Le Minh Khai's SEAsian History Blog (+ More)

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Phan Văn Hùm, a Vietnamese journalist and intellectual who, among many other achievements, produced a book about the Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming in the 1940s.

Not much has been written about Phan Văn Hùm in English. The study that appears to have recorded the most information about him is David G. Marr’s 1981 monograph Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945.

So, I’ve been looking at what Marr had to say about Phan Văn Hùm, and as I always do when I read scholarly works, I check the footnotes and follow up on the works cited there.

These days, that process has been greatly facilitated by the digitization of historical materials. Indeed, almost everything that Marr cites in his book can now be accessed in a click or two by searching through the digitized materials at the French and Vietnamese national libraries.

As I’ve done so, I’ve really become “thất vọng” (see the image below for the meaning) with this work. Tradition on Trial has long stood as a classic study that many believe is based on solid scholarship, but as I have followed up on the works cited in the footnotes, I have developed a very different view of this book.

In Tradition on Trial, Marr examines the world of ideas in Vietnam from the 1920s to 1940s. His goal is to try to understand how revolution came in 1945. In his preface, he makes the following points:

“I think that to concentrate solely on the winners risks misunderstanding why the losers lost. Losing, like winning, has its own creative process, its own historical momentum. To ignore the larger context, or to reduce everyone except communists to convenient stereotypes, ironically risks downgrading the historical achievements of both the ICP [Indochinese Communist Party] and Ho Chi Minh.”

“Besides, the conviction has persisted throughout my research that the ability of the ICP twice to survive almost complete destruction, and to mount a thirty-year national resistance struggle, was not to be explained either by organizational history or by the brilliance of one man.” (x.)

Ultimately, what explains the persistence of the ICP, to Marr, are the intellectual and social changes that took place in Vietnam in the 1920s to 1940s, and his book attempts to document how the revolutionary ideas of the “winners” rose to prominence during this period while the ideas of the various “losers” fell to the wayside.

This seems like a potentially convincing argument, but it falls apart once one follows Marr’s footnotes.

I am going to look at a little more than one paragraph here, but the issues that I will discuss are ones that we can find throughout the book.

Marr has a section in his book on “History as Process” in which he attempts to document and discuss different understandings among Vietnamese intellectuals in the 1920s-1930s of how events or developments in the past unfolded.

Marr begins by talking about Phạm Quỳnh, the editor of an influential journal called Nam Phong. Phạm Quỳnh was Western-educated, and his journal played an incredibly important role in introducing Western ideas to Vietnam. This process was facilitated by the fact that the journal published articles in three languages (Vietnamese, classical Chinese, and French), and thereby was able to reach a wide readership.

However, politically Phạm Quỳnh was conservative, and in 1945, he was assassinated by members of the Việt Minh for being pro-French.

This is what Marr writes: “Faced with increasing Vietnamese interest in Social Darwinian concepts of struggle and progress, Pham Quynh went to the trouble of translating and printing a contemporary Chinese refutation of evolution based on Chuang-tzu’s [Zhuangzi’s] ancient cyclical concept of history.”

Marr then goes on to say that: However, with the Chinese Revolution, the Great War, and the Russian Revolution fresh in their minds, most young Vietnamese had little use for [Zhuangzi’s] cycles.

Look at the language Marr uses here – “faced with,” “went to the trouble of,” “little use” – and think about the ideas that are behind the decision to choose such terms.

What we see here is Phạm Quỳnh depicted as a “bad guy” (one of history’s “losers”), and he is a bad guy because he is out of touch. He doesn’t realize that Vietnamese society is moving inevitably towards revolution, and he therefore fails to prepare for that inevitability.

According to Marr, while there was an “increasing Vietnamese interest in Social Darwinian concepts of struggle and progress,” Phạm Quỳnh went in the opposite direction: He “went to the trouble of translating and printing a contemporary Chinese refutation of evolution based on [Zhuangzi’s] ancient cyclical concept of history.”

Wow!! Talk about conservative! When the people want to learn about struggle and progress, Phạm Quỳnh throws Zhuangzi at them to keep them going in circles. That’s nasty!!

Ok, but this is when my brain says “time to check the footnotes.” For one, I’m aware that traditionally trained scholars had been writing in classical Chinese about Darwinian concepts of struggle and progress for over a decade by that point, and I’m also aware that the classical Chinese section of Nam Phong contains articles on that topic as well.

