Role+and+impact+of+missionaries

= What is a missionary? =  A person sent by a church into an area to carry on evangelism or other activities, as educational or hospitalwork.

European Role of Missionaries
 The role of missionaries in terms of the European colonisation in Vietnam stood as a attempt to impose the language, culture, religion and moral values on the less-developed and vulnerable nation. Imperialism (colonialism) was very significant to the 19th century European nations as it expanded there territorial empires they gained natural resources that there countries did not supplyand gave access to an indigenous labour force that could be exploited for economic purposes.

Catholic Missionaries
 Catholic missionaries first arrived in Vietnam in the 16th century; univited and unannouced. The Vietnamese Emperors over the next 300 years treated these people from Catholic missionaries in various ways these being hostility to curiousity. As time passed clergy men were accopanied by French government officals, military experts, astronomers, physicians and merchants looking to establish a long term relationship with Vietnam. The royal court was interested in creating trade links with France although it was against the Catholic priests, whose conversion policies created a threat to Vietnamese spirtitual beliefs and violated the Confusian ethic. Parts of the VIetnamese culture was lost over these years from the European missionaries imposing their own culture.

Gia Long
 The vietnamese maintained a cordial attitude towards the French up untill 1802, at this time vietnamese warlords were engaged in civil war. Gia Long the soon-to-be-emperor in return for the missionaries to continue their spirtual work he appealed for military intervention, French troops helped to defeat the Tay Son revolutionaries.

Alexandre de Rhodes
 Between 1627 and 1640 Alexandre de Rhodes a French priest worked in and out of Vietnam. He converted no less than 6700 Vietnamese to Catholicisim. He was deported 3 times and was threatend with beheading if he came back. However he did return and over 6 years gave Vietnam a new written language called Quoc-ngu it was a romanised writing system based on different vietnamese oral tones. Rhodes also wrote reports that described Vietnam's economic potential, its untapped natural resources and its large labour force. He described the Vietnamese government as simple and its army ineffective.

In Vietnam, the Royal court welcomed its new, yet modest, trade arrangements with France. Over these years the French cleverly capitalised and had a major influence over the Vietnamese culutre.