Imperial Troops Research Articles

Canton, 1857

Canton, 1857 May Caroline Chan (bio) January 1857 opened with a bang, if not four of them: thanks to two overzealous colonial administrators, Sir John Bowring and Consul Harry Parkes, four Chinese forts lay in ruins in Canton Province. Britain had been at war with China since October 1856 because these two men had contested the registration of the Arrow, a lorcha sailing vessel registered in Hong Kong with a British captain, Thomas Kennedy (Wong 3). While this vessel was docked in Canton Harbour on the morning of 8 October 1856, Chinese officials boarded it and arrested the Chinese crew because it contained two suspected pirates. The Chinese marine police also allegedly pulled down the British ensign during this arrest. This act of aggression resulted in a general election and what historians now refer to as the Arrow War. Though Prime Minister Palmerston viewed it as only a "quarrel," Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels labelled it the "Second Opium War" (Marx). As this name suggests, they suspected that the excessive military response to the Arrow episode was really a British attempt to seize more territory and to open markets for Indian opium sales—in other words, to extend the largest drug trade in world history. Records of parliamentary debates in January and February of 1857 show liberal politicians were similarly wary about using military force in a thinly veiled endeavour to pressure the Chinese into concessions that they had refused to accept at the end of the First Opium War (1838-42). In the meantime, Parkes and Bowring bided their time, waiting for the right moment to unleash British firepower on what they saw as a recalcitrant Chinese government, unbowed after the Opium War. China's Arrow War is often eclipsed by the horror and drama played out in India's Sepoy Mutiny, but the two events are tied together by shared military resources and Britain's opium profits. Britain was growing wealthy from Indian-produced opium, which was in turn sold illegally in China, redressing Britain's earlier trade deficit with China. Even after the Opium War, China restricted British trade to a handful of treaty ports and continued to ban opium. [End Page 31] Parkes and Bowring worked tirelessly to get Canton opened to British trade, to fulfill the last concession in the Treaty of Nanking, but to no avail—until the moment of the Arrow conflict. China had been the original destination of British imperial troops before the Sepoy Mutiny started on 10 May 1857. The mutiny grabbed Britain's imagination with terrifying tales of innocents slaughtered and natives running wild.1 In the British imagination, the mutiny's suppression became a moral imperative. The public debate over using excessive military force to bend the Chinese will to Britain's economic agenda disappeared in the shock and revulsion over the Sepoy Uprising. Troops were quickly diverted to India, leaving Parkes and Bowring simmering in China, with their plans for retaliation on hold. Unlike Parkes and Bowring, historians and politicians would describe Britain's war with China from October 1856 to October 1860 as "causeless" and "sordid" (Maxwell 124; Innes 218). The contested registry of the Arrow gave the pretext for the conflict and was soon forgotten for political expediency. Technically, the vessel was British only because of its captain and its registry at Hong Kong. Botanist Robert Fortune wrote in 1857 how lorchas had no clear identity: Lorchas are not English vessels, as some people appear to imagine, and are rarely owned or sailed by Englishmen. They are Portuguese vessels .... They are manned, almost without exception, by Chinese .... These vessels, whether in convoying or in simple trading, do not confine themselves to the five ports at which foreigners are permitted by treaty to trade, and are well known both to the Chinese government and to foreigners as inveterate smugglers. (424-25) Fortune knew that British smugglers routinely bypassed the legal trading ports designated by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, as he was the official smuggler of Chinese tea plants for the British tea plantations in Northern India and would therefore have been familiar with the technicalities of boat registry as exploited on all sides. British officials on...

Christian Magistrate and Territorial Church: Johannes Brenz and the German Reformation (review)

Reviewed by: Christian Magistrate and Territorial Church: Johannes Brenz and the German Reformation Robert Kolb Christian Magistrate and Territorial Church: Johannes Brenz and the German Reformation. By James M. Estes. Rev. ed. [Publications of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Essays and Studies, 12.] (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. 2007. Pp. 243. $21.50. ISBN 978-0-772-72034-4.) Martin Luther’s call for reform built a team that introduced the Reformation in the Wittenberg way to parishes and territorial churches in various parts of central and northern Europe. Perhaps the most influential member of that team who was never a student in Wittenberg and never resident there was Johannes Brenz, a Swabian, who found Luther’s presentation captivating at the provincial meeting of his Augustinian Eremites in Heidelberg in 1518, where he presented his “theologia crucis.” He became a reformer in the imperial city Schwäbisch Hall, was driven into hiding by imperial troops occupying that area after the Smalcald War, and then assumed formal leadership of the church in the duchy of Württemberg when the effort of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to eradicate the Lutherans weakened in 1553. As an exegete, Brenz shaped the biblical interpretation and preaching of his own time and subsequent generations across a broader Protestant spectrum. He also exercised considerable influence in questions of the organization of the evangelical territorial churches, both in theoretical planning and active participation in the reformations of several German principalities. This is the subject of Estes’s study. Originally published in 1982, the book appears in revised form, with an updated bibliography and insights from further study of Estes and other scholars in the intervening quarter-century. The original work pioneered English-language research into Brenz’s life and work and was among the earliest modern examinations of his impact in any language. Estes carefully sets Brenz’s thinking of ecclesiastical polity in the setting of late- medieval developments of princely power over local church affairs. The course of German church governance had not been different in the late Middle Ages from its parallels in France, England, or the Iberian states, although no Pragmatic Sanction distanced the German churches quite as far from Rome as had the French. These medieval developments laid a firm basis for Brenz’s designs for church governance, first in Hall and then in Württemberg; Estes traces the process of this development of plans for the [End Page 386] administration of church life with perceptive insights into the influences on Brenz, also from fellow reformers, and his impact. He did not always get his way with the governments for which he worked, especially in the enforcement of good morals. Particularly significant was Brenz’s relatively “liberal” stance on questions of toleration of Anabaptists; his position won the praise of Sebastian Castellio. Brenz also shared Luther’s sharp rejection of armed resistance to higher political authority, the emperor, by lesser magistrates and held to his position more stubbornly and longer than Luther. Because his own duke, Christoph, was dependent on Habsburg power in the period of the Interims and maintained a neutral position after the Smalcald War between the brothers Emperor Charles and King Ferdinand, on the one side, and the evangelical princes around Elector Moritz of Saxony, Brenz was not pressured into abandoning his stance that reflected his deep respect for the empire and for political authority. This volume was initially a significant and helpful contribution to understanding an important element in the dynamics of reform in sixteenth-century Germany. Readers experience the master’s hand in reading the revision. Its elucidation and analysis of Brenz’s construction and execution of his understanding of ecclesiastical polity make this book a valuable exposition of an important aspect of the Lutheran Reformation. Robert Kolb Concordia Seminary, St. Louis Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press

The Ypres League and the Commemoration of the Ypres Salient, 1914—1940

This article explores British visions of Ypres between 1914 and 1940, and concentrates on the work of the crucial interwar remembrance movement, the Ypres League. The city of Ypres became a crucial symbol of all Britain was fighting for during the course of the First World War, and rapidly developed a holy aura. Led by the league, the horrors of industrial warfare were commuted into a spiritual quest in which British and imperial troops were purified by their experiences in the Ypres salient. After the war, British people visited Ypres in large numbers in order to imagine the sufferings of the servicemen and gain a spiritual benefit often with the assistance of the Ypres League and its publications. This reflected a culture of high diction and ritual greatly at odds with the idea that the twenties and thirties saw the dawn of an age disillusioned with the values of 1914. The British also became resident in Ypres in considerable numbers, and the article explores the relationship between the local population and the immigrants. By exploring the nature of war commemoration through the detailed case study of one particular site, it is intended to deepen the historiography of commemoration studies.

Removing the Blinders and Adjusting the View: A Case Study from Early Colonial Sierra Leone

