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Warlordism in Early Republican China
The emergence of warlordism, a condition under which military commanders exercise autonomous political power by virtue of their personal control of military force, made the early Republican period (1912–1927) a dark chapter in Chinese history. Warlordism arose as the consequence of a militarization of politics that accompanied the fall of China's last imperial dynasty. Unlike military interventions in many countries, military rule did not appear suddenly in China as the result of a military coup. Rather, warlordism emerged over a period of time as the application of military force in political struggles over the creation and control of the postimperial government drew military commanders into politics and ultimately allowed them to parlay military power into political domination. The subsequent competition among these military commanders, or “warlords,” to strengthen their own political positions led to additional military conflicts and civil wars, with devastating effects on Chinese society. In less than a decade after the 1911 Revolution, warlordism had become a defining feature of the Chinese “Republic.”
The combination of personal military and political power seen in Republican-period warlordism was by no means a new phenomenon in Chinese history. Periods between dynasties had often been marked by political fragmentation among competing military leaders (the powerful military governors who arose during the collapse of the Tang dynasty being a notable example). A more immediate historical precedent occurred in the mid-nineteenth century when regional army commanders, such as Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, organized and led personally-oriented armies to defeat the Taiping and other major rebellions. Rewarded with important civil positions as provincial governors or governors-general, these men wielded a considerable degree of political power, tempered only by their continued loyalty to the Qing dynasty.
The resemblance of these regional army commanders to later warlords has led some historians to trace twentieth-century warlordism to these nineteenth-century forces. However, the direct links connecting these armies and their commanders to Republican-period warlords are tenuous at best. The regional armies were first significantly reduced following the restoration of peace and then largely superseded at the turn of the century by modern-style “New Armies.” Unlike the regional armies, which drew their strength from a chain of personal loyalties, these new forces were organized on a relatively nonpersonal or bureaucratic basis. More warlord armies actually originated from these modern-style forces than from the remnants of regional armies that survived to the end of the dynasty. Likewise, late Qing provincial governors, who supposedly inherited the personal military powers of regional army commanders, did not survive the fall of the dynasty to become warlords. Thus, while the personalization of military power seen in nineteenth-century regional armies, and the combination of military and civil authority under late Qing provincial governors, may have provided some inspiration for Republican-period military commanders, there was no direct line of succession from late-Qing regional army commanders to Republican warlords.
While the personalist orientation of military power under the warlords cannot be traced to late Qing military organization, the military fragmentation characteristic of warlordism was influenced by the organizational diversity of the late Qing military. China did not have a unified national army on the eve of the 1911 Revolution, but rather a hodgepodge of old and new-style forces, which were often organized on a provincial or local basis. This military fragmentation resulted in part from the dynasty's inability to harness sufficient central resources to create a truly unified national army. At the same time, this organizational diversity reflected a long-standing dynastic strategy that guarded against military usurpation by preventing the accumulation of too much military power in the hands of any one commander. The advantages of this organizational diversity were lost, though, with the fall of the dynasty. In its fragmented state, the Chinese army was in no position to act as a unifying national force in the face of political instability. On the contrary, military intervention, when it occurred, would reflect the military's own fragmented organization, and thus enhance rather than inhibit political disunity.
The rise of warlordism differed from previous periods of military fragmentation in Chinese history because it did not simply reflect a military struggle to establish a new dynasty, but political and military conflict over how to create a new, nondynastic state. The crucial part played by military men and military power in the 1911 Revolution itself had laid the groundwork for a more expansive political role by the military. Historians seeking to understand the overthrow of China's two-thousand-year-old imperial tradition in 1911 have often focused their attention on issues such as modernizing reform movements, the development of Chinese nationalist thought, and the activities of revolutionary societies. The result has often been to forget that the outcome of the 1911 Revolution, in the last analysis, was determined by military force.
The 1911 Revolution began with an uprising by the Hubei provincial New Army at Wuchang on October 10, 1911. One by one, a majority of provinces eventually followed Hubei's lead to declare their independence of the Qing dynasty and their support for the establishment of a Republic. In each case, New Army units played a leading role, either in provincial revolutionary uprisings or in providing military support for revolutionary declarations by civilian elites. The revolutionary predilection of New Army units was largely the result of the enlistment of large numbers of educated youths into these forces, inspired to no small extent by the increased status of military service in a time of rising nationalism. The susceptibility of these patriotic youths to revolutionary appeals quickly turned many New Army units into subversive threats to the dynasty they were supposed to defend. The 1911 Revolution cannot, of course, be entirely understood in military terms. The Revolution would not have occurred without a broader disaffection of the Chinese elite, of which military men were only one portion. Nonetheless, the revolutionary cause also could not have succeeded without this crucial military support.
