Chapter 1: Circulating the ‘Self’ in Colonial Vietnam
The establishment of French colonial domination over Vietnam by the turn of the twentieth century opened doors for the remodeling of cultural conceptions of the Vietnamese ‘Self’ through circulation of transnational ideas. This circulation was not simply a one-way importation of ideas from metropolitan France to colonial Vietnam, but rather a complex process of mediation between contesting cultural spheres on parts of an intersection between colonial policy-making and efforts of a reform-minded Confucian literati, which included Phan Khôi. Crucial to this complex process were relatively novel mediums of print, press, and translation. Altogether, this form of mediation and circulation contributed to new methods of cultural production and the formation of a colonised public sphere in the interwar
period.
The first fifty years of colonial intervention (1887–1932), especially from the 1900s onwards, saw a rapid expansion of print, press and translation that played a key role in the transnational circulation of ideas surrounding the link between modernity and identity formation across colonial Vietnam. This transnational circulation was not only the efforts of
the French colonial project but also made possible by the traditional elite, who retained and utilised their ties to the traditional Confucian cultural sphere to reimagine the Vietnamese nation. This complex and dynamic process of intellectual mediation was at play through early reform attempts, which included the Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục (Tonkin Free School) and Duy Tân Movement of the late 1900s. At the same time, the emergence of new heterogenous spaces of cultural production, that included colonial urban centres such as Saigon in Cochinchina, further laid the infrastructural foundation for the propagation of transnational ideas of the ‘Self’ and Phan Khôi’s involvement in this process in particular (13). This chapter traces the historical development of the transnational circulation of the ‘Self’ in colonial Vietnam from its earliest inceptions between the 1900s and 1920s, as well contextualises Phan Khôi’s own development as an intermediary of global ideas. By challenging outdated Franco-Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese binaries and applying the analytical framework of
cultural transfers, it paints a complex historical foundation of circulating and debating discourses on the ‘Self’ in a nascent colonised Vietnamese public sphere. It concludes these early discussions on modernity in colonial Vietnam set an important precedent for the more
radical 1930s.
New ideas, old ties
While the French colonial project and the rethinking of the ‘Self’ in Vietnam began as early as the 1860s when they annexed the southernmost provinces and established the colony of Cochinchina, for consistency and contextualisation of Phan Khôi’s life, we must establish the narrative from 1887, when the French effectively took control of all of Vietnam and
established the Indochinese Union along with modern-day Cambodia and Laos, coinciding with Phan’s birth year. Into the 1900s, there remained the traditional Confucian-trained and male-dominated scholar-official class who continued to play a leading role in the newly colonised Vietnamese society. While some accepted subordination to the newly-installed
colonial administration, others collaborated with neither the imperial court nor the colonial establishment but sought to forge their own solutions to contemporary problems by looking beyond their immediate boundaries for models and practices.
Despite divergences within this small but significant class of men, one thing in common was they continued to communicate via writing or ‘brush conversations’ in Classical Chinese, which they had done for centuries prior to French intervention. This form of communication ensured continued engagements with the centuries-old Confucian sphere, alongside Japan and Korea with imperial China serving as pivot, while allowing them to absorb new ideas and concepts (14). As observed by Christopher Goscha, the circulation of ideas was yet a monopoly of the French colonial project in these early years. In fact, the colonial project pushed these old cultural ties even further. In Cochinchina as was the rest of Vietnam, the French colonial administration encouraged greater Chinese economic migration into urban enclaves such as Saigon and Chợ Lớn, where Chinese migrants and traders transported and consumed “new
books” (“hsin-shu”, “tân thư”) which propagated intermediary Chinese translations of ideas on republican citizenry and Social Darwinism from prominent Western thinkers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau and Herbert Spencer by Chinese reformist thinkers Liang Qichao and Kang Yuwei who in turns, translated them from Meiji Japanese translations. Because
Classical Chinese remained in use, Vietnamese scholar-officials could consume these texts with relative ease even if they could speak neither Chinese nor Japanese fluently (15). In this period, European Enlightenment ideas did not directly travel from Paris but through the waterways of Canton and Tokyo with intellectual mediation in between through acts of translation, often reaching the Vietnamese ports of Saigon and Haiphong (16). Hence, pre-existing cultural networks and translations as well as common forms of literary communication contributed to early circulation of transnational ideas of the ‘Self’ in colonial Vietnam. In addition, they represented first instances of print and translation as mediums for circulating transnational ideas.
