Intellectual And Bourgeoisie Nationalism, 1911-1927

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Chinese Nationalism 1901-1949
The Qing Dynasty suffered international humiliation from the Germans, British and French empires in the second half of the 19th century. This was shortly followed by extensive droughts and lack of political and social reforms to align the dynasty with the 20th century. In the early 20th century, nationwide civil disorder led to the ousting of the last emperor by a republican revolution in 1911. Chinese political landscape was disorganized for the period which followed up to 1949 when the Chinese communism founded the people’s republic of china. The embroiled political landscape of the Chinese people was hinged on nationalism as an ideological foundation for creating a modern Chinese state. The Chinese people wanted a build a strong united government able to resist the interest of foreign imperial powers. The nationalism spirit was thus founded on the fundamental goal of sovereignty and independence from foreign influence. However, the political groups of the land during this period used the pursuit of nationalists’ goals to serve their own interest and that is the reason the country was embroiled in war and political instability for the first half of the 20th century.
Warlord Nationalism
After overthrowing the Qing dynasty, the leaders who took up china shortly after encountered many challenges of uniting the people. By 1916, chin had split into several provinces headed by military commanders. These military commanders were known as Chinese warlords and they used the nationalism spirit to propagate their own interest [1]. They convinced their people that they needed to conquer the rest of china and reinstate themselves as the rulers of the land. This continued till 1928. The military commanders of each province sought to secure their military interests. Duan Qirui was one of the warlord who used his influence and authority to further his interests to have china participate in the First World War. He did this not on the national interest, but his own interests. He manipulated the national assembly by surrounding them with a military mob and threatening republican politicians to agree to declare a war on the Germans. This was a personal quest which had no national interest but he used his position coerce the national assembly to agree to his plans. He epitomized the use of nationalism to further individual interests. Xun and Duan exemplified the use of nationalism to legitimize military conflict while on the flip side breaking china politically. As demonstrated by the Kwangsi warlords, in a bid to protect their authority, used their position and resources which were purported to implement social and economic reforms to fund self-serving military campaigns. They suppressed any program that sought to enlighten their subjects on economic and social reforms but masked their corrupt actions as true markers of nationalism.[Edward A McCord, ‘Warlords against Warlordism: The Politics of Anti-Militarism in Early Twentieth Century China’, Modern Asian Studies, 30, 4, (1996), pp. 795-827, p. 802.]
Intellectual and Bourgeoisie Nationalism, 1911-1927
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