Although setting an important precedent for military forays into politics and legitimating the use of military force for political ends, the army's role in the 1911 Revolution did not immediately result in fullblown warlordism. For example, initial revolutionary uprisings were largely carried out by activists in the rank and file of New Army units, not by military commanders, and often involved the ouster of senior officers who remained loyal to the dynasty. Thus, the personal control of military commanders over their troops, one hallmark of warlordism, was not yet evident in these military actions. A more important contribution of the revolution to the eventual emergence of warlordism was the institutionalization of military participation in government. In the aftermath of revolutionary uprisings, military men were included in the elite coalitions that organized new administrations in most rebellious provinces. Recognizing the military demands of the revolutionary struggle, “military governors” were placed at the head of most of these provincial governments. The establishment of such positions did not necessarily mean the establishment of military rule. The participation of prominent gentry leaders in these governments helped to provide considerable continuity in civil administration. Over half of the provincial military governors who held office in the first months of the revolution were not even military men. Nonetheless, the creation of such posts would provide later military commanders with a foundation for the extension of their control over civil administration.
The military victory of the 1911 Revolution was never a foregone conclusion. The province-by-province progression of the revolution left many revolutionary forces temporarily isolated and vulnerable to military action by forces loyal to the dynasty. The Yangzi valley quickly became the focal point of a revolutionary civil war, with hard-fought battles over strategic cities such as Wuhan and Nanjing. While provincial New Armies dominated revolutionary uprisings, the Qing dynasty pinned its own hopes for the suppression of the revolt on the continued loyalty of the largest of the New Armies, the six-division Beiyang Army. To this end, the court recalled Yuan Shikai from his retirement to lead the dynasty's defense, counting on his influence as the army's founder to keep it loyal to the dynasty. Instead, Yuan played both sides of the fence. Hoping to bring the revolutionary war to a quick conclusion, the provisional president of the Republican forces, the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, agreed to yield the presidency to Yuan Shikai in exchange for his betrayal of the Qing dynasty. When Yuan accepted these terms, the military balance of power shifted decisively in favor of the revolution. Using the threat of Beiyang Army defections, Yuan pressured the child emperor to abdicate and assumed the presidency of the new Chinese Republic.
The success of the 1911 Revolution in achieving the overthrow of the last imperial dynasty was unfortunately not accompanied by a consensus on the structure and distribution of political power in the new Republican regime. While Yuan Shikai advocated a centralized, bureaucratic government under a strong presidency, many revolutionary activists, emerging political parties, and elite-based provincial regimes favored increased local self-government, federalism, and a strong parliamentary system. All these arguments were framed in terms of creating greater national strength, but just as clearly reflected the personal political interests of their advocates. Having observed the political importance of military power in the revolution, neither Yuan nor his opponents were reluctant to use military force to resolve these issues. Accumulated grievances against what many saw as Yuan Shikai's dictatorial tendencies (including complicity in the assassination of his main parliamentary opponent and the negotiation of foreign loans to strengthen his military forces without parliamentary consent) finally came to a head in 1913 when Yuan arbitrarily dismissed several politically troublesome governors in former revolutionary provinces. Fearing Yuan's actions were aimed at the elimination of all political opposition, Sun Yat-sen reemerged to call for an anti-Yuan “Second Revolution.”
Military force was decisive in the revolutionary attempt of 1913 as it had been in 1911. Only seven provinces responded to Sun Yat-sen's call, and most of these provinces had drastically reduced their military forces following the 1911 Revolution. Yuan had meanwhile expanded the Beiyang Army as the main “national” army (not coincidentally insuring the loyalty of its officers), and quickly defeated the forces arrayed against him. Yuan's actions in the wake of his victory confirmed Sun's worst fears. Yuan promulgated a new constitution that concentrated power in the presidency, dissolved the National Assembly and replaced it with a more subservient body, banned Sun's political party, removed independent provincial governors within reach of his armies, and abolished all local and provincial representative assemblies. Although his power over the entire country was never complete, Yuan did his best to transform the new Republic into a centralized dictatorship.
