Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh

Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh (* 1882 in Hanoi , Empire Vietnam , † 1936 ) was a Vietnamese journalist and publicist in French Indochina . He was the founder of the first newspaper in modern Vietnamese script in Hanoi and acted as an editor and journalist with political and cultural claims. He took a line of cooperation vis-à-vis the colonial power, as he promised himself democratization through colonialism.

Origin and career

Nguyen Van Vinh was born in the Ha Dong district of Hanoi city. He attended the translation school of the colonial authorities in his hometown. He then worked for the colonial administration in Lao Cai , Hải Phòng , Bac Ninh and Hanoi himself.

Professional activities

Nguyen Van Vinh was the founder and editor of the newspaper Dong Duong Tap Chi (Indochina Revue) in 1913. Part of the press working with the colonial authorities was sponsored by Governor General Albert Sarraut . Nguyen Van Vinh saw the most important instrument of modernization as the widespread use of the Latinized modern Vietnamese script. His newspaper also served as the publication site of the modern Vietnamese writer Tản Đà . The French colonial authorities financed them because they feared a republican-anti-colonial movement due to the Xinhai revolution in China. To prevent this, they tried to promote pro-French republicans like Nguyen Van Vinh.

In the further course of his editorial activity he founded other newspapers, namely the Vietnamese-language Trung Bac Tan Van ( news from Annam and Tonkin ) and the French-language Annam nouveau .

He made outstanding contributions to the first translations of traditional Vietnamese works into modern script. So he translated The History of the Kiều and The History of the Three Kingdoms into modern Vietnamese. He also translated western works such as Gulliver's Travels and Die Elenden .

During the First World War , Nguyen Van Vinh served as a translator for Vietnamese troops and workers in the European theater of war.

He advocated the establishment of an Indochinese union with a republican constitution instead of the indirect rule of the Nguyen dynasty and the colonial authorities. Ngyuen Vanh Vinh assumed, however, that the colonial state must also be democratized for the natives in this context. This led to a public debate over the media with the monarchist Prime Minister Phạm Quỳnh .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Duiker, 2006 p. 284f
2. ↑ Duiker, 2006 p. 284f
3. ↑ Goscha, 2013, p. 116f
4. ↑ Goscha, 2013, p. 343
5. ↑ Brocheux, 2009, p. 245
6. ↑ Brocheux, 2009 p. 227
7. ↑ Duiker, 2006, p. 246f
8. ↑ Goscha, 2013, p. 346f
9. ↑ Goscha, 2013 p. 111
10. ↑ Goscha, 2013 p. 120f
11. ↑ Brocheux, 2009 p. 303
12. ↑ Duiker, 2006, pp. 284f

literature

Used in the article

• Pierre Brocheux, Daniel Hémery: Indochina. An ambiguous colonization, 1858-1954. Berkeley 2009
• Bruce L. Lockhart, William J. Duiker: Historical Dictionary of Vietnam, Oxford 2006
• Christopher Goscha: Vietnam - A New History. New York 2016

further reading

• Christopher E. Goscha (2004): "The Modern Barbarian: Nguyen Van Vinh and the Complexity of Colonial Modernity in Vietnam". European Journal of East Asian Studies.