In the political history of French Indochina, Phan Bội Châu is one of the names the record keeps returning to.
The record lists Phan Bội Châu as 19/20th-century Vietnamese nationalist and revolutionary.
Phan Bội Châu was born at Nam Đàn in 1867. His recorded nationality is French Indochina.
The nineteenth century produced mass politics - parties, newspapers, franchises that widened by inches - and empire on a scale never seen before.
He is described as historian, writer and poet.
What survives of a political career is usually not the speeches but the institutions left behind.
That the career was made in French Indochina is not incidental: the institutions available, the franchise, and the constraints of the moment all shaped what could be attempted.
Phan Bội Châu died in 1940, aged 73. The assessment continues, as it does for anyone who held power - which is the ordinary fate of a political life.