As a result of these forms of circulation in 1900s colonial Vietnam, discourses such as those of Liang Qichao on the binary relations between “personal virtues” (“side”, “tư đức ”) and “civic virtues” (“gongde”, “công đức ”) in relations to individual responsibilities to the self and an imagined polity gained currency among local elites in this period (17). In addition, these elites also embraced practices such as the Meiji Japanese concept of the “Keio Gijuku” (“public school”), which drew upon the Sino-Vietnamese centuries-old tradition of creating private schools or classes for teaching of the classics, to create new spaces of dissemination of new knowledge such as the Hanoi-based Tonkin Free School, founded in 1907 (18). Thus, there already existed a mediation of ideas and practices from different cultural spheres for the purpose of a reimagination of a more modern Vietnamese nation within a colonised setting. At the same time, Mark Phillip Bradley noted as these local elites often mediated these ideas and concepts through Chinese and Japanese translations, their interpretations remained confined within Confucian norms and values, thus their politics remained moderately conservative compared to later generations (19). A prominent example of these forward-thinking scholar-officials engaging in intellectual mediation was Phan Châu Trinh, originated from the coastal province of Quảng Nam from which Phan Khôi also hailed and an important site of
activism (20). Similar to other members of this class of scholars, Phan Châu Trinh refused to serve the imperial court despite having passed the traditional Confucian civil service examinations but rather dedicated his life to advocating socio-cultural changes and the reimagination of the Vietnamese polity. In contrast to the more radical Phan Bội Châu who
called for Meiji-inspired Pan-Asianist revolutionary actions, Phan advocated for gradual but fundamental social and cultural transformation of Vietnamese society along colonial republican lines, mostly through close and equal association with the French Thỉrd Republic à la Commonwealth, allowing Vietnam to transition from an absolute monarchy to a
constitutional democracy (21). Based on his ideological orientation and provincial affinity, Phan Châu Trinh had a profound impact upon his younger understudy Phan Khôi. This association was visible in their activities in their home region in the late 1900s.
The circulation of new transnational expressions of the ‘Self’ via print and translation in colonial Vietnam translated into interconnected movements across all corners of the country led by reformist scholar-officials. In Quảng Nam, Phan Châu Trinh led the Duy Tân (‘Modernisation’) Movement between 1906 and 1908, in which Phan Khôi was an active member. Like others, this movement attempted to apply new ideas and practices of citizenry and body politics onto local societies through concrete actions that included setting up schools, promoting trade, encouraging physical changes like cutting one’s hair short and abandoning traditional teeth dyeing, adopting Western-styled clothings for social and cultural advancements, as well as generating a national consciousness (22). As in this period, oral transmission remained the main form of communication among a mostly rural and illiterate population, elite participants of the movement such as Phan Châu Trinh and Phan Khôi
composed traditional-styled poems and chants which communicated these reform measures in spoken vernacular Vietnamese that can be recited by heart and reach a greater audience. Amongst those that survived is one chant, allegedly attributed to Phan Khôi, titled “Vè cúp tóc” (“The Haircut Chant”), composed around 1906. In this chant, which aimed to galvanise a
male audience who still maintained the traditional chignon, Phan equated cutting one’s hair short to maintaining a clear mind and thus, emancipating one’s self and should be replicated nationwide (23). This chant represents Phan Khôi’s first attempts at mediating between different cultural spheres via writing, right down to the employment of the word “cúp”, which is a Vietnamese reading of the French word for “cut” (“couper”), showing a transfer of Western cultural practices into a local setting through traditional mediums in the early years of colonial intervention (24). On the other hand, the chant also reinforces the Confucian social hierarchy, accidentally or not, that placed scholars (“sĩ”) at the top and merchants (“thương”) at the bottom, which can be seen as contradictory considering one of the aims of the movement was to promote entrepreneurship and demonstrated how Confucian norms and
sensibilities remained intact in earlier circulation of ideas of the ‘Self’ (25). Nonetheless, this is a useful piece of evidence to trace Phan’s early years in the midst of profound changes in Vietnamese society.