Mende raiders caught Mr. Goodman, “an educated young Sierra Leonean clerk,” at Mocolong, where he “was first tortured by having his tongue cut out, and then being decapitated.” His was a brutal fate, not unlike those which befell scores of his fellow Sierra Leoneans in the spring of 1898. Others were stripped of their Europeanstyle clothes and systematically dismembered, leaving only mutilated bodies strewn across forest paths or cast into rivers. Stories of harrowing escapes and near-death encounters circulated widely. Missionary stations burned and trading factories lost their stocks to plunder. Desperate cries were heard in Freetown. Send help. Send gun-boats. Send the West India Regiment. Almost two years after the British had legally extended their control beyond the colony of Sierra Leone, Mende locals demonstrated that colonial law had yet to win popular assent.In 1898 Great Britain fought a war of conquest in the West African interior. To the northeast of the Colony, armed divisions pursued the Temne chief Bai Bureh's guerrilla fighters through the hot summer months, while in the south the forest ran with Mende “war-boys,” small bands of fighters who emerged onto mission stations and trading factories, attacked, and then vanished. Mr. Goodman had had the misfortune to pursue his living among the latter. In the north, Bai Bureh fought a more easily definable ‘war,’ a struggle which pitted his supporters against imperial troops and other easily identified representatives of the colonial government. No reports of brutalities done to civilians ensued. In the south, however, Sierra Leoneans and missionaries, both men and women, joined British troops and officials on the casualty rolls.

Los soldados ilirios en el ejército de los Severos (193-235).

En este artítculo se reconstruye el protagonismo de los legionarios Ilirios en su ascenso con Septimio Severo, su duración a lo largo de la dinastía Severa, y su desembouqe en la Tetrarquía y en los Segundos Flavios. No se quiere, con esto, oscurecer o minimizar la soberbia actuación de Severo y sus grandes dotes como estadista y militar, punto demostrado holgadamente por los mismos hechos y reconocido meridianamente por sus contemporáneos. Pero, cabe preguntarse por la idiosincrasia y formación de estas unidades, que suministraron de forma prácticamente constante las mejores tropas imperiales hasta bien entrado el siglo VI. Las legiones danubianas van a convertirse en la clave del panorama político y militar, y resultarán imprescindibles tanto para derrotar y expulsar a la creciente ola de pueblos bárbaros como para combatir el las guerras civiles y los sangrientos conflictos internos que arrasarán el Imperio Romano hasta la subida al trono de Diocleciano en 284. Serán las tropas ilirias las que, bajo el mando de Decio, derroten a los bárbaros en el Danubio, y posteriormente proclamen emperador a su victorioso general. Por todo ello, las nuevas fuerzas romanas de primera línea, la infantería pesada y las legiones más preparadas para el combate, se encontrarán a partir de ahora en Iliria y Panonia, donde los generales brillantes, comenzarán también a proliferar. Italia, de este modo, se verá desplaza definitivamente de la preponderancia en el plano militar. This article reconstructs the prominence of the Illyrian legionaries in their ascent with Septimius Severus, their duration throughout the Severe dynasty, and their landing in the Tetrarchy and the Second Flavians. This does not mean to obscure or minimize Severo's superb performance and his great gifts as a statesman and a military man, a point amply demonstrated by the same facts and widely recognized by his contemporaries. But it is worth wondering about the idiosyncrasy and formation of these units, which practically constantly supplied the best imperial troops until well into the 6th century. The Danubian legions will become the key to the political and military panorama, and will be essential both to defeat and expel the growing wave of barbarian peoples and to fight the civil wars and bloody internal conflicts that will devastate the Roman Empire until the rise to the throne of Diocletian in 284. It will be the Illyrian troops that, under the command of Decius, defeat the barbarians on the Danube, and later proclaim their victorious general emperor. For all these reasons, the new front-line Roman forces, the heavy infantry and the legions most prepared for combat, will from now on be found in Illyria and Pannonia, where brilliant generals will also begin to proliferate. Italy, in this way, will be definitively displaced from the preponderance in the military plane.

From Kaitiaki to Branch Office: The Bureaucratisation of Whakapapa

Recently, my husband, my mother-in-law and I were sharing lunch at her home (the family homestead) in Ngāwhā, which is located in the Bay of Islands in the Northern Tai Tokerau area of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The conversation had become centred on the proposed extensions to the family urupā (burial ground),which has basically reached its carrying capacity. A decision has been made unilaterally by an older family member, as is his usual custom, to make available to the wider community more of the adjacent whānau land. The site itself is now designated as a national historic site, being as it is the locale for one of the most significant battles of the Northern Wars of the 1840s: the battle of Ohaeawai in which the British Imperial troops suffered a resounding defeat. It is now the site of St. Michael ’ s Church and graveyard.

Peter Paul Rubens, Galileo Galilei Und Die Schlacht Am Weißen Berg

P. P. Rubens's Apocalyptic Woman, painted 1623-1625 for the cathedral of Freising as its altarpiece, and now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, has recently been interpreted as a work imbued with several layers of meaning. One of these layers refers to specific historical circumstances under which the painting came into being - especially to the fact it was ordered by Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of imperial troops at the Battle fought on the White Mountain near Prague on 8 November 1620. In this article, this topical significance of the painting, proposed by Konrad Renger in 1990, is further substantiated by connecting Rubens's depiction of the moon therein with a passage in Galileo Galilei's Sidereus Nuncius of 1610, where the round cavity around the middle of the moon was compared in its shape with Bohemia on the map of earth. In Rubens's picture, this shape can be seen under the right foot of the Apocalyptic Woman.

La guérilla espagnole dans la guerre contre l'armée napoléonienne

Vittorio Scotti Douglas, The Spanish Guerrilla War against Napoleons Army. After discussing the change in meaning of the Spanish word guerrilla, from the original sense of "secondary military operation conducted by small groups of soldiers" to the modern one of "armed civilian struggle against an invader/occupier and their allies", the problem raised is that of the military effectiveness of the anti-Napoleonic guerrilla war. Four aspects are reviewed : the losses inflicted by the guerrillas on the Imperial army ; the communication difficulties arising, including the obstacles put in the way of troop supplies ; finally, the need for the Imperial army to use the greater part of their forces to control the territory, thus preventing them from making use of their numerical superiority in the order of battle against the Anglo-Luso-Spanish armies. Guerrilla warfare was also a non-negligible means of bringing psychological support to the Spanish population, while the Imperial troops dreaded the prospect of being sent to Spain, where they set foot already undermined by fear.

Os nomes da revolução: lideranças populares na Insurreição Praieira, Recife, 1848-1849

Este artigo retoma o problema da participação de agentes advindos das camadas subalternas na Insurreição Praieira (1848-49), e nas manifestações de rua que a precedem, buscando dimensionar esta participação e investigar as possíveis motivações dos participantes. Quinze funcionários dos baixos e médios escalões do aparato estatal e vinte e dois artesãos foram denunciados no inquérito contra a rebelião. Entre eles havia sedutores de povos que comandavam reuniões em suas lojas. Alguns mais ousados chegaram a atirar nas tropas imperiais no combate do Recife. A Praieira serve de prisma para se estudar os limites da obediência da clientela às malhas patronais e a formação de lideranças populares capazes de intermediar as relações entre a haute politique partidária e os interesses imediatos dos trabalhadores livres pobres urbanos.

Passion for Empire: War Poetry Published in the Canadian English Protestant Press During the South African War, 1899 - 1902

In the years 1899—1902, Canada sent over 7000 troops to fight alongside British and imperial troops in South Africa against the two Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic. This article will explore the imperial sentiment in the Canadian English Protestant churches through a look at the poems published in their various publications during the war years. It will note the origins of much of the poetry, identify the amount of poetry that was published, as well as outline some of the larger themes of the war poetry. These poems indicate that imperial sentiment was, in fact, quite widespread within the members of the English Protestant churches. They also indicate that the 'type' of nation that the churches were trying to build cannot be understood apart from its imperial sentiments.

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (review)

Reviewed by: The Rape of Nanking Dr. Liang Chi Shen (bio) and Michael Koping Shen (bio) The Rape of Nanking. By Iris Chang. New York: Basic Books, 1997. 304 pp. $25.00 Cloth. Almost everyone today is familiar with the dark chapter of history from 1939 to 1945, when Hitler’s army rolled across Europe, claiming the lives of millions of people, including six million Jews. However, very few people are aware of what happened to millions of people in China from 1937 to 1945. Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking is a landmark work because it finally reveals the least remembered and perhaps the most gruesome horrors of the Second World War: the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army on innocent Chinese civilians. Chang’s book is also important in searching for the reasons behind the Japanese barbarity. The Rape of Nanking contains a chilling description of what happened to the Chinese civilians and soldiers who were unable to escape the walled city of Nanking, capital of the Kuomingtang (KMT) government, after its fall to the Japanese in December 1937. Based on a German eyewitness’ diary, interviews with survivors, and Japanese soldiers’ journals, the evidence is beyond doubt: over the subsequent six weeks, the Japanese army, under direct orders from Prince Asaka of the Imperial family, senselessly massacred over 350,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers, all of whom were disarmed and helpless. To put things in perspective, in those six weeks, the Japanese slaughtered over three times as many people as the United States lost in 12 years in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined. Chang adds more perspective to the death toll: [I]t is shocking to contemplate that the deaths at Nanking far [End Page 220] exceeded the deaths from the American raids on Tokyo (an estimated 80,000–120,000 deaths) and even the combined death toll of the two atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the end of 1945 (estimated at 140,000 and 70,000, respectively). The cruelty by which the Chinese were killed further unveils the barbarity of the Japanese army. Mass samurai-style beheadings, gasoline dousing and burning of roped captives, bayonet training for Japanese infantry, and grenade launchings all directed at escaping Chinese swimming the Yangtze River were just a few of the Japanese methods. Chang writes Not only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs, and the roasting of people become routine, but more diabolical tortures were practiced, such as hanging people by their tongues on iron hooks or burying people to their waists and watching them get torn apart by German shepherds. So sickening was the spectacle that even the Nazis in the city were horrified, one proclaiming the massacre to be the work of “bestial machinery”. Worse still, the massive rapes committed on 20,000 to 80,000 Chinese women, many of whom were killed afterwards, showed the absolute disregard for human dignity exhibited by the Japanese soldiers. Other shocking means of torture and death employed by the Japanese are also described by Chang, but too horrendous to recall here. What is even more horrific about the Rape of Nanking is that it was the rule, not the exception, during Japan’s occupation of China. The reason why the Nanking massacre has been documented at all was the presence of foreigners in the capital city, many of whom heroically saved the lives of thousands of Chinese. According to Chang, because the Japanese had an ingrained sense of racial superiority which was affronted when the Chinese refused to capitulate - indeed, they resisted furiously when the imperial army marched into China - someone had to pay. The Rape of Nanking occurred in part because the Chinese fought valiantly for 13 weeks in Shanghai, dashing any hopes the Japanese had of ending the conquest of China in the predicted three months. Chang describes vividly that when Shanghai fell, “the mood of the imperial troops had turned ugly, and many, it [End Page 221] was said, lusted for revenge as they marched toward Nanking.” After American pilots involved in the Doolittle raid on Tokyo were rescued by Chinese soldiers and villagers, for example, the Japanese launched a punitive expedition...

Die Schlacht bei Mühlberg in der Reichsgeschichte als Auseinandersetzung zwischen protestantischen Fürsten und Kaiser Karl V.

The Battle of Muhlberg on 24 April 1547 sealed the defeat of the Ernestine Elector Johann Friedrich of Saxony and ushered in a new imperial policy towards Protestants. The strategy of Protestant self-defense introduced by the Smalkaldic League had led to a temporary stabilization of the Protestant territories, but in 1546 produced a deep crisis. The allies of electoral Saxony and Hesse did not manage to stand up against imperial diplomacy and the imperial troops. The end of German Protestantism seemed to be near. The defeat of Johann Friedrich changed the map of Germany. It deepened the conflict within the house of Wettin, which after the Interim also acquired a theological dimension. The Wittenberg theologians around Philipp Melanchthon became suspect and could only stand their ground by backing the new princes, the Electors Moritz and - later on - August. The victory of Charles V did not lead to a solution of the problems in the Empire in favor of the Emperor. Rather, the Albertine Elector Moritz succeeded in freeing himself from the political clutch of the Emperor. He focused the political interest of the princes against Charles V. An alliance with France made it possible to lead the Princes' War (Furstenkrieg) in 1552 and to find a political solution in the Empire in agreement with the Catholic princes and bishops, and King Ferdinand I. With the Treaty of Passau (1552) and the Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) multiconfessionalism was ensured in the Empire. This strengthened particularism and prevented a religious war in the Empire in the sixteenth century.

