Bùi Quang Chiêu

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Bùi Quang Chiêu (* 1872/73; † 1945 ) was a reformist journalist and politician in French Indochina . He founded the Indochinese Constitutionalist Party and, with the consent of the colonial authorities, published several newspapers. In the turmoil at the end of World War II , he was killed by the Viet Minh .

Origin and career

Bui Quang Chieu was born into a family of scholars who owned land from Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta in Cochinchina . He was trained at the colonial school in France and then began studying agricultural engineering in Paris . In 1897 he returned to Indochina and worked in the capital of the Cochinchina colony, Saigon , as an agricultural engineer for the colonial authorities. He acquired French citizenship and became a wealthy landowner in Cochinchina. He also oriented his business activities towards the goal of lifting the economic backwardness of the Vietnamese population. So he got involved in associations for mutual self-help, which should reduce the economic backwardness of the Vietnamese population. In 1915 he was involved in building the first rice mill outside the traditional trade monopoly of the Chinese minority.

Acting as a publicist

With the support of Governor General Albert Sarraut , he founded the French-language newspaper La Tribune indigène in Saigon in 1917 . This became the mouthpiece of a group of western educated and reformist orientated Vietnamese. It was from this group that the constitutionalists were founded. The aim of the party was to involve the Vietnamese subjects of the colonial state more closely in the political process while at the same time continuing colonialism.

In 1919, Bui Quang Chieu, together with the newspaper editor Nguyễn Phan Long, propagated a boycott campaign against Chinese traders because, in his opinion, they would hinder the economic emancipation of the Vietnamese. The campaign was unsuccessful and was discontinued under French pressure under Governor Maurice Long , who took office in 1920 . In the 1920s, Bui Quang Chieu became known nationwide with the newly founded La Tribune Indochinoise , as the newspaper was one of the few permitted publications to criticize the policies of the colonial authorities. As a result of the violence of the anti-colonial nationalists in the thirties, such as the Yên Bái mutiny and the Nghệ-Tĩnh Soviets , Chieu felt repulsed by the movement and was perceived as pro-French in nationalist circles. His party fell apart in wing battles over the question of whether political change could be achieved through cooperation or resistance against the colonial power. Due to his continued contact with the ex-emperor Hàm Nghi , who was exiled in Algeria, the French security authorities listed him as an anti-French activist who, behind a pro-French facade, was pursuing the same goals as the Vietnamese nationalists.

In 1938 he retired from political life. During the August Revolution , he was arrested by the Viet Minh in September 1945 and executed on charges of collaboration.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Bruce L. Lockhart, William J. Duiker: Historical Dictionary of Vietnam . Oxford 2006, p. 51
  2. ^ A b K. W. Taylor: A History of the Vietnamese . Cambridge 2013, p. 497 f.
  3. ^ Gisèle Luce Bousquet, Pierre Brocheux (Ed.): Viêt Nam Exposé: French Scholarship on Twentieth-century Vietnamese Society. Ann Arbor 2002, p. 281
  4. ^ Justin Corfield: Historical Dictionary of Ho Chi Minh City . London 2014, p. 36
personal data
SURNAME Bùi, Quang Chiêu
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Vietnamese agricultural engineer, politician and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH 1872 or 1873
DATE OF DEATH 1945