debor044

The Taiping Rebellion was one of the largest and bloodiest civil conflicts in modern world history; though seemingly forgotten today, in the 1850's-1860’s the small but prominent role played by many Westerners in the conflict was nearly a decisive factor. This conflict is remembered in China and Asia today as a bloody holy war inspired by the desire of some Chinese to escape the Imperial domination of the Manchu minority and to attain religious and cultural freedom. Named for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, an unrecognized state ruled from 1851-1864 by a charismatic peasant and former low ranking civil servant named Hong Xiuquan (b.1814-1864) who claimed to see visions from above and who also claimed to be the blood and spiritual brother of Jesus Christ. Support swelled for the rebellion of Xiuquan allowing for his forces to capture Nanjing in southern China as their capital in the year 1851, severely threatening the Qing Empire’s rule throughout China for the next ten years. The mil...

The Second Sino-Japanese Conflict of 1931-1945 saw thousands of different regiments, divisions, units, and armies, nationalities fighting throughout what is today Mainland China, Myanmar (Burma), Mongolia, and Korea. Torn apart by revolution and civil war from 1911-1930, China faced a great challenge to its national sovereignty when the mighty Japanese military decided to press its economic and political claims in Manchuria and Northern China beginning in 1930-1931. Japanese Army artillery in Manchuria, 1931 One of the most unique Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) units to fight in the earliest portion of the great Sino-Japanese conflict of 1931-1945 was the Skull Regiment, known alternatively as the Skull Squadron and as the “Manchurian Stormtroopers” for their unique regimental iconography and symbols. The Japanese Skull Regiment was seemingly inspired by the German Totenkopf, or Death’s Head regiments/brigades of the 18th-20th centuries.  Formed originally during the reign of King Fr...

The culture of the Japanese Army and its rigid command structure is critical in analyzing the strategies used by them in China from 1931-1939. The Kwantung Army was an anomaly in the greater study of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) from 1900-1945, in that it often took extra-judicial measures in its occupied territories and theatres of operations. Formed in 1919 from the original  Kwantung Garrison , which since 1906 had guarded the southern Manchurian railway from bandits or enemy nations, the Kwantung garrisoned the Liaodong Peninsula. Occupation of this territory had begun during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Japanese Army 'Skull Squadron' Manchuria, 1933 Soon dominated by young officers who privatized and isolated command, the Kwantung often operated under regional command structures. This so called "loyal insubordination" became the key to the Kwantung's military doctrine whilst serving in Manchuria and Northern China beginning in the early 1920...

On 19 May 1883, the Battle of the Paper Bridge (Cầu Giấy, Hanoi) was fought between a French column led by Commandant Henri Rivière (b.1827-1883) and the Black Flag Army led by Liu Yongfu (b.1837-1917), a southern Han Chinese bandit, mercenary-soldier, and revolutionary. The Black Flag army ended Rivière’s expedition into the Tonkin (North Vietnam), then a tributary state of the Qing Empire (China and it Imperial provinces, 1644-1912) with a stunning ambush near what was called the Paper Bridge (Pont du Papier) outside modern day Hanoi in Vietnam. Background France’s early campaigns fought in Northern Vietnam from 1881-1889 form just the tail-end of a greater narrative of Franco-Vietnamese and Franco-Sino (Chinese) conflict for control over the Tonkin (Tonquin or Tongkin) province of North Vietnam. The Battle of the Paper Bridge (Cầu Giấy) in 1883 was arguably the first major conflict in France’s commitment to conquer and pacify what became Vietnam and French Indochina (1896-1954). The...

After the Russian Revolution but before the communist 'Red' Bolsheviks had yet to secure a total victory during the Russian Civil War (1917-1923), Soviet leadership under Lenin, Trotsky, and later Joseph Stalin (b.1878-1953), looked to the Far East to establish a sphere of influence as a buffer to Imperial Japan’s growth in the East and Pacific Ocean following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The Japanese Empire spent most of the 1920’s and 1930’s refining and building their military capabilities for their planned economic and cultural domination of Asia which would begin in China and Soviets sensed that the Far East would become a vital diplomatic and military frontier later on.   Hence the early heightening of Soviet political and military presence in Mongolia at the tail end of the Russian Civil War in 1920-1921.  The 'Bloody White Baron of Mongolia': Baron Roman Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg  After crushing most if not all of the White resistance on the Russia...