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Roberto Naranjo

Between the years 621 and 626 A.D., the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius waged a bloody, ravaging, and exhausting war on the Persian Empire. In retrospect, three compelling reasons for such an enterprise stand out. First, to end the Persian conquests of Byzantine territory. Second, to stop Christian setbacks at their hands. And third, to satisfy the spiritual hunger of a young Emperor thirsty for honour and adventure. It was not an easy war; however, it re-established Byzantium as the major power in Asia Minor until the rise of Islam. Of the three reasons for a Roman campaign against a powerful Persian state, the first was the most important, to put an end to the territorial bleeding of the empire. Beginning in 603(1), the Persian king Khosroes started a series of invasions and occupation of Roman lands that went on for over fifteen years. In that first year (603) he defeated the Byzantines at the battle of Arxamoun using elephants in his assault of the fortress. (2) Dara, Mesopotamia, and Syria fell the following year. Emperor Phocas hardly opposed these conquests. In taking Armenia, Kappadocia, Galatia, and Paphlagonia in 607, the barbarians routed the Byzantines every time. (3) The Persians crossed the Euphrates unopposed and ravaged Syria, Palestine, and Phoenicia advancing all the way to Chalcedon. In Heraclius' first year as Emperor (4), the Persians campaigned against Syria, taking Apamea and Edessa and proceeding as far as Antioch. According to the chronicler Theophanes the Romans "met them, fought, and were beaten... the whole Roman army was destroyed, so that very few men got away."(5) For Heraclius and Byzantium, the situation did not improve in 611, his second on the throne. The Persians captured Kappadocian Caesarea, taking thousands of prisoners.

Worse still, in Byzantine Europe the Avars were devastating the Balkans as the Roman army slowly withered. Heