Emperor Minh Mạng received from his father Gia Long a peaceful and prosperous country. But over the years of his reign, he did a lot to turn Vietnam into a European colony. In 1860-80, the Japanese government was afraid of turning their country into a colony of European states and specially sent government agents to Vietnam to study the methods of colonial penetration and the errors in state administration that contribute to it. Now the information gathered by Japanese agents is of great value for studying the Vietnamese state system of that historical period.
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