Phan Xich Long - Early Career

Early Career

Long was born in 1893 in southern Vietnam as Phan Phát Sanh. His place of birth is disputed; the historians R. B. Smith and Hue-Tam Ho Tai say that he was from Cholon, the Chinese business district of Saigon, while Oscar Chapuis records Tan An as his place of birth. Sanh's father was a police officer. and it has been speculated that the family were of Chinese descent. He started as a servant in a French family, before travelling to the That Son (Seven Mountains) region in the far south of Vietnam, a region that was known as a hotbed of mysticism. There Long trained in mysticism. As a youth, Sanh travelled from Vietnam to Siam, earning his living as a fortune-teller and geomancer.

In mid-1911, Sanh formed a secret society on the unverified pretense that he was a descendant of Ham Nghi, the boy emperor of the 1880s. Led by Ton That Thuyet and Phan Dinh Phung—two high-ranking mandarins—Ham Nghi's Can Vuong movement battled against French colonisation in the decade leading up to 1895. Their objective was to expel the French authorities and establish Ham Nghi as the emperor of an independent Vietnam. This failed, and the French exiled the boy emperor to Algeria, replacing him with his brother Dong Khanh. From then on, the French retained the monarchy of the Nguyen Dynasty, exiling any emperors who rose against colonial rule and replacing them with more cooperative relatives. Sanh also claimed descent from the Le Dynasty, which ruled Vietnam in the 15th and 16th centuries. He was a strong warrior, further presenting himself as the founder of China's Ming Dynasty.

At the time of Sanh's activities in the 1910s, there were two members of the Nguyen Dynasty who commanded respect among Vietnamese monarchists. The first was the boy emperor Duy Tan, who was himself deported in 1916 after staging an uprising. Duy Tan's grandfather, Emperor Duc Duc, was the adopted son of the childless Emperor Tu Duc, the last independent emperor of Vietnam. The second figure who was seen by Vietnamese as a possible leader of an independent monarchy was Prince Cuong De. Cuong De was a direct descendant of Emperor Gia Long, who had established the Nguyen Dynasty and unified Vietnam in its modern state. Cuong De was a prominent anti-colonial activist who lived in exile in Japan.

Sanh's two main assistants were Nguyen Huu Tri and Nguyen Van Hiep, whom he met at Tan Chau in Chau Doc Province (now in An Giang Province). The trio agreed to plot an uprising against the French under the cover of a religious sect. The genesis of their cooperation is unclear, but it may have started before mid-1911. Tri and Hiep were said to have been in awe when Sanh produced a golden plaque that read "heir to the throne". The men agreed that the geographical foci of their movement would be in Cholon and Tan An in Vietnam and Kampot in Cambodia. The trio decided to model their actions on an uprising that had occurred in Kampot in 1909. On that occasion, a group of Cambodians of Chinese descent had marched into the town wearing white robes, claiming to be followers of a Battambang-based Cambodian prince who would overthrow French rule and lead them to independence. After the formation of the sect, Sanh temporarily moved abroad, spending time in Siam and Cambodia. During this time, he learned sorcery and magic, supplementing his mystical training with a military education. He learned pyrotechnics for the purpose of making fireworks and bombs.