My local paper ran an editorial (version here) by Rich Lowry which gave readers more Qing dynasty history than they normally get.  As an American conservative his main point in the piece is that Europe is at last on the brink of collapse due to excessive state spending, just as the Lowrys of the world have been predicting for the last 50 years or so.¹ He opens with a lament for the Good Old Days

One hundred and fifty years ago, no one could mistake the relative power of Europe and China. When the British defeated the Chinese in the First Opium War, they imposed an indemnity, took Hong Kong, and forced open more Chinese ports to British merchants. They demanded extraterritoriality for British citizens, exempting them from Chinese law. Other Western powers extracted similar privileges.

When this wasn’t enough, the British launched the Second Opium War after the Chinese seized a ship flying the British flag and refused to apologize. The French joined in, and the two together captured Beijing, and burned the emperor’s summer palaces for good measure.

This nasty episode is worth recalling against the backdrop of the Europeans’ begging the Chinese to help bail them out from their debt crisis. What would Lt. Gen. Charles Cousin-Montauban, the commander of the French forces who marched on Beijing, make of Klaus Regling, the commander of the European bailout fund who traveled to Beijing hoping for a helping hand? What would Lord Palmerston, who justified war against China as a matter of honor, think of Nicolas Sarkozy’s supplicating his Chinese counterpart for funds?

He does toss in that “nasty episode” line, but he is obviously lamenting the idea of white people dealing with yellow people as equals. He probably knows as little about Chinese history as he does about Greek bonds, but I would guess that even if he did know more about Palmerston’s ideas of honor he would still support them. In the case of the Arrow incident neither international law nor any other principle other than power were on the British side.² Palmerston, of course did not care. Harry Parkes, a British official had made certain assertions about Chinese behavior and British power had to back him up. Those who questioned him in Parliament were traitors, motivated by

“an anti-English feeling, an abnegation of all those ties which bind men to their country and to their fellow-countrymen, which I should hardly have expected from the lips of any member of this House. Everything that was English was wrong, and everything that was hostile to England was right.”

In any case, an excuse to beat up on wogs was not be be missed, as Palmerston’s most famous quote on foreign policy shows.

“These half-civilised governments, all require a dressing down every eight or ten years to keep them in order. Their minds are too shallow to receive an impression that will last longer than some such period and warning is of little use. They care little for words and they must not only see the stick but actually feel it on their shoulders before they yield to that argument that brings conviction, the argumentum baculinem”

Why bring this up? Well in part because one just does not get much Chinese history in the Indiana Gazette. Also, I think we may see more and more of this. In the Chinese press people are always bringing up the past as a way of understanding present international relations and while as a historian I think that can be good, I also think it can be bad. Historical analogies are not just sprinkles on top of an argument, they are ways of helping you think, and in this case they help you think wrong. While you can’t understand China’s relationship with Britain or Japan without understanding the past, assuming that the Japan of today is that of the 1930′s, or that the U.S. of today is that of 1900 is not a good way of using the past. Likewise, as Americans talk and think more about our relationship with China the ‘lessons of history’ will come up a lot, and we will have to choose if we want a foreign policy that will “Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all” as Washington put it, or if we will follow Lowry in admiring Palmerston and that other great Englishman, Lord Voldemort in assuming that “There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”

1. I don’t know about Lowry, but some of the prominent early American Neo-Cons started out as Trotskyites, which may have helped them write all these explanations for why reality is not matching their theories.
2. J.Y. Wong’s Deadly Dreams: Opium and the Arrow War (1856-1860) In China deals with this at great length.

From Gawker a set of military recruitment ads from around the world. Representing East Asia we have Taiwanese who gain skills while defending 20 million people from an unknown enemy, a Singaporean battleship that transforms into a giant robot, and an ad for the Japanese Navy that is quite remarkable.

