<資料・研究ノート>開明的知識人層の形成 : 20世紀初頭のベトナム

Abstract

(1) Phan Chu Trinh was born into a traditional village family of rural intellectuals in 1872. And Phan Boi Chau was born in 1867. Trinh, Chau and others with similar backgrounds became leaders of new movements around 1905. They condemned the existing educational and mandarinate examination system as well as corrupt officialdom, to which they attributed their nation's decline. They stressed the importance of introducing new thoughts, new knowledge and new education into the country, and advocated movements called Duy Tan (Innovation) and Dong Du (Visit-to-the-East). (2) The following factors which led younger Vietnamese intellectuals from traditionalism to modernism are noted. (a) The first and most basic factor was sensitivity to the humiliating loss of the country's sovereignty and the possibility that the nation would be destroyed. (b) Simultaneously they were disillusioned with the Vietnamese court and its mandarins, and because of this most of them were very hesitant about entering the service of the Emperor. (c) Consequently they no longer regarded the mandarinate examination as one of the primary goals of their lives. Once they began to feel this way, they hated this old-fashioned system all the more, because their youth was wasted studying for these examinations. (d) Around 1900, they became interested in Chinese ideas concerning modernization through which they learned of Japanese attempts to modernize together with those of Chinese. Inspired by these thoughts, the Vietnamese intellectuals became better able to articulate their feelings about Vietnam's fate and their doubts about the mandarinate and the examination systems. Thus the new Vietnamese intellectuals emerged as advocates of new movements in the first decade of the 20th century. These movements away from traditionalism were probably strengthened by the development of commerce in the country side. (3) Phan Chu Trinh, in his "Letter to the Governor-General, " reportedly written in 1906, appealed to the French to adopt a new policy to modernize Vietnam. In one sense, this was a challenge to the traditional Vietnamese elite. Trinh identified himself as a member of the new intellectuals and he claimed that they had the right to replace the mandarins who, he felt, had been obstructing the progress of the nation. The mandarins, of course, responded quickly. They were eventually successful in completely wiping out the new movements in 1908, when peasant demonstrations against taxation and corve system were crushed.