Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T09:09:31.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bui Quang Chiêu and the Constitutionalist Party in French Cochinchina, 1917–30

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

R. B. Smith
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The years 1916–17 were something of a turning-point in the development of Vietnamese nationalism. In Cochinchina an abortive attack on Saigon central prison in February 1916 was followed by a great many arrests and the virtual destruction, for the time being, of the network of secret societies which had grown up in many of the colony's provinces during the previous decade. Many members of such societies were brought before special military tribunals (justified by the fact that France was at war in Europe) and sentenced to death, exile, or long terms of imprisonment. In Annam another abortive plot, probably quite separate, was hatched at Huê in May 1916, involving the kidnapping of the boy-emperor Duy-Tân; but he was found by the French two years later, before a projected rising in the provinces of Quang-Nam and Quang-Ngai could get under way. The leader of the plot, Trân Cao Vân, was executed along with three others, and the deposed emperor was exiled to the island of Réunion.2 These events in Cochinchina and Annam brought to a halt, for a time at least, the activities of secret nationalist groups which, drawing their initial inspiration from Japan, had been increasing in strength since about 1905. In Tongking there were also secret associations, mostly acknowledging the leadership of Phan Bôi Châu who was then in exile at Canton, and strongly influenced by the revolutionary methods of Sun Yat-sen. But there also, their last important operation for several years occurred in September 1917, when Luong Ngoc Quyên escaped from prison at Thai-Nguyen and was able to control the town for a week, before being driven out and committing suicide.3 Phan Bôi Châu himself was arrested by the Chinese the following year.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , March 1969 , pp. 131 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Coulet, G., Les Sociétés Secrètes en Terre d'Annam, Saigon, 1926, analyses the events in Cochinchina of 1913–1916 in some detail; on the Huê plot, see Courrier Saigonnais, 17 May and 5 June 1916.Google Scholar

3 Lê, Thanh Khôi, Le Viêt-Nam, Histoire et Civilisation, Paris, 1955, p. 390.Google Scholar

4 M., Khai still lives in Saigon and I was fortunate enough to meet him there in September 1967; my information about his career is based partly on our conversation then.Google Scholar

5 La Cochinchine Libérale, 6 July 1915; the editor was strongly in favour of the move.Google Scholar

6 I am indebted for much information about Bui Quang Chiêu's life to his daughters in Saigon, who were kind enough to spend several hours talking to me about his career. In the account which follows, however, I have tried as far as possible to document all events.

7 Courrier Saigonnais, 25 February 1913.Google Scholar

8 L'Avenir du Tonkin, 22 August 1906. The society had 110 members.Google Scholar

9 La Tribune Indigène, 25 April and 27 June 1918.Google Scholar

10 Part of the letter is printed in Duong Dinh Khuê, Les Chefs d'Oeuvre de la Littérature Vietnamienne, Saigon, 1966, pp. 351–3.Google Scholar

11 La Tribune Indigène, 24 September 1917.Google Scholar

12 La Tribune Indigène, 21 and 28 January 1918. A former government official, he sat on the Conseil Colonial from 1904, and is to be distinguished from his namesake referred to below.Google Scholar

13 Khoi, op. cit., p. 403.Google Scholar

14 La Tribune Indigène, 28 August and 4 September 1919.Google Scholar

15 La Tribune Indigène, 7 October and 4 November 1919.Google Scholar

16 La Tribune Indigène, 18, 27 November and 2 December 1919.Google Scholar

17 La Tribune Indigène, May 1919, passim.Google Scholar

18 La Tribune Indigène, 17, 24 February 1921; Lê Quang Trinh was elected president.Google Scholar

19 Rapport du Gouverneur de la Cochinchine, 4e trimestre 1922, National Archives, Saigon: S.L. 366.Google Scholar

20 La Tribune Indigène, 17 October 1922.Google Scholar

21 Rapports, etc., as note 19 above; 1ertrimestre 1919 and 4e trimestre 1922.Google Scholar

22 Garros, Georges, Forceries Humaines, l'Indochine litigieuse, esquisse d'une entente Franco-Annamite, Paris, 1926, Documents annexés.Google Scholar

23 La Tribune Indigène, September 1923.Google Scholar

24 La Tribune Indochinoise, 31 August and 7 September 1927.Google Scholar

25 Langlois, Walter G., André Malraux, the Indochina Adventure, London, 1966, pp. 93–5, etc.Google Scholar

26 La Tribune Indigène, 13, 20 November and 1 December 1923; cf. also 22 January 1924. I. M. Sacks says that the opposition to the convention was successful, but I find no record of it being withdrawn; his source on this is the newspaper La Lutte for 1 November 1934, ten years after the event;Google ScholarTrager, F. N. (ed.), Marxism in Southeast Asia, Stanford, 1960, p. 113.Google Scholar

27 Nguyên, An Ninh, La France en Indochine, Paris, 1925, p. 17.Google Scholar

28 La Tribune Indigène, 11–13 December 1923; 18 March 1924.Google Scholar

29 For an account of his early career, see L'Avenir du Tonkin, 5 May 1926. Ninh appears to have been in France in 1921–3, but it is doubtful whether he left with a qualification.Google Scholar

30 In the tract cited in note 27 above.

31 La Tribune Indigène, 26 June 1923.Google Scholar

32 La Tribune Indigène, 3 January 1925.Google Scholar

33 La Tribune Indigène, 31 January 1925.Google Scholar

34 The story of this newspaper, and of Malraux's other activities in Indochina, has been told by W. G. Langlois in the work cited above, note 25.

35 Langlois, , op. cit., p. 178.Google Scholar

36 For a report of the trial see L'Avenir du Tonkin, 23–25 November 1925; all later sources say that Châu was sentenced to death, but this was not so.Google Scholar

37 And reprinted by Garros, G., op. cit., note 22 above.Google Scholar

38 Report of the British Consul in Saigon, Gorton, F. G., April 1926.Google Scholar

39 L'Avenir du Tonkin, 5 May 1926.Google Scholar

40 La Tribune Indochinoise, 10 November 1926.Google Scholar

41 Gouvernement-Général de l'Indochine, Contribution à l'Histoire des Mouvements Politiques de l'Indochine Française, I, Hanoi, 1933, p. 17. The new party was not given legal recognition by the authorities.Google Scholar

42 Ph., Devillers, Histoire du Viet-Nam de 1940 à 1952, Paris, 1952, pp. 63–4.Google Scholar

43 Tribune Indochinoise, 14 March and 4 April 1927.Google Scholar

44 Contribution, etc. (as note 41), I, p. 44.Google Scholar

45 Tribune Indochinoise, 27 May 1927; La Presse Indochinoise, 5, 12 June 1927.Google Scholar

46 Tribune Indochinoise, 25 July and 28 October 1927; 28 March, 16 and 24 April 1928. Also sentenced to imprisonment in this case was Nguyên Khanh Toan, who spent some time in Moscow in the 1930s, and later became Deputy Minister of Education in Hanoi.Google Scholar

47 Tribune Indochinoise, 30 April–11 May and 20 June 1928.Google Scholar

48 On 8 May 1929, Tribune Indochinoise, 7 February 1930, review of events o the previous year.Google Scholar

49 Tribune Indochinoise, 16–18 July 1930.Google Scholar

50 As note 48.

51 Echo Annamite, 25 March 1930.Google Scholar

52 A list of the disturbances is contained in Contribution, etc., IV, pp. 124 ff.; a short account of the events of 1930–31 will be found in Smith, Ralph, Viet-Nam and the West, London, 1968, pp. 104–8.Google Scholar

53 Cf. Nguyên Tân Duoc's reply to an attack on the Constitutionalists by La Dépêche d'Indochine, in Echo Annamite, 7 June 1930.Google Scholar

54 For a brief account of the religion, see Smith, op. cit., pp.71–6. Fuller details will be found in Contribution, etc., VII, which is devoted entirely to Caodaism.Google Scholar

55 Thân Chung (Saigon newspaper), 14 and 21 March 1966. Unlike Chiêu, Trung had not been educated in France; there is no evidence that he was ever active in the Constitutionalist party.Google Scholar

56 Gobron, G., History and Philosophy of Caodaism, Saigon, 1950, p. 150;Google ScholarRevue Franco-Annamite, I, July 1929, pp. 9–1; Revue Caodaique, 1950, pp. 93–107.Google Scholar

57 Echo Annamite, 16 January 1930;Google ScholarLuoc-Su Dao Cao-Dai, Histoire Sommaire du Caodaisme, Tourane, 1956, p. 20.Google Scholar

58 La Tribune Indochinoise, 29 June 1929;Google Scholarcf., Nguyên Dang Thuc; Asian Culture and Vietnamese Humanism, Saigon, 1965.Google Scholar

59 Revue Franco-Annamite, I, Hanoi, 1 07 1929, pp. 3–6 and II, 16 July, pp. 1–5.Google Scholar

60 Devillers, op. cit., p. 69.Google Scholar

61 La Tribune Indochinoise, 13 July 1942.Google Scholar

62 La Tribune Indochinoise, 28 September 1942.Google Scholar

63 Devillers, , op. cit., p. 181.Google Scholar