the Paris Missionary Society's operations in Vietnam, which had closed in 1792 during the chaos of the power struggle between Gia Long and the Tây Sơn brothers before Vietnam was unified. In the early years of Minh Mạng's government, the most serious challenge came from one of his father's most trusted lieutenants and a national hero in Vietnam, Lê Văn Duyệt, who had led the Nguyễn forces to victory at Qui Nhơn in 1801 against the Tây Sơn dynasty and was made regent in the south by Gia Long with full freedom to rule and deal with foreign powers.
Policy towards missionaries and Christianity
In February 1825, Minh Mạng banned Christian missionaries from entering Vietnam. French vessels entering Vietnamese harbours were ordered to be searched with extra care. All entries were to be watched "lest some masters of the European religion enter furtively, mix with the people and spread darkness in the kingdom." In an imperial edict, Christianity was described as the "perverse European" (practice) and accused of "corrupting the hearts of men".
Between 1833 and 1838, seven missionaries were sentenced to death, amongst them Pierre Borie, Joseph Marchand, and Jean-Charles Cornay. He first attempted to stifle the spread of Christianity by attempting to isolate Catholic priests and missionaries from the populace. He asserted that he had no French interpreters after Chaigneau's departure and summoned the French clergy to Hue and appointed them as mandarins of high rank to woo them from their proselytising. This worked until a priest, Father Regereau, entered the country and began missionary work. Following the edict which forbade further entry of missionaries into Vietnam, arrests of clerics began. After strong lobbying by Duyệt, the governor of Cochin China, and a close confidant of Gia Long and Pigneau de Behaine, Minh Mạng agreed to release the priests on the condition that they congregate at Đà Nẵng and return to France. Some of them obeyed the orders, but others disobeyed the order upon being released, and returned to their parishes and resumed preaching.
Minh Mạng continued and intensified his father's isolationist and conservative Confucian policies. At the start of his rule, Vietnam was of no interest to the European powers, since most of the continent was engaged in the Napoleonic Wars. Nevertheless, Napoleon had seen it as a strategically important objective in the Anglo-French power struggle in Asia, as he felt that it would make an ideal base from which to contest the East India Company's foothold in the Indian subcontinent. With the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy and the final exile of Napoleon in 1815, the military scene in Europe quieted and French interest in Vietnam was revived. Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau, one of the volunteers of Pigneau de Behaine who had helped Gia Long in his quest for power, had become a mandarin and continued to serve Minh Mạng, upon whose ascension, Chaigneau and his colleagues were treated more distantly. He eventually left in November 1824. In 1825, he was appointed as French consul to Vietnam after returning to his homeland to visit his family after more than a quarter of a century in Asia. Upon his return, Minh Mạng received him coldly. The policy of isolationism soon saw Vietnam fall further behind the pace of technology and become more vulnerable to outside encroachment as political stability returned to continental Europe, allowing European powers free hand to once again direct their attention towards increasing their influence in Asia. With his Confucian orthodoxy, Minh Mạng shunned all Western influence and ideas as hostile and avoided all contact.
In 1819, Lieutenant John White of the United States Navy was the first American to make contact with Vietnam, arriving in Saigon. Minh Mạng was willing to sign a contract, but only to purchase artillery, firearms, uniforms and books. White was of the opinion that the deal was not sufficiently advantageous and nothing was implemented. In 1821, a trade agreement from Louis XVIII was turned away, with Minh Mạng indicating that no special deal would be offered to any country. That same year, East India Company agent John Crawfurd made another attempt at contact, but was allowed to disembark only in the northern ports of Tonkin; he gained no agreements, but concluded relations with France posed no threat to Company trade. In 1822, the French frigate La Cleopatre visited Tourane (present day Đà Nẵng). Her captain was to pay his respects to Minh Mạng, but was greeted with a symbolic dispatch of troops as though an invasion had been expected. In 1824 Minh Mạng rejected the offer of an alliance from Burma against Siam, a common enemy of both countries. In 1824 Henri Baron de Bougainville was sent by Louis XVIII to Vietnam with the stated mission "of peace and protection of commerce. Upon arriving in Tourane in 1825, it was not allowed ashore. The royal message was turned away on the pretext that there was nobody able to translate it. It was assumed that the snub was related to an attempt by Bougainville to smuggle ashore a Catholic missionary from the Missions étrangères de Paris. Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau's nephew, Eugène Chaigneau, was sent to Vietnam in 1826 as the intended consul but was forced to leave the country without taking up his position.
Further fruitless attempts to start a commercial deal were led by de Kergariou in 1827 and Admiral Laplace in 1831. Another effort by Chaigneau in 1829 also failed. In 1831 another French envoy was turned away. Vietnam under Minh Mạng was the first East Asian country with whom the United States sought foreign relations. President Andrew Jackson tried twice to contact Minh Mạng, sending Edmund Roberts in 1832, and Consul Joseph Balestier in 1836, to no avail. In 1837 and 1838, La bonite and L'Artémise were ordered to land in Tourane to attempt to gauge the situation in Vietnam with respect to missionary work. Both were met with hostility and communication was prevented. Later, in 1833 and 1834, a war with Siam was fought over control of Cambodia which for the preceding century had been reduced to impotence and had fallen under the control of its two neighbours.
In 1824, a Burmese envoy dispatched by the Burmese king, presenting a proposal of a Burmese–Vietnamese alliance against Siam, which was immediately declined by Minh Mang. Minh Mang saw a risky war against Siam, the former ally, might have jeopardized Vietnamese hegemony in Cambodia, which had been acquired by his father Gia Long. Second, he had carefully watched the British seizure of Singapore in 1819 and who were waging war in Burma, thus he saw Britain as the new rising threat, and urged that the Chakri dynasty of Siam should focus alongside Burma in their struggle against the British expansion.