Vietnam's situation was complicated by the fact that the Nguyen Dynasty came to power after a period of internal conflict, with considerable assistance in the form of arms and military expertise provided by France. Maybe you've visited the great Citadelle at Hué, built during Gia Long's time, which contains the Purple Forbidden City -- a superb example of Vaubanesque miitary architecture in Asia. The cannons cast in Vietnamese foundries under French guidance are also magnificent things -- well crafted in the latest French patterns.
You can also note Vietnamese and European interaction with European powers in the field of military technology during the two centuries prior -- purchases of cannon from the VOC, Portuguese cannon-founders working in Annam and also the introduction of snap matchlocks to the area by Portuguese even even before that technology reached Japan.
As re the influence of Catholicism and resistance against it, that parallels a broader theme in parts of Asia other than Vietnam and Japan. China, Korea, India, and the Himalayan kingdoms also experienced this in varying degrees. The anti-Christian sentiment on the part of Confucian states is understandable, considering the early opposition to Buddhism by some Tang Dynasty rulers (Han Yu's essay "Memorial on the Bone of Buddha" is a charming rant by a Chinese medieval nativist scholar).
Whatever one's personal opinions are concerning Christian missionary work in a non-European context, we should remember that France's effort to Catholicize Indochina was not necessarily a bad thing in toto, when you consider the work of Fr Alexandre de Rhodes, a gifted Jesuit scholar who gave us the system of writing the Viet language which is in use today. Using the Roman alphabet (minus a few unneccessary letters) and incorporating diacritical symbols to accommodate the language's complex tonal structure, it is a model of efficiency. It put an end to centuries of less-than-adequate results in trying to fit the Sanskrit alphabet and Chinese ideographs to Vietnamese parameters. This 17th cent. creation ranks along with Korea's development of the han'gul alphabetic system, and the romanization of Turkish under Kemal Atatürk, as monumental strides in boosting literacy rates via rationally-conceived writing systems developed specifically for specific languages.
I was told by someone in Vietnam that in his country, the only city streets named after foreigners are those in honor of de Rhodes, and of Louis Pasteur. Good choice!!
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