I THE PREMISE: THE FIRST WESTERN CONSULATE AND FRENCH CONSULS IN THE PHILIPPINES 1824 AND 1836 AND BEYOND

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.

Figure 89. Eugène Chaigneau, first French Vice Consul and Chancellery agent in the Philippines, 1835-1840 (miniature, “J.-B. Chaigneau et sa famille”, Bulletin des Amis du Vieux Hué, No. 23/1, fig. XX)

Seizing the opportunity offered by Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau’s relations with the emperor of Annam, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Duke Armand de Richelieu sent him back to Huế as Consul of France, thus opening the first French Consulate in Southeast Asia. Moreover, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accepted to name the young Eugène Chaigneau, Jean-Baptiste’s nephew, as chancellery agent. Unfortunately, Emperor Gia Long had died during Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau’s stay in France, and his successor, Minh Mạng, was less than favorable to Westerners: Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau himself had no choice but to leave the country in 1824. After the departure of Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau, the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs named Eugène Chaigneau (Figure 89) Acting Consul in Huế. 3 The young Eugène was less successful than his uncle, as Emperor Minh Mạng refused him audience in 1825. On his way back to France, Eugène Chaigneau embarked on a new expedition searching for La Pérouse.

The difficulties endured by the French in Cochinchina and their absence from the Europe-China Trade (though a few French merchants participated in the Eastern Asia regional trade) explained why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to establish a Consulate in Manila in 1824, in order to have a second diplomatic outpost located in a more favorable place. One year later, in 1825, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs even decided to reopen its consulate in Canton, which had been closed in 1801.

But neither Bernard-Marie Barrère, appointed Consul for Manila, or Dussumier de Fonbrune, Deputy-consul to Canton,4 arrived at their destinations. B.-M. Barrère was finally redeployed to Peru in 1829, without even having reached the archipelago, and Dussumier de Fonbrune, apparently, remained in France. For financial reasons, and also because of the weakness of French commercial activities in the region, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs chose to rely on honorary consuls, whose salaries and living costs were considerably less expensive than those of full diplomats.

Benoît Gernaert, a trader living in Canton and Macao, was thus appointed as honorary consul for Canton in November 1827, and kept the office until his departure for Belgium in September 1837. The British Lancelot Dent, the head of the trading firm Dent & Co— whose main business activity was the opium trade—succeeded Gernaert as acting honorary consul for France.

In 1829, Eugène Chaigneau was once again sent to Cochinchina, this time as vice consul in Tourane; unfortunately he landed penniless after a shipwreck and once again, the local authorities totally ignored him. He then left Tourane in 1831.

After his misadventures in Cochinchina, E. Chaigneau was finally sent to the Philippines in 1835, as second class honorary consul in Cavite, and consular agent in charge of the chancellery in Manila. Théodore-Adolphe Barrot, former consul at Cartagena (Colombia), was appointed as consul to Manila on 3 October 1835. Barrot stayed for two and a half years in Manila, with his wife, the daughter of the British Rear Admiral Thomas Manby (who fought against the French during the Revolutionary and Napoléonic era), before leaving mid-1838 for the Balearic Islands.

The increasing difficulty of smuggling British opium into China was the decisive factor for the upgrading of the French consulate in Manila. In spite of the ban on the import of opium, enforced by the Chinese customs since 1729, the opium trade by Westerners multiplied 20 times between 1720 and 1790 (from 200 boxes yearly to 4,000),5 and again 10 times between 1790 and 1838 (from 4,000 to 40,000 boxes),6 the British having established their de facto monopoly on the trade in 1797, smuggling their products through Macao. In 1838, Emperor Daoguang chose Lin Zexu as imperial commissioner to halt the illegal importation of opium by the British. Having closed most of Chinese opium dens in Canton, he ordered the destruction of all the seized drugs (23,243 boxes, more than half of the British imports),7 but failed in convincing the British to surrender their stocks of opium against tea, thus triggering the first ‘Opium War’ in 1839. As a major trader, the French honorary consul in Canton, Lancelot Dent, was himself the object of an arrest warrant, prompting his escape to Macao.

Due to the high stakes of the conflict—a predictable forced opening of China to Western trade (thanks to the superiority of British weaponry)—the French decided to support the British, upgrading their representation in Manila to “Consulate General for Indochina”8 in October 1839. The Manila Consulate was then designated as regional overseer of the French Consulates in Southern China and, eventually, Cochinchina.

The first French Consul General was once again Théodore Adolphe Barrot,9 called back from the Balearic Islands, who disembarked in Singapore on May 1840, then reached Manila on July 1840. He asked to keep Eugène Chaigneau—who had just been promoted to the rank of Consul General of Singapore—in Manila, for a while. Chaigneau finally took his office in Singapore at the end of 1840.10 However, due to his poor health, he resigned at the beginning of 1848, and died a few months later, upon his arrival at Lorient.

