From: vnguyen@husc8.harvard.edu (Vinh Nguyen)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: Re: Phan Dinh Phung (was: NEWS/VN: Lost world in VN jungle)
Date: 29 Jul 92 07:50:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Jul29.035007.14277
Distribution: world
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

From: vnguyen@husc8.UUCP (Vinh Nguyen)
Subject: Re: Phan Dinh Phung (was: NEWS/VN: Lost world in VN jungle)

From article <1992Jul28.183541.15954@news.media.mit.edu>, 
	by CNguyen.osbu_north@xerox.com:

>>and bombing, stepping into Vu Quang is "like opening a door into a lost and
                             ********
>>neglected place," MacKinnon said. "Biologically, it's not like the rest of
>>Indochina."
> ....
>>   The reserve originally was set aside and protected as a cultural area because
>>it provided refuge for a local hero who had rebelled against the French,
>>			 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>MacKinnon said.
> ....
> 
> 
> Who is this local hero who had rebelled against the French?
> Was it O^ng Phan ddi\nh Phu\ng?

You hit the bull's eye here!

> Any netter knows?
> 
> /cuong

The sine qua non study in Vietnamese of this patriot is the book
by DDa`o Trinh Nha^'t, Phan DDi`nh Phu`ng, Saigon: Ta^n Vie^.t,
1957.  I don't know of any more recent study in North Vietnam or
in presentday Vietnam -- but there might well be a few.

As to studies in English on Phan DDi`nh Phu`ng, all of them are
part of some larger works on the anti-colonial resistance.

David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anti-Colinialsm, 1885-1925.  Berkeley,
UC Press, 1971. pp. 61-68.
By far the "best" and most substantive treatment of Phan Dinh
Phung in English.  The book as a whole is not without flaw,
but has stood well the test of time -- mostly by default --
as the standard "textbook" in English on this important period.
Too bad, the book has gone out of print for some 2 years.  But
fortunately, there is now a more solid (though shorter) study 
of the period by Mark W. McLeod, published in 1991 by Praeger.
I don't have to book at hand to review his treatment of the
Phan DDi`nh Phu`ng case. 

Helen B. Lamb, Vietnam's Will to Live: Resistance to Foreign
Agression from Early Times Through the Nineteenth Century.
New York, Modern Reader, 1972. pp. 232-235; 240-242.
This is a neglected book which made an impassioned case for the
tradition of Vietnamese resistance to foreign agression --
it came as no surprise from an anti-war activist at the
turning point of the Vietnam War.  Lamb does seem to get
carried away with her argument on the strength of an much
weaker historical grasp than Marr, who did not push the
case so far.  In sum, a somewhat flawed book, but with
an interesting interpretive framework that's worth exploring
for its own sake.  Too bad, this book is also out of print --
long ago!

Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese 
Revolution. Cambridge, MA, Harvard UP, 1992. pp. 15-20.
The most recent socio-cultural history of the radical
movement of the 1920-30s leading to the 1945 Revolution.
The exchange between Phan DDi`nh Phu`ng and Hoa`ng Cao
Kha?i is discussed in passing in the context of the
emerging tension between piety and patriotism in the
withering day of the traditional world of the Confucian
scholar.  
 
Vinh Q. Nguyen