Who they were
A Confucian prize scholar turned revolutionary, Phan Boi Chau founded the Duy Tan Hoi (“Reformation Society”) in 1904 to work against French colonial rule.
What they did
He led the Dong Du (“Go East”) movement of 1905–08, sending some two hundred Vietnamese students to study in Japan, until France pressured Japan into expelling them after the 1907 Franco-Japanese accord. In China after 1912 he founded the Viet Nam Quang Phuc Hoi on republican lines. Kidnapped by French agents in Shanghai in 1925 and tried in Hanoi, he saw his sentence commuted, amid public outcry, to house arrest in Hue, where he was known as the “old man of Ben Ngu” until his death in 1940.
Legacy
His fiery histories and appeals shaped a generation. He was the bridge from the scholar-gentry to modern nationalism; Ho Chi Minh’s generation grew up on his writings.