Phan Boi Chau - Early Years

Early Years

Phan was born as Phan Văn San (潘文珊) in the village of Dan Nhiem, Nam Hoa commune, 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 Nhiễm, 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.

At age five, Phan's father returned home and 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.

At the time, the central region of Vietnam where the family lived was still under the sovereignty of Emperor Tự Đức, but the southern part of the country had gradually been colonised in the 1860s and turned into the colony of Cochinchina. In 1874, an attack on Hanoi forced Tự Đức to sign a treaty to open up the Red River for French trade. In Nam Đàn District, a Binh Tây (Pacify the French) movement sprung among the local scholar-gentry, and Phan responded at the age of seven by playing Binh Tây with his classmates, using “guns” made of bamboo tubes and lychee bullets. The unrest was enough to prompt the imperial court to bring in troops to quell the opposition to Huế's deal with the French. Phan's family was not affected by the crackdown, but the movement had a deep impact on him. Later in life, he noted that as a youth, “I was endowed with a fiery spirit. From the days when I was a small child … every time I read the stories of those in the past who were ready to die for the righteous cause, tears would come running from my eyes, soaking the books.”

At the age of thirteen, Phan's 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 “putting down the French and retrieving the North” (Binh 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.

In 1884, his mother died and his aging father was growing weaker, forcing Phan to help support the family. In 1885, the Cần Vương movement began its uprising against French rule, hoping to install the boy Emperor Hàm Nghi as the ruler of an independent Vietnam by expelling colonial forces. The imperial entourage fled the palace in Huế and attempted to start the uprising from a military base in Nghệ An. The scholar gentry of the province rose up, and Phan attempted to rally approximately 60 classmates who were prospective examination candidates to join in the uprising. Phan called his new unit the Army of Loyalist Examination Candidates (Si tu Can Vuong Doi) and convinced an older cử nhân graduate to act as its commander. They had just began to collect money and raw materials to make ad hoc weapons when a French patrol attacked the village and scattered the students. Phan's father forced him to seek out the commander to have the membership list destroyed to avoid French retributions.

With his father growing weaker, Phan decided to keep a low profile to avoid trouble with the French colonials so that he could support his family. He did so by teaching and writing, while still continually preparing for examinations. During this time, he quietly acquired books on military strategy by the likes of Sun Tzu and Đào Duy Từ, the military strategist of the Nguyễn Lords who stopped the Trịnh Lords with a defensive wall, and Trần Hưng Đạo, the military commander of the Trần Dynasty who repelled Mongol invasions of Vietnam in the 13th century. Phan cultivated a small number of his students whom he identified as having abundant pro-independence sentiments. He enthusiastically received visits from Cần Vương visitors and passed on their tales to his students, particularly those concerning Phan Đình Phùng, who led the Cần Vương effort.

Phan failed the regional mandarin exams for a number of years in a row. By the time he was 30, he traveled to Huế to teach, “improve his contacts” and to obtain some special tutoring in preparation for his next exam attempt. In Huế, Phan quickly made friends with likeminded political values and beliefs. One friend, Nguyễn Thượng Hiền, introduced him to the unpublished writings of Nguyễn Lộ Trạch, a Vietnamese activist/reformist. This was Phan's first encounter with the Self-Strengthening Movement in China and other major political and military reforms made around the world. After returning to Nghệ An in 1900, Phan passed the regional mandarin exams with the highest possible honors.