"Mandarins and Martyrs deftly weaves a rich history of the interactions between the Nguyen emperors [. . .] on one hand and the Vietnamese Catholic Church and French missionaries on the other . . . Ramsay's book is a magnificent contribution to Vietnamese studies. The fact that it is lucidly and elegantly written, and reasonably short is an excellent model for all doctoral dissertations."—Peter C. Phan, Georgetown University, Catholic Books Review "Jacob Ramsay presents us here with a well-researched volume making convincing use of Vietnamese and French missionary archives alike to discuss a period that has not yet been throughly investigated in relation to the impact of the French missionary push in Vietnam before the military conquest formally started in 1858 .... Jacob Ramsay's carefully crafted book constitutes a most welcome addition to a growing body of scholarly studies of the influence the Société des Missions Étrangéres de Paris has had on the history of Vietnam."—Jean Michaud, Church History "Lucid and well-balanced, Mandarins and Martyrs offers a new perspective on Vietnamese Christian communities in the first half of the nineteenth century. This book is a thoughtful and significant contribution to the field of Vietnamese Studies."—George E. Dutton, University of California, Los Angeles "The most persuasive and well-documented picture currently available of the relationship between Vietnamese Catholics, the Vietnamese state, and the non-Catholic majority at the cusp of the colonial era, Ramsay's original and ambitious new work revises significantly how this controversial topic has been conventionally understood."—Peter Zinoman, University of California, Berkeley