(Japanese ad intercut with an American one)

Lots of American military recruitment ads (which turn up a lot on the type of shows my 15-year old son watches) emphasize how joining up connects you to a glorious history, not just the few, the proud, etc. but pictures of the G.I.s who defended freedom by beating Hitler. They tend to avoid pictures defenders of freedom in blue uniforms shooting defenders of slavery in gray, since that brings up some history that they don’t want brought up.

The British ad is maybe the best and most historical. The ad shows as screaming armed black guy (ohh a native) who is calmed by the sheer stiff upper lip  and steely eyes of a British officer. Remember when Britain was an Empire? Well that was before your time, but IF you could be a real British officer that would be something. Beats sitting around Oldham getting pissed, anyway.

In East Asia military history is a very fraught subject. The PLA has killed lots of people, but many of them were Chinese. Even stirring up anti-Japanese feelings (or even bringing up the Revolution) may not be a good idea.

The Japanese Navy of course also has a glorious history, if one assumes that for a Navy a glorious history means sending lots of foreigners to watery graves. Needless to say they don’t want to emphasize that. Maybe a dance routine is best.

Here is a PRC version. Comparing ads you might think Taiwan and Chinese Beijing were the same country.

Via Tapped

Recently I went to the Jianchuan museums, which are in Anren, just outside Chengdu. It is an interesting place first because it is huge, financed by mogul Fan Jianchuan, and second because it is a private museum, something not very common in China.

The place is covers a lot of ground, and there are, or soon will be buildings showcasing West Sichuan folk customs, footbinding, traditional houses, and the response to the Wenchuan earthquake of 2008. They are already working on the building for the last of these, and some of the artifacts are sitting outside.

The biggest and most interesting sections are on the War with Japan and the Red Years.

The War buildings (there are several) are strongly nationalistic (it is glorious to die for the homeland, etc) and pretty popular with the Chinese visitors. The war also gets some of the most striking installations, including a display of the handprints of 300 veterans and statues of 200 heroes of the war (mostly generals and commanders of various sorts.)

Both of them sort of reminded me of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, in that they rely on the effect of masses of individuals (each of the handprints and statues has an inscription telling you who it is.) The statues also remind me somewhat of Qin Shihuang’s terracotta warriors, although having been given names and not being in such strict ranks they are more individualized.¹

The interpretation of the war focuses primarily on heroism and sacrifice. There is not much interpretation of how the war progressed or what happened in it, just endless scenes of sacrifice and combat. There is a whole building on the Nationalist armies, which is unusual, and they are credited with having killed a million Japanese while suffering over three million casualties. American aid and the Flying Tigers also get a building, and their contributions are listed.

The museums in general are not overflowing with artifacts, although they do have a few.

Mostly they rely on pictures, like this one of an ambulance team of monks

Or this injured boyscout.

There are a lot of pictures blown up on the walls with a 3-D element, like this

There are also a number of somewhat interactive exhibits, like a tunnel for tunnel warfare, and the Flying Tiger bar where you can have a beer and feel just like an American. (I passed.)

The Red Years section has some installations

but mostly it focuses on what life was like in the Mao years, emphasizing both the idealism and the over-politicization of the period. So we get things like a bedstead that greets you with Mao quotes when you wake up,

and a piano which defends itself from charges of being bourgeois by proclaiming that art must serve the workers, peasants and soldiers.

The exhibits are about as critical of the Mao years as I have ever seen in China, although not of Mao personally. The porcelain exhibit explicitly criticizes the politicization of teacups, emphasizes the continuing class nature (and poverty) of Maoist society by explaining which classes of people could afford what, and compares having an image of Mao in your house was like having a Bodhisattva around in the old society.

As close as you get to really explicit criticism is the hallway where you exit the Daily Life building, were you walk over a list of the years of the Cultural Revolution as slogans are shouted overhead.

The museums take on the Mao years is a little on the schizophrenic side. The texts keep emphasizing the contradiction between idealism and chaos, and there is a picture of Fan Jinchuan himself in Inner Mongolia striking his best Lei Feng pose. What might strike the young people coming to look at it most is the poverty of the old society.

I suspect the place is going to become more political, as they are currently working on buildings on the Great Leap and China’s Famine. I can’t imagine how you could deal with those without some fairly explicit criticism. The place is well worth seeing. Most Chinese historic sites focus on a fairly abstract traditional period or the straight revolutionary narrative. This is one that goes a good deal further.

1. Also, like Qin Shihuang himself, they are on top of a relief map of China.

In teaching the Tang dynasty one thing I like to talk about is the Princess of Pingyang, d. 623 who assisted her father the Tang founder Gaozu in setting up the empire by recruiting an army of 70, 00o bandits (the Lady’s Army 娘子軍) who assisted in the overthrow of the Sui and the establishment of  the new dynasty. One reason to talk about this is that an imperial princess leading an army of 70,000 bandits is a cool story. Unfortunately we don’t know much about her other than that. The Tang Shu (scroll down) biography is quite short, but it does bring up the other event that makes her good to talk about in class. By the Song the old system of aristocratic family-based politics was replaced by a new, more bureaucratic and exclusively male political world. In the early Tang we are still back in the period of disunion in that women were still political actors in their own right. When the princess died some officials pointed out that as a woman she should not have drums at her funeral. 以礼，妇以礼，妇人无鼓吹. Implicitly they are saying that drums are male music. The emperor disagreed saying that drums were martial music 高祖曰：“鼓吹，军乐也¹ Given that she had herself used drums to command troops in battle it was quite appropriate to have drums at her funeral. The categories of male and female, general and bandit would be a lot less permiable later in the dynasty

太常奏议，以礼，妇人无鼓吹。高祖曰：“鼓吹，军乐也。往者公主于司竹举兵以应义旗，亲执金鼓，有克定之勋。周之文母，列于十乱；公主功参佐命，非常妇人之所匹也。何得无鼓吹！”遂特加之，以旌殊绩；仍令所司按谥法“明德有功曰昭”，

1. i.e. not necessarily male or female, just associated with the military

I got a query from a reader which echoes a question I’ve gotten in class¹ many times:

With China’s long history of martial arts, how prominent can it be said such arts were (if at all) in actual military affairs outside the realm of legends?

My immediate thought is that there’s almost no connection whatsoever: what little I have read of pre-modern Chinese military theory places most of the emphasis on strategy (e.g. Sunzi) and unit organization (e.g. Huang, 1597). In massed combat, individual fighting skills mostly take a backseat to numbers, tactics, technology and discipline. There are times when smaller numbers of skilled warriors can overcome a disadvantage of numbers — the Mongols come to mind — but their combat style isn’t really part of any conventional martial art tradition. Chinese culture being largely Confucian, there isn’t as much of a warrior literature, either² in which individual soldiers might be valorized for bravery, strength and skill. There is some of that which comes out of the operatic/dramatic tradition, and Ming literature like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but it’s a late development with almost no connection to actual military practices.

In fact, about the only place I’ve run across a connection between martial arts and combat is in histories of the Boxer Uprising like Paul Cohen’s History in Three Keys, in which he actually argues that most of the “fighting style” of the Fists United in Righteousness, etc., was based on imitation of stage fighting. Anyone know of other examples, or major sources that I’ve missed?

1. Actually, the question is usually much less carefully phrased, and I hear it at least as often in Japanese history
2. Again, I’m think of Japanese examples like the Heike monogatari, etc.

I have been reading Isabel Hull’s Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of Total War in Imperial Germany Cornell, 2005¹ I was mainly interested in the book for its treatment of the Boxer Expedition, but the book in general is about the evolution of ideas about war in German military culture. She sees the colonial wars in China, Southwest Africa and East Africa as being very important in the development of German concepts of war and above all treatment of civilians.

