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After the death of Yuan Shikai, the foolish and short-ruling strongman who succeeded Sun Yat-Sen and neglected to leave an heir, history books and lectures tend to gloss over the individual warlords China found itself in the hands of, instead going for the vague "a bunch of bad things happened while the GMD regrouped and Communists emerged." Is there any particular reason no historian has focused on the character and leadership of the individual warlords who ruled the bits and pieces of then-divided pre-Communist/post-Imperial China? ("Republican" China, as the era is often called, seems like a huge misnomer).
Last edited by solomonkane; 07-17-2016 at 02:04 PM..
Is there any particular reason no historian has focused on the character and leadership of the individual warlords who ruled the bits and pieces of then-divided pre-Communist/post-Imperial China?
There have probably been several papers & dissertations & etc. on the topic of those warlords. But because those efforts fizzled out without producing a Mao or a Stalin, they're only of interest to specialists in the history of that time & place. Without someone who caught the eye of a wider public, it's unlikely that we'll ever learn very much about the leadership @ that point. Glancing through the Internet, it looks like a lot of those warlords aligned themselves with the KMT, becoming more or less franchisees to Gmo. Chiang Kai-shek.
In this war the United States deployed 126,000 soldiers. They suffered around 7000 casualties, about 5000 of them dead. They killed somewhere between 12 and 20 thousand of the enemy and an estimated quarter of a million civilians perished during the three years of combat.
Which war was this?
Spoiler
The 1899-1902 Philippine–American War
Thinking about the OP's question, for whatever reasons, some historical events have achieved a glamorous, famous status and have had lots of attention from historians, novelists and filmmakers. In America it is the Alamo, Custer's Last Stand, the Gunfight at the OK Coral ...all of which get far more attention than the consequences of the events merit. About 430 Americans combined were killed in those three events, but how many were aware of the 5000 lost in the Philippine war? Some events just don't gain traction.
If you wish to see the fame of the Chinese Warlord era pumped up, the first step would be for you, or someone, to write a best selling historical novel set in this time and place. Then get some studio to buy the movie or mini series rights and suddenly the subject is being exposed to millions. Among those millions will be people like me who when reading or viewing an intriguing historical drama, the actual events of which are unfamiliar to me, will then go out and find some historical work on the subject to learn more.
Gotta catch that p.r. break, like Paul Revere did when Longfellow scratched out "Here is a story that inspires awe, the midnight ride of William Dawes", in favor of "Listen my children and you shall hear..."
Who in general would know do dap diddly about the Crimean War had not Tennyson immortalized the Light Brigade? Davy Crockett was famous in his own lifetime, fell into relative obscurity after that, but was revitalized and made famous all over again by the Disney people. How many of us knew anything about Oscar Schindler before the film?
PS..if you do write that novel and you want to make it marketable to the movies, make sure that the central characters are a couple of Americans stranded in China during that era, and get a romance going between them. The warlords are seen through their eyes.
In this war the United States deployed 126,000 soldiers. They suffered around 7000 casualties, about 5000 of them dead. They killed somewhere between 12 and 20 thousand of the enemy and an estimated quarter of a million civilians perished during the three years of combat.
...
Yah, 1898 was a breakout year for the US. We carried Cuba, Puerto Rico & the Philippines, no sweat. Of course, we had promised friendship & alliance with the Revolutionary Philippine insurrection (started 1896), we transported the insurrection leader back to the Philippines from exile (also in 1896), we defeated the Spanish flotilla there, & we kept the Revolutionary land forces out of Manila - in order to facilitate the Spanish surrender & withdrawal after a decent period, allowing them not to lose face. & then, well, we needed to Christianize the Philippines, nothing personal, you know. (Never mind that Spain had been there from 1564CE, long enough to soak into the languages, establish Roman Catholicism, Spanish architecture, legal system, government, Spanish crops, & so on.)
Moslem, but ethnic Chinese, they are credited with brutally crushing seperatist movements in Xianjiang. They were also anti communist and overwhelmed an exhausted communist column of 20,000 people (7,000 fighters, 13,000 non combantants) attempting to cross their territory. The prisoners eventually included the famous Women's Regiment which, in the communist vanguard, was eventually surrounded in a remote area and over run after running out of ammunion. Their last ammunition allotment was five rounds per women. The survivors were then either taken as concubines, or sold as slaves.
Though extemely combative and fighting Turkic seperatists, communists, Tibetans, Japanese, and Japanese allied Mongolians, they also had a more sophisticated side. One of the clan's mega mansions was featured in Life Magazine after one of the clan patriarchs sent a son to an elite California university.
Last edited by Cryptic; 07-18-2016 at 09:46 AM..
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Probably too much information
