The Chinese Military History Society held its 2024 conference in Arlington, Virginia, on April 18, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Society for Military History. Fifteen papers were presented:
Barend Noordam (Heidelberg University), “Knowledge of the Enemy: Delineating the Wokou in the Late Ming.”
The late sixteenth century was a contentious period in Japan's relationship with the East Asian mainland. While Japan itself was embroiled in a long civil war, many of its denizens were engaged in illegal acts of trading, smuggling, and piracy along the northeastern coasts of the Chinese Ming Empire. Here they banded together in multiethnic bands, which raided the maritime provinces of China in earnest in the 1550s and 1560s, sometimes even reaching as far inland as Jiangxi province. Although the majority of participants were Chinese in origin, a fact well known to many civil officials engaged in suppressing the Wokou, the armed conflicts stimulated a stream of new writings about Japan and the Japanese. This process of knowledge production and circulation received a new impetus once Japanese armies invaded Korea in 1592. The resulting conflict, the largest in the world at that time, put Japan firmly on the map as a major military threat. This paper will tentatively explore the nature of the resulting knowledge production process, including its contents, the participants in the process, and the extent of its dissemination. The paper will also explore the consequences of this new threat perception for the naval mobilization and strategy of the Ming Empire in the early decades of the seventeenth century. This naval mobilization would be of immeasurable help to counter the expansion of budding Manchu power contesting Ming authority in the northeastern maritime regions adjacent to the province of
Liaodong.
Yan Hon Michael Chung (Emory University), “The Early Hanjun Artillery Corps and Its Political and Military Impact.”
It is now quite clear that the Hanjun artillery corps, established by Hong Taiji in 1631, played a key role in the Ming-Qing transition. This study re-examines the early Hanjun artillery corps with a bottom-up approach, focusing on the lives and activities of individual Hanjun Bannermen. Utilizing digital humanities methods, I sort the text of the Hanjun liezhuan (minibiographies) in the Baqi Tongzhi Chuji into a dataset according to Hanjun individuals and use it as the basic framework to weave together other Manchu and Chinese sources of the Hanjun. Subsequently, I visualize the data with GIS mapping and conduct statistical analysis.
The dataset is used to explore a series of questions regarding the early Hanjun artillery corps, including but not limited to 1) the changing number of Hanjun artillerists in sieges across time and space; 2) the development of the artillery corps command chain; 3) the changing Banner composition of the Hanjun artillerists, and its possible relationship with court power shifts; 4) the relationship between military merits and promotion of ranks of individual Hanjun artillery officers and gunners. This survey aims to examine the political and military impact of the early Hanjun artillery corps during the Ming-Qing transition and evaluate its impact on individual Hanjun artillerists. On the other hand, it serves as an experiment with the digital approach for historical study and publication.
Kenneth Swope (University of Southern Mississippi), “Connecting the Dots: Wu Sangui and the Origins of the San Fan Rebellion.”
While the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories (1673-81), also known as the San Fan (三藩) Rebellion, is well-known to historians and universally regarded as a seminal event in the consolidation of Qing power in China, there is remarkably little scholarship on it in English. And most references that do exist tend to focus on the events precipitating the actual onset of hostilities or at best from General Wu Sangui’s capture and execution of the Ming Yongli Emperor (r. 1647-62) in 1662. But in fact, a close examination of primary sources, notably field reports submitted to the Qing from Wu himself, reports submitted to the Qing court by centrally appointed officials, personal communications between Wu and other commanders and officials, and a private diary kept by one of Wu’s aides, suggest that Wu’s plans for carving out an independent realm, if not necessarily starting a rebellion to overthrow the Qing, were in the works since the mid 1650s, if not earlier. These plans were given greater momentum by the fact that Wu inherited the infrastructure and most of the actual military forces of the Ming loyalist groups he defeated in the southwest, ostensibly on behalf of the Qing. This presentation will consider these literal and figurative smoking guns to explore the origins of the San Fan Rebellion while also highlighting that in the process Wu unintentionally laid the groundwork for future Han-Manchu cooperation in the assimilation of minority peoples on China’s frontiers and the annexation of their lands by accelerating the gaitu guiliu process initiated under the Ming.
Xing Hang (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University), “Trade, Warfare, and Chinese on the Gulf of Siam Littoral, 1760-1800.”