Due to the importance of military power in his own political rise and the fact that many of the military leaders to emerge as warlords originally served under him in the Beiyang Army, Yuan shikai is sometimes referred to as the “father of warlordism.” Nonetheless, having gained the presidency, Yuan was not prepared to see a devolution of political power into the hands of local military commanders. Whenever possible, he sought to keep military governorships out of the hands of the strongest commanders and to reestablish the precedence of civil governors over these military posts. Nonetheless, to the extent that Yuan continued to rely on military force to uphold his political authority, he ultimately undermined the strong central and civil state that was his goal. Yuan's failure became obvious in late 1915 when he sought to consolidate his authority even further by declaring himself emperor.
While many had been willing to accept Yuan's dictatorship as the price for peace and order, he overstepped the bounds of political tolerance with his monarchical ambitions. Revolutionary activists such as Sun Yat-sen, as well as more moderate politicians, appealed to military commanders in southwestern provinces that had not been occupied by Beiyang Army forces (Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and Guangdong) to rise against Yuan. The Yunnan Army was the first to respond. Renaming itself the National Protection Army in December 1915, the Yunnan Army initiated the National Protection or Anti-Monarchical War with a call for the overthrow of the new emperor. Expeditionary forces from Yunnan soon gained support from military forces in surrounding provinces until the entire southwest was in open revolt. Although Yuan sent Beiyang Army forces to crush the revolt, many of Yuan's own commanders were themselves uncomfortable with his imperial ambitions and were reluctant to press the war with vigor. As opposition to Yuan grew, some of his commanders began to consider their own military intervention against him. Only Yuan's death in June 1916 ended the need for further struggle.
The Anti-Monarchical War was a turning point in the emergence of warlordism. Military governors in National Protection provinces, most notably Tang Jiyao in Yunnan and Lu Rongting in Guangxi, took advantage of the conflict to throw off remaining central constraints and assume direct control over provincial administrations. In the north, a number of military commanders manipulated Yuan's need for their support to acquire broader administrative powers. Two prominent examples were Wang Zhanyuan, commander of the Beiyang 2nd Division in Hubei, and Zhang Zuolin, commander of the largest garrison force in Fengtian province, both of whom had been denied top administrative posts by Yuan. With the outbreak of the war, these men forced Yuan's agreement to their appointments as military governors and their control over civil administrations. By this means, these commanders gained direct access to official financial resources to support, and thus exert greater personal control over, the military forces at their command. For such men, then, the Anti-Monarchical War marked their transition to warlordism.
The emergence of warlordism was not, however, a uniform process. In some areas, no single military commander possessed sufficient power to gain a dominant political position. In a number of provinces, a degree of civilian authority remained or was restored at the end of the Anti-Monarchical War. Yuan shikai's death even provided some hope that a reconstituted central government could regain control over increasingly autonomous provinces and begin to recover the political powers assumed by military men. Unfortunately, the main result of Yuan's death was to reopen, rather than resolve, the basic constitutional issues that had troubled the Republic since its inception. The ensuing political struggles only served to confirm the political importance of the military and to complete the hold of warlordism on Chinese society.
Map 10.1 China during the Warlord Period, 1916–1928. Adapted by Don Graff based upon “Provinces of China, 1916–1928,” in Warlord Politics in China, Hsi-sheng Ch'i (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976).
Hopes for restored national unity at the end of the Anti-Monarchical War were based on a number of political compromises balancing the various interests that had emerged during the war. The vice president, Li Yuanhong, who now succeeded to the presidency, had revolutionary credentials (as military governor of Hubei during the 1911 Revolution) but an ambiguous relationship to revolutionary activists (having opposed the Second Revolution). Thus he was seen as a potentially neutral political figure. The continuing importance of the Beiyang Army was recognized by giving two top Beiyang Army leaders, Duan Qirui and Feng Guozhang, positions as premier and vice president, respectively. As a concession to Yuan's opponents, the National Assembly dissolved after the Second Revolution was restored, as was the provisional constitution Yuan had supplanted with his more authoritarian document.
