In early 20th century, Hanoians named "4 tigers" of the then Trang An land: "the first is Si, the second Phuong, the third Xuong, and the fourth Buoi". The fourth person was a businessman named Bach Thai Buoi, one of the most wealthy and successful businessmen in Hanoi. He was well- known for many different names, including "Northern Sea Lord" and "King of ships". The empty-handed Bach Thai Buoi had the rare courage to get rich.
Bach Thai Buoi was born in 1874 in An Phu village, Thanh Tri district, Hanoi, in a poor peasant family surnamed Do. Since his father died early, he had to help his mother earn a living by working as a street vendor. Then a wealthy man from the rich Bach family adopted him and sent him to school. He then changed his surname from Do to Bach. After spending some time to learn Vietnamese and French, he dropped out to work as a clerk for a French trading company on Trang Tien street.
In 1894, Bach Thai Buoi quit and started working for a factory of a civil engineering firm. Here he was firstly exposed, acquired knowledge of machinery, organization and production management. He soon gained a reputation in this new field.
In 1895, Bach Thai Buoi was selected by the Office of the Resident Superior in North Vietnam as an introducer for products originating from the protected North Vietnam in Bordeaux Fair (France). On this occasion, he had the chance to directly contact with the Western civilization.
He returned to the country when the French colonialist pushed up the first colonial exploitation and the construction of bridges, ports and roads were intensified. In Hanoi, the colonial government was building the Long Bien bridge. Bach Thai Buoi applied for the position of supervisor at the bridge construction site. Then in order to supply raw wood materials for the colonial government to build railway routes, Bach Thai Buoi entered into a venture with a French person to exploit and sell timber to the Indochina railway department and some traders and house builders. This wood business achieved a great success, "profits are some ten thousand dong so people who contribute the capital can share the profit together." Since then Bach Thai Buoi was known as "the modern businessman who just returned from the Fair", and was considered a Vietnamese who could "do business just as well as Western people."
After 3 years of business, he became rich. Bach Thai Buoi bravely separated with his partner and run his own business to invest capital in trading corn for export. However he started doing business with corn when there was a crop failure, causing the price of corn to rise, which resulted in purchasing insufficient quantities as contracted and he suffered heavy losses. After that deal, Bach Thai Buoi was again empty-handed, however he also gained the first lesson in the market.
Overcoming initial difficulties, Bach Thai Buoi decided to invest the remaining capital in a tender of a Chinese pawnshop in Nam Dinh and won. Then he continuously expanded his business, tendered market taxes in Vinh (1906-1913) and Nam Dinh (1906 - 1909), made wine in Thai Binh, opened a restaurant in Thanh Hoa (1907- 1909), shared capital to open Dong Kinh printing, and established Khai Hoa newspaper. In particular, he invested in mining coal in Bi Cho (Quang Yen, now in Quang Ninh province).
Realizing the potential development of waterway transport and high trading demands in the North and with encouragement of the movement "commerce and industry make the country prosper and boost trading", Bach Thai Buoi invested all his capital into a new business area which was riverway transportation. Initially, he leased 3 ships (Phi Phung, Phi Long and Khoai Tu Long) of a shipping company named AR Marty (France) to carry mail and passengers on river routes in the Northern area, with 2 ships running the Nam Dinh-Hanoi route, and the other bridging Nam Dinh-Vinh-Ben Thuy.
"The first step is the hardest", and when Bach Thai Buoi started his business in this field, Chinese and French merchants still dominated the transportation market. Chinese and French merchants associated together in order to crush a new competitor in the market named Bach Thai Buoi. The competition was very fierce, firstly in train fares. Bach Thai Buoi decided to lower the ticket price, and his Chinese competitors immediately reduced their price by twice that much. The fare of Hanoi-Nam Dinh river route initially was 3-4 dimes/person, then down to only 3-5 penny/person. The fee for a whole rice ship was only equal to that for a rice sack before. Beside the ticket price, the two competitors continuously refurbished their train and improved the quality of passenger services on board. However, the Chinese ship-owners who had more capital were determined to beat Bach Thai Buoi by all ways. In the fierce competition, Bach Thai Buoi was on the verge of going bankrupt. The turnover of Bach Thai Buoi’s 3 ships was only about 15-20 dong per month, not enough for monthly rental costs. During a long time, Bach Thai Buoi struggled to look for responding strategies to stand steady against market troubles.
Finally, he found an extremely advantageous way, a weapon which the Chinese and French could not ever have. Bach Thai Buoi said "An Nam people could be for An Nam’s sake, if you know admonishing ways you can also take the advantage of the solidarity of local people that can effectively help my competition”. With strong national spirits and belief, Bach Thai Buoi quickly reversed the situation by "his business talents". He sent people to ports to deliver speeches, advocate and analyze, clearly stating the disadvantages of Vietnamese people and calling for "the united solidarity" and mutual spirits. He hung a tin on the ship, so that when someone found that his work should be encouraged they could put money into the tin to help the ship owner reduce losses. As a result, passengers gradually left Chinese ships to use Vietnamese ones. He was therefore able to make full rental payments, and even bought the 3 ships from Marty company. He successfully used the national spirits as an effective weapon to defeat the competitors.
On the momentum of victory, in 1912 Bach Thai Buoi started to open new ship routes from Nam Dinh to Hai Phong - a route with enormous potential development. During that time, the world was experiencing many changes, which had direct impacts on the business throughout colonial countries. The Second World War caused a number of French and Chinese traders to go bankrupt. Taking advantage of such opportunities, Bach Thai Buoi acquired the fleets of Marty d'Abbadie company and Desch Wander company. The names of ships defeated and bought by Bach Thai Buoi were posted publicly on the walls of his office.
In 1915, with his broad vision, Bach Thai Buoi decided to buy the ship repairing and building factory of AR Marty company, one of the first shipyards in Hai Phong. After 11 years of doing business on rivers, Bach Thai Buoi had created a complete business cycle from running to building and repairing ships and branches were located in many places. His transportation team was up to 20 passenger ships or cargos for renting to run all over river routes in the Northern and the Central parts.
In 1916, Bach Thai Buoi moved his headquarters from Nam Dinh to Hai Phong where he founded the maritime company named Giang Hai Luan Bach Thai Buoi. He used new Vietnamese names such as Lac Long, Hong Bang, Trung Trac, Dinh Tien Hoang, Le Loi and Ham Nghi for the ships bought from foreign competitors. In an economic conference, due to his advocacy for the rights of local people in colonial countries, Bach Thai Buoi made French officers frustrated and they threatened him. Resident Superior of the Northern Vietnam René Robin cursed that “Wherever there is Robin, there will be no Bach Thai Buoi”.He chivalrously responded that “This nation exists Bach Thai Buoi then Robin no longer exists”.
With his great successes in business, Bach Thai Buoi was well-known as "North River Lord" or "King of ships." He set up branches everywhere in Nam Dinh, Hai Phong, Vinh and Hanoi. Bach Thai Buoi’s company began to expand its business throughout Indochina and other neighboring countries like Hong Kong, China, Japan, Singapore and the Philippines.
The early years of the 20th century were the most prosperous period of Bach Thai Buoi’s company. He increased promotion for his company by publishing schedules or using Nom poetry to advertise on Nam Phong magazine and Khai Hoa newspaper. During this period, Bach Thai Buoi company had over 40 ships and barges running in all routes of the Northern Vietnam to neighboring countries and territories with as many as 2,500 people working on the fleets and at the shipyards under the control of a manager named Nguyen Van Phuc, a confidant of Bach Thai Buoi.
The most glorious period of Bach Thai Buoi’s company was when he won the bid for the ship Anbe Sarraut. Owning this ship, he considered that "Saigon to be taken as the headquarters for rice ships and cargos to the Philippines and unloading there, then putting American groceries of the native country to sell in Huong Cang and Shanghai. These goods to be loaded and brought to Haiphong, and later to the South through the Far East area, wiping out all risks of leaving the ships running empty”. His consideration was so thorough that “every benefit from rivers belongs to the Bach family”.
Along with his transportation business and repairing facilities, Bach Thai Buoi conducted regular maintenance, refurbished worn-out ships, built a lot of sea-river ships, and organized the building of sea ships with the participation of Vietnamese workers and engineers.
On September 7, 1919 Bach Thai Buoi’s company launched Binh Chuan ship in Cua Cam (Hai Phong), which was completely designed and constructed by Vietnamese people. Binh Chuan was 42m long, 7.2m wide and 3.6m high, with a tonnage of 600 tons using a compound 450-horsepower engine, steam capacity of 8m3 and a velocity of 8 knots/hr. Binh Chuan ship ran the first trip from Hai Phong to Saigon seaport on September 17, 1920 at the warmly welcome of Saigon’s traders. This event was considered the symbol of "the movement to promote the industry and commerce" of Vietnamese bourgeois at that time.
From 1926, due to the incident that An Nam ship carrying 150 tons of cement sank and cost 60,000 dong in damage, Bach Thai Buoi’s business activities started deteriorating. In 1929, the world economic crisis began to have strong impacts on Bach Thai Buoi’s business. He had to demolish the entire ship repairing facilities, and then his company declared bankruptcy. Therefore his marine business ended. He sought to invest in coal mining areas. However, the business was not thriving.
Through Bach Thai Buoi’s enrichment aspirations, the competition and discontent of Vietnamese people against foreign powers can be clearly seen. Despite of regular contact with French people and efforts to learn advanced techniques of Western countries, Bach Thai Buoi always showed the national spirits in his business activities.
Perhaps Bach Thai Buoi’s second most important contribution to the maritime business was the culture business. He invested in establishing “Bach Thai Buoi printing and publishing company " (later named Dong Kinh printing shop). In 1921, Bach Thai Buoi launched a daily newspaper called Khai Hoa Daily News with the principle "The first thing is to help our people self-civilize and teach one another ... opening ways of developing industry and commerce. Second is to present practical and legitimate requirements of residential people to the protected Government. Third is to express ideas, benefits and bad effects of what the Government is doing...". Khai Hoa Daily News had rolled out 22 daily issues before it was banned. The ultimate goal of the industry and commerce movement launched and encouraged by Bach Thai Buoi was to make local people become rich "because only if the residents are rich, the nation can be better-off”.
Bach Thai Buoi also nurtured various great plans as building a rice grinding mill in Nam Dinh with advanced equipment bought from Hamburg (Germany), establishing sewage systems, constructing water supply plants and power plant for Nam Dinh city, and building Nam Dinh - Hai Phong railway routes... However, he was not able to realize these plans. Bach Thai Buoi passed away on July 22, 1932 in Hai Phong after a heart attack when he was 58 years old.
It can be asserted that Bach Thai Buoi was a shining example of businessmen in Vietnam. These strict principles in the market such as "commodity association", "commercial partnership", "real credit," "being patient”, "being determined", “being focused”, "commercial study", "communications”, "savings" and "respecting domestic goods" was assessed to cover 10 fundamental defects of Vietnamese firms that Luong Van Can had indicated.
When judging him, Khai Tri Tien Duc Association considered Bach Thai Buoi a great person in the North, a hero on the marketplace with his life worth to be showed nationwide and his career a mirror for traders to follow. In an article in Dong Thanh magazine, Ung Hoe Nguyen Van To in the Association of Vietnamese script popularization honored Bach Thai Buoi as the first hero in the national economy.
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