So how could Western-educated Phạm Quỳnh be more conservative than members of the traditionally educated elite?

In following the footnote, I see that in 1924, the Vietnamese translation of a talk that a Chinese scholar by the name of Zhang Hongzhao 章鴻釗 had given the previous year at the Beijing Advanced Normal School was published in Nam Phong. I also see that this talk was translated by “Hoa Đường,” one of  Phạm Quỳnh’s pen names (My bad!! I did not know this until someone pointed it out. I was only aware of his pen name Thượng Chi).  [Chương Hồng Chiêu (Zhang Hongzhao), “Học thuyết Tây với học thuyết Tàu,” translated by Hoa Đường, Nam Phong No. 87 (1924): 216-226.]

Zhang Hongzhao was a pioneering geologist in China. Traditionally trained, he then turned to “New Learning” and went to study geology in Japan. Upon returning to China in 1911, he worked to introduce modern (Western) geological knowledge and techniques and did so out of a strong sense of national duty.

In this talk, Zhang made use of his familiarity with both Chinese and Western knowledge. Essentially what he did was to compare Darwin’s idea of natural selection (lit., “heavenly selection,” thiên trạch 天擇) with a concept in the Zhuangzi that literally means “heavenly equality” (thiên quân 天均).

In doing so, Zhang Hongzhao did not reject evolution. Zhang accepted Darwin’s idea of natural selection but attempted to see if the Zhuangzian concept of heavenly equality could explain certain things that natural selection could not.

So, we’re off to a bad start here. To begin, Marr had no evidence to make the claim that this piece was published because Phạm Quỳnh was “faced with increasing Vietnamese interest in Social Darwinian concepts of struggle and progress.” In fact, we have no information about the editorial decisions that were made concerning the publication of this piece at all.

We also don’t have evidence that Phạm Quỳnh had to “[go] to the trouble of translating and printing” the piece, because doing so should have been no different from any other piece he translated and published, and Phạm Quỳnh did that a lot.

Finally, Zhang Hongzhao’s talk was not “a contemporary Chinese refutation of evolution based on Chuang-tzu’s [Zhuangzi’s] ancient cyclical concept of history.”

In fact, I don’t think there is even such a thing as “Zhuangzi’s ancient cyclical concept of history.”

As such, Marr also had no evidence to argue that “most young Vietnamese had little use for [Zhuangzi’s] cycles,” because that’s not what the translated talk was about.

There is thus a lot in these few sentences that is incorrect, but it is perfectly clear why Marr employed all of this incorrect information. We can see that Marr did precisely what he says in his preface that one should not do – he reduced Phạm Quỳnh to a convenient stereotype.

The stereotype was of Phạm Quỳnh as a conservative, historical “loser” who was out of touch with the direction that Vietnamese society was going. Marr then found “evidence” in the form of inaccurate information to support his ideas of how this convenient stereotype of Phạm Quỳnh would have acted.

Having thus “documented” some of the ideas that explain why Phạm Quỳnh was a “loser” in the march towards revolution in 1945, Marr then turns to discuss the “winners.” In this case, this refers to people who introduced the concept of a dialectic, which ultimately led to discussions of dialectical materialism, a core communist concept to explain/promote revolution.

First, Marr states the following: “Dao Duy Anh’s small group in Hue was probably the first to attempt a dialectical approach to history and society. After that effort was halted by the authorities, the initiative passed to Saigon and a group of young radicals recently returned from Paris. Although best known for their acid criticism of contemporary policies, particularly via the journal La Lutte, a number of these young men were attracted to broader philosophical questions as well. In 1933 one of them published the most cogent review of the history of Western philosophy to be seen to date.”

This 1933 author in question wrote under the name “X. X.” and published 11 short pieces on philosophy in the journal Phụ nữ tân văn [Women’s News]. The main interest of X. X. was to introduce Hegel’s concept of dialectics (biện chứng pháp), however, in some of his pieces, he discusses other issues.

For example, in a piece published on 24 August 1933, X. X. criticized an emerging tendency in Nam Kỳ (Cochinchina) among people to believe that “Asia was defeated by Europe in terms of machinery, but it is superior in terms of philosophy” (Á châu thua Âu châu về máy móc mà hơn về triết lý).

This was a psychological/emotional response to Westernization that was common in China at that time as well, and X. X. criticized it by arguing that Asia had no true “philosophy.” For X. X., only Western philosophy was “philosophy.”