I found this interesting not only because there is stuff about the Boxers. Everyone knows that German military advisers were very important in China and that Chinese military culture was heavily influenced by Germany. Everyone also knows that Chinese troops, especially warlord troops, were notoriously brutal towards non-combatants and generally inept at dealing with the civilian population. I would have attributed the bad behavior of warlord troops to their poor training, inadequate supplies and lack of modern military professionalism. After reading Hull I think that much of the military professionalism that China would have been importing would not have done much to remedy these problems

The Boxer War is one of Hull’s key bits of pre WWI evidence. German troops in China behaved pretty badly. Although there does not seem to have been a specific order given to exterminate all Chinese², lots of Chinese, especially men, were summarily executed. The Germans did little of the actual fighting before the relief of the legations, but were the most enthusiastic about punitive expeditions, which were little more than troops roaming the countryside killing Chinese. Looting was discouraged, which made the Germans better on this score than most of the Allies. Rape was common, and the German forces in China managed a venereal disease rate of 140%.³ The Boxer expedition was fairly ad-hoc, but by combining it with the colonial wars in Africa, especially Herero War, she finds a number of characteristics of German military culture, almost all of which seem to be exactly the same as in China.
-Lack of concern for the well-being of civilians and P.O.W.s. This is to some extent universal to all armies. If you want promotion you a better off with the war record of General Patton than that of Colonel Klink. Still, the Germans seem to have been worse than most other European armies at this.

-To some extent this lack of concern with P.O.W.’s was part of a larger lack of concern with planning. Like most European armies of the late 19th century the Germans were convinced that future wars would be extremely short. The German Army was perhaps worse than others at preparing the logistical and command needs of protracted war. Planning for anything other than actually fighting was very sketchy as all of that was seen as a sign of “British Commercialism.” If a war did not end quickly German troops would start requisitioning supplies from the population.

-If long term planning and organization would not win wars what would? “restless energy, boundless initiative, inordinate capacity for suffering, and blind self-sacrifice, matched only by the willingness to sacrifice others.” She points out that the great model of the war in SW Africa was not “Franke’s relief of Omaruru. Accomplished with few resources, much bravery, and only seven deaths, this battle saved the strategically important railroad for German use. But Frank was an old Schutztruppler, not a regular officer; and, besides, he survived.” Instead the Germans valorized Captain Klein, who’s pursuit of an already-dead enemy chieftain across the Omaheke Dessert was a monument to the ability of brave men to overcome suffering. The fact that it failed and was known to be pointless even before it started did not make Klein’s march less admirable. Like the Long March it took its meaning from the suffering of the men involved, not from any military importance.

-Her description of the convoluted command structure of the Imperial German Army (p.12) makes it sound almost like Chiang Kai-shek was in command.

-The Germans also displayed quite racist attitudes towards all non-whites. Not really a match to China here.

It’s not really a China book, but for those interested in the development of military culture in China (and maybe also in Japan) it is a good read.

1. One of the great things about the modern, internet, age is that when you find an interesting book you look it up on Amazon to see if they have a table of contents. They often have a used copy, in this case for 8 bucks.
2. given later developments in Germany she is very interested in the evolution of exterminationism, and it is interesting to see that while William Rowe has found lots of sources for exterminationist ideas in China, it may have been imported as well
3. p.151

I recently finished reading Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China, 1895-1949 by Frank Dikötter. You can find pictures from the book posted on his website here. The book is a well written overview of the history of modern prisons in China, beginning with the late Qing through the war against Japan, with a few pages on the civil war that follows. Dikötter has written elsewhere about his preliminary findings about early Communist labor camps, taking his research into the 1950s.

Dikötter’s book is especially strong when it explores various attempts to reform the prisons in the Republican period, even if a lack of trustworthy information prevents a full evaluation of the effects of some of these reforms. Despite the wide chronological coverage and national scope of the book, the footnotes reveals a truly remarkable amount of archival research.

