Americans and the Dragon: Lessons in Coalition Warfighting from the Boxer Uprising

©2023 Mitchell G. Klingenberg Drawing from archival materials at the US Army Heritage and Education Center and the United States Military Academy at West Point, numerous published primary sources, and a range of secondary sources, this monograph offers an overview of the China Relief Expedition from June 1900 to the moment of liberation in August. Its considerations range from the geopolitical to the strategic and down to the tactical levels of war. US forces partnered alongside the combined naval and land forces of multiple nations, thus constituting the first contingency, expeditionary, and multinational coalition in American military history. In the face of numerous obstacles conditioned by enemy forces, the environment, and internal to the informal coalition itself, American forces succeeded in liberating their besieged legation. While the character of war has evolved since 1900, students of war should see through disparities that appear to separate the China Relief Expedition from the historical present.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1957/thumbnail.jp

Politics, religion and pleasure: travel writing about China in the literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle, 1880-1925

Founded in 1793, Newcastle’s Literary & Philosophical Society is the largest independent library outside of London, with collections as diverse as its history. Since its founding, travel writing has made up a significant proportion of the society’s collections. By the nineteenth century, connections between the North East and the Far East ranged from industrial, to cultural and religious and this is reflected in the Lit & Phil’s travel writing collections. Until now, however, the significance of Newcastle’s interests in China at the turn of the twentieth century has been neglected in scholarship. Nonetheless, the library’s catalogues demonstrate a continued interest in the acquisition of travel accounts, within which books on China feature in significantly larger numbers than other countries in Asia. This thesis is the first to examine the society’s collection of travel writing in relation to regional interest in China at the turn of the twentieth century. Moreover, I argue that the uniqueness of the collection is a result of this specific historical context of Newcastle. My thesis also provides an original, interdisciplinary model for approaching regional libraries by combining collection-focused methods with close readings of individual items, alongside the historical and regional context of the society. A close reading approach to the books within the collection uncovers the richness of the Lit & Phil’s ‘Travel Writing: China’ and demonstrates how collection analysis alongside a literary approach can upset expectations of regional libraries. This thesis approaches travel writing as read by the members of the Lit & Phil, to demonstrate that the collection is a direct response to the intellectual interest demonstrated by the society’s membership in the early twentieth century, leading to the development of the diverse and unique collection of travel narratives in the Lit & Phil

Annals of the Congregation of the Mission, Vol. 7, No. 4

Pages 451-60

British policy and the Chinese revolutionary movement, 1895-1912.

This thesis traces British reactions to the development of the Chinese revolutionary movement from its beginnings in the British colony of Hong Kong, to the involvement of returned students in the Yangtze ports, the outbreak of the Revolution in October 1911, and finally studies Britain's role in the negotiations between the government and the revolutionaries leading to the peaceful establishment of the Chinese Republic. British policy in China was influenced variously by the China merchants, the missionaries and most important of all, by members of the Diplomatic and Consular Services in China, who were the only reliable sources of information emanating from a country geographically and culturally remote from Great Britain. In practical terms there was really no definite policy towards the Chinese revolutionary movement: Britain was caught in the dilemma between desire for conditions of peace and stability to enable her to carry on her main business in China, namely trade and commerce, and the hopes among many in the late Victorian period to see the Chinese undertake radical reforms in all aspects of their government and administration. This resulted in Britain's official stand of absolute neutrality and nonintervention when the Revolution finally erupted, while unofficially the British Legation in Peking was given free rein to influence the course of events in China by mediation and indirect pressure, to expediate the return to normalcy after the chaos of the Revolution. Policy-making in China was thus in the hands of those experts on the scene upon whose personal attitudes and idiosyncracies regarding reform and revolution in China statesmen in Britain depended

HISTORY FROM THE MIDDLE: THE STUDENT INTERPRETERS CORPS AND IMAGINED AMERICAN ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM IN CHINA, 1902-1941

The project of American economic imperialism in China during the first half of the twentieth century was first and foremost an imagined enterprise. This dissertation examines the role of the Student Interpreters Corps (SIC) in this endeavor. Studying language-trained intermediaries, this treatment is a first step towards studying history with an approach that is neither top-down nor bottom-up but rather middle-outward. Examining hitherto neglected personnel records and State Department correspondence, this study reveals the SIC as part of an imagined but unsuccessful program of economic imperialism. Although effective in garnering American business interest and support for Foreign Service reform and expansion, efforts to entice American merchants and companies to enter Asian markets (particularly in China) failed to yield a coherent, successful trade empire. However, the largely unstated goal of increased American power was achieved as the result of a bureaucratic imperative for specialization, professionalization, and institutional expansion set in motion during the establishment of the SIC. Examining the evolving roles and views of SIC-trained intermediaries, this dissertation finds that while the imagined trade empire failed to materialize, the SIC contributed to a developing American perception of China that envisioned increasingly greater American intervention in East Asia. In this millieu, a “Peking” order emerged by the mid-1920s that became influential in American East Asia policy towards the eve of Word War II that saw China as vital to American interests. Established as precursor of American economic empire in China, the SIC was instrumental in shifting discourse away from economic empire towards an interventionist American Orientalism. Trade expansion rhetoric waned and Orientalist language solidified as Japanese aggression became more blatant and the ascendance of Communism in China ever more certain. Highlighting the bureaucratic intermediaries as new method of studying history, this study indicates that the project of American economic imperialism was largely imagined, but one that transformed to accommodate evolving visions of expanding American power in East Asia. These conclusions offer new challenges to and opportunities for scholars of American foreign relations

British ships and West China, 1875-1941: With special reference to the Upper Yangtze.

This dissertation describes the activities of British ships in west China, especially on the Upper Yangtze, in the first forty years of this century. The beginning of this period coincided with the high water mark of imperialism, and its close with the decline of imperialism in most parts of the world. This was probably more clearly illustrated in west China than in any other part of the world, and this was one main area of Anglo-French colonial rivalry. It is difficult today to realise that as late as 1940, Britain was still pursuing an expansionist policy here, and inducing a China, hard pressed by Japanese aggression, to cede tracts of territory on her far western border to Burma. The contribution of British shipping to the country's prestige and prosperity is insufficiently appreciated. On the Upper Yangtze and on the West River, British ships were trading in comparatively unknown parts of the world, yet in parts with a much longer history than western Europe. The war brought west China into international prominence, and hastened its economic development. British people can look back with some pride on the part their merchants and sailors played in the early stages of this development. It was an historic anachronism, that British ships were trading 1,400 miles from the sea in a foreign country as late as 1940, as long before then the rights of cabotage had been abolished in almost every other part of the world. I have attempted to describe the operations of these British ships against the international political situation in the Far East. To some extent this was reflected in rivalry in shipping on the Yangtze, and coincided with the rise of Japan as a world power, and the growth of nationalism and communism in Chin

Annals of the Congregation of the Mission, Vol. 9, No. 1

Pages 1-14