Marr says of X. X.’s writings on philosophy that: The author was particularly concerned with contrasting the “static” formulations of Aristotle with those of Hegel; he then argued that the dialectical materialism of Marx was the capstone of man’s epic philosophical quest.

So here we have it! The Vietnamese people wanted to struggle and progress, but in 1924, the evil Phạm Quỳnh plotted to keep them ensnared in a traditional Chinese mental trap of Zhuangzian cycles. However, Phạm Quỳnh was on the wrong side of history, and the right side emerged in 1933 when X. X. “argued that the dialectical materialism of Marx was the capstone of man’s epic philosophical quest.”

At another point in the book, Marr states that X. X.’s series of essays on philosophy “ended by asserting that dialectical materialism was the culmination of humankind’s effort to both comprehend and remake reality.” (224)

Marr makes these statements without citing where in X. X.’s 11 essays he supposedly made this argument/assertation. I have attached the essays below. I encourage readers to try to find where X. X. made this statement (Spoiler alert: I can’t find it!).

Finally, let us look at Marr’s statement that “The author was particularly concerned with contrasting the ‘static’ formulations of Aristotle with those of Hegel.”

Marr places the term static in quotes, but he doesn’t indicate where in X. X.’s 11 essays that term was used. And of all of the points that one could make about these 11 essays, why highlight the word “static”?

In the first two essays in this series, X. X. offers a kind of colloquial explanation of Hegel’s dialectics, and he does so by explaining what they differ from – Aristotelian logic.

Aristotle developed the use of syllogisms, and most famously, this one: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

For this logic to work, the subjects of the premises of the syllogism – in this case, “men” and “Socrates” – have to remain the same. However, X. X. points out that some things can change. For instance, when a baby chicken breaks the shell of an egg and comes out, the egg ceases to be an egg, and this, X. X. argues, is something that Aristotle’s logic could not account for, but which Hegel’s dialectics can.

In his second essay (11 May 1933), X. X. thus states that Aristotle’s logic required that certain things be “invariable” (bất biến), literally “not change.” It looks like this is where Marr got the idea that X. X. “was particularly concerned with contrasting the ‘static’ formulations of Aristotle with those of Hegel,” as this is the only place in these essays where I can find a term that one could translate as “static” (although I think the philosophers among us would probably argue that “not changing” and “static” are not necessarily the same thing).

However, on 5 October 1933, X. X. addressed this topic again and did so in a more sophisticated manner. This time he referred Aristotle’s premises as “precise” or “exact” (đích xác), not as “not changing.”

Readers might think I’m being nitpicky here, but I think Marr’s decision to pull out a single word from these 11 pieces is not because it was the salient issue, but because it reflected the larger argument that he wanted to make: Vietnam was moving inevitably toward revolution, and anything “cyclical” or “static” was ineffective.

Dialectical materialism was neither, and as X. X. (as far as I can tell, did not) declare, it was “the culmination of humankind’s effort to both comprehend and remake reality.”

To continue, Marr then goes on to talk about Phan Văn Hùm. In November of 1933, Phan Văn Hùm gave a talk in Vietnam on dialectical materialism upon returning from France. In his talk, he mentioned X. X.’s writings on Hegel’s dialectics, and he also made critical comments about the scholarship of Trần Trọng Kim and Phan Khôi, two prominent scholars at the time.

To quote, Marr states that: “One of his [meaning X. X.] colleagues, Phan Van Hum, brought the issue [of dialectical materialism] closer to home in November 1933 with a public critique of the idealistic historical outlook of both Tran Trong Kim and Phan Khoi. The stage was thus set for a wide-ranging attack on idealism that continued through the 1930s.”

Marr has a footnote here that says “Public lecture reprinted in PNTV 224 (9 Nov. 1933).”

In fact, Phan Văn Hùm’s public lecture was not reprinted in Phụ nữ tân văn 224 (9 Nov. 1933), so we don’t actually know what he said.

There is a note about the talk in the above issue in a section of news items where it states that Phan Văn Hùm “rejected” (bài bát) Trần Trọng Kim and Phan Khôi, but we don’t know the details, and therefore, cannot state, as Marr does, that this was “a public critique of the idealistic historical outlook of both Tran Trong Kim and Phan Khoi.”

In this same report about Phan Văn Hùm’s talk, the editors of the paper felt the need to clarify that Phan Văn Hùm had expressed his agreement with X. X.’s writings, and had not criticized them.

