Phan Bội Châu (Vietnamese: [faːn ɓôjˀ cəw]; 26 December 1867 – 29 October 1940) was a Vietnamese nationalist and revolutionary. In 1904, he formed a revolutionary organization called Duy Tân Hội ("Modernization Association") and initiated the Đông Du movement. From 1905 to 1908, he lived in Japan where he wrote political tracts calling for the independence of Vietnam from French colonial rule. After being forced to leave Japan, he moved to China where he was influenced by Sun Yat-sen and gradually shifted his political position from monarchist to democrat. In 1912, he disbanded Duy Tân Hội to form Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội (“Vietnamese Restoration League”), 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.
During his career, Phan used several pen names, including Sào Nam (巢 南), Thị Hán (是 漢), Độc Tỉnh Tử (獨 醒 子), Việt Điểu, and Hàn Mãn Tử.
Phan was born as Phan Văn San (潘 文 珊) 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, 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 Nhiệm, 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.
When Phan was five, his father returned home and he 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 his family lived was still under the sovereignty of Emperor Tự Đức, but the southern region had gradually been colonized by Cochinchina campaign in the 1860s. In 1862, Nguyễn dynasty was forced to sign the first Treaty of Saigon that ceded the three east provinces. In 1874, Nguyễn dynasty continued to sign the second Treaty of Saigon that ceded the three west provinces to the French, the whole Nam Kỳ lục-tỉnh (Southern six provinces) became French Cochinchina. In Nghệ-Tĩnh, the Văn Thân movement sprung among the local scholar-gentry with their motto Bình Tây (Pacify the French), and Phan responded at the age of seven by playing Bình Tây game with his classmates, using bamboo guns and lychee bullets. The unrest was enough to prompt the imperial court to bring in troops to quell the opposition to the treaties. Phan's family was not affected by the crackdown, but the movement had a deep impact on him.
When Phan was thirteen, his 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 "pacifying the French and retrieving the North" (bình 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 Sĩ tử Cần Vương Đội (Army of Loyalist Examination Candidates) and convinced an older cử nhân graduate to act as its commander. They had just begun 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, to "improve his contacts" and to obtain some special tutoring in preparation for his next exam attempt. In Huế, Phan quickly made friends with similar 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.
At the age of 22, Phan married Nguyễn Thị Huy (Thái Thị Huy, Thái Thị Huyên), who was from the same village. The union had long been arranged by their parents, who were acquaintances. Phan was the only son in the family, and his wife initially did not bear him any children, so she arranged for him to be married to a second wife Nguyễn Thị Minh (Phạm Thị Minh) so that the family line could be continued. This practice was not uncommon in Confucian families of the time. His second wife bore him a son (Phan Nghi Đệ) and daughter, and his first wife later bore him another son (Phan Nghi Huynh).
When Phan passed the regional examinations in 1900, he was eligible to become a public servant. However, Phan had no intention of pursuing such a career and only wanted the qualification to increase his gravitas in rallying anti-colonial action. With his father dying in the same year, Phan had less family obligations, and decided to travel abroad to pursue his revolutionary activities.
Phan met with his wife only once more following the leaving: when he was pardoned and released from Hỏa Lò Prison more than two decades later. He was then sent to a loose form of house arrest in Huế and the train stopped at Vinh, Nghệ An, Vietnam. On the way, his wife said, “I am very happy. From now on, my only wish is that you will hold to your initial aspiration. Do whatever you like, and do not worry about your wife and children.”
Phan spent the first five years of the 20th century living in Huế and traveling the country. Phan drew up a three-step plan to get the French out of Vietnam. First, he would need to organize remnants of the Cần Vương movement and other sympathizers of the cause. Second, he would need to attain support from the Vietnamese imperial family and the bureaucracy, many of whom had already come to grips with French colonial rule. Finally, he would need to obtain foreign aid, from Chinese or Japanese revolutionaries, to finance the revolution.