Barrot left Manila in April 1843, with his wife and eldest son, Odilon, born in Manila in 1841. His successor was Charles Lefebvre de Bécourt. In March 1844, Bécourt became Acting Consul General in Canton — where he could not reside for safety reasons — meaning that he had to leave Manila for Macao, as replacement for Comte de Ratti-Menton, who had been called back to France. Barrot’s nephew,

the young Amédée Fabre,11 ‘élève consul’ (i.e. trainee), then became Acting Consul in Manila, for two years (1844-46).

Following the Treaty of Whampoa between France and China (1844), the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs changed its representation in the Far-East. At the beginning of 1847, it closed the Consulate in Canton and opened both a Legation in China, based in Macao, and a Consulate in Shanghai. The Manila Consulate General was downgraded to first class consulate, meaning that the consul’s yearly emoluments were decreased by 20,000 Francs.12 C. de Bécourt then left Macao for Calcutta.

A few years later, the Manila Consulate was once again upgraded to Consulate General. ‘Franco-Greek’13 Alexandre-Achille de Codrika14 was appointed Consul General in Manila in 1851. Before taking his assignment, he first had to temporarily take over the French legation in Macao as chargé d’affaires. De Codrika came from a diplomatic background. His father had previously served as secretary, then as drogman (interpreter) at the first Ottoman resident mission in Paris from 1797 to 1802 before joining the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs when the mission was called back to the Sublime Porte15—the Sultan having not been amused16 by the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. De Codrika, whom the great novelist Gustave Flaubert described as “a man whom I strongly remember for his nervousness... I believe he is excessively passionate”17 left Manila one year after his arrival, in 1853.

Casimir Troplong18 arrived a few weeks later. Born in 1824 to Julien Troplong and Céphise de Sèze, niece of King Louis XVI’s lead counsel during his trial, Casimir Troplong belonged to a wellknown family from Bordeaux, the city whose trade networks—the most prominent of which was the Balguerie family—had strongly supported the effective opening of a consulate in Manila. He had been the first French Vice Consul in Padang. In the middle of 1856, however, Troplong eventually left Manila, too, for the French Legation in Beijing.19 A year later, Troplong went back to the Dutch East Indies, to marry Elisabeth Steenstra Toussaint (1840-1879) in Batavia.

Consul Eugène Méchain and King Norodom’s visit to Manila

Of all the 19th century French consuls in Manila, it was EugèneLouis-Désiré-Benjamin Méchain who stayed the longest in the Philippines. Born in 1814, Eugène Méchain came from a family famous for its contributions to science and diplomacy. Among his relations was the French journalist Edmond Plauchut. His grandfather, Pierre Méchain (1744-1805), was both an astronomer and a mathematician, who worked for the French Navy as a cartographer while pursuing the study of planets. The British Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences—into which Pierre Méchain was admitted in 1782—asked him to work on the comparison of Greenwich and Paris meridians. With Jean-Baptiste Delambre,20 he became the main calculator of the meter, as a 1/10 millionth section of the meridian.21 Eugène Méchain’s father, Jérôme-Isaac Méchain (1778-1851), started his career as an astronomer too. As such, he followed Napoléon Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt (1798-1801) and joined the French diplomatic services, becoming Consul General in the Dardanelles (Gallipolli, 1804-1817) and in Cyprus (1820-1829).

Along with his younger brother, Edme (1815-1873), an amateur sinologist who served as Vice Consul in Smyrna, Eugène Méchain

likewise made a career for himself in consular service. From Puerto Rico, he arrived in Manila in 1859 where he was Consul General for nearly fourteen years. During his posting, the main international issues Eugène Méchain had to deal with were linked to the French policy in Indochina; the Franco-Spanish military intervention in Cochinchina was also then currently ongoing, and so he had to regularly intervene to secure basic supply for the French and Philippine troops.

A decade later, on 8 August 1872, E. Méchain welcomed King Norodom (born 1834, reigned from 1860-1904) of Cambodia—a French protectorate since 1863—upon his arrival on board the corvette Bourayne. 23 Escorted by the Protectorate delegate, Lieutenant Commander Jean Moura, the King was on his way back to Phnom Penh via Singapore after his visits to Hongkong, Macao, and Canton.24 E. Méchain attended the State Dinner and the ball given by Governor- General Rafael de Izquierdo y Gutíérrez25 at the Malacañan Palace, and several other festivities. Lodged at No. 2 San Sebastian Street (today Félix Resurrección Hidalgo Street), at the house of the Conde de Avilés,26 His Majesty found that the people of Manila were not very different from the Khmers, as the author of Norodom’s travel accounts (shown in Figure 90) narrated, noting that the complexion of their skin, in particular, was very similar to that of the Khmers and the only difference was the language.27 The King brought a Filipino band back to the Royal Palace, but failed to marry a pretty Filipino girl, Josefa Roxas y Manio. King Norodom gave Josefa and her older sister a jeweled pendant each, but Josefa’s got lost. Her sister’s was much smaller, and bore the inscription, “S.M. el Rey de Cambodia à la Sta. Ana Rojas 1872”.28

E. Méchain remained in Manila until early 1873, when he left for Hong Kong for medical reasons. He died in the British colony a few weeks later, in February 1873.29 His successor, Charles Ducourthial, appointed in 1874, left in 1876 after the death of his Colombian wife in Manila.

Eugène Méchain, Felipa de Torrès, and the French jurisprudence on filiation

Méchain’s personal life and the question of his succession following his death were so complicated that it required the intervention of the French courts to settle the matter. The decision of the French Court of Appeals in this instant is noteworthy as the judgment became part of French jurisprudence on filiation and legitimation and would be reproduced in numerous law books in the following decades.30

A few weeks after his arrival in Manila, Méchain had—as was a common practice among westerners — taken a Filipino querida, Felipa de Torrès. On 26 August 1860, a first daughter, Eugenia-Loretta, was christened at Sampaloc, a Manila suburb. The church register recorded the name of both parents as Eugène Méchain, bachelor, and Felipa de Torrès, Spanish mestiza. A second girl, Felipa, was christened in the parochial church of San Miguel on 19 September 1861, as the daughter of “Felipa de Torrès, Chinese mestiza, and unknown father”. A third child, Enrique Mariano, was christened in the same church on 26 October 1862, and was described as “son of Felipa de Torrès, Spanish mestiza, and unknown father. All three baptism documents were signed by the ecclesiastic authorities, and not by any of the presumed parents. On 29 April 1870, Consul Méchain married at the very last moment Felipa de Torrès on her death bed. The wedding certificate was signed only by the officiating priest and not by any of the spouses.

Not only did E. Méchain not leave any documents relating to the three children’s legitimation, but he died without even having written a will. Once informed of the existence of the three children born out of wedlock, Méchain’s siblings disagreed on the matters regarding their late brother’s estate. The sister, widowed by a Mr. Laurent, and Henri-Armand Méchain, who was a manager at the Chemins de fer de l’Est, were predisposed to refuse the inheritance due to the existence of the children.

On the contrary, the less prosperous Adolphe Méchain did not recognize the rights of his so called “nieces and nephew”. Their legal

guardian, Mr. Chevrillon, had no other choice but to take the case to court. In its first decision, the Seine Civil Court judged in 1875 that the three children could not be considered as the natural, recognized and legitimated children of Eugène Méchain, thus had no rights to his inheritance despite an affidavit drawn in Manila proving their apparent status.31 The Court of Appeals in 1876 confirmed the decision, adding that the validity of the documents establishing the children’s identity in the Philippines was not contested in itself, but that their consequences on filiation, state, and capacity in France should be based solely on the French law. The Court thus ordered the sale of Méchain’s house in Manila,32 with the task of implementing the regium exequatur falling on the shoulders of the new French Consul General in Manila, Léopold Dudemaine.33

While the Paris courts deprived the Méchain children of their inheritance, documents show that the two daughters were recognized in Saigon as Eugène Méchain’s. As far as civil law and filiation were concerned, it seemed that the colonial practices were more adaptable and tolerant than the Metropole’s courts.

Figure 92. Eugenia Méchain’s second marriage certificate, mentioning her previous marriage, Loire, 20 August 1885. (Archives municipales de Saint-Etienne, 3 E 92)

As a whole, during the first fifty years of the French Consulate in Manila, France sent highly-qualified diplomats to the Philippines, as shown by the dispatches of Gabriel de Bérard—Consul General from 1890 to his death in March 1904.34 They came from upper-class families interested in international affairs—with diplomatic, business, or navy backgrounds, with only perhaps the exception of Charles Ducourthial. All spoke perfect Spanish, most having been previously posted in Latin America or Spain.

The unstable political situation in China explained the change in the level of the French consulate in Manila: the Philippines could be used as a diplomatic hub between China and Southeast Asia, and as a possible strategic support for intelligence, naval and military operations in the region—or not. With the development of trade between Cochinchina and France after 1865, the consuls tried to promote French exports, too, which were lagging behind those of Britain, Germany, or the United States. In 1885, Consul General Ernest Crampon’s report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cited the following problems: 1) the lack of French trading houses in Manila; 2) the unsuitability of French products to local demand; 3) the excessive costs of transport, conditioning and intermediation; and 4) the deficient transport logistics between Manila and Marseilles35 — all factors that did not change significantly after 1898, with the exception of trade with America.