One section I found of particular interest was his short discussion of Chinese POW camps during the war against Japan.¹ In this section Dikötter uses materials from International Red Cross (ICRC) archives to help him get at the conditions in the camps.

The conditions in wartime Japanese POW camps (when captured soldiers weren’t shot, as was sometimes the case, especially in the China theater) were of course infamous, and the target of much criticism at the war crimes proceedings that followed the war. Beyond the unnecessary direct brutality of the guards (a non-trivial percentage of which were Koreans and Taiwanese) towards their prisoners, however, the relatively high death rates in Japanese camps (as well, we might mention, in Soviet camps, North Korean POW camps among other well-known examples) as compared with death rates of non-Slavic prisoners in Nazi POW camps is sometimes attributed to a simple brutal fact: The dire logistical reality faced by the military forces meant they could rarely provide sufficient supplies to their own soldiers, let alone supply thousands of POWs in the elaborate camp system.

If any belligerent in World War II was strained for supplies, surely China was one of them. However, Dikötter’s short discussion of Chinese POW camps based suggests that China’s strong desire for international legitimacy and continued support from international agencies led one of the poorest participants of the Second World War to go to considerable lengths in providing for its Japanese prisoners.

Although the ICRC representative sent to China, Ernest Senn, did not have access to all POW camps and his correspondence was heavily censored, his reports generally suggest relatively good treatment and health for Japanese prisoners in Chinese POW camps. Like many countries, there were also camps used as propaganda showcases such as the “Paradise Camp” located 20km south of Chongqing.² Suggestions by the Red Cross to improve latrines and washrooms in one camp were apparently followed and supposedly the agency received no complaints from prisoners. Dikötter contrasts the treatment reportedly given to Japanese prisoners in the evidence available and the horrible fate of political prisoners in the SACO (Sino-American Cooperation Organisation) run camps as well as the wretched conditions of the average Chinese soldier fighting in the war. He notes, however, that at least one camp was heavily reliant on medical support from the Red Cross, which suggests that international support might partly explain tolerable conditions in some camps.

The problem with this short section on POW camps is, of course, that it is mostly dependent on ICRC reports from a limited number of camps. We ought to carefully evaluate such evidence, including the lack of prisoner complaints. I am curious what ICRC reports on German prison camps, North Korean, and South Korean camps concluded. One thinks of various war movies showing scenes where prisoners are pressured to spruce things up for visiting Red Cross officials. I’m sure there are memoirs and other materials that can be found on the Japanese side that might give us more anecdotal information on the Chinese POW camp conditions, just as we have learned horror stories in the accounts left by former prisoners of camps elsewhere. I know there is a considerable amount of Japanese material on Chinese Communist run prison camps and the elaborate efforts made to convert and use Japanese soldiers for propaganda uses, not to mention utilizing their technical skills.

If the bulk of Japanese anecdotal materials confirm Dikötter’s suggestion that, overall, Chinese treatment of Japanese POWs was relatively decent, it might contribute to a debate about what conditions are necessary for international norms, such as those articulated in the Geneva conventions that govern the treatment of prisoners, to have a significant impact on even the most resource-starved belligerents in a violent conflict.

1. Frank Dikötter. Crime, Punishment and the Prison in China (Columbia University Press, 2002), 345-349
2. ibid., 348.

While looking through 1945-50 US State Department documents—the same collection where I came accross Zhu De’s request for a $20 million US loan to buy off puppet soldiers-I came across over 150 pages of China Regional Directives from the Office of War Information (OWI) from early December, 1944 through mid-September 1945.

As far as I can make out these were roughly weekly sets of guidelines sent out to the various relevant agencies (these were in the possession of the US State Department) on what propaganda approach was to be taken. I don’t know much about the OWI but I think these guidelines might have been primarily for US radio broadcasts.

I was personally interested in some of these because of the many references to and warnings against Chinese collaboration. However, it struck me that this little collection would make a wonderful little primary source packet for undergraduates or even high school students studying history. There is lots of fun and interesting material in here and a lot of interesting questions that one might ask as you analyze the contents and the documents themselves.

I scanned-to-PDF the whole collection I found and uploaded it to the Frog in a Well Library where you can download the whole 37MB PDF file.

Many of the documents seem to be coming from or addressed to “Lilienthal, SX” which I think is probably Philip E. Lilienthal (1914-1984) who was the Chief of the Chinese Division for the US OWI. According to his obituary, Lilienthal also served as editor of Pacific Affairs and the Far Eastern Survey and was also important in building the Asia book selection of the University of California Press.¹

The other name commonly seen in these documents is “Fairbank, WA” who I misidentified as John K. Fairbank. C. W. Hayford identifies this as Wilma Fairbank (see comments below).

Some of the guidelines suggested are quite revealing, many of them just great strategic sense while others were a mix of good sense and the bizarre. A few selections below the fold:

Jan 4, 1945 “When quoting statements of Communist leaders follow carefully the Special Guidance on the use of materials from Yenan radio, quoting only such statements as appear in the American press and then giving only the American Press as source…”

Feb 15, 1945 “Continue to use materials which recall official statements regarding the possibility of American landings on the China coast.”

March 29, 1945 “Caution: In treating such projects for the improvement of China’s war situation as the WPB, the WTB, and the FEA activities, emphasize their importance to the immediate war effort. Play down their post-war significance.”

“Continue to report Japanese advances in China factually…”

“Reports of successes over the Japanese elsewhere should be played in such a way as to encourage Chinese action on the mainland.”

April 27, 1945 “Call attention to May 4 Anniversary, pointing out that this day commemorates the beginning of the great student movement in 1919 pioneering towards more democratice government.
NOTE: Although this is considered by Chinese to be one of the most important anniversaries in modern China, it is not looked upon with too much favor by the present Chungking government. We should, however, emphasize the significance of the event for the development of a democratic and modern China.”

May 30, 1945 “As an indication of American interest in the problem, report the Generalissimo [Chiang Kai-shek]‘s proposed cooperation with Harley and Wedemeyer on easing up of censorship. Make use of any comment which favords such a development and which favors evidence of such a change.” [Text was crossed out in original]

Aug 9, 1945 “…[we] should taper off on our line of a long war. We should, however, continue to use materials which indicate that Japan is still a strong enemy…We should also continue to stress the importance and toughness of land fighting.”

“Continue air raid warnings to China, listing specific installations to avoid; continue to avoid comparison between these warnings and the warnings given to Japanese cities by Lemay.”

Aug 31, 1945: “Avoid directing attention to the relatively low cost (in terms of casualties and home front suffering) of this war to the United States.”

Sept 7, 1945: “Caustion: Use special care in avoiding the use of any materials which might be considered derogatory to the Far Eastern peoples in general, such as, ancestor worship or reference to color, size, or “Oriental” appearance.

Sept 14, 1945: “Avoid overemphasis of the Tojo story. Treat Tojo as but one of the accused war criminals, but make clear his arrest is illustrative of MacArthur’s policy of not coddling or excusing the Japanese mlitary leaders. Avoid overplaying Japanese atrocities on American prisoners of war in such a way as to give it undue prominence to a country which has suffered so greatly from Japan.”

“With special reference to the Chinese wherever possible, this week’s science show will discuss new ways of discovering minerals in the earth.”

Lots of other interesting material. Pay the library a visit and see for yourself.

UPDATE: I corrected my misidentification of one of the people mentioned. Thanks to C. W. Hayford for pointing my mistake out in the comments.

1. Irwin Scheiner “Obituary: Philip E. Lilienthal (1914-1984) The Journal of Asian Studies 43:3 (May, 1984) 616-617.