Nguyễn Công Trứ

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A bronze bust of Nguyễn Công TRU, which in Hanoi is

Nguyễn Công Trứ (* 1778 ; † 1858 ) was a prominent Confucian scholar in Vietnam at the time of the Nguyễn dynasty . He reached the office of Minister of War and, in addition to his administrative work, was known for his literary work. He died fighting the French invasion of Cochinchina .

Origin and career

Nguyen Cong Tru was born as the son of Nguyen Cong Tan in a rural area in what is now Ha Tinh . Nguyen Cong Tru came from a family of scholars who held high offices at the time of the Lê dynasty , but who were now impoverished.

He had problems obtaining the necessary qualifications in the civil service examination and only attained the formal qualification for a civil service relatively late at the age of 41.

Public offices

After his acceptance into the civil service, he quickly made a career, became provincial governor and finally Minister of War at the court of the Nguyen. As a civil servant, he worked for the reclamation of land in the Red River Delta in the provinces of Nam Dinh and Ninh Binh. This enabled the Tien Hai and Kim Son districts to be re-created. To secure the dikes on the Red River, he advocated deepening the tributaries to the Red River in order to lower the water level there. However, when the imperial administration partially put the plan into action, it caused severe flooding. At the end of the 1820s, he made a profit as a military commander in the fight against insurgents in the provinces of Nghe An and Thanh Hoa .

Literary activity

In addition to his administrative work, his poems, in which he satirically dealt with double standards and social barriers, were known nationwide. In his poems he also addressed the poverty of the rural rural population and criticized the feudal upper class. His poems found their way into the school curriculum in his country decades after his death, after not being taught in favor of less critical Confucian literature.

retirement

In 1848, Nguyen Cong Tru retired from public office. In 1858 he volunteered to repel the French Cochinchina campaign . He died shortly after the French forces landed.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 47 / Issue 02 / June 2016, pp 255 - 280 doi : 10.1017 / S0022463416000072 , first published on April 29, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c d e Bruce L. Lockhart, William J. Duiker: Historical Dictionary of Vietnam. Oxford 2006, p. 264
  3. ↑ a b Hữu Ngọc: Viet Nam: Tradition and Change. Athens, 2016, entry Nguyen Cong Tru: The Poet of Povery and the Solitary Pine, ebook without page numbers
  4. ^ A b Mart A. Stewart, Peter A. Coclanis: Environmental Change and Agricultural Sustainability in the Mekong Delta. Heidelberg, 2011, p. 56, p. 63
personal data
SURNAME Nguyễn, Công Trứ
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Vietnamese mandarin and man of letters
DATE OF BIRTH 1778
DATE OF DEATH 1858