Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920-28, Second Edition

First published in 1982, this book remains the classic account of the arms trade in warlord China. The second edition includes a new preface that reframes the argument within the paradigm of critical militarism and state criminality. Arming the Chinese tells the story of the Western and Japanese merchants and governments who provided weapons to warlords for their expanding armies. Although the warlords were hearty individualists who retained control over domestic affairs and rarely relied on single foreign suppliers, the armaments trade, Chan argues, was a new form of imperialism, which perpetrated the continued Western and Japanese domination of China.