Phan Bội Châu (; 26 December 1867 – 29 October 1940) was a Vietnamese nationalist and revolutionary. In 1904, he formed a revolutionary organization called Duy Tân Hội ("Modernization Association") and initiated the Đông Du movement. From 1905 to 1908, he lived in Japan where he wrote political tracts calling for the independence of Vietnam from French colonial rule. After being forced to leave Japan, he moved to China where he was influenced by Sun Yat-sen and gradually shifted his political position from monarchist to democrat. In 1912, he disbanded Duy Tân Hội to form Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội (“Vietnamese Restoration League”), modeled after Sun Yat-sen's republican party.
Aliases
During his career, Phan used several pen names, including Sào Nam (巢 南), Thị Hán (是 漢), Độc Tỉnh Tử (獨 醒 子), Việt Điểu, and Hàn Mãn Tử.
Early years
Phan was born as Phan Văn San (潘 文 珊) in the village of Sa Nam, Nam Đàn District of the northern central province of Nghệ An. His father, Phan Văn Phổ, descended from a poor family of scholars, who had always excelled academically. He spent his first three years in Sa Nam, his mother's village, before the family moved to another village, Đan Nhiệm, his father's home village, also in Nam Đàn District. Until Phan was five, his father was typically away from home, teaching in other villages, so his mother raised him and taught him to recite passages from the Classic of Poetry, from which he absorbed Confucian ethics and virtues.
When Phan was five, his father returned home and he began attending his father's classes, where he studied the Chinese classics, such as the Three Character Classic, which took him just three days to memorize. As a result of his ability to learn quickly, his father decided to move him to further Confucian texts, such as the Analects, which he practiced on banana leaves. In his autobiography, Phan admitted he did not understand the meaning of the text in great detail at the time, but by age six, he was skillful enough to write a variant of the Analects that parodied his classmates, which earned him a caning from his father.
When Phan was thirteen, his father sent him to another teacher with a better reputation. Since the family lacked the money for Phan to travel far away, he studied with a local cử nhân graduate who was able to borrow a range of books from wealthier families in the area. In 1883, the French finished the colonization of Vietnam by conquering the northern part of Vietnam, and the country was incorporated into French Indochina. Phan drafted an appeal for "pacifying the French and retrieving the North" (bình Tây thu Bắc). He posted the anonymous appeal calling for the formation of local resistance units at intervals along the main road, but there were no responses and the proclamations were soon torn down. Phan realized no one would listen to a person without the social status ensured by passing mandarin examinations.
When Phan passed the regional examinations in 1900, he was eligible to become a public servant. However, Phan had no intention of pursuing such a career and only wanted the qualification to increase his gravitas in rallying anti-colonial action. With his father dying in the same year, Phan had less family obligations, and decided to travel abroad to pursue his revolutionary activities.
Activism in Vietnam
thumb|right|Phan studied the works of [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.]]
Phan spent the first five years of the 20th century living in Huế and traveling the country. Phan drew up a three-step plan to get the French out of Vietnam. First, he would need to organize remnants of the Cần Vương movement and other sympathizers of the cause. Second, he would need to attain support from the Vietnamese imperial family and the bureaucracy, many of whom had already come to grips with French colonial rule. Finally, he would need to obtain foreign aid, from Chinese or Japanese revolutionaries, to finance the revolution.
After getting Cường Để to support the revolutionary cause, Phan wrote his first significant work, Lưu Cầu Huyết lệ Tân thư (Letter from the Ryukyu written in Tears of Blood). He argued that independence in Vietnam could only be achieved "through a transformation and revitalization of national character". The book was moderately successful amongst the Vietnamese populaces and received attention from other nationalists like Trần Quý Cáp and Phan Châu Trinh. However, many mandarins were reluctant to publicly support Phan's ideas, and as a result, he came to realize that he couldn't rely on the bureaucratic elite to support his cause. Despite its growing member base, Duy Tân Hội struggled financially. Phan had hoped to obtain financial assistance from China, but the country was forced to abandon its suzerain relationship with Vietnam after the 1884–85 Sino-French War.
Early writings
Frustrated by the Japanese response, Phan turned to Liang, who explained to Phan it was naïve to expect financial assistance from the Japanese. The Vietnamese people would have to look only within Vietnam for support and financial backing. Liang told Phan that he could best serve the cause by writing and distributing pamphlets advocating for the revolution to rally support from the Vietnamese and others abroad. Phan took Liang's advice very seriously and immediately began to publish materials to obtain support for the revolutionary cause.
After Đông-Du
In 1909, after being deported from Japan, Phan went to Hong Kong with Cường Để. There, he made plans to raise money and bring to Thailand the Vietnamese students who had studied in Japan, but had now been dispersed. He had previously had the foresight to establish a base in Thailand.
But instead he received news of an armed uprising in Vietnam, led by Hoàng Hoa Thám (Đề Hoàng Yên-Thế). So he assembled his comrades in Hong Kong, and sent two people to Japan to buy 500 of the Arisaka Type 30 rifles. But after buying the weapons to support the uprising with, they could not afford to hire a ship to smuggle the rifles into Vietnam. So, in July, Phan went to Thailand to ask their government to help with the smuggling. The foreign minister refused, as such direct support would spark a major diplomatic incident with France were it to leak. So he had to return to Hong Kong and wait for the money needed for smuggling. The money never arrived, and news arrived that his fundraising organizer - , also known by courtesy name Ngư Hải - was dead, and that the uprising was going badly. Phan donated 480 of the rifles to the forces of Sun Yat-sen. He then tried to smuggle the remaining 20 of the rifles via Thailand, disguised as first-class luggage. This attempt failed. Indochinese Communist Party members condemned Phan as a traitor, while other commentators defended him as a nationalist revolutionary and reformer, in a public display of hostility in 1939.
Final years
In 1925, Phan arrived in Shanghai on what he thought was a short trip on behalf of his movement. He was to meet with Hồ Chí Minh, who at that time used the name Lý Thụy, one of Hồ's many aliases. Hồ had invited Phan to come to Guangzhou to discuss matters of common interest. Hồ was in Guangzhou at the Soviet Embassy, purportedly as a Soviet citizen working as a secretary, translator, and interpreter. In exchange for money, Hồ allegedly informed the French police of Phan's imminent arrival. Phan was arrested by French agents and transported back to Hanoi.
This is disputed by Sophie Quinn-Judge and Duncan McCargo, who argued that this is likely propaganda invented by anti-communist authors, considering that Lâm Đức Thụ's reports showed that the French already had all the information they needed from their own spies. Also, according to Quinn-Judge and McCargo, Hồ was rapidly gaining supporters from the "best elements" of the Vietnamese nationalist movement to his ideas, thus having no motivation to eliminate Phan, who considered Hồ more as a successor than a competitor. Thus, Hồ had plenty of reasons to support such a respected activist as a figurehead for his movement.
thumb|Phan Bội Châu's House in Bến Ngự, [[Huế, where he spent his last fifteen years.]]
When he was transported back to Hanoi, he was held in Hỏa Lò Prison. At first, the French authorities did not release his real name in order to avoid public disturbances, but it quickly leaked out who he was. A criminal trial followed, with the charges going back to 1913 when he had been sentenced to death in absentia. The charges included incitement to murder and supplying an offensive weapon used to commit murder in two incidents, which had resulted in the deaths of a Vietnamese governor on 12 April 1913 and of two French majors on 28 April 1913. The court sentenced Phan to penal servitude for life. He was released from prison on 24 December 1925 by Governor General Alexandre Varenne, in response to widespread public protest.
On 25 December 1925, Phan left Hanoi to arrive in Huế with Ngô Đức Kế. During this trip, Phan visited Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh and Quảng Bình to meet his family and supporters. On 16 February 1926, Phan left Quảng Bình and arrived in Huế, and there became a prisoner in house arrest in Bến Ngự for the rest of his life.
Phan Bội Châu died on 29 October 1940, about a month after Japan invaded northern Vietnam.
Works
- Việt Nam vong quốc sử (History of the Loss of Vietnam) was written in 1905 while Phan was in Japan. This book was smuggled in Vietnam under the French domination period, and also incorporated into Liang Qichao's Collected Works of Yinbingshi (Chinese: 饮冰室合集).
- Việt Nam quốc sử khảo (An Inquiry into the history of Vietnam) was written in 1908, first published in 1909 in Japan. Việt Nam quốc sử khảo summarizes 4000-year history of Vietnam from Hùng kings to emperor Tự Đức, focus on the most typical heroes and heroines who fighting against foreign invaders, as well as the biggest territory gains and losses.
- Việt Nam nghĩa liệt sử (History of the patriots died heroically for the just cause of Vietnam) first published in 1918 in Shanghai, with and Nguyễn Thượng Hiền. This work is a collection of over 50 short stories about members of Cần Vương, Duy Tân and Đông Du movements, who sacrificed their lives for Vietnam's independence from 1906 to 1917, begins with and ends with .
- Ngục trung thư (Prison Notes) was written in 1913 while Phan was put in jail and facing a death sentence due to a deal between the Liangguang governor and the French Indochina governor. This work was completed just in a few days and has discrepancies with Niên biểu in some important events of the Đông-Du movement.
- Văn tế Nguyễn Thượng Hiền (Funeral oration for Nguyễn Thượng Hiền) written in 1925 when Phan got the news of Nguyễn's death in China.
- Văn tế Phan Chu Trinh (Funeral oration for Phan Chu Trinh) written in 1926 for the memorial ceremony for Phan Chu Trinh in Huế.
- Phan Bội Châu niên biểu (Year to Year Activities) was clandestinely written sometimes during his house arrest in Huế (1925–1940). The basic manuscripts were in Classical Chinese. The first Quốc ngữ edition was published under the title Tự phán (Self Judgment) by Tâm Tâm thư xã, copyright by Phan Nghi Đệ in 1946. The second Quốc ngữ edition was translated by Tôn Quang Phiệt and Phạm Trọng Điềm, published in 1956, reissued in 1957. The Phan Bội Châu memorial site in Huế, which comprises his house, tomb and temple with around 150 artifacts and documents about his life and revolutionary activities, became a national relic in 1990.
The Phan Bội Châu memorial site in Nam Đàn district became a special national relic since 2016. The relic area consists of two clusters: the cluster of relics in Đan Nhiệm village and the cluster of relics in Sa Nam village. In 1997, an additional gallery was built there with support from Japan. In 2017, the additional gallery was rearranged, complemented and is now home to hundreds of artifacts.
Most cities in Vietnam have major streets named after Phan Bội Châu.
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