481 - Why Was The Tonkin School Dangerous? - Viet History Makers
Published: March 21, 2026
Duration: 54:05
Welcome back to The Vietnamese Podcast. In this episode, Kenneth sit down with scholar Kevin Phan to dissect one of the most radical experiments in Vietnamese history: the Tonkin Free School (Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục).
Opened in Hanoi in 1907, this school lasted only 10 months before the French colonial government shut it down—but those 300 days changed the trajectory of the nation forever. We explore how a tiny group of intellectuals, inspired by Japan's Meiji Restoration, attempted to "enlighten the Vietnamese mind" by abandoning ancient Confucian rote-learning in favor of science, hygiene, and a brand...