Like Strangers in a Foreign Land: Chinese Officers Prepared at American Military Colleges, 1904-37

The lives of Chinese "returned students" who had studied military science in the United States between 1904 and 1937 straddled the end of the Qing dynasty and the creation of the Chinese Republic—a turbulent era of foreign hegemony and almost constant civil war. National and provincial military establishments held unique positions in the fragmented republic, yet commissions and postings were limited by alumni association membership. Tainted by their foreign education and distrusted for their lack of membership in dominant alumni cliques, they were denied significant roles in the line and staff of the Nationalist Army. Forced by circumstances to rely on one another, most would eventually abandon its ranks.