Myanmar’s invasion of Siam during the 1760s was an event with massive geopolitical ramifications for not just the two countries, but also Qing China, Cochinchina (southern Vietnam), and Cambodia. The war created a power vacuum that brought unprecedented levels of influence to the Chinese communities along the Gulf of Siam littoral. Mo Tianci (Mạc Thiên Tứ), the creolized Sino-Vietnamese leader of Hà Tiên, on the present-day Vietnam-Cambodia border, provided asylum to the Siamese princes of the fallen Ayutthaya Dynasty. He became the preeminent source of intelligence for the Qing court, which used his information to wage its own border war against Myanmar. Meanwhile, Chaozhou merchants, the largest group of Qing immigrants and sojourners on the Gulf of Siam littoral, helped their compatriot, the Sino-Siamese creole Taksin, seize the throne of Siam in 1767, and rule for the next 15 years. By 1770, tensions between Taksin and Mo had broken out into bloody warfare. Ultimately, more ambitious state-builders with firm local attachments, in contrast to the transnational cosmopolitanism of the two men, succeeded in solidifying the boundaries of present-day mainland Southeast Asia. On a broader level, this important episode provides significant insight into the character of the “Chinese century” in eighteenth-century maritime East Asia. We can acquire a better under- standing of how a Southeast Asian periphery interacted with the Qing, its treatment of overseas Chinese, and the impact of these ties on changes in China’s relative economic position over the eighteenth century.
Kelly DeVries (Loyola University Maryland), “Thoughts on the Diffusion of Gunpowder from Asia to the West.”
The first recipe(s) for gunpowder in Europe appeared in Oxford, England c.1250 written by Franciscan professor Roger Bacon. His would be followed relatively quickly by his Dominican contemporary, Albert the Great, writing in Paris. Before the first decade of the 14th century other recipes appear written by the pseudonymous Marcus Graecus and, in Syria, by Hasan al-Rammāh. Gunpowder weapons followed a generation later, c.1326.
Roger Bacon did not “discover” gunpowder, though, nor does he tell us how it diffused to him from where it was being used prior to his recipes – Central and Eastern Asia.
This paper will go over what we know of gunpowder’s use in Central and Eastern Asia in the decades before Bacon’s recipes. It will also suggest a path of diffusion from East to West. How did an important, but certainly not well known outside of Western Europe, philosopher-scientist Bacon acquire the knowledge of gun- powder? And why did he propose a different way of using the chemical substance than that of the Asians – a ballistic rather than a propulsive use of gunpowder?
Travis Shutz (California State University LA), “Contested Control along the Fujian-Guangdong Border: Nan’ao Island in Time and Space.”
This paper focuses on the history of Nan'ao Island, in the seas off eastern Guangdong, to examine the territorialization of maritime spaces over imperial China's longue durée. Located at the crossroads of intra-Asian sea routes, this nearshore island emerged as a meeting place for smuggling-traders and roving-raiders as early as the Song period. A hub for illicit activity, Nan'ao's historical development diverged from authorized trading centers. Rather than government agents, archaeological findings and local records illuminate trader-raiders and littoral residents who took the lead in exploiting the island's economic and strategic potential. Reports by civil officials and military officers, ranging from the Song licentiate Zhen Dexiu to Ming commander Qi Jiguang, show that when these activities came into view, the government generally adopted one of two strategies to assert control. On the one hand, the Song, early Ming, and early Qing relied on elimination and evacuation. Military campaigns and depopulation policies aimed to eradicate the challenge by removing the people from Nan'ao. On the other hand, the Yuan, late Ming, and mid-Qing turned to subjugation and transformation. Pacifying the area was pursued by utilizing the people and trade as resources for insular state-building projects. Over the long term, this competition for control led to the island's development fluctuating between periods of progression, stagnation, and regression. As a result, Nan'ao long remained a perilous frontier beset by cycles of violence.
James Bonk (College of Wooster), “The Case of the Taipao in the 19th Century Qing Empire: Military Authority and Technology Transfer between the Green Standards and Eight Banners.”