In general, the transnational circulation of ideas of the ‘Self’ into colonial Vietnam through print and translation at the turn of the century demonstrates how old elite cultural ties in the Confucian sphere continued to play an important role in disseminating and mediating new
ideas and practices. Furthermore, this intellectual mediation also translated into movements led by reform-minded scholar-officials across colonial Vietnam. From these movements, their elite participants, which included a young Phan Khôi, attempted to articulate these novel
expressions of the ‘Self’ to inform a wider audience through traditional genres. The importance of print, press and translation as mediums of disseminating transnational ideas and Phan Khôi’s contributions would only grow further in the interwar period.
The emergence of print, press, and translation
The early movements and their intellectual propagators paved the way for the circulation of transnational ideas of the ‘Self’ in Vietnam in the early years of French colonialism, albeit within traditional patriarchal constraints. Part of this wave of intellectual ruptures was due to
the emergence of print, press and translation as mediums of dissemination of new knowledge. These changes were also further facilitated by moderate but fundamental modifications to colonial policy-making in the 1910s, which local actors sought to utilise to advance their own modernisation agenda, as well as contribute to a novel colonised public sphere. Many of these figures eventually crossed paths with Phan Khôi in the formative years of his career. At the same time, the backgrounds and modus operandi of these early intermediaries also demonstrated the complexity of colonial modernity in Vietnam in this period, in which this section takes into consideration the complex relationship between the colonial politics of
collaboration and promotion of cultural changes.
By the 1910s, one of the fundamental changes to the French colonial project in Vietnam that accelerated the advent of print, press, and translation as mediums for circulation of transnational ideas of the ‘Self’ was the policy of Pháp Việt đề huề (Franco-Vietnamese Harmony and Collaboration) between 1911 and 1919. The policy was the brainchild of then Governor-General of French Indochina Albert Sarraut, who sought to legitimise the French presence in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina through a series of relatively liberal reforms influenced by humanistic and republican ideals that promoted a more equitable working
relationship between the French colonial apparatus and the Vietnamese elite (26). This policy also aimed to usurp the centuries-old Confucian system of knowledge with an allegedly modern French one through establishment of a Franco-Vietnamese school system and abolishment of the mandarinate examination system in 1919, thus further reducing the influence of scholar-officials who led the earlier movements (27). Additionally, there were signs of a growing readership as the number of students enrolled in the new school system increased, who were more competent in French and Romanised Vietnamese Quốc ngữ than Classical Chinese. In 1917, Vietnamese school students numbered around 75,000 and this number increased to 150,000 students by 1921, as the traditional system of teaching was being phased out (28).
However, despite institutional and systemic changes, old cultural ties continued to exist in new forms and continued to play a role in the mediation of ideas of the ‘Self’. Another transformative aspect of this policy was new press laws, which permitted publication of an unprecedented number of newspapers, books and translations to propagate promises of
colonial modernity. The Vietnamese elite fully took advantage of this opportunity and many of them started their own publications across Vietnam. Prominent publications included Phạm Quỳnh’s Nam Phong Tạp Chí (Southern Wind); Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh’s Đông Dương Tạp Chí (Indochina Review), Trung Bắc Tân Văn (Northern Central News), and L’Annam
nouveau (New Annam) in Tonkin; Bùi Quang Chiêu and Nguyễn Phú Khai’s La Tribune indigène (Native Tribune) in Cochinchina and later Huỳnh Thúc Kháng’s Tiếng Dân (Voice of the People) in Annam, just to name a few (29). Early into his career, Phan Khôi served as contributor to a number of these publications.
A common trait of the men who founded these publications, with the exception of Huỳnh Thúc Kháng, was they were early beneficiaries of French colonialism, thus more conservative in terms of outlook and more willing to collaborate with the status quo (30). During this period, because of the promises of Sarraut’s policy, there was a general consensus among the Vietnamese elite that it was more productive to advocate changes through official cultural means rather than political agitations. An example was Tonkin-based intellectual Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh, who used his French liberal connections to initiate his own version of a socio-cultural revolution in Vietnam within a colonised public sphere through mediums of print, press, and translation (31). The same can be said about Phan Khôi. According to Lại Nguyên Ân and based on Phan Khôi’s own testaments, after almost ten years working as a political activist in which he suffered through instances of arrests and official crackdowns from the colonial authority, he felt he could achieve more by concentrating his efforts on contributing to the novel colonised Vietnamese public sphere that was taking shape at the onset of the First World War (32). In addition, like many of his contemporaries, Phan Khôi was optimistic about Sarraut’s liberal reforms as an alternative to political agitations. His written
contributions in this period reflected these tendencies.
Phan Khôi started his writing career in the later years of the First World War and was briefly involved with the Hanoi-based magazine Nam Phong, founded in 1917 by scholar-official and colonial collaborator Phạm Quỳnh, as his first employer. The magazine was not only recognised as a prime example of Franco-Vietnamese collaboration to the point
it received a monthly wartime subsidy of four hundred piastres from the Governor-General, but also a pioneering forum of mediation of ideas of colonial modernity and novel expressions of the ‘Self’ in colonial Vietnam (33). Because of this official patronage, the nature of this publication remained moderate at best, as was the case in Phan Khôi’s contributions. In probably one of his first long-form essays, Phan discussed changes in Vietnamese academic traditions in the last hundred years. Here, he gave an extensive overview of the historical development of Confucian learning (“Nho học ”) in Vietnam along with the advent of Western learning (“Tây học ”) through French intervention in the nineteenth century (34). Further
down the line, he also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of both systems of learning, where he utilised the dual images of the “master” (“chủ ”) and “guest” (“khách”) to describe the respective positions of Confucian and Western learnings in Vietnam, in which the two must learn to coexist under the same roof (35). From here, he proposed a mediation of
both learning systems to formulate a distinct Vietnamese one through several means, including translation of textbooks into Quốc ngữ in which he cited global examples of the historical use of Japanese vernacular writing (“Hòa văn”) in popularising Buddhism in Japan and other indigenous languages in propagating Christianity (“Da giáo”) worldwide, as well as promoting learning through consuming press (“học báo”) (36). The bulk of this piece is deeply imbued with Social Darwinist and pro-collaboration languages, which included referring to France as “Great France” (“Đại Pháp”) and endorsing France’s protection of Vietnam as a prerequisite to national regeneration in an increasingly predatory world (37).
From the above, this piece is relatively moderate in tone and confined with Confucian sensibilities and norms, compared to the later critical style which would later earn Phan fame and notoriety in the interwar years. Otherwise, it is possible this article was toned down in the editing process based on the fact Phạm Quỳnh held an almost monopolistic control over the magazine, which limited its influence compared to more radical publications (38). In addition, Phạm’s heavy editorial intervention probably played a critical role in Phan’s decision to resign from the magazine after two years (39). Despite its conservative nature, the article gives us a glimpse of Phan’s early attempts at mediation of ideas and practices from different cultural spheres to inform a more modern Vietnamese ‘Self’ within colonial and traditional constraints. Moreover, it signals a gradual radicalisation of Phan’s worldviews, which became more apparent in the period between 1928 and 1932.
In general, beyond legitimising French colonial presence in Vietnam, Albert Sarraut’s policy of Pháp Việt đề huề also further accelerated the emergence of print, press and translation as mediums of circulation of ideas of the ‘Self’. These mediums were quickly embraced by local elites, many of them close collaborators with the colonial administration,
who utilised them to advance their own modernisation agenda and to formulate a distinct Vietnamese public sphere. This explosion in print generated opportunities for young thinkers such as Phan Khôi to make their own mark in the wider socio-cultural transformation of Vietnamese society within a restricted colonised setting.
Saigon as a space of cultural production
Besides the emergence of print, press and translation, the French colonial project in Vietnam, unintentionally or otherwise, contributed to the formation of new public spaces where contested visions of modernity interacted with each other. These spaces of cultural production were mostly concentrated in the major urban centres such as Hanoi in Tonkin and Saigon in Cochinchina. Here, we focus on the development of Saigon and its role in forming a colonised urban Vietnamese public sphere due to its distinct economic development, diverse populations and how those factors permitted it to be a transnational space of mediation of the ‘Self’ from the 1920s onwards. Furthermore, how that intersected with Phan
Khôi’s own intellectual development when he moved there in the early 1920s.
Theoretically speaking, according to Jurgen Habermas, the foundation of a “bourgeois public sphere” depended on individual elites coming together publicly as a collective political force outside of the traditional system of authority, eventually to challenge, critique and overthrow that authority through various means (40). While a “bourgeois public sphere” was
taking shape across colonial Vietnam in the first two decades of the twentieth century through the explosion in print, press, and translation, Saigon, the capital of Cochinchina, was arguably the most prominent centre of this transformation due to its distinctive development in the
French colonial project. Compared to the rest of French-ruled Vietnam, Cochinchina in the south was directly ruled as a French colony, whereas Tonkin and Annam were protectorates where traditional Vietnamese authority continued to exist in principle. Its capital, Saigon, was
the largest urban Vietnamese centre and most Westernised due to a longer period of French control since the 1860s, as well as possessing a multicultural population and a powerful indigenous elite (41). This diversity is reflected in the highest proportion of ‘foreign’ residents in
all of Indochina, with particular attention to the Overseas Chinese population, who represented almost the half the total number of inhabitants in both Saigon and Chợ Lớn before the Great Depression of 1929–1930 (42). As previously mentioned, the French colonial project greatly encouraged Chinese migration and trade into Vietnam, Cochinchina in particular. This migration also incidentally facilitated the transportation of Chinese reformist texts that were consumed by Vietnamese scholar-officials and contributed to early movements, thus reinforced mediation of ideas through old cultural ties. This circulation of
Chinese-language texts continued into the interwar period, in which Phan Khôi was an avid reader.
Saigon and Cochinchina in general were the first regions of colonial Vietnam to undertake cultural transformations, partly through colonial imposition but mostly through local initiatives. Historically, the southern provinces that made up Cochinchina were only incorporated into the wider Vietnamese imperial state from as late as the eighteenth century
and was a frontier land of recent settlers who mingled with other ethnic groups such as Chinese and Khmers. Thus, Confucian orthodoxy and learning never really took hold compared to Tonkin and Annam, and was mostly phased out when the French took control in the 1860s. As a result, this early colonial imposition eventually led to the new creation of a
new indigenous elite who were initially interpreters, secretaries and militiamen employed by the French colonial apparatus. Examples included the controversial Catholic interpreter and scholar Petrus Trương Vĩnh Ký, who were among the first to embrace print, press and translation. Other members of this new elite were early recipients of colonial education and
even higher education in metropolitan France such as Bùi Quang Chiêu (43).