:The Man Who Sacked Rome: Charles de Bourbon, Constable of France (1490- 1527)

This is the first general biography of Charles de Bourbon, Constable of France (1490-1527), to appear for some time. The events of Bourbon's life form a dramatic and compelling story, centering on his treasonable plot to dismember France in 1523; his victory at Pavia and capture of Francois I in 1525; and his command of the imperial troops who sacked Rome in 1527 The narrative, illuminated by the findings of modern scholarship, is integrated into the broader context of French and international history. The biographical idiom is used to examine the evolution of French social and political institutions in the first decades of the sixteenth century, the strains induced in the French and Hapsburg monarchies by the long struggle for primacy in Italy, and the rapid transformation of war and diplomacy in the period.

The Riel Rebellion of 1869: New Light on British Liberals and the Use of Force on the Canadian Frontier

Within the context of the colonial policy of the first Gladstone government in Great Britain, the Riel Rebellion in the Red River Colony on the Manitoba frontier in 1869 offers a case study in the nature of late nineteenth-century British imperialism. The incident has usually been treated within Canadian history as part of the story of western expansion, or as an example of the continuous thread of Anglo-French tension within the Canadian union. However, this confrontation raised strategic imperial considerations and issues of race and social control to which London authorities felt compelled to respond. This paper offers a reinterpretation of the motives and forces behind the British decision to deploy imperial troops to end the Red River disorders at a time when official policy was set to withdraw British garrisons from Canada and other self-governing colonies. This re-examination offers evidence that London authorities needed little Canadian prodding. Rather, the pattern that emerges shows a consistent Liberal commitment to empire and a continuing belief in the empire’s strategic and prestige value to Britain in world politics.

A Fighting Retreat

The battle of Isandlwana, 22 January 1870, was a debâcle for the British army. The story of the battle has been told many times in varying detail. It is easy to imagine the battle culminating in a great massacre, followed by a headlong flight of panic stricken men to a further ordeal, this one Nature's, at the 'Fugitives' Drift'. The imperial troops at Isandlwana were not completely destroyed by the Zulu impi, nor did all the fugitives from the battlefield flee in total disorder. In the aftermath of the battle at least three units preserved their organization, helped cover the retreat of the disorganized troops, and retarded the pursuit of the enemy. All three of these units consisted of black troops, the mounted men of the Natal Native Contingent, a force raised in the Colony to serve as auxiliaries to the British army.

LORD ROTHSCHILD, AFRIKANER SCABS AND THE 1907 STRIKE: A STATE-CAPITAL DAGUERROTYPE

STATE, organized white labour and capital were in an intense state of flux in South Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century. Not only was the outcome uncertain, but the rules of the game themselves had still to be established. In this respect, the situation of white labour in South Africa then was analagous to the situation of black labour today. The white miners' strike on the Witwatersrand in 1907 is important precisely because of its role in determining the rules of the game which have endured in most essential aspects until the present. The strike is treated here as a snapshot of the emerging state-capital relationship. Snapshots clearly have weaknesses: they freeze movement and they tend to overemphasize black and white tones. On the other hand, as with some wedding photographs, they can also capture a developing relationship at that crucial moment when it begins to crystallize into an enduring pattern. This does not exclude flux and change in the subsequent relationship-as the marriage analogy should make clear-but it does enable one to make a rough distinction between family quarrels and genuine wars. The distinction is as important to understanding contemporary South Africa as it is to understanding the events of 1907. There have been very real disputes between Sir Ernest Oppenheimer and D. F. Malan, or Harry Oppenheimer and Dr H. F. Verwoerd; but these disputes cannot be fully understood unless they are seen to be between contenders who, however reluctantly, are wedded to each other. The marriage of state and capital in South Africa's industrial heartland was solemnized in 1907 after many years of tentative wooing and many breaches of promise. It is still intact.' The 1907 white miners' strike on the Witwatersrand began on Knight's Deep mine on 1 May. It spread throughout the gold fields and reached its peak by late May, when well over 20 per cent of all white miners, according to official figures, were on strike. The strike was then met by the combined onslaught of capital and state: about 1,250 Afrikaner strike-breakers were recruited, mining regulations were bent to allow unqualified men to do certificated work, and miners' meetings and pickets were violently broken up by Imperial troops called

Palace and Jihād in the Early ʽAlawī State in Morocco

The early ʽAlawī state has repeatedly been described as heavy and efficient military government. In practice it functioned as a relatively loosely-knit tribute state. The achievement of its notable and long-lived second sultan Ismāʽil (1672–1727) was to shed the aegis of Fez, his economic metropolis, and set up an increasingly gigantic palace, beside a market town, as an independent political base. His central government there was characterized by minimal use of coin and minuscule central bureaucracy. For military support the sultan at first relied chiefly upon free troops, associated by fictional kinship with his most notable wife: later he relied increasingly upon black slave guards. But the motors of government at large were not imperial troops, whose functions were essentially deterrence and the hallmarking of government activity; they were provincial governors, bound to the sultan by ties of individual loyalty. These governors were responsible for the extraction of tribute destined for the palace.Religion gave increased coherence to this state. This was not so much because of its association with literacy, as because it enabled the sultan, who needed religious prestige, to enhance his unremarkable claim to descent from the Prophet, by taking up the Islamic mantle of ‘Commander of the Faithful’. This was a forceful image for propaganda that could counter the close association between the palace and Moroccan Jewry. It could also validate demands for loyalty throughout the empire. A hard Islamic line was expressed injihād, or holy warfare, against Christendom. The sultan's limited resources and his other military commitments prevented him from conducting activejihādmuch above the level of token confrontation. But there was also a moraljihād, waged, in so far as this was possible, by rejection of cultural and economic ties with Europe.

The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. From Kagoshima Through the Siege of Kumamoto Castle

HE SATSUMA REBELLION of 1877 was the final act of organized military resistance to the reforms of the Restoration Government. This civil war pitted a well-trained samurai army commanded by Saiga Takamoril and deeply imbued with the traditional concepts of feudal Japan against the Imperial Army of 'conscripted farmers'. The Imperial Army certainly had several advantages-the ability to mobilize the resources of most of the nation, a continuing supply of manpower, and overwhelming material superiority. For a nation with a conscription system less than four years old, government troops had remarkably competent leadership matched by heroic performances of the rank and file. Tactically sophisticated, the imperial forces quickly seized the rebel base area, carried out landings behind enemy lines, and made successful amphibious assaults under naval gunfire support. The only advantages enjoyed by the rebel Satsuma army were high morale and better training. But generally unable to recruit more men other than those who had rebelled initially, Saiga was forced to carry on the war with the ever-diminishing original number of soldiers and was soon short of both troops and weapons. No amount of elan or intrepidity could compensate for the advantages enjoyed by the imperial forces, and the material eventually triumphed over the moral. In retrospect, perhaps, one may judge that the rebellion should never have occurred: the issue was decided before the first shot was fired. But it did take place, and the price was high. More than 60,000 imperial troops fought against the rebels and they suffered 16,000 casualties, 7,000 of these being combat deaths. Only a few hundred of the 30,000 Satsuma troops survived the conflict. The most important result of the military victory won by the imperial forces was political. For the first time since the establishment of the Restoration Government in 1868 the oligarchy could pursue its policies and programs for a modern centralized state free from worry over the possibility of organized military resistance. The most important military result was the convincing proof that a conscript force

Aspects of the Power of Darkness in Lu Hsün

As the legend goes, the reign of Sui Yang-ti was a great heroic age. The heroes were destined to fight either on the side of or against the great emperor to come, T'ang T'ai-tsung. Before the fall of Sui, however, Sui Yang-ti summoned all the rebels to Yangchow for a tournament. The champion was to win'the title of the Supreme Rebel, to whom would be accorded the honors due a king. The plot was to let the rebels kill each other with their own hands, and the survivors would then be killed by mines set off soon after the contest was over. If there were still some survivors left, a gate which weighed one thousand chin would be lowered into the city wall to block their retreat so that a massacre might be carried out by the Imperial troops. But since Sui Yang-ti was to lose the mandate of heaven, his plot did not work. An insufficient number of rebels were killed in the arena, and the mines did not explode as planned, thanks to the happy intervention of an ancient fox who had to save the life of the true dragon, T'ang T'ai-tsung, among all the rebels. When the gate was lowered, it was caught by a giant-like bandit who supported it long enough to let the eighteen princes and the lesser rebels from all over China escape to safety. But the gate proved too much of a burden even for such a hero, and he was crushed to death.

Roman Imperial Troops in Macedonia and Achaea

Roman Imperial Troops in Macedonia and Achaea