In 1927, Jiang Jieshi a.k.a. Chiang Kai-shek (q.v.) tried very hard to eliminate the Chinese Communist Party, which we will call the CCP. This is hard to understand…
Category: History of China
The Malayan Campaign and Emergency
The campaign was a military action in South-East Asia between December 1941 and August, 1945 during the Second World War. General Tomoyuki secured free passage…
Gunboat diplomacy
It might well have been Lord Palmerston (twice Prime Minister of Britain, 1855- 58, 1859- 65, q.v.) who concreted this term, though gunboat diplomacy in its various…
The curse of the ‘Devil’s Horsemen’
It is said that in the early part of the thirteenth century, English fish dealers working on the long eastern coast at places like Grimsby and Yarmouth were…
Powerful women in history: the Empress Dowager Cixi
She was the real ruler in China from 1861 – 1908. She was intelligent, literate, well able to express herself, and able in all matters. She did not…
The League of Nations
This preamble to the United Nations has vanished without trace. It was one of the oddest disasters waiting to happen the world has ever seen. It appeared after…
Disasters waiting to happen: General Gordon
Charles George Gordon was born in 1833. When his father discovered that the boy was wilful, obstinate, brave, selfish and over-fond of himself, he decided to send…
Chief Khans of the Mongol Empire
While Europe was littered with principalities and petty kingdoms headed by princes and kings with ambitions beyond their resources; while both American sub-continents were spacious open homes for…