ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why attacks on Catholic villages and institutions were part of early Vietnamese anti-colonial movements in the nineteenth century. Vietnamese officials and Vietnamese anti-colonial resistors tended to make few distinctions between French missionaries and French soldiers. Attacks on Catholic villages resulted, at times, in the kidnapping of Vietnamese women and children who were then sold in Chinese markets. The missionary reports on human trafficking reveal, as a product of their time, a gendered perspective. The metropolitan disputes between religious and lay institutions and between the Catholics and the freemasons made their way to China and Viet Nam. The freemason accusations, suffered from two problems. First, their writings were particularly vituperative and highly biased. Second, many of their claims were undocumented and unsubstantiated. In a significant number of instances, the missionaries' endeavours to re-purchase trafficked women and children did allow a better existence to victims of human trafficking in Viet Nam.
