John Jennings and his colleague Chuck Steele are preparing a volume for publication under contract to Reaktion Books UK. For this volume, they have asked contributors to pick the worst military leader in history and write an essay of about 15-20 pages explaining why their choice is the worst. So far they have about 15 contributors, but the publisher has expressly asked for another article on an Asian military leader.    

If you are interested, please contact Professor Jennings:

John M. Jennings, Ph.D.

Professor

Department of History

2354 Fairchild Dr. Suite 6F101

USAF Academy CO 80840 USA

719-333-4727

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Chinese Military History Society will hold its 2019 conference in Columbus, Ohio, on Thursday, May 9. The theme of this year's conference is “The Impact of War in East Asia,” focusing on how armed conflict has influenced the societies, economies, and cultures of China and its neighbors, as well as individual lives. Papers may address any historical period from antiquity to the present. As usual, papers are not required to address the conference theme; proposals on other subjects related to the military history of China and other East Asian countries will be considered as well.

Issue 7.1 of the Journal of Chinese Military History has just been published and will be available online to CMHS members later in June. It includes the following articles:
Kwok-leong Tang, "Reporting to the Sage: Military Monuments in the Imperial Academy in Qing China," 1-36.

Stephen Pow and Jingjing Liao, "Subutai: Sorting Fact from Fiction Surrounding the Mongol Empire's Greatest General (With Trans-lations of Subutai's Two Biographies in the Yuan Shi), 37-76.

Z. George Wang, "The Rescue of British by Chinese at Yenangyaung and Slim's Flawed Account of the Battle," 77-108.

This issue also contains book reviews by Edward A. McCord, Peipei Qiu, and John K. Whitmore.

CMHS members may access the journal online by going to the society's Web site (www.cmhsociety.org), logging in there with their previously assigned CMHS username and password, and clicking the journal link in the Members Area. Please note that there is no need to log in again at the Brill Online site. If you have not been assigned a username or password or encounter any other problem, please contact David Graff (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) for assistance.

Meeting in conjunction with the Society for Military History, Louisville, Kentucky

2018 Annual Conference of the Chinese Military History Society

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Session 1: 8:30-9:50

Panel: “Visions of Violence in Chinese History” – Organized by Kenneth M. Swope Kenneth M. Swope (University of Southern Mississippi), “The Rhetoric of Catastrophe in the Ming-Qing Transition”

Kristin Mulready-Stone (U.S. Naval War College), “Vocabularies of Devastation and Chaos in World War II Shanghai”

Lei Duan (University of Michigan), “The Prism of Violence: The Social and Cultural Life of the Gun in Modern China”

Session 2: 10:00-11:20

Vered Shurany (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Landscape and Logistics between the Steppe and the Sown”

Dr. Solomon George FitzHerbert (CNRS, Paris), “Tantric Rituals as War Propaganda in 17^th-18^th Century Tibet, China and Mongolia”

Hyeok Hweon “H.H.” Kang (Harvard University), “Accurizing the Gun: Tactics and Technologies in East Asia”

Lunch Break

Session 3: 1:00-2:00

Edward A. McCord (George Washington University), “Context and Contingency in 19^th Century Chinese Militia Organization: Reevaluating the ‘Ladder of Militarization’”

Gregory J. Nedved (Center for Cryptologic History), “Cryptology during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895”

Session 4: 2:10-3:10

Clemens Büttner (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany), “Reconciling National and Territorial Desires in China: The Borders of the Qing Empire, the Decline of Ethnic and the Rise of Militaristic Nationalism in the 1911 Revolution”

Dr. Sherman Xiaogang Lai (Royal Military College of Canada), “Marxism Versus Realism:
The Legacy of Zhou Enlai’s Diplomatic Maneuvers in the Indochina Wars”

Session 5: 3:20-4:50

Roundtable: “Is There a Chinese Way of War? – Organized by Xiaobing Li

Participants:    Stan Adamiak, chair (University of Central Oklahoma)

                        Sherman Lai (Royal Military College of Canada)

                        Xiaobing Li (University of Central Oklahoma)

                        Peter Lorge (Vanderbilt University)              

                        Harold Tanner (University of North Texas)

All sessions will be held in the Willis Room of the Galt House Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky.