History Accounts

Send us Fan Mail The war with Japan devastated the Nanjing Government, her military, and China.  The Nationalists had survived the war and still remained in power.  Their failures, however, particularly late in the war, and at the nation’s greatest time of need, were fateful.   The open, unhealed wound of the issues with the Communist was one of the fateful consequences of the Nationalists’ failur...

Send us Fan Mail The Sino-Japanese War ends.  Japan’s surrender, a momentous event, also ended World War II.  A victory certainly for China and the Allied Powers.  It left, however, many geo-political questions and issues.  The war with Japan also exposed to the world the deteriorated condition of the Nationalist military forces, the Nanjing Government, and China.  The victory also did not resolve...

Send us Fan Mail China’s war against Japan eventually merged into the greater world war.  Particularly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan became a central concern to the Allies, especially the United States.  Soon after the Japanese began their war against China, it had planned to pacify and consolidate the territory she had gained in China.  However, largely unsuccessful, by 1942, she had bi...

Send us Fan Mail Did the second united front between the Nationalists and the Communists solidly meld the two sides together, or was that merely an illusion?  We find out in this episode.    By 1939, the United States was loaning money to the Nationalist government.  There was no appetite by the western nations to pursue appeasement with Japan as they had toward Germany. In 1940, Japan became part...

Send us Fan Mail The second Sino-Japanese War began in July 1937.  Which side started it can be debated.  We do know it was an eight-year horror show.  It would overlap and influence the coming second world war.  The opening actions of the Japanese war saw terrible human casualties.  These portended what was coming.  In this episode I focus on the opening phases of the war.  I end the episode with...

Send us Fan Mail The relatively short time span from 1927, after the Nationalists’ creation of the Nanjing Government, to 1937, at the start of the Sino-Japanese war, makes it difficult to evaluate that government.  Today, there are mixed views.  During a portion of that same time span, Japan tried to solidify their physical and international control of Manchuria.  Protective and restive about the...

Send us Fan Mail Beginning in 1927, Mao Zedong and Zhu De grew the Communist Red Army from a small force of maybe 5,000 troops to over 250,000 troops by 1933. Despite the progressive antagonism and military attacks by the Nationalist forces, the communist learned to recruit for their party primarily from the peasants and the farmers.  They even formed a State within a State called the Chinese Sovi...

Send us Fan Mail If the 1920 decade was not enough drama, stay tuned for the even more dramatic 1930s.  The decade tested the new Nationalist government in Nanjing, its leader, Chiang Kai-shek, and China. Internationalism was tossed.  Ever so visible with Japan’s aggression toward China.  Beginning in 1931 with the Mukden Incident Japan began its campaign to seize complete control of Manchuria.  E...

Send us Fan Mail The new National government in Nanjing begins.  For most of its existence it was led by Chiang Kai-Shek and his Guomindang cadre.  Many parts of China were united for the first time since 1916.  It was an uneasy unity facing many challenges both immediately and in the future.  Chiang Kai-Shek would eventually emerge as an autocratic, powerful, and dynamic leader.  He would face gr...

Send us Fan Mail There were many reasons for the Peking (Beiyang) government’s failure.  Its fecklessness led to the organization and planning of the massive nationalist campaign in China in the 1920s. Its goal was to unify China and expel or neutralize foreign intrusion and interference.  Russia ironically played a large role.  Through the merger of the Guomindang Nationalists and the Communists,...

Send us Fan Mail The May 4, 1919, demonstrations (or revolution, as it is referred to sometimes) opened a public discourse in China over the nation’s past and future direction.  It was partially precipitated by the betrayal China received from the Paris Peace Conference.  The Chinese nationalist and communist movements, so prevalent in the next decade, can probably trace their roots to the iconic...

Send us Fan Mail After Yuan Shikai’s death in 1916, the next twelve years pitted regional warlords against each other for control of the national government.  This period of time is known as the Beiyang Warlord Era.   China only had limited involvement in World War I.  Japan used the war’s distraction to strengthen and gain her foothold in China.  The Treaty of Versailles in 1919, ended the fighti...

Send us Fan Mail Spring of 1912, and Yuan Shikai is the first president of the Republic of China.  He was given considerable powers, and quickly moved to consolidate it. The newly elected legislative assemblies, both national and provincial, were new political concepts to China.  Whether or not any of this new concept would work depended on many factors and time.   The Nationalists, or Guomindang,...

Send us Fan Mail The roughly forty-year period, between the fall of the imperial Qing Dynasty to the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China, is a complex, confusing, and ambiguous era in the history of China.  The era is defined by powerful and violent foreign influence in China and intense and violent Chinese nationalism.  I begin this episode near the end of the Qing Dynasty and the ushe...

Send us Fan Mail This series will cover the roughly 40-to-50-year period of Chinese history.  It will cover the waning years of the imperial Qing Dynasty to the inauguration of Communist China and the Chinese Nationalist resettlement on Taiwan.  A fascinating and complex period of time. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A final word about (and lessons from) each of the revolutions. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail By 1797, the second Directory already had a bad reputation and was mistrusted. It was viewed as corrupt and needed the military to support its continued existence.  The public had turned against the Directory.  In desperation, a coup d’état was planned. Its main author a fellow by the name of Abbe Sieyes.  In collaboration with Napoleon Bonaparte, the military, and others, the Cou...

Send us Fan Mail The Jacobins unsuccessfully stage a coup d’état in a final attempt to restore their political power in France.  By the late 1790’s, France was ready to move away from their radical message.   A new government was elected.  A new Directory took its seat.  The European wars ground on.  Napoleon Bonaparte, now an accomplished and famous figure, proposed to invade Egypt to economicall...

Send us Fan Mail By the fall of 1794, the Reign of Terror was ending.  France had turned anti-Jacobin.  The terror and tyranny offered by them was no longer seen as productive.  In 1795, the new French Constitution was adopted and the new government seated.  The new legislature was bi-cameral.  The executive functions of the nation to be run by a Directory.  The land war in Europe had once again t...

Send us Fan Mail By 1793, The War of (or in) the Vendee region (in France) exploded into a major counter revolution/insurrection against the French Revolution.  With the European war also going bad, the Committee of Public Safety took drastic measures to stop the insurrections.  In the fall of 1793, the former Queen Marie Antoinette  met the same fate as her husband had nine months earlier.  Publi...

Send us Fan Mail By early 1793, parts of France were beginning to heat up with counter-revolutions opposing the conditions many faced.  In rural France the opposition continued to grow and would later escalate into the War of the Vendee.  Partially in response, the National Assembly, now firmly under the control of the radical Jacobin Party, created the Committee of Public Safety.  The Committee w...

Send us Fan Mail The warnings given to the French in 1791 and 1792 by the other European powers were seen as a declaration of war.  The radical National Assembly declared war on Austria.  Prussia soon joined with Austria.  In 1792, the allied forces invaded France.  Despite the French military force’s early setbacks in the invasion, they did manage a large victory in the fall of 1792, and stopped...

Send us Fan Mail The French King and his family attempt to flee France but are quickly discovered and returned to Paris.  Concern for their safety led to the Declaration of Pillnitz in 1791.  It urged European powers to intervene in France on behalf of the beleaguered King and Royal Family.  The French took it as a declaration of war.  The summer of 1791, saw the Massacre of Champ de Mars in Paris...

Send us Fan Mail France confiscates church property in an effort to help pay for the nation's expenses and debt.  The National Assembly forces the clergy to sign loyalty oaths, and imposes additional church reforms.  These cause a schism in the church and with the the nation.   The National Assembly continues to assiduously work toward a National Constitution.  Meanwhile, the nation's fi...

Send us Fan Mail From the earliest moments of the revolution, France radically changed, and there was no going back.  The summer of 1789, brought the Great Fear and marked a particularly violent, dramatic, and notable period.  These events led to the August decrees promulgated by the National Assembly.  In a whirlwind session, the Assembly adopted a series of documents that would define the revolu...