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| See also: | Other events of 1885 History of China • Timeline • Years | ||||
Events in the year 1885 in China .
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2024) |
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| Decades: | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See also: | Other events of 1885 History of China • Timeline • Years | ||||
Events in the year 1885 in China .
1885 (MDCCCLXXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar, the 1885th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 885th year of the 2nd millennium, the 85th year of the 19th century, and the 6th year of the 1880s decade. As of the start of 1885, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
The Sino-French War, also known as the Tonkin War and Tonquin War, was a limited conflict fought from August 1884 to April 1885. There was no declaration of war.
Tang Jingsong was a Chinese general and statesman. He commanded the Yunnan Army in the Sino-French War, and made an important contribution to Qing dynasty China's military effort in Tonkin by persuading the Black Flag leader Liu Yongfu to serve under Chinese command. His intelligent, though ultimately unsuccessful, direction of the Siege of Tuyên Quang was widely praised. He later became governor of the Chinese province of Taiwan. Following China's cession of Taiwan to Japan at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) he became president of the short-lived Republic of Formosa.
Zongdu were the managers supervising provincial governors in Ming and Qing China. One viceroy usually administered several provinces and was in charge of all affairs of military, food, wages, rivers, and provincial governors within their region of jurisdiction. Viceroys was appointed by and directly reported to the Emperor.
The Black Flag Army was a splinter remnant of a bandit group recruited largely from soldiers of ethnic Zhuang background, who crossed the border in 1865 from Guangxi, China into northern Vietnam, during the Nguyễn dynasty. Although brigands, they were known mainly for their fights against the invading French forces, who were then moving into Tonkin. The Black Flag Army is so named because of the preference of its commander, Liu Yongfu, for using black command flags.
The Battle of Bang Bo, known in China as the Battle of Zhennan Pass, was a major Chinese victory during the Sino-French War. The battle, fought on 23 and 24 March 1885 on the Tonkin-Guangxi border, saw the defeat of 1,500 soldiers of General François de Négrier's 2nd Brigade of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps by a Chinese army under the command of the Guangxi military commissioner Pan Dingxin.
Feng Zicai (1818–1903) was a general in the Imperial Army during the Qing dynasty. He was originally a bandit from Qinzhou, Guangxi, China.
The Beiyang Fleet was one of the four modernized Chinese navies in the late Qing dynasty. Among the four, the Beiyang Fleet was particularly sponsored by Li Hongzhang, one of the most trusted vassals of Empress Dowager Cixi and the principal patron of the "self-strengthening movement" in northern China in his capacity as the Viceroy of Zhili and the Minister of Beiyang Commerce (北洋通商大臣). Due to Li's influence in the imperial court, the Beiyang Fleet garnered much greater resources than the other Chinese fleets and soon became the dominant navy in Asia before the onset of the 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War. It was the largest fleet in Asia and the 8th in the world during the late 1880s in terms of tonnage.
Events from the year 1885 in France.
The Battle of Zhenhai was a minor confrontation that took place on 1 March 1885 between Admiral Amédée Courbet's Far East Squadron and Chinese warships and shore batteries near the coastal city of Zhenhai, 12 miles (19 km) downstream from Ningbo, China during the Sino-French War. French and Chinese sources disagree sharply as to what happened; French sources treat the encounter as a minor incident, while Chinese sources consider it a striking defensive victory. The Battle of Zhenhai is still commemorated in China as an important Chinese victory in the Sino-French War.
The Battle of Phu Lam Tao was a politically significant engagement during the Sino-French War, in which a French Zouave battalion was defeated by a mixed force of Chinese soldiers and Black Flags.
The Pescadores campaign which took place in late March, 1885, was one of the last campaigns of the Sino-French War. It was fought to capture the Pescadores, a strategically important archipelago off the western coast of Formosa (Taiwan). Admiral Amédée Courbet, with part of the French Far East Squadron, bombarded the Chinese coastal defences around the principal town of Makung on Penghu Island and landed a battalion of marine infantry which routed the Chinese defenders and occupied Makung.
The Tonkin Expeditionary Corps was a French military command based in northern Vietnam (Tonkin) from June 1883 to April 1886. The expeditionary corps fought the Tonkin Campaign (1883–86) taking part in campaigns against the Black Flag Army and the Chinese Yunnan and Guangxi Armies during the Sino-French War and the period of undeclared hostilities that preceded it, and in important operations against Vietnamese guerrilla bands during the subsequent 'Pacification of Tonkin'.
The Lạng Sơn campaign was a major French offensive in Tonkin during the Sino-French War. The Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, under the command of General Louis Brière de l'Isle, defeated the Chinese Guangxi Army and captured the strategically important town of Lạng Sơn in a ten-day campaign mounted under formidable logistical constraints.
François Oscar de Négrier, known as Oscar de Négrier, was a French general of the Third Republic, winning fame in Algeria in the Sud-Oranais campaign (1881) and in Tonkin during the Sino-French War.
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 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, 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.
The Retreat from Lạng Sơn was a controversial French strategic withdrawal in Tonkin at the end of March 1885 during the Sino-French War. It represented the last major event of the conflict and was deemed a considerable embarrassment in France, further cementing negative public opinion about the colonial conflict which led to the collapse of French Prime Minister Jules Ferry's government.
The Tonkin Expedition commemorative medal was awarded to all the French soldiers and sailors who took part in the battles of the Tonkin campaign and the Sino-French War between 1883 and 1885. The medal, decreed by a law of 6 September 1885, was minted at the Monnaie de Paris and distributed shortly before the Bastille Day parade on 14 July 1886 to around 65,000 soldiers and sailors. The medal was later awarded to participants in a number of earlier and later campaigns in Indochina, bringing the total number of recipients to 97,300.
The Treaty of Tianjin, signed on June 9, 1885, officially ended the Sino-French War. The "unequal treaty", or colonial treaty, restated in greater detail the main provisions of the Tianjin Accord, signed between France and China on May 11, 1884. As Article 2 required China to recognize the French protectorate over Annam and Tonkin established by the Treaty of Hue in June 1884, implicitly forcing China to abandon its claims to suzerainty over Vietnam, the treaty formalized France's diplomatic victory in the Sino-French War.
Events in the year 1884 in China.