Why was it necessary to make that point? Perhaps because as the editors also noted, “Many members of the audience were not very pleased, as they felt that the topic of the speech was difficult to understand.” (Nhiều thính giả không mấy vui, cho rằng khó hiểu cái đề mục diễn thuyết.)

Indeed, in the same issue, some comments by writer Nguyễn Thị Kiêm about the speech were also published, and she stated that, “Unfortunately, in his talk, Phan Văn Hùm used many Hán words, and so his speech was not accessible to everyone.” (Tiếc rằng ông Phan Văn Hùm, trong khi diễn dung nhiều chữ Hán nên bài diễn văn không được phổ thông cho hết mọi người.)

Hmmm. . . as a historian, I would say that it’s pretty difficult to make the claim that with this talk Phan Văn Hùm brought the issue of dialectical materialism closer to home and set the stage for anything, as Marr does, because many people who listened to the speech had no idea what the hell the guy was talking about. . .

Phan Văn Hùm appears to have learned from his mistakes, as he published a book on dialectics in 1936 that explains this concept and related ideas in very clear terms.

Marr cites this book to make the following comment about how Vietnamese Marxists viewed the contradictions in society that can lead to revolution:

“No Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist was supposed to sit idly by and wait for these contradictions to work themselves out. It was the responsibility of the proletarian vanguard not only to explain contemporary society but to change it. By ‘thrusting one’s hands into action,’ Phan Van Hum affirmed, one could ‘help speed up the dialectical process.’” (362)

Marr cites here one sentence in the middle of Phan Văn Hùm’s 100-page text (on pg. 39). This is similar to the way that he pulls the single word “static” out of 11 essays by X. X. This is what is called “cherry-picking” information.

Marr has an argument that he wants to make, and he selects bits and pieces of information to “document” his ideas. But did anyone ever really notice that one sentence in the middle of Phan Văn Hùm’s book?

If we can find other people writing about that point and noting that they learned it from Phan Văn Hùm’s book, then I think we have justification to see that statement as important. However, Marr doesn’t have that kind of historical evidence.

As a result, the more I read Tradition on Trial, the more I see it as a fabrication of Marr’s imagination.

We have only looked at just over a paragraph, and yet there is so much that we can see and talk about.

Most importantly, we can see that Marr forced a narrative of the past on historical evidence that did not support that narrative.

Marr wanted to show that Phạm Quỳnh’s ideas “lost” while the ideas of those who talked about dialectical materialism “triumphed.” But that’s not what the historical sources that Marr cited demonstrate.

Instead, we can see that in 1924, the translation of a speech was published in Nam Phong, but we have no information about that piece’s connection (if any) to Phạm Quỳnh or his ideas. The one point we can be certain of is that, contrary to Marr’s claim, the speech was not a rejection of evolution.

We can also see that in 1933, X. X. did not declare that “the dialectical materialism of Marx was the capstone of man’s epic philosophical quest” or that “dialectical materialism was the culmination of humankind’s effort to both comprehend and remake reality.”

And we can see that in that same year, Phan Văn Hùm gave a talk on dialectical materialism in Vietnam to an audience that largely did not understand what he was talking about.

These three pieces of information do not form a coherent narrative that can help us understand why revolution came to Vietnam in 1945. However, they do give us a better sense of the complexity of Vietnamese society in the 1920s and 1930s.

I know that there are some readers who will probably think I’m being mean-spirited here. I just think that life is too short, and academics spend their careers making polite (and ineffective) comments about the scholarship of their colleagues if they ever make any comments at all.

The result is that too many mediocre ideas continue to circulate (think Srivijaya, Hùng kings, etc.).

What’s the purpose of engaging in scholarship if we don’t try to improve it? People have been polite for decades, and look at where we are.

I write posts like this one for the young people who are just starting out. I want them to know that they should not believe someone just because s/he is a prominent scholar.

Follow the footnotes and make your own conclusions. You’ll be surprised at what you find.

Here is the translated speech by Zhang Hongzhao in Nam Phong: Hoc thuyet Tay va hoc thuyet Tau.

Here are the essays by X. X. on philosophy in Phụ nữ tân văn: Phu nu tan van Philosophy essays.

Finally, for anyone interested, I earlier wrote about these same issues with Tradition on Trial here and here.

Tradition on Trial is still a very important book, but it needs to be read alongside the digitized materials in the French National Library and the National Library of Vietnam: newspapers and books.