320 Reviews

Phan Châu Trinh and His Political Overturned Chariot, was an annotated Writings, ed. & tr. by Sinh. Studies English language version of Phan Boi on Southeast Asia 49 (Ithaca, NY: Chau’s autobiography co-edited with Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2009). Nicholas Wickenden, also a first in isbn 978 0 87727 779 8 (hard), 978 0 English.) 87727 749 1 (soft) These translated documents, paired with an excellent biographical Phan Chau Trinh is the lesser known introduction that includes a historiography of the two great Vietnamese scholar- of Vietnamese , fill in a nationalists who became active at the very large gap for non-speakers of turn of the 20th C. The other is Phan Boi Vietnamese. They not only clarify Chau, the leader of the “Eastern Travel” Trinh’s thinking on the future of the movement to Japan that started in 1905 Vietnamese nation, but also provide and the hero- patriot who masterminded fascinating evidence of the range of several attempts at insurrection against ideas that the Vietnamese intelligentsia the French. These two are often was encountering by 1925, the year mentioned as a pair, with the result that Trinh returned from his fourteen that Phan Chau Trinh’s reputation has years in France. For a Thai audience, suffered from the obligatory comparison they underline the common problems with Phan Boi Chau, whose stirring anti- that an independent Siam shared with colonial appeals are better known than colonized . The challenge that Trinh’s own writing. Phan Chau Trinh Phan Chau Trinh faced was to persuade was, however, no less than Vietnam’s his compatriots that they could retain “earliest and most eloquent proponent their national identity without clinging of democracy.” (p.1) He advocated a to the traditions of neo- or non-violent path to self-rule, built on a absolutist monarchy. He placed primary foundation of cultural transformation responsibility for Vietnam’s humiliating and political modernization inspired by situation on Vietnamese ignorance of the thinking of Japanese and Chinese the modern world. Like the younger, reformers. Because he was willing to western-educated Pridi Banomyong, work toward this goal under French he returned from a sojourn in France tutelage, he has often been criticized convinced that the rule of law should as a collaborator who was naïve about replace the rule of man. French intentions. Phan Chau Trinh was born in 1872 Vinh Sinh, Professor of History and to a well-off family in Tay Loc village, Classics at the University of Alberta, Tien-Phuoc District, in southern Quang has done much to correct the imbalance Nam province. This central province, in our knowledge of these two with his home to the trading ports of Hoi An latest book, a compilation of Phan Chau and Danang, was the first that the Trinh’s essays translated into English French attempted to conquer in 1857, for the first time. (His previous book, before they turned their attention to the

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 99, 2011 Reviews 321 southern provinces. The main source newspaper, Xinmin Congbao [Renewing on Trinh’s early years as an activist- the People], published from 1902-1905 scholar is the brief memoir by his fellow in Yokohama. Huynh Thuc Khang’s mandarin Huynh Thuc Khang, Phan memoir confirms that by 1904 this Tay Ho Tien Sinh Lich-su [Biography periodical was being read by scholars of Phan Ho Tay ].1 This describes his in Hue.3 It was an outgrowth of Liang’s flight to the mountains with his father rejection of Confucian tradition and during the Can Vuong [Save the King] morality as a compass for reform; its resistance to French rule, his father’s articles reflected his eclectic reading and death at the hands of his fellow resisters, passion for free thought.4 At this point, and his return to his burnt-out home in all of Trinh’s knowledge of Western 1887, as the movement crumbled. His political and philosophical ideas, from serious education began at this time with Rousseau to Herbert Spencer, came his older brother’s help, and it was not from reading translations or summaries until the age of 29 in 1901 that he was in Chinese. able to pass the regional and national Phan Chau Trinh first acted on his exams in the that new convictions when he undertook a enabled him to become a mandarin in the “fact-finding” trip south to Phan Thiet government bureaucracy. He received a in 1905. His talks with local scholars second-rank diploma, the result that Ho led to the founding of a modern school Chi Minh’s father achieved in that same and a factory to produce fish sauce. His year. How impartially these distinctions promotion of Vietnamese business was were conferred is not clear – we should part of a program of self-strengthening, remember that Phan Boi Chau failed his which bore fruit in his home province only attempt at the national exam, in in the form of a cinnamon-producing spite of his reputation as a brilliant stylist cooperative and several new primary in Chinese. For this reason, as Vinh Sinh schools, where both boys and girls could tells us, Phan Boi Chau refused to join enroll. His program probably influenced the call for the abolition of the Chinese the creation of the modernizing Minh language exam system initiated by Trinh Tan Society in Saigon, as well. After the in 1903. Japanese victory over Russia in 1905, In 1904 he was starting his second he travelled to China and Japan to meet year in the Ministry of Rites, a typical entry post in the bureaucracy, when he withdrew from the mandarinate. This is 1 Ho Tay is his pen name, meaning “West Lake”. when he made what David Marr calls, 2 David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism. “a declaration of lifelong warfare,” with Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971, 2 p.157. the Nguyen dynastic system. Marr and 3 other biographers have surmised that he Marr, op. cit., p. 99. 4 Joseph R. Levenson, Liang Ch’i- Ch’ao and was influenced by the Chinese reformer the Mind of Modern China. Berkeley: University ’s writings, in particular his of California Press, 1967, pp. 96-7.

