I
THE PREMISE: THE FIRST WESTERN CONSULATE AND FRENCH CONSULS IN THE PHILIPPINES 1824 AND 1836 AND BEYOND
Two decades before the French expedition to Basilan and more than
a century before the treaty of friendship initiating full diplomatic relations between two sovereign states in 1947, France was the first Western country to establish a consulate in Manila. To understand why France decided to open a consulate in 1824 and why it took twelve years before it opened in 1836, it is first necessary to describe the set up of both the French and regional contexts. France, China, Cochinchina and Manila France was kept out of the Far East ‘Great Game’ for a while, the major stakes of which were the China Trade and the DutchBritish rivalry in Southeast Asia, due to the failure of the Napoléonic hegemonic enterprise in Europe. The Treaty of Paris of 20 November 1815 (Article 4) marked the calamitous French defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and resulted in France having to indemnify the Seventh Coalition1 with 700 million francs to be paid during the following five years. As France was financially exhausted, the only place in the Far East where it was capable of maintaining some minimal diplomatic presence was in Cochinchina, thanks to Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau.2 Introduced to Prince Nguyễn Phúc Ánh by Mgr. Pigneau de Béhaine, the French Bishop of Adran, Chaigneau entered the Prince’s service at the end of 1796 and participated in the Nguyễn’s conquest of Tourane (today Ðà Nẵng) and Huế. Promoted as general a few years later under the name of Nguyễn Văn Thắng by Emperor Gia Long (the former Nguyễn Phúc Ánh), Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau returned to France in 1819, disembarking in Bordeaux in January 1820. 141
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