Garrison Tales from Tonquin - by James O'Neill (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The thought of enlisting in the French Foreign Legion held a tantalizing allure for young nineteenth-century American boys in search of adventure. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, James O'Neill enlisted in the legion in 1887, at the age of twenty-seven. In 1890, deployed to Tonquin in French Indochina (more familiar today as Tonkin, Vietnam), O'Neill faced tropical heat, infectious disease, and sudden death. Like his contemporary Stephen Crane, O'Neill's ability to recount an engaging story and his keen sense for telling details provide a unique record of his time in this exotic world.

In these thirteen "tales," O'Neill shows--with surprising subtlety--that France's efforts to conquer and govern Indochina were foolhardy. Although the only American in his stories is the narrator, it is clear the tales are aimed at readers in the United States and intended to caution against the construction of empires abroad. Far from polemical tirades, these absorbing, unadorned stories read as remarkably contemporary in both style and substance.

Historian Charles Royster provides a short biography of O'Neill and the text of two long-forgotten essays O'Neill published in magazines of the time, one a description of a Buddhist temple in Hanoi and the other an appreciation of the Hungarian novelist Maurus Jókai. Whether read for historical value, literary merit, or political insights, Garrison Tales from Tonquin is a true discovery.

Review Quotes

"O'Neill wishes to engage his readers in his characters' crises of emotion, of identity, and of moral choice... [He] tries to reconcile sympathy and memory by creating beautiful stories of brutal doings... His mind's eye saw readers who understood his tales: the fight in Tonkin would continue as long as the Vietnamese exist or 'until justice and equity reign in the East.' He wished to attract 'the notice of our Occidental minds' to this attribute of the people he had fought. Americans and Europeans ought to know that the Vietnamese, instead of being 'savages, ' were 'patriots'; they had 'made desperate efforts to resist French invasion, ' and this 'resistance to injustice' both 'preserved individuality' and proved 'a certain superiority."--Charles Royster, from his introduction

About the Author

Charles Royster is Boyd Professor Emeritus of History at Louisiana State University and the author of many books including A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783.