Local elites in Cochinchina were considered early adopters of print, press and translation to communicate transnational ideas of the ‘Self’. For example, the first Vietnamese newspapers were established in Cochinchina, starting with the colonial government’s official
bulletin Gia Định Báo from as early as 1865 and the first instance of an official use of the novel Quốc Ngữ script (44). In addition, Cochinchina witnessed the importation and local appropriation of new literary genres. Based on more recent scholarship, it has been agreed that the first modern Vietnamese novel emerged in Cochinchina, rather than Tonkin as previously assumed. According to John C.Schafer and The Uyen, southern writers such as Gilbert Trần Chánh Chiếu and Hồ Biểu Chánh wrote the first modern Vietnamese novels in the 1910s, coinciding with the emergence of print in Vietnam (45). The first novels of Cochinchina were products of intellectual mediation between multiple cultural spheres. The writers in question blended literary traditions from the Confucian sphere, that of “knight-errant” and “scholar-beauty” stories, with elements from French literature to inform a distinct body of literature and thus, new cultural expressions of the ‘Self’ (46). Because these cultural innovations were taking place, along with socio-economic factors, by the end of the First World War, Saigon and Cochinchina as a whole laid the foundation for a modern, urban Vietnamese public sphere in a colonised setting and paved the way for the more radical 1920s and 1930s.
Regarding Phan Khôi, according to Lại Nguyên Ân and other scholars, after parting ways with Phạm Quỳnh’s Nam Phong, Phan Khôi moved southward to Saigon after the end of the First World War, where he briefly wrote for the moderate Quốc Ngữ newspaper Lục Tỉnh Tân Văn (Six Provinces Gazette) (47). While the tone of Phan’s writings remained somewhat moderate, he became more assertive and critical as a result of moving to Saigon. In a piece written for Lục Tỉnh under the pen name Chương Dân, he analysed a speech given by the Governor-General of Indochina and architect of Franco-Vietnamese collaboration Albert Sarraut at a tea reception of the Hội Khai Trí Tiến Đức (l’Association pour la Formation Intellectuelle et Morale des Annamites, the Association for Annamite Intellectual and Moral Education) in 1919. In this piece, he interpreted Sarraut’s idea of “Indochinese autonomy” (“Đông Dương tự trị ”) as a demand for greater autonomy for the French colonial administration in Indochina from the metropole, rather than greater self-determination for the populace of the territory in question (48). Here, Phan Khôi expressed cynicism at the true intentions of the colonial administration in permitting greater self-rule for the local population and casted doubts on the promises of Sarraut’s own reform. To further contextualise Phan’s article, his reference to ‘Indochinese autonomy’ also reflected a trend among Vietnamese intellectuals, especially collaborationists, who were beginning to articulate their political and cultural future in more transnational Indochinese terms, incorporating both Laos and Cambodia, as an alternative to a single Vietnamese polity (49). At the same time, Phan began to display suspicions of French intentions through this article.
This increased assertiveness from Phan could be attributed to an increased politicisation of the Vietnamese Quốc Ngữ press in the immediate post-war period, at least in Saigon, following Sarraut’s policies and greater assertiveness from publishers which allowed for more independent-minded journalism (50). These factors, along with Saigon’s relative modernity, impacted Phan’s thinking and writing style. At the same time, Lại Nguyên Ân also argued it was Phan’s criticism of Sarraut’s message that ended his brief association with Lục Tỉnh, as well as his first tenure in Saigon’s emerging public sphere, before returning to Hanoi (51). On the other hand, the distinct landscape of Saigon and its emerging indigenous public sphere proved formative for Phan’s development as a writer and public intellectual whose influence when he became greatly involved in Saigon’s public sphere again by the late 1920s.
Because of its development as an economically important urban centre of French Indochina and the cultural innovations resulted from this socio-economic transformation along with diverse populations and an increasingly influential local urban elite, Saigon became an important space of mediation of transnational ideas of the ‘Self’ in colonial Vietnam in the interwar period. These factors had a significant impact on Phan Khôi’s own intellectual development, especially during his first tenure in Saigon’s relatively well-established printing press. This formative experience allowed him to become an influential voice in Saigon’s colonial public sphere in the later years of the interwar period, as well as showing the complex agency of collaborators in this period.
13 Philippe M.F. Peycam, The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon, 1916–1930 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 5.
14 Christopher Goscha, “Aux origines du républicanisme vietnamien: Circulations mondiales et connexions coloniales,” (The Origins of Vietnamese Republicanism: Global Circulations and Colonial Connections) Vingtième siècle, no. 131(July-Septembre 2016): 21–22.
15 Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 96.
16 Goscha, “Aux origines,” 23.
17 Peter Zarrow, After Empire: The Conceptual Transformation of the Chinese State, 1885–1924 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 77.
18 Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 106–107.
19 Mark Phillip Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950 (The University of North Carolina Press: London, 2000): 12.
20 Under the Nguyễn imperial dynasty, this region of Vietnam became known for producing prominent patriotic scholar-officials and diplomats. Case in point, Phạm Phú Thứ, a member of the first Vietnamese emissary to Europe in the 1860s and an early advocate of Western-styled modernisation, as well as Hoàng Diệu who served as governor (Tổng đốc ) of Hanoi in the early years of French military intervention and also Phan Khôi’s maternal grandfather. Vinh Sinh, “Introduction: Phan Châu Trinh and his political writings,” in Phan Châu Trinh and his political writings, ed. Vinh Sinh (New York: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2009): 11.
21 Goscha, Vietnam, 102.
22 Nguyễn Hiến Lê, Đông kinh Nghĩa thục (Tonkin Free School) (Saigon: Lá Bối, 1968), 85–86.
23
‘…Cúp hè! Cúp hè!
Mọi người cùng cúp
Cho sạch đầu tóc
Cho đẹp con người…’
Phan Khôi, “Vè cúp tóc”, 1906, https://cadao.me/ve/ve-cup-toc/
24 Phan, “Vè cúp tóc”
25 ‘…Từ sĩ đến nông
Từ công đến thương
Đi chài, dệt sợi
Trăm người như một
Bảo nhau cúp tóc…’
Ibid
26 This policy also came about after outcries over the violent crackdown of anti-tax revolts in Quảng Nam in 1908, which resulted in the arrests of both Phan Châu Trinh and Phan Khôi. Furthermore, it was also to partly stem Chinese republican influence in Vietnam following the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 led by Sun Yatsen, which established the Republic of China.
This event would have allowed Vietnamese revolutionaries to gain access to a potential backer and base of operation for further anti-colonial agitations.
27 Goscha, Vietnam, 115.
28 Christopher Goscha, “‘The Modern Barbarian’: Nguyen Van Vinh and The Complexity of Colonial Modernity in Vietnam,” European Journal of East Asian Studies 3, no. 1 (2004): 152.
29 Ibid, 116.
30 Both Phạm Quỳnh and Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh were initially trained as interpreters for the French colonial administration. Bùi Quang Chiêu and probably Nguyễn Thế Khải were early beneficiaries of the French colonial education system in Cochinchina and influential members of indigenous political circles. Huỳnh Thúc Kháng held from the same province as
Phan Châu Trinh and Phan Khôi and was a major participant of Duy Tân.
Agathe Larcher-Goscha and Kareem James Abu-Zeid, “Bùi Quang Chiêu in Calcutta (1928): The Broken Mirror of Vietnamese and Indian Nationalism,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 9, no. 4 (Fall 2014): 70–71.
31 Goscha, “‘The Modern Barbarian’,”146.
32 Lại Nguyên Ân, “Tiểu dẫn về sưu tập các tập tác phẩm của Phan Khôi đăng báo trong các năm 1917–1924” (Introduction: Phan Khôi’s published writings, 1917–1924), in Phan Khôi: Tác phẩm đăng báo, 1917–1924 (Phan Khôi: Published writings, 1917–1924), ed. Lại Nguyên Ân (Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Tri Thức (Knowledge Publisher), 2019), n/a.
33 Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954, trans. Ly-Lan Dil Klein, with Eric Jennings, Nora Taylor, and Noémi Tousignant (London: University of California Press, 2009): 228.
34 This is a Quốc ngữ translation of the original piece written in Classical Chinese “論 南 國 百 年 來 學 術 之 變 遷 及 現 時 之 改 良 方 法” as the magazine featured contributions in both writing systems throughout its existence Phan Khôi, “Bàn về sự thay đổi của học thuật nước Nam trăm năm nay cùng phương pháp cải lương hiện thời” (Discussion
on changes in Vietnamese way of learning in the last hundred years along with contemporary methods of innovation), Nam Phong, no. 5 & 6 (November/ December 1917): 327–334.
35 Phan, “Bàn về sự thay đổi” (Discussion on changes), 327–334.
36 Ibid, 327–334.
37 Ibid, 327–334.
38 Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954, trans. Ly-Lan Dil Klein, with Eric Jennings, Nora Taylor, and Noémi Tousignant (London: University of California Press, 2009), 228.
39 Neil L. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 109.
40 Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989): 27.
41 Peycam, The Birth, 4.
42 In 1921, there were 140,000 Chinese to 145,000 Vietnamese. By 1928, there were 125,000 Chinese to 159,000 Vietnamese. Other communities included Indian and French colons, as well as Vietnamese migrants from other regions. Ibid, 27.
43 Ibid, 18–19.
44 Goscha, Vietnam, 346–347.
45 Gilbert Trần Chánh Chiếu wrote and published Hoàng Tố Anh hàm oan (“The unjust suffering of Hoàng Tố Anh) in 1910. Two years later, Hồ Biểu Chiếu made his literary debut with Ai làm được? (“Who can do it?”) in 1912 and went on to be recognised as the most prolific southern novelist of his time. John C. Schafer and The Uyen, “The Novel Emerges in Cochinchina,” The Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 4 (Nov., 1993):854.
46 Schafer and Uyen, “The Novel,” 855.
47 Before joining Lục Tỉnh, Phan also wrote for another Saigon-based journal called Quốc dân diễn đàn but no record of his contributions survived to this date, according to Lại Nguyên Ân. Lại Nguyên Ân, “Liệu có thể xem Phan Khôi (1887–1959) như một tác gia văn học quốc ngữ Nam Bộ?” (Can we view Phan Khôi (1887–1959) as a Southern Quốc Ngữ writer?) (Paper submitted to the Scientific Conference on “Southern Quốc Ngữ
literature from the end of the XIXth century to 1945”, Ho Chi Minh City, May 26, 2006), http://lainguyenan.free.fr/baiviet/PKvaBaoChi.html
48 Phan Khôi (Chương Dân), “Giải đại ý bài diễn thuyết của quan toàn quyền Sarraut về cuộc Đông Dương tự trị” (General explanation of Governor-General Sarraut’s speech on Indochinese Autonomy), Lục Tỉnh Tân Văn no. 628, May 14, 1919.
49 At the same time, terms such as ‘Annam’ and ‘Indochina’ as well as ‘Vietnam’ continued to be used in writings interchangeably during this period Christopher E. Goscha, “Annam and Vietnam in the New Indochinese Space, 1887–1945,” in Asian Forms of Nations, eds.
Stein Tonnesson and Hans Antlov (London: Curzon Press, 1995): 99–100.
50 Peycam, The Birth, 101–102.
51 Lại, “Phan Khôi,” May 26, 2006.
