Testimony of a Twentieth Century Vietnamese Revolutionary: The Memoirs of Trần Trọng Khắc

Much has been written about contemporary revolutionary movements in Vietnam. There has been a tendency among researchers to emphasise aspects of the anti-imperialist war against France and the United States, featuring military strategies and descriptions of battles. The majority of these describe struggles waged by heroes and heroines who lived within Vietnam. Some of them focus extensively on the victory of the communists, led by Hồ Chí Minh and General Võ Nguyên Giáp. A younger generation of Vietnamese, whether they live in the West or the East, have learned very little about those non-communist nationalists who lived and worked throughout Asia for the benefit of Vietnam. One of these patriots deserving scholarly attention is Trần Trọng Khắc (1884–1965), who was more than a bystander in the long and hard struggle for Vietnamese independence.Trần Trọng Khắc was an historical witness, as well as a participant in major events that shaped the first half of the twentieth century Vietnamese popular history. His name is closely linked to the Travel East Movement (Phong Trào Đông Du), spearheaded by the famous revolutionary Phan Bội Châu and later jointly with Prince Cuờng Để, a direct descendant of crown prince Cảnh and emperor Gia Long, the founder of the Nguyễn imperial dynasty. The movement encouraged the creation of Vietnamese intellectual talent by sending students to study in Japan, following the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese war.¹ Trần Trọng Khắcwas the very first Vietnamese to leave his homeland for this purpose.

Trần Trọng Khắc, known then as Nguyễn thức Canh, left Vietnam in 1905 and did not return until 1960. His memoirs record events from his overseas life, including his political experiences and personal feelings. He wrote during the last stage of his life in Vietnam (Nha Trang), when he desperately wished to spend time with his only son, who was eight months old when he left Vietnam, and was now fifty-five years of age. Khắc passed away in 1965, and his memoirs were put to print in 1971 by his son with the title Năm Mươi Bốn Năm Hải Ngoại [Fifty Four Years Overseas].²

This paper presents a personal document of a Vietnamese intellectual who not only played a part in the early twentieth century Vietnam’s anti-French nationalist movement, but also lived overseas throughout the periods French colonialism, the rise of Japanese power, the birth of the Republic of China and the tense politics of international affairs during the interwar period. The paper focuses on the parts of his memoirs that revealed the intricate politics of Franco-Japanese, Vietnamese-Japanese, and Chinese-Vietnamese relations, which affected him and his nationalist associates in their quest to bring independence to Vietnam. From this enquiry into Khắc’s experiences the paper also evaluates the usefulness of ego-documents to reconstruct the past and understand contemporary Vietnamese history.

Khắc’s memoirs were written as a one hundred-page book, which was not divided into chapters as convention details. Instead it has fifty-six headlines which cover the corresponding details. The book is arranged chronologically to allow the reader to follow the development of his political life. It begins with his youth and the background of his political undertakings, then flows to his career paths, political and professional, including significant events that shaped his life in Japan, China and Germany. He ends his memoirs in China during the Japanese-Chinese conflict at the outbreak of the Pacific War which stranded him in China. Providing the precise dates of his political activities is at times difficult as most are not recorded. However, their sequences can be pieced together with the help of historical records, archival documents, security reports, memoirs, and diaries left by Khắc’s contemporaries.

Background to his political undertakings

Before exploring Trần Trọng Khắc’s memoirs, it is necessary to highlight Vietnam’s political...