Pub Date : 2023-10-27DOI: 10.1163/22127453-02312203
Sherman X. Lai
{"title":"The Collapse of Nationalist China: How Chiang Kai-shek Lost China’s Civil War, written by Parks M. Coble","authors":"Sherman X. Lai","doi":"10.1163/22127453-02312203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-02312203","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139312562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-26DOI: 10.1163/22127453-02312201
Qiong Liu
{"title":"Sun Tzu in the West: The Anglo-American Art of War, written by Peter Lorge","authors":"Qiong Liu","doi":"10.1163/22127453-02312201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-02312201","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":"173 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139313732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-23DOI: 10.1163/22127453-02312202
Sara B. Castro
{"title":"The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941-1949, written by Zach Fredman","authors":"Sara B. Castro","doi":"10.1163/22127453-02312202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-02312202","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":"99 3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139315472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-19DOI: 10.1163/22127453-02312204
Zhongtian Han
{"title":"The Rise and Fall of an Officer Corps: The Republic of China Military, 1942–1955, written by Eric Setzekorn","authors":"Zhongtian Han","doi":"10.1163/22127453-02312204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-02312204","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":"26 4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139316727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-11DOI: 10.1163/22127453-bja10019
Amanda Zhang
Abstract This article considers how Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) officials understood, perceived, and experienced enemy female tewu (special agent) activities and “honey traps” during the early People’s Republic of China. Drawing upon internally circulated party reports and newsletters, speeches of officials, newspapers, films, literature, and dramas, it finds that officials saw enemy female tewu as real threats that had tangible impact on both civilians and men affiliated with the party through honey traps and gendered manipulations. It further argues that narratives of female tewu in official instructions, newspaper reports, and popular cultural works played a larger role in the CCP ’s broader efforts to combat and resist enemy espionage than previously understood. This article contextualises existing arguments about CCP counterespionage propaganda. It counterbalances perspectives that suggest the utilisation of these narratives was largely based on irrational wartime sentiments, with the primary aim of increasing the party’s societal control.
{"title":"Engendered Perceptions","authors":"Amanda Zhang","doi":"10.1163/22127453-bja10019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-bja10019","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article considers how Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) officials understood, perceived, and experienced enemy female tewu (special agent) activities and “honey traps” during the early People’s Republic of China. Drawing upon internally circulated party reports and newsletters, speeches of officials, newspapers, films, literature, and dramas, it finds that officials saw enemy female tewu as real threats that had tangible impact on both civilians and men affiliated with the party through honey traps and gendered manipulations. It further argues that narratives of female tewu in official instructions, newspaper reports, and popular cultural works played a larger role in the CCP ’s broader efforts to combat and resist enemy espionage than previously understood. This article contextualises existing arguments about CCP counterespionage propaganda. It counterbalances perspectives that suggest the utilisation of these narratives was largely based on irrational wartime sentiments, with the primary aim of increasing the party’s societal control.","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136023937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-11DOI: 10.1163/22127453-bja10018
Yiming Ha
Abstract This paper reexamines the Yuan’s military response to the Red Turban Rebellion between late 1351 and early 1355. It argues that up until 1355, the Yuan’s military garrisons remained intact and successfully bore the brunt of the fighting. Mercenaries and militias were used to augment, rather than replace, garrison forces, and they played a mostly secondary role as support for the garrisons. However, this force collapsed in 1355 with Toghto’s dismissal. This was due to an institutional shift in the Yuan where military power devolved into the hands of powerful prime ministers, without whom the garrisons could not function properly. This paper thus revises the view of the Yuan military as having collapsed completely at the onset of the Red Turban Rebellion, while also shedding more light on the growing power of the prime ministers in the Late Yuan and its effect on the military.
{"title":"Was There a Military Collapse in the Late Yuan?","authors":"Yiming Ha","doi":"10.1163/22127453-bja10018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-bja10018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper reexamines the Yuan’s military response to the Red Turban Rebellion between late 1351 and early 1355. It argues that up until 1355, the Yuan’s military garrisons remained intact and successfully bore the brunt of the fighting. Mercenaries and militias were used to augment, rather than replace, garrison forces, and they played a mostly secondary role as support for the garrisons. However, this force collapsed in 1355 with Toghto’s dismissal. This was due to an institutional shift in the Yuan where military power devolved into the hands of powerful prime ministers, without whom the garrisons could not function properly. This paper thus revises the view of the Yuan military as having collapsed completely at the onset of the Red Turban Rebellion, while also shedding more light on the growing power of the prime ministers in the Late Yuan and its effect on the military.","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136023769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-11DOI: 10.1163/22127453-bja10020
J. Travis Shutz
Abstract By examining actions taken to eliminate seaborne bandits, this study argues during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), everyday people and foreigners played important roles in military activities. When Guangdong native Lin Feng (also known as Limahong) roamed the seas from South China to Southeast Asia in the mid-1570s, officials searched far and wide for allies to confront him. Reevaluating this period in Chinese military history from the bottom-up and outside-in shows civil officials and military officers repeatedly found fishers, traders, and sailors, along with outsiders, who were willing to collaborate against the marauders. Historical records from the late Ming and Qing periods consistently presented this cooperation as a Sinocentric and hierarchical ritual-based recruiting. In contrast to this top-down and inside-out perspective, the present research illuminates that during the early modern period, the Chinese government was growing progressively dependent on sea-going peoples to reinforce its maritime operations.
{"title":"Old Hundred Names and Barbarians Fight the Pirates: Recruiting Auxiliaries for Late Ming Naval Operations","authors":"J. Travis Shutz","doi":"10.1163/22127453-bja10020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-bja10020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract By examining actions taken to eliminate seaborne bandits, this study argues during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), everyday people and foreigners played important roles in military activities. When Guangdong native Lin Feng (also known as Limahong) roamed the seas from South China to Southeast Asia in the mid-1570s, officials searched far and wide for allies to confront him. Reevaluating this period in Chinese military history from the bottom-up and outside-in shows civil officials and military officers repeatedly found fishers, traders, and sailors, along with outsiders, who were willing to collaborate against the marauders. Historical records from the late Ming and Qing periods consistently presented this cooperation as a Sinocentric and hierarchical ritual-based recruiting. In contrast to this top-down and inside-out perspective, the present research illuminates that during the early modern period, the Chinese government was growing progressively dependent on sea-going peoples to reinforce its maritime operations.","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136023561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1163/22127453-01201000
{"title":"Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/22127453-01201000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-01201000","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":"73 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135807661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-12DOI: 10.1163/22127453-20231021
James Bonk
This issue of the Journal of Chinese Military History features four articles exploring riverine warfare in premodern China. The articles show that rivers have played an important, but often overlooked, role in defensive and offensive warfare. Just as the distinctive qualities of water – flowing, nurturing, clear when still – helped to make it a “root metaphor” in Chinese philosophy, the watery qualities of rivers made them a fundamental part of military thought.1 In the military realm, successful armies took advantage of the potential of rivers to flow quickly, transport heavy objects, impede movement, and be stored, diverted, or released. Wicky Tse’s article, “The Tactical Role of Rivers in Early Chinese Warfare,” shows that many of these qualities were already integrated into warfare in Early China. Examples from Zhanguo ce, Mozi, and the Zuozhuan show that armies vied to control water for offensive, defensive, and logistical advantage. For instance, moats could provide defense for cities built next to rivers, but the same river could be diverted by besieging armies to flood the city or deprive it of access to supplies. In the realm of logistics, Tse shows that early Chinese regimes – much like later dynasties – used rivers to efficiently transport troops, weapons, and provisions. Tse also introduces a theme that runs through all four articles, that riverine warfare cannot be abstracted from the surrounding land. In the second part of his article, he analyzes “shore-based river-crossing campaign.” Rivers had to be crossed, but crossing at the wrong place, or in a
{"title":"Riverine Warfare","authors":"James Bonk","doi":"10.1163/22127453-20231021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-20231021","url":null,"abstract":"This issue of the Journal of Chinese Military History features four articles exploring riverine warfare in premodern China. The articles show that rivers have played an important, but often overlooked, role in defensive and offensive warfare. Just as the distinctive qualities of water – flowing, nurturing, clear when still – helped to make it a “root metaphor” in Chinese philosophy, the watery qualities of rivers made them a fundamental part of military thought.1 In the military realm, successful armies took advantage of the potential of rivers to flow quickly, transport heavy objects, impede movement, and be stored, diverted, or released. Wicky Tse’s article, “The Tactical Role of Rivers in Early Chinese Warfare,” shows that many of these qualities were already integrated into warfare in Early China. Examples from Zhanguo ce, Mozi, and the Zuozhuan show that armies vied to control water for offensive, defensive, and logistical advantage. For instance, moats could provide defense for cities built next to rivers, but the same river could be diverted by besieging armies to flood the city or deprive it of access to supplies. In the realm of logistics, Tse shows that early Chinese regimes – much like later dynasties – used rivers to efficiently transport troops, weapons, and provisions. Tse also introduces a theme that runs through all four articles, that riverine warfare cannot be abstracted from the surrounding land. In the second part of his article, he analyzes “shore-based river-crossing campaign.” Rivers had to be crossed, but crossing at the wrong place, or in a","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45159503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-04DOI: 10.1163/22127453-bja10017
W. Tse
This article aims to study the tactical role of rivers in early Chinese warfare. Rivers or, broadly speaking, waterways served not only as defensive barriers and offensive weapons but also for logistical purposes, which was particularly crucial for military campaigns in the regions of Central and South China with their abundant river networks. Furthermore, this article also analyzes a few early Chinese cases of shore-based river-crossing campaigns, in which rivers functioned as barriers in land warfare. Some tactics were thus developed to overcome and even make use of the landscape to achieve victory in battles.
{"title":"The Tactical Role of Rivers in Early Chinese Warfare","authors":"W. Tse","doi":"10.1163/22127453-bja10017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22127453-bja10017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article aims to study the tactical role of rivers in early Chinese warfare. Rivers or, broadly speaking, waterways served not only as defensive barriers and offensive weapons but also for logistical purposes, which was particularly crucial for military campaigns in the regions of Central and South China with their abundant river networks. Furthermore, this article also analyzes a few early Chinese cases of shore-based river-crossing campaigns, in which rivers functioned as barriers in land warfare. Some tactics were thus developed to overcome and even make use of the landscape to achieve victory in battles.","PeriodicalId":38003,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Military History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46176732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}