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One of the most impressive man-made structures on the beautiful “Garden Island” of Kaua’i County, Hawaii’s most populated, westernmost island, relating to military history and warfare studies is the Russian constructed (1817) Fort Elizabeth. Its walls and defensive structures still stand today, albeit in ruins, outside of Waimea on the southwestern Kaua’i coast on the eastern banks of the Waimea river mouth overlooking Waimea Bay, directly off what is today the Kaumuali'i Highway. These ancient overgrown red volcanic rocks and ruined outer defenses are all that remain of the Russian Empires attempts to colonize and intervene in the Hawaiian Islands ( Mokupuni o Hawai‘i ) from c.1815-1817. Russian Fort Elizabeth, Waimea, Kaua'i  (Taken by the author) To understand the importance of Russian influence and the importance of Kaua’i one must look to the decades of fighting inter-Island warfare which had all but come to end following the unification of the Hawaiian islands, save for...

In China’s long history the massive size of its empire both past and present creates many geographical, cultural, and chronological problems when dealing with the study of Chinese warfare in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This issue is prevalent in our Western understanding of China after the Revolution of 1911 which succeeded in the overthrow of the the Qing Empire. China ’s first attempt at a more republican form of government was come to be a fragile coalition of Warlords who in 1912 signed a series of treaties and alliances to form the Beiyang government in what is today  Beijing, China . The Beiyang Star, a political and military symbol of the  5 major regions (Warlord cliques) of China under Beiyang Rule Two of the smaller warlord cliques in the earliest era, Kuomintang (Nationalist dominated, but nominally a Marxist-Leninist party as well) and the independent Chinese Communist Party, later struggled for control over all of China after 1928 and beyond, only interrupt...

James Thomas Brudenell (b.1797-1868), 7th earl of Cardigan, known popularly as Lord Cardigan, commander of the 600 or so British cavalrymen who participated in the Charge of the Light Brigade , at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War in 1854, is perhaps singularly one of the most controversial figures of his day and in modern military history circles as well. Amongst the many histories, homages, and works of art devoted to the Crimean War and the Charge of Light Brigade, one of the most famous and endearing must be  Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem of the same year, The Charge of the Light Brigade . Lord Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade Modern interpretations put Lord Cardigan at the center of one of the most misunderstood but oft-cited events in military history. What is known of the Charge of the Light Brigade is that the British commander Lord Raglan (b.1788-1855), who had an lost arm serving with Wellington at Waterloo , ordered Lord Lucan, the cavalry comm...