Warlordism at Bay Civil Alternatives to Military Rule in Early Republican China

Warlordism at Bay Civil Alternatives to Military Rule in Early Republican China by Edward A. McCord The 1911 Revolution in China was a crucial event that resulted in the demise not only of the rUling Manchu dynasty but of the imperial political system that had defined Chinese government for two thousand years. Advocates of this revolution had hoped that the republican government they sought to establish would provide a new foundation for national strength, which the imperial system no longer seemed able to supply. These hopes were shattered, as the Republic turned out to be even weaker than the dynastic government it had replaced. The most obvious sign of this weakness was the eventual devolution of state power into the hands of numerous and competing military commanders, usually referred to as "warlords." The political fragmentation and military rule represented by this "warlordism" thus came to symbolize the ultimate failure of the 1911 Revolution to fulfill Chinese national aspirations. Given the identification of warlordism with Republican politics and government, it is not surprising that many scholars see the establishment of military rule as a direct and immediate consequence of the 1911 Revolution. Thus, in a recent textbook Jack Gray concluded that, "In the course of the revolution of 1911-1912 government throughout the provinces had been militarized. "I Diana Lary likewise argued that the warlord era began in 1912, "on the ground that thereafter China was clearly under military rule, that military might had become the ultimate arbiter and legitimator of power holding. ,,2 Other scholars prefer to shift the date for the actual beginning of warlordism to the end of the Yuan Shikai presidency in 1916, noting that Yuan's command of the Beiyang Army enabled him to maintain at least some degree of unitary control over the country. As a result, the political fragmentation that is an essential part of the definition of warlordism is not seen as appearing until after Yuan's death. At the same time, the proponents of this view do not normally reject the conclusion that the first years of the Republic under Yuan's Presidency were still a time of military rule. Thus, Donald Sutton proposes differentiating between the onset of "militarism" in 1911 and the debut of warlordism in 1916: The age of militarism began in 1911, when the New Armies overthrew imperial authority and established a Republican government. Politics from then on was militarized: military men ruled directly or permitted a facade of civil rule. For a time military institutions, chiefly the Peiyang [Beiyang] Army, preserved a kind of unity, and central authority was reconstituted until 1916, the start of the period of warlordism. 3 38 I I I I I I I ( ( [ ( [ ~"." ..,._,."',•. ,, l.J ( J_' :lJ lJ ~ ~ ~ Whichever date is taken for the actual beginning of warlordism, few question the proposition that the 1911 Revolution itself marked the beginning of military rule in China. Despite this widespread'consensus on the initiation of militarism in china, the actual process by which military men established their political dominance in the wake of the 1911 Revolution has rarely been the object of detailed study. Generally speaking, the 1911 Revolution is simply viewed as creating a political vacuum, a collapse of civil authority and government at both the center and in the provinces, that not only gave military men the chance to seize political Ilower bU~ effectively left them as the only force able to grasp this pow~r.4 One of the most detailed examples of this view can be found~n the following passage from a 1971 study of warlord politics by Lucian pye: with the Revolution of 1911, the destruction of the formal monolithic structure of government was complete •••• Few formally organized groups closely related to the interests of the total society, or even of particular segments of the society, were directed to, and capable of, seeking political power to carry out specific policies . The only organizations that were in any sense able to seek political power were those in the military field. The military leaders had at their command armies that were personally loyal to them, and these semi-private armies became the only effective organizations with which to compete...