Вьетнамдық ұлттық-азаттық күрескері Пан Бой Чау

19/20th century Vietnamese nationalist and revolutionary

Phan Bội Châu (; 26 December 1867 – 29 October 1940), born Phan Văn San, courtesy name Hải Thụ (later changed to Sào Nam), was a pioneer of Vietnamese 20th century nationalism. In 1904, he formed a revolutionary organization called Duy Tân Hội ("Modernization Association"). 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. He formed a new group called Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội (“Vietnamese Restoration League”), modeled after Sun Yat sen's republican party. In 1925, French agents seized him in Shanghai. He was convicted of treason and spent the rest of his life under house arrest in Huế.

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.

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.

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. It was only later that Phan realized that obtaining independence for Vietnam would be much more difficult than expected. He became familiar with the works of famed European thinkers, such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Darwin. Phan was also influenced by the writings of such Chinese Confucianists as Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei. opened Phan's mind to more expansive thought regarding the struggle for freedom of his people. Liang's Hsin min ts'ung pao ("The Renovation of the People") influenced Phan's revolutionary ideas and beliefs, as it criticized the Chinese government and proclaimed that the Chinese people's consciousness needed to be awakened to further the country into the modern era. Kang, one of the major thinkers that influenced Phan, took the idea of Social Darwinism and discussed the survival of the fittest concept as it applied to nations and ethnic groups. He described the dire outcomes that would face China if the country did not embark on a series of reforms, similar to those faced by the Ottoman Empire and colonial India. He believed that reforms made by Peter the Great and Emperor Meiji were excellent examples of the political restructuring that needed to take place to save China. From Kang's work, Phan realized why Emperor Tự Đức's decision to ignore Nguyễn Trường Tộ's proposed modernization reforms had led to the downfall of Vietnam and had allowed for French rule in Vietnam. Phan continued to seek support from the scholar gentry and the bureaucracy serving the French, before shifting his focus to obtaining support from members of the imperial family. Phan had moved to Huế, claiming that he was preparing for the metropolitan imperial examinations, but in actuality, he planned on drumming up support among the various factions of royal family. Phan traveled to Quảng Nam to meet with Nguyễn Thành, also known by courtesy name Tiểu La, a contemporary anti colonial revolutionary activist who was involved in the Cần Vương movement. Tiểu La suggested that a royal associate of his, Tôn Thất Toại, could help lead the revolution.

By the spring of 1903, Phan had found a perfect candidate to lead the revolution: Prince Cường Để, a direct descendant of Gia Long's eldest son, Prince Cảnh. Cường Để's descendants had long been dissociated from the emperor and his family since the early 19th century. Cường Để's father was personally sought by Phan Đình Phùng to take Hàm Nghi's place and lead a popular revolt against the French in the 1880s, but he declined. By 1894, he suggested that his son, then 12 years old, could be the new face of the revolution. This plan was never executed as Phan Đình Phùng died in January 1896. Cường Để changed the course of his life and began studying history, economics and geography and thought admiringly of the heroic achievements of Trần Hưng Đạo, Zhuge Liang, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Saigō Takamori, Cavour, Otto von Bismarck, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. After getting Cường Để to support the revolutionary cause, Phan wrote his first significant work, Lưu Cầu Huyết lệ Tân thư (Letter from the Ryukyus 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. Phan and Cường Để decided to seek aid from Japan, which had recently won a war against Russia, had successfully imposed reforms and seemed more inclined to help out revolutionaries in a nearby Asian country. Phan was selected to visit Japan to secure the funds needed to sustain Duy Tân Hội. Phan did not speak Japanese and had no contacts in Japan, so he sought help from Liang Qichao, who was living in Japan since being exiled years earlier. Liang introduced Phan to many prominent politicians, including Ōkuma Shigenobu, a well liked statesman who had previously served as Prime Minister of Japan for a few months in 1898. Phan asked Okuma for financial assistance to fund the activities of Vietnamese revolutionaries. In his letter to Okuma, Phan stated that Japan should be obligated to help Vietnam since both countries were of the "same race, same culture, and same continent". Japan could also promote its interests in Vietnam and prevent French and Russian expansion into China. In Guangxi and Guangdong, the Vietnamese revolutionaries arranged alliances with the Kuomintang by marrying Vietnamese women to Chinese officers. Their children were at an advantage since they could speak both languages and they worked as agents for the revolutionaries and spread revolutionary ideologies across borders. This intermarriage between Chinese and Vietnamese was viewed with alarm by the French. Phan's revolutionary network practiced this extensively; additionally, Chinese merchants also married Vietnamese women, and provided funds and help.

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. These writings, perhaps the most widely recognized of Phan's works, include: Việt Nam vong quốc sử (History of the Loss of Vietnam), Tân Việt Nam (The new Vietnam; 1907), Ai Việt điếu Điền (Grief over Vietnam and Condolence for Yunnan; 1907), Hải ngoại Huyết thư (Letter Inscribed in Blood from Abroad; 1907), Việt Nam quốc sử khảo (An Inquiry into the history of Vietnam; 1908). All were initially written in Classical Chinese and then translated to Quốc ngữ, upon which they were smuggled into Vietnam. These works, most notably Việt Nam vong quốc sử, were critical in intensifying the nationalist fervor in the country. The book helped revive the name "Vietnam", which was not commonly used at the time. The book is noted for its negative assessment of the response of the Nguyễn dynasty in the 19th century to the colonial challenges facing Vietnam and the failure to modernize, with the Nguyễn instead turning to ultra orthodox conservative Confucianism. The book presents strident and emotive memorials to the key figures of the Cần Vương movement of the late 1880s and early 1890s, led by mandarins such as Tôn Thất Thuyết and Phan Đình Phùng, who led guerrillas against the French. The Cần Vương attempted to overthrow the French rule and establish the boy emperor Hàm Nghi as the ruler of an independent Vietnam. The book created a reaction in China, sparking follow up essays by Chinese writers who were taken aback by the Phan's description of Vietnamese life under French colonial rule. It generated gloomy pieces by Chinese writers who predicted that their nation would suffer a similar fate if they failed to modernize. One such Chinese response later became a teaching text at the Tonkin Free School in Hanoi, a school run by Phan's contemporaries to promote the independence movement. However, Phan did not receive much of a reaction in terms of aid towards his independence efforts, since the book made Chinese readers worry about their own future.

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, since it would be a major diplomatic incident with France if it leaked out. 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 Đặng Thái Thân, 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. This is disputed by Sophie Quinn Judge and Duncan McCargo, who point out that this is a legend made up 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 adherence from the "best elements" of Vietnamese Quoc Dan Dang to his ideas, thus having no motivation to eliminate Phan, who considered Hồ more like a successor, rather than a competitor. Thus Hồ had plenty of reasons to support such a respected activist as a figurehead for his movement. 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 all 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, since then he become a prisoner in house arrest in Bến Ngự. Phan Bội Châu died on 29 October 1940, about a month after Japan invaded northern Vietnam.

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 Đặng Đoàn Bằng 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 Tăng Bạt Hổ and ends with Lương Ngọc Quyến. 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. 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 city including his house, tomb and temple with around 150 artifacts and documents about his life and revolutionary activities became a national relic since 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 has hundreds of artifacts till now. Most cities in Vietnam have named major streets after Phan Bội Châu.