Much scholarship on military technology in 19th century China has focused on the transfer of Western technology. This paper examines, instead, the transfer of technology between branches of the Qing military. I focus on the taipao, a light cannon promoted by a Han Green Standard officer, Yang Yuchun (1761-1837), in Gansu in the early 1820s. From the late 1820s until the 1850s, the taipao and its associated ‘rapid attack’ (suzhan) battle formation came to be adopted across both the Manchu and Mongol Eight Banners and the largely Han Green Standards. This paper examines the diffusion and adaptation of the taipao during this thirty-year period, focusing on political and cultural factors that shaped technology transfer between ethnically defined institutions. The use of the taipao began in the Green Standards and remained associated with a Han officer even as it was adopted by the Banners. I argue that what was being transferred was not just a new weapon, but a particular configuration of military authority and embodied know-how. The transfer of taipao required a reversal of institutional hierarchies, placing Han officers and trainers in positions of influence over bannermen. The taipao shows military technology implicated in a broader issue of imperial governance: how to reproduce hierarchy and differentiation while also addressing internal or external threats. Given that Manchu identity was grounded in claims to military supremacy over their Han subjects, such transfers of military technology are useful for examining inter- sections of identity and governance in the Qing.
Zhongtian Han (University at Buffalo), “Gendering the Culture of Secrecy: Women in the Chinese Communist Party’s Communications Services, 1925–1930.”
Past scholarship on women in the Chinese Communist revolution emphasized the persistence of patriarchal power structures within the Party despite the rhetoric of improving women’s status. This paper argues that the practical concern to survive in face of existential threats led the Party to entrust women with important functions in the Party’s daily operations. Using family as an essential social cover for its secret communications agencies, the Party pushed women cadres to the frontline of its intelligence and counterintelligence struggles with domestic and foreign opponents. Bringing Communist docu- ments and memoirs into dialogue with archives of the Nationalist government and foreign police forces, the paper challenges past scholarship that focused on how traditional and Marxist-Leninist ideologies influenced gender roles within the Party, and highlights how the practical concern to survive and maintain utmost secrecy shaped the Party’s gender norms.
Esther Hu (Boston University), “Women’s Work during the War of Resistance (1937-1945): Soong Mayling and the Women’s Advisory Council, War Relief, and National Reconstruction.”
The Second Sino-Japanese War compelled Soong Mayling (1899-2003) not only to serve as a representative of the Nationalist (Central) government as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, but also to expand her role as “mother of China,” and scholars have observed how she worked indefatigably for refugees, orphans, and wounded soldiers, and inspired thousands of other women to follow her lead. As the Chinese government and population moved into the interior, Chinese people of different dialects, social classes, ages, and genders were brought together in close community. The westward movement created opportunities for women to contribute to the war effort in a variety of ways.
This presentation renders visible the networks among the Chinese female elite, as led by Soong Mayling, and Chinese local society, discussing Chinese women’s work that tailored itself to local needs and conditions. Through her work with the Women’s Advisory Council as its chair, Soong Mayling led many important women’s war programs. For example, in March 1938 she established the Wartime Association for Child Welfare to care for children from war zones such as the lower Yangtze valley as they and their families fled from the cities by hundreds of thousands. The association cared for children who were orphaned by war, who were refugees, whose parents were destitute, or whose parents were providing war relief. By 1940 there were more than forty homes for children in more than eight provinces including Sichuan, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian, with workers who rescued and cared for over 20,000 children.
Pingchao Zhu (U.S. Naval Academy), “United as One: The Nationalist Military Troops in the War of Resistance against Japanese Invasion.”
Ten days following the China Incident of July 7, 1937, Chiang Kai-shek issued a call to arms to rally the entire nation for the war effort against the Japanese invasion. During the first few months, Chiang was able to mobilize the country’s military assets into forty army corps, 1.7 million in strength, to be thrown in haste into the bloody battles against growing numbers of better equipped Japanese forces. Of the forty Army Corps, only eight, the Central Army, were under the direct command of Chiang Kai-shek; the rest were largely the combination of major regional warlord troops.
This paper investigates the composition of the Nationalist military forces to argue that with the national crisis at hand, major regional warlord leaders put aside their respective political ambitions and personal differences to come together and unite under the national banner of fighting against the mounting Japanese military pressure.
Discussions will also explore a few of the toughest campaigns fought tenaciously by the warlord troops, especially the well-known Sichuan Army and the “Wolf Army” from the Guangxi Warlords.
Edward McCord (The George Washington University), “The State-ification of Militia in Nationalist Hunan, 1928-1936.”
This paper examines how the extension of provincial control over militia in Hunan reflected a pattern of increasing state-ification of the public realm in the Nationalist period from 1928 to 1936. This activity followed the consolidation of power in Hunan under the NRA commander He Jian as provincial chair. He instituted a flurry of regulations that would seek to standardize mass and standing militia in counties across the province. Following up on the politicization of militia that had occurred during the National Revolution, He made special