Despite this balancing of political interests, there was still no consensus within the new government on basic constitutional issues, such as the relative powers of executive and legislative branches or the relationship between national, provincial, and local governments. Bitter political struggles soon broke out between the president, the premier, the National Assembly, and the provinces over a wide range of issues. In the absence of an appropriate political framework to resolve these issues, those who had access to military power were not reluctant to use it to achieve their political ends. Initial military pressure on political issues was largely limited to threatening public announcements by military commanders. Such pressure became more organized when the Beiyang Army and other northern military governors formed a “military governors' association” to support Duan Qirui's struggles against both Li Yuanhong and the National Assembly. Open military intervention was not long in coming. When Li Yuanhong tried to remove Duan from his position in May 1917, Duan rallied his military supporters to declare their independence of Li's government. Li then accepted the offer of another general, Zhang Xun, to mediate this conflict. As the first step in this “mediation,” Zhang forced Li to dissolve the National Assembly. Then, with his own troops ensconced in Beijing, Zhang betrayed Li by declaring the restoration of the Qing dynasty. As Li fled the capital, the political future of China was again firmly in military hands.
Zhang Xun's restoration attempt provided Duan with an opportunity to lead his own military supporters to Beijing to “save” the Republic, and in the process create a new government dominated by the Beiyang Army. Easily defeating Zhang's forces, Duan announced that the imperial restoration had destroyed the constitutional foundation of Li's government. While Duan kept his own position as premier, his Beiyang Army compatriot, Vice President Feng Guozhang, assumed the presidency in Li's place. A new constitution and a new National Assembly were then created to support their government.
Having established Beiyang Army dominance over the Beijing government, Duan and Feng turned their attention to the restoration of central authority over the rest of the country. Their main targets were southern provinces that had remained largely autonomous since the Anti-Monar-chical War. Riding on their military success in Beijing, Duan and Feng agreed to use military force to achieve this political unification. In the summer of 1917, Beiyang Army troops began to move into Hunan and Sichuan provinces in the first step of a pincer movement to bring recalcitrant southern provinces to heel.
The southern provinces that had participated in the National Protection Movement against Yuan refused to accept the legitimacy of the unilateral Beiyang Army reconstitution of the Beijing government. Seeking to build on this opposition, Sun Yat-sen called for the organization of a “Constitutional Protection” movement to restore the early Republican constitution and recall the original National Assembly. Supported by the main military leaders of the south, Lu Rongting of Guangxi and Tang Jiyao of Yunnan, Sun organized an alternate government in Canton (Guangzhou). The legitimacy of this government was enhanced when both the Chinese navy and a substantial portion of the old National Assembly joined Sun in Canton. Not unexpectedly, then, when Hunan and Sichuan armies rose up against the northern invasion of their provinces, they received the political support of the Canton government and military support from other southern provinces. The result was the outbreak of yet another civil war, the Constitutional Protection or North-South War.
As in previous military conflicts of the early Republic, the dependence on individual military commanders to carry out the political objectives of the North-South War provided an opportunity for these commanders to increase their own political influence. The appearance of competing Beijing and Canton political authorities vying for the support of these commanders only served to enhance their political leverage. The end result was that while the North-South War was supposedly fought over constitutional issues, the actual course of the war was determined by the interests of the military commanders who fought it.
The ability of individual military commanders to influence political outcomes was most evident in actions taken by Wu Peifu, commander of the Beiyang vanguard in Hunan. Wu had originally been a strong supporter of military unification. Assigned to the Hunan front in early 1918, Wu's forces were largely responsible for victories that brought most of Hunan under Beiyang control. However, when Duan Qirui slighted his contribution by awarding the post of Hunan military governor to another commander, Wu negotiated a cease-fire with his southern enemies and effectively brought the northern advance, and the war itself, to a halt. Wu's action, though particularly striking in its effect, was by no means exceptional. From the other side of the conflict, Lu Rongting made it clear that he would abandon his opposition to the Beijing government if his own hegemony over Guangdong and Guangxi was guaranteed.
The independent actions taken by Wu, Lu and other commanders in the North-South War made this conflict another turning point in the development of warlordism. The constitutional issues that had framed earlier conflicts faded into the background as this and subsequent wars increasingly reflected little more than the competing interests of military commanders and military factions. In their public announcements, military commanders continued to frame their actions in terms of higher patriotic principles. Some were no doubt even sincere in their commitment to these principles. Nonetheless, military men had become political actors on the basis of their military power, and to survive as political actors this military power had to be maintained. The warlord era therefore came to be defined by the increasing number and scale of civil wars and military conflicts fought by warlords and warlord factions for political and military resources.
The appearance of competing military factions was in itself another significant feature of the North-South War. While every military commander was a potential warlord, the actual political autonomy of individual commanders could be limited by numerous constraints, including the size of their armies, access to financial and military resources, and the comparative power of other military commanders with whom they interacted. Commanders therefore usually found their interests best served by factional associations that increased their own power through collaboration with other commanders. Warlord factions were usually headed by a military leader who had attained a significant political position that gave him access to resources (tax revenues, weapons, and administrative positions) that could be used to reward his followers. While familial, school, and organizational ties were emphasized to enhance factional unity, the success of a factional leader was measured by his ability to provide these rewards. Ironically, this success could also have a detrimental effect on factional unity as access to resources increased the autonomous political interests of individual faction members. In this regard, the Beiyang Army under Yuan shikai was a prototype for subsequent warlord factions in both their strengths and weaknesses. While Yuan initially used the Beiyang Army to establish his will over much of China, the commanders who benefited most from his success also contributed to his downfall by their unwillingness to risk their own interests by providing full support for Yuan's monarchical enterprise.
Fissures that were already apparent within northern and southern forces prior to the North-South War initially provided the foundation for the appearance of two dominant factions on each side. The Beiyang Army and its affiliates split into two main factions named after the home provinces and main bases of their top leaders: the Anhui clique led by Duan Qirui and the Zhili clique led first by Feng Guozhang. Two leading military factions also arose in the south: the Yunnan clique under Tang Jiyao and the Guangxi clique of Lu Rongting. The appearance of these dominant factions would, however, eventually be followed by additional factional divisions. The emergence of military factions also marked a shift in the direction of subsequent military conflicts, which would no longer pit the north against the south but would reflect narrower regional struggles among these factions. The overall pattern of these struggles differed somewhat in the north and in the south. In the north, large military coalitions formed and collapsed over the course of major wars fought for control of the Beijing government. In the south, military conflicts reflected the rise of provincial-based factions to challenge the dominance of the Yunnan and Guangxi cliques.
The factional breakup of the Beiyang Army into Anhui and Zhili cliques began with a division of interests over the strategy and the spoils of the North-South War. Duan Qirui had been the main advocate of military unification and used the war to strengthen the positions of his closest associates. While Feng Guozhang initially supported the war, he soon found greater political benefits, in his rivalry with Duan, in supporting a negotiated settlement of north-south differences. Feng found support from Beiyang Army commanders in central China who feared the expansion of the conflict into their domains, and from commanders such as Wu Peifu who resented Duan's lack of recognition of their efforts. When Feng died in 1919, shortly after the end of his term of office as president, Wu Peifu's immediate superior, Cao Kun, assumed leadership of the Zhili clique.
The rivalry between the Anhui and Zhili cliques eventually led to war. The prelude to this conflict was the withdrawal of Wu Peifu and other Zhili-affiliated commanders from Hunan in early 1920. In an advance agreement with his supposed southern enemies, Wu also allowed the Hunan Army to follow on the heels of his retreat and drive Duan's supporters from Hunan. Despite this loss, Duan's Anhui clique was still the strongest power in the north, controlling a broad swath of provinces across northern China and down the eastern coast. Apart from Cao's home base in south Zhili, Zhili clique commanders only controlled the Yangzi valley provinces of Hubei, Jiangxi, and Jiangsu. This disparity was reduced, though, when Cao formed an alliance with Zhang Zuolin, the emerging leader of a non-Beiyang military faction based in Manchuria, usually referred to as the Fengtian clique. In exchange for Zhang's support, Duan had originally supported the extension of Zhang's power from Fengtian to the other two Manchurian provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang. Nonetheless, when Duan began to support the buildup of another force on the Mongolian border, which Zhang saw as his sphere of influence, Zhang shifted his support to Cao. In the summer of 1920, Cao and Zhang attacked and crushed Duan's forces between them in the Zhili-Anhui War.
