Phan Bội Châu

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Lore & Background

Phan Bội Châu was born as Phan Văn San 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. Until Phan was five, his father was typically away teaching, so his mother raised him and taught him to recite passages from the Classic of Poetry. When Phan was five, his father returned and he began attending his father's classes, studying the Chinese classics such as the Three Character Classic, which he memorized in just three days. By age six, he wrote a variant of the Analects that parodied his classmates, earning a caning from his father. At age seven, he played a "Bình Tây" (Pacify the French) game with classmates using bamboo guns and lychee bullets. In 1883, when the French finished colonizing Vietnam, Phan drafted an appeal for "pacifying the French and retrieving the North" (bình Tây thu Bắc), posting it along the main road, but there were no responses. In 1885, he rallied about 60 classmates for the Cần Vương movement, forming the Sĩ tử Cần Vương Đội (Army of Loyalist Examination Candidates), but a French patrol scattered them. After his father died in 1900, Phan passed the regional mandarin exams with the highest possible honors, using the qualification only to increase his gravitas for anti-colonial action.

Reader's Guide

Phan Bội Châu's significance comes from his early organization of modern Vietnamese nationalism. In 1904, he formed the Duy Tân Hội and initiated the Đông Du movement, living in Japan from 1905 to 1908 to write political tracts for independence. After leaving Japan, he moved to China, where Sun Yat-sen influenced him to shift from monarchist to democrat. In 1912, he disbanded Duy Tân Hội to form Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội, 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 until his death on 29 October 1940. During his career, he used several pen names, including Sào Nam, Thị Hán, Độc Tỉnh Tử, Việt Điểu, and Hàn Mãn Tử. His early activism included a three-step plan: organize remnants of the Cần Vương movement, attain support from the Vietnamese imperial family and bureaucracy, and obtain foreign aid from Chinese or Japanese revolutionaries. He was influenced by European thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Darwin, as well as Chinese Confucianists Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei. Liang's Hsin-min ts'ung-pao and Kang's ideas on Social Darwinism shaped his revolutionary beliefs.

Did You Know?

• Phan Bội Châu was born as Phan Văn San and used multiple pen names, including Sào Nam, Thị Hán, Độc Tỉnh Tử, Việt Điểu, and Hàn Mãn Tử.
• At age six, he wrote a parody of the Analects on banana leaves that mocked his classmates, earning a caning from his father.
• In 1885, he formed the Sĩ tử Cần Vương Đội (Army of Loyalist Examination Candidates) with about 60 classmates, but a French patrol scattered them.
• He passed the regional mandarin exams with the highest possible honors in 1900 but never intended to become a public servant, using the qualification only to boost his revolutionary credibility.
• In 1925, French agents seized him in Shanghai, and he was convicted of treason, spending the rest of his life under house arrest in Huế.