Вьетнамдық ұлтшыл Паң Чоу Чринь

Vietnamese nationalist

Phan Châu Trinh (Chữ Hán: 潘周楨, 9 September 1872 – 24 March 1926), courtesy name Tử Cán (梓幹), pen name Tây Hồ (西湖) or Hi Mã (希馬), was an early 20th century Vietnamese nationalist. He sought to end France's colonial occupation of Vietnam. His method of ending French colonial rule over Vietnam had opposed both violence and turning to other countries for support, and instead believed in attaining Vietnamese liberation by educating the population and by appealing to French democratic principles.

Phan Châu Trinh was born in Tây Lộc village, Hà Đông district, Thăng Bình fu, Quảng Nam province, Đại Nam (now is Tam Lộc commune, Phú Ninh district, Quảng Nam province) on 9 September 1872. He was the son of a rich landowner and scholar. His father was a fighter in the Scholars' Revolt, but in 1885 he was killed by the other leaders in the revolt who suspected him of being a traitor. This left Trinh an orphan at the age of 13. His older brother educated him in Confucian classics. In 1900, he obtained a Cử nhân (舉人 senior bachelor) degree in the regional exam. One year later, he got Phó bảng (sub table, under doctorate table) title in the national examination. In 1905, Phan resigned from his post in the mandarin bureaucracy. He had become strongly opposed to the monarchy, traditional Chinese Confucian influenced Vietnamese court and mandarin system. He called for an end to the monarchy and its replacement with a democratic republic. Having earlier met Phan Bội Châu (Sào Nam) in 1903, in early March 1906, he went to British Hong Kong then Guangdong to meet with him again at Liu Yongfu (ông Lưu)'s house. He made his way there disguised as a disheveled common laborer. He then went to Japan with Sào Nam as part of the Đông Du movement. They stayed in Yokohama, where they had set up a two story Japanese house to teach students, which they called Bính Ngọ Hiên (Fire Horse Lodge). In early May 1906, they went to Tokyo to inspect the Japanese education and political system. Phan disagreed with Sào Nam's early ideas of asking for military assistance from Japan, as he didn't trust Japan's militarism. He also had other disagreements with Sào Nam's philosophy. Therefore, they had a friendly argument for a few weeks before he returned to Vietnam. By the end of the year 1906, he wrote a letter titled Đầu Pháp Chính phủ thư to the governors general of French Indochina Paul Beau. He asked the French to live up to their civilising mission. He blamed them for the exploitation of the countryside by Vietnamese collaborators. He called on France to develop modern legal, educational, and economic institutions in Vietnam and industrialise the country, and to remove the remnants of the mandarin system. The letter was originally written in Chinese, then translated to French and published on the bulletin of French School of the Far East. After peasant tax revolts erupted in 1908, Phan was arrested, and his school was closed. He was sentenced to death, but it was commuted to life imprisonment after his progressive admirers in France intervened. He was sent to Côn Đảo. In 1911, after three years, he was pardoned and sentenced to house arrest. He said he would rather return to prison than have partial freedom. So instead he was deported to France with his son, where the French continued to monitor him. His funeral was attended by over 60,000 people and caused big protests across the country demanding the end of French colonial occupation.

In Tokyo, Phan told Sào Nam: "The level of their people is so high, and the level of our people is so low! How could we not become slaves? That some students now can enter Japanese schools has been your great achievement. Please stay on in Tokyo to take a quiet rest and devote yourself to writing, and not to making appeals for combat against the French. You should only call for 'popular rights and popular enlightenment.' Once popular rights have been achieved, then we can think about other things." Sào Nam commented: "Thereafter over more than ten days, he and I debated time and again, and our opinions were diametrically opposed. That is to say, he wished to overthrow the monarchy in order to create a basis for the promotion of popular rights; I, on the contrary, maintained that first the foreign enemy should be driven out, and after our nation's independence was restored we could talk about other things. My plan was to make use of the monarchy, which he opposed absolutely. His plan was to raise up the people to abolish the monarchy, with which I absolutely disagreed. In other words, he and I were pursuing one and the same goal, but our means were considerably different. He wished to start by relying on the French to abolish the monarchy, but I wished to start by driving out the French to restore Vietnam – That was the difference. However, even though his political view was the opposite of mine, he liked me personally a great deal and we roomed together for several weeks. Then all of a sudden he decided to return to our country." Trung kỳ dân biến thỉ mạt ký (French: Manifestation de 1908 en Annam) written in 1911 when exiled in France, originally in Chinese then translated to Vietnamese and French.

In 2006, Madame Bình – a granddaughter of Phan Châu Trinh – and her associates, formed a Cultural Foundation named after him to "Import, Revive, Initiate, Preserve & Spread of quintessential cultural values to contribute to the renewal of Vietnamese culture in the 21st century". Most cities in Vietnam have named major streets after him.