The Zhili-Anhui War resulted in a major redistribution of power in north China. Duan Qirui was forced to resign, while the Fengtian and Zhili cliques joined to organize a new government in Beijing. Zhang's armies meanwhile moved up to Beijing and took control over northern provinces along the Manchurian and Mongolian borders. Most of the rest of north and central China came under Zhili control. The Anhui clique was left only with a small foothold in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. The Zhili-Fengtian alliance did not last long. Conflicts soon arose between the two cliques over the policies and resources of the Beijing government. The result was yet another major war, the First Zhili-Fengtian War in the spring of 1922. This war pushed Zhang Zuolin's forces back into Manchuria and gave the Zhili clique total control over the Beijing government.
As internal conflicts in north China had eliminated any hope of a reconquest of the south, successive Beijing governments had sought to negotiate some resolution of their differences. Feng Guozhang's successor as president, the Beiyang Army elder statesman Xu Shichang, supported a north-south peace conference in 1919. However, this conference broke down over the refusal of military commanders on both sides to compromise over contested territory. Another attempt to entice the south back into Beijing's fold came after the First Zhili-Fengtian War, when Li Yuanhong was recalled to the presidency and the early-Republican National Assembly restored in an obvious concession to long-standing southern “constitutional protection” demands. This effort was derailed, however, by Cao Kun's growing ambition. In the summer of 1923 Cao forced Li to resign and bribed the National Assembly to elect him president. These actions destroyed Cao's reputation as a national leader and shattered hope in many quarters for national reunification under the Zhili clique.
The downfall of the Zhili clique was not long in coming. When Zhili forces attacked the Anhui clique remnant in Zhejiang and Fujian in September 1924, Zhang Zuolin, fearing his own increasing isolation, declared war against the Zhili clique in the Second Zhili-Fengtian War. The record number of nearly 300,000 troops mobilized for this conflict reflected the increasing scale and intensity of warfare in this period. The Zhili clique began the war with a clear advantage. Its hopes for a decisive victory were smashed, however, when Feng Yuxiang, the “Christian general” whose well-disciplined army was a key factor in Zhili strength, switched sides. Seizing Beijing and forcing Cao Kun's resignation, Feng collaborated with Zhang Zuolin in a successful two-front attack that defeated the main Zhili army under Wu Peifu on the Manchurian front.
The Second Zhili-Fengtian War left the north more politically confused than at any time since Yuan shikai's death. The Fengtian clique expanded beyond Manchuria, taking control of Beijing away from Feng Yuxiang and extending its power south along the eastern coast. Feng Yuxiang emerged as a new faction leader with control over several provinces to the north and west of Beijing. Zhili clique commanders still controlled a swath of provinces from Henan to Fujian. However, the relationship between these factions remained unsettled, and alliances were broken as quickly as they were made. Thus, while Zhili commanders resisted the advance of Fengtian armies toward the Yangzi River, Wu Peifu allied with Zhang Zuolin in an attack on Feng Yuxiang. Meanwhile, little pretense of regular constitutional government remained. The Beijing government continued to operate under a series of ad hoc chief executives, but no new president was elected. Finally, in 1927 Zhang Zuolin took direct control over the Beijing government with the title of “grand marshal.”
Warlord struggles in the south led to an even greater degree of political disintegration. In the period between the 1911 Revolution and the North-South War, both the Yunnan and Guangxi armies had expanded beyond their own borders and allied with other provincial forces to form two multiprovince military factions. The Yunnan clique under Tang Jiyao sent troops into southern Sichuan and exerted influence over Guizhou and west Hunan. The Guangxi clique under Lu Rongting extended its control over Guangdong and allied with provincial forces in south Hunan. Northern threats in the National Protection and North-South Wars had encouraged the collaboration of these two factions and their local allies against a common enemy. With the removal of these threats, however, this common interest faded. The result was not just conflict between the Yunnan and Guangxi cliques, but increased resentment by other provincial armies over the occupation of their provinces by Yunnan and Guangxi troops. Over the course of 1920, the power of these two cliques was drastically reduced as the Yunnan and Guangxi armies were forced back within their own provincial borders. Internal struggles within these armies following this debacle eventually forced both Tang and Lu from power. The decline of these two factions did not, however, lead to greater peace in the south, but intensified struggles by military factions within each province for the control of provincial and local governments.