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Phan Boi Chau. This trip in early 1906 The French quickly grew suspicious crystallized the disagreements between of the uncensored political discourse the two Phans but also exposed Trinh encouraged at the Dong Kinh Free to a rapidly modernizing Japan. Vinh School; they forced it to close its Sinh agrees with other scholars, who doors by the end of 1907. Then in the assume that it was a visit to Fukuzawa spring of 1908 anti-tax and anti-corvée Yukichi’s Keio Gijuku school in Tokyo demonstrations in Hue, Danang and that prompted Trinh to accelerate the other central Vietnamese towns spooked promotion of westernized education the colonial establishment, who blamed when he returned to Vietnam. He became the reformist scholars. They believed what Vinh Sinh calls an “enlightened that Trinh and Chau had coordinated thinker” who created a Vietnamese the uprising, although Trinh denied any movement patterned on the Japanese part in the affair. These unarmed peasant keimo (enlightenment). (p. 9) His role marches resulted in the closing down of in the founding of the Dong Kinh Nghia the modernist schools in Quang Nam Thuc (Eastern Capital Free School) in and the arrest of teachers and scholars, and his encouragement of hair- many of whom were sentenced to years cutting and western dress for men are of hard labor on the prison island of Con the accomplishments for which he is Son. Phan Chau Trinh saw his death best known. It was on his return from sentence converted to hard labor, and Japan that he also composed a strong then in 1910 to an amnesty, thanks to letter of warning to Governor-General the intervention of French socialists. Paul Beau, to point out that the French The essay he began upon release, while were commonly viewed as accomplices he lived under house arrest in My Tho, of a corrupt mandarin elite with little is his attempt to distance himself from regard for the popular welfare. Although Phan Boi Chau and explain his own he never completed his ambitious political thinking to the French. Titled program for modernization, including “A New Vietnam Following the Franco- a Sericulture Reform Society and a Vietnamese Alliance,” it describes the Domestic Cotton Reform Society, he deterioration of his relations with Phan did form societies to promote the “New Boi Chau, and clearly separates his Learning” and “Public Speech”. In ideas on western-inspired modernization this regard, Vinh Sinh points out “an from Chau’s advocacy of violence. The important omission” in the writing distinction he draws is much sharper on Phan Chau Trinh: “the lack of an than most contemporary Vietnamese examination of Phan Chau Trinh as historians would make: he claims that the founder of the Vietnamese political Chau was “thoroughly conservative” discourse style” (p. 10). He could write and “adamantly refuses to read New with verve in both literary Chinese and Books” (p. 75). He continues, “The modern Romanized Vietnamese (quoc books he wrote, therefore, are not based ngu), unlike many of his contemporaries. on reasoning and pay no attention to

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 99, 2011 Reviews 323 world trends.” Trinh delineates their the execution of his close friend Tran two positions and their followers as, Quy Cap, a reformist scholar from Hoi “the Revolutionary Party” and his own An, had deeply distressed him. Since “Self-rule Party” (p. 74). Tran Quy Cap’s death, he wrote, “...I In his analysis of the Anti-Tax protests, have had no tasty meal and no peaceful he credits Phan Boi Chau’s pamphlet sleep and have persistently been struck sent from Japan, Hai ngoai huyet thu with an eternal sorrow” (p. 81). In [An Overseas Book Inscribed in Blood], Paris he composed his History of the as the source of the tactics used by the Insurrection in Central Vietnam,7 which protestors: the boycotting of taxes and includes a full account of the retribution forced labor (p. 86). This work had been meted out by the French against the translated into quoc ngu in 1907 for modernist movement. Despite his distribution in Vietnam, where it was efforts, the scholars imprisoned on Con incorporated into the syllabus of the Son would not be released until the end Dong Kinh Free School. Trinh claimed of the First World War. to reject the use of active nonviolence In 1912 he teamed up with the French- and above all he rejected the need for educated interpreter and lawyer Phan underground organizing to draw the Van Truong to form the Association of people into violent plots. However, Vietnamese Patriots, which kept him he may have been exaggerating his under the watchful eye of the authorities differences with Phan Boi Chau for in charge of “native affairs” (affaires the benefit of the French; interestingly, indigènes) during his entire stay in David Marr detects the influence of the France. At the start of the First World two scholars’ exchanges in Japan on the War, the two were accused of being part tenor of the pamphlet, which attributes of an overseas network linked to Phan blame for the loss of Vietnam to the Boi Chau and the royal pretender Cuong Nguyen ruler and his mandarins.5 In any De, which in Phan Van Truong’s case case, it is clear from the French reports may have been true. Trinh was locked on the 1908 protests that they saw the reformists to be more effective than the “party of agitation” at undermining the 5 Marr, op.cit., p. 129. respect for French rule, as they were 6 Phan Chau Trinh, A Complete Account of the “more directly in communication with Peasants’ Uprising in the Central Region, trans. the people.”6 Peter Baugher and Vu Ngu Chieu. Madison, Wisconsin: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, In 1911 Phan Chau Trinh persuaded University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1983, p. 21. the French to allow him to travel to Paris 7 Not included in this book, but available in an with his son, as part of a student group. annotated edition translated by Peter Baugher His goal was to gain freedom of action and Vu Ngu Chieu, as A Complete Account of the Peasants’ Uprising in the Central Region. and to continue lobbying the French Madison, WI: Center for Southeast Asian to change their colonial policies. The Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, imprisonment of his fellow scholars and 1983.

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 99, 2011 324 Reviews up in the Santé Prison from September towards France had become more 1914 until July 1915, and after his conditional by the time he was permitted release, his government stipend was to return to Saigon in 1925. However, cut off. In the years up to 1914 he spent the complications of his relationship much of his time translating a popular with the French government, including nationalist Japanese novel, Encounters the fact that he was constantly watched with Elegant Females, into quoc ngu by their secret agents, who referred to verse, working from Liang Qichao’s him in their communications as a “rebel” Chinese translation. Although he only [nha phien loan], is an aspect of his life translated half the novel, the Vietnamese that is little appreciated. version is more than twice as long as the When Trinh finally sailed back to popular verse epic, Tale of Kieu. Vinh Saigon in 1925, he was greeted as Sinh suggests that he may have decided a returning hero. Although he was not to finish the translation, as the weakened by tuberculosis, he gave second half of the book extols Japan’s two final speeches to packed houses in destiny as an expansionist Asian power. Saigon, before his death in 1926. Vinh Trinh’s years in France turned into Sinh has performed a great service an enforced exile, especially after his by translating these in full – until son’s death from tuberculosis. He did not now we have known more about receive permission or money to return the nation-wide days of mourning to Vietnam until a socialist government following his death than the content came to power in 1925. In the meantime of these lectures. Both of them – the he collaborated with Phan Van Truong first on “Morality and Ethics in the and a new arrival in Paris, Nguyen Ai Orient and the Occident”, the second Quoc, the future , to write titled “Monarchy and Democracy” – and distribute an appeal for Vietnamese presented a direct challenge to governing rights to the post-war peace conference. institutions. The issues of nationalism This appeal made no impact on the and patriotism run through these texts peace settlement, and like other Asian in a manner that cannot have reassured activists, the Vietnamese then turned the French. In Europe, he explains, the their attention to Moscow and the transition from autocracy to “national Communist International’s promises to loyalty and ethics” was accompanied aid colonized peoples. Trinh never joined by the growth of individual rights and the radicals who split from the Socialists less family control. (p. 106) This trend to form a new party aligned with has been accelerated since the Great Moscow, but he did grow increasingly War, he says, as the “great politicians, disillusioned with French colonial great philosophers, and great educators policies and even wrote a long letter all came to realize that the age of encouraging Nguyen Ai Quoc to take his nationalism has passed... giving way to new Marxist ideas back to Vietnam to try the age of social ethics” (p. 106). Social them out. Not surprisingly, his warmth ethics, he maintains, “are based on a

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 99, 2011 Reviews 325 sense of public justice, and public justice demonstrated scholarly agreement that is in turn based on a sense of personal Trinh set an important example as a justice” (p. 107). cultural modernizer, as someone who In the case of Vietnam, he maintains, understood the need to integrate new national ethics do not yet exist. The values into Vietnamese life. people are not “aware of the distinctions between the king and the country. Sophie Quinn-Judge They know only the duty of revering the king and do not know the duty of loving their country” (pp. 110-1). He believed that Vietnam would have to pass through a nationalist phase before rising to the higher plane of “social ethics,” an interesting echo of the Leninist idea that colonized nations would have to experience a national- democratic revolution before moving on to . At the same time he declared that, “In order for Vietnam to have freedom and independence, in the first place the Vietnamese must have solidarity. In order to have solidarity, what can be better than circulating socialist ideas among Vietnamese?” (p. 115) Phan Chau Trinh died in March 1926, before he could travel to Hue or Hanoi to meet old friends. His memorial service in Saigon, organized by well-known opposition figures, was attended by around 16,000 mourners. In Hue, his old colleague Phan Boi Chau presided over the service and gave a moving eulogy (pp. 37-8). In recent years Vietnamese scholars have been showing increased interest in Phan Chau Trinh as one of the intellectual forerunners of the Doi Moi reforms. A symposium on the 80th anniversary of Trinh’s death, held in March 2006 in Ho Chi Minh City,

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 99, 2011