In contrast to the north, where multiprovince factions continued to fight for control of Beijing with at least the stated goal of restoring central authority, some southern warlords championed the idea of federalism as a defense against renewed northern invasions or threats from their immediate neighbors. Leading civilian politicians also supported this idea, hoping that the principle of provincial self-government would end interprovincial military conflicts, eliminate the need for military rule, and ultimately provide a federalist framework for renewed national unity. In the end, though, provincial self-government and federalism simply became slogans used by provincial warlords to justify their own power and did little to stop either inter- or intraprovincial military conflicts.
A wild card in warlord struggles of the south was Sun Yat-sen's effort to establish an alternate national government at Canton and initiate his own military campaign for national unification. While a variety of warlords gave lip service to Sun's cause, they did so mainly because an affiliation with Sun helped legitimate their own regimes. They were less willing to support Sun's military objectives or to allow Sun to interfere in their own affairs. Thus, after coming into conflict with Lu Rongting, Sun was forced to resign from his position as head of the Canton government in 1918. In 1921, Sun was invited to create a new government in Canton following the expulsion of the Guangxi army from Guangdong. In little over a year, though, Sun was again forced to leave his position in a conflict with the dominant Guangdong warlord. Only on his third attempt in 1923 would Sun finally establish a solid base in Guangdong by developing his own party army to keep his warlord enemies at bay. Although Sun, who died in 1925, would not see the results, his vision of an antiwarlord Northern Expedition was finally realized in 1926. The success of this campaign, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, resulted in the nominal reunification under a new Nationalist Party (Guomindang) central government established in Nanjing in 1927. This event has conventionally been taken to mark the end of China's warlord era.
This brief survey only touches the surface of the convoluted politics and incessant warfare of the warlord period. While factional alliances provided a broad framework for many conflicts, some warlords remained independent or were only loosely allied to these factions. Numerous minor conflicts involved nothing more than the competing interests of individual commanders. Territorial bases of warlord power were also in a constant state of flux. The size of warlord bases varied from multiprovince alliances, to single-province enclaves, to subprovince garrison commands. A few warlords were able to maintain stable control over one area for fairly long periods of time, with Yan Xishan's rule over Shanxi province from 1911 to 1949 setting the record. Other regions experienced alternating patterns of territorial consolidation and fragmentation under a succession of competing warlords. In most cases, war remained the primary catalyst for these territorial and political changes.
The conditions of warlordism had a devastating effect on the lives of the Chinese people, as well as on broader nationalist aspirations. As military commanders competed to increase their own military “capital,” the number of men under arms rose from under half a million at the end of the Qing dynasty to over two million in the 1920s. The dedication of this expanded military establishment to domestic struggle, however, weakened rather than strengthened its effectiveness for national defense. The political and military fragmentation represented by warlordism likewise limited China's ability to take a united stand against foreign threats. Meanwhile, with warlords in control of civil administrations, state finances were increasingly committed to military ends. The people were burdened with new taxes and loans raised by warlord rulers to support their growing armies, while funding for education and other public services was drastically reduced. Populations in war zones suffered more directly from the requisitions and abuses of passing armies as well as from battles that disrupted agriculture and commerce and destroyed their homes.
While warlordism grew from military struggles that had attempted to resolve the political problems of the early Chinese Republic, within a decade of the 1911 Revolution the devastating effects of warlord misrule and the destructiveness of warlord wars made warlordism itself China's most pressing political problem. Meanwhile, the political issues that had framed early Republican politics were also changed by the emergence of warlordism. Thus, opportunistic warlord manipulation of the Beijing government and hypocritical support for local “self-government” discredited both constitutionalism and federalism as political alternatives. At the same time, the emergence of antiwarlordism as a nationalist goal stimulated new political movements, and provided a context for both the revitalization of Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist Party and the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.
Despite the “victory” of the Nationalist Party's Northern Expedition, and the “reunification” of China under a new Nationalist government in Nanjing in 1927, it would be some time before the shadow of warlordism over China would be lifted. First, all warlords were not simply eliminated by the Northern Expedition. Many were absorbed into the Nationalist party army and, in exchange for their allegiance to the new government, allowed to retain a considerable degree of political autonomy in their garrison areas. These residual warlords would remain a thorn in the side of the Nationalist government and would not be completely eliminated until after the Communist victory in 1949. Although the warlords did eventually disappear, the legacy of warlordism was more lasting. To achieve success in a military era, both the Nationalist and the Communist parties ultimately had to find ways to accommodate military power within their political structures. The importance of the military as a foundation for political power was perhaps most obvious in Chiang Kai-shek's government, both on the mainland and in Taiwan. However, Mao Zedong also drew a lesson from the warlord era that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Although Mao insisted that the party should control the gun, the People's Liberation Army has nonetheless remained a political force in the Chinese Communist Party up to the present. Finally, warlordism also left an enduring scar on the political consciousness of the Chinese people. The ability of the Communist Party to appeal to popular apprehensions about threats to national unity or the danger of political disorder are rooted, at least in part, in memories of the civil wars and political instability of the warlord era.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
The two most important studies of Yuan shikai and the Beiyang Army for the late Qing and early Republican periods respectively are Stephen R. MacKinnon, Power and Politics in Late Imperial China: Yuan shi-kai in Beijing and Tianjin, 1901-1908 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980) and Ernest P. Young, The Presidency of Yuan shih-k'ai: Liberalism and Dictatorship in Early Republican China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977). Both works challenge the conventional portrayal of Yuan as the “father of Chinese warlordism” with more complicated pictures of Yuan's role in this transitional period. An important study of the role of the military in the 1911 Revolution, with a particular emphasis on the revolutionary subversion of the New Armies, is Edmund S. K. Fung, The Military Dimension of the Chinese Revolution (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980). The only major work to focus specifically on the issue of the origins of Chinese warlordism, examined through case studies of Hunan and Hubei provinces, is Edward A. McCord, The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993).
A significant number of books have been published that describe individual warlords or warlord cliques. Two classic biographical studies are Donald Gillin, Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province, 1911–1949 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967) and James E. Sheridan, Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966). Two additional studies of major warlord figures (Wu Peifu and Zhang Zuolin) that also delve more deeply into the relationship between warlords and imperialist powers in China are Odoric Y. K. Wou, Militarism in Modern China: The Career of Wu P'ei-fu (Dawson: Australian National University Press, 1978) and Gavan McCormack, Chang Tso-lin in Northeast China, 1911–1928: China, Japan and the Manchurian Idea (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977). Two excellent studies of specific warlord factions are Donald S. Sutton, Provincial Militarism and the Chinese Republic: The Yunnan Army, 1905–25 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980) and Diana Lary, Region and Nation: The Kwangsi Clique in Chinese Politics, 1925–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Robert A. Kapp examines one of the more extreme examples of military fragmentation within one province in Szechwan and the Chinese Republic: Provincial Militarism and Central Power, 1911–1938 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). The best of the very few works to examine warlord politics in a more comprehensive fashion is Hsi-sheng Ch'i, Warlord Politics in China, 1916–1928 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), which applies systems theory analysis to the relations of warlord factions. The broader factional politics that characterized warlord struggles for the control of the Beijing government are also examined in detail in Andrew Nathan, Peking Politics, 1918–1923: Factionalism and the Failure of Constitutionalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976).
A few authors have contributed more topical studies of warlordism. One example is Diana Lary's excellent study, Warlord Soldiers: Chinese Common Soldiers, 1911–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). One aspect of the complicated issue of how warlords armed their forces is examined in Anthony B. Chan, Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920–1928 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982). Finally, Arthur Waldron, From War to Nationalism: China's Turning Point, 1924–1925 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) is the only book to examine a specific war and its broader impact on Chinese society.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
With the focus of much past scholarship on the careers of individual warlords, the histories of military cliques, and warlord politics (largely defined in terms of relations among the warlords themselves), many issues relating warlordism to broader developments in Chinese society have barely been explored. For example, much work remains to be done on the specific economic impact of warlordism, not only on the lives of the Chinese people but on the shape of the Chinese economy. A better understanding of the development of modern Chinese political thought and institutions could result from more careful study of subjects such as the psychological effect of persistent warfare on Chinese society, the role of warlordism as both a stimulant for and an obstacle to revolutionary movements, and the impact of military rule on government administration. Finally, with the exception of the few topical studies noted, many of the classic subjects of traditional military history have been largely unexplored. Further study, for example, of developments in military organization, strategy, and logistics in relation to the actual conduct of war under warlordism is needed to round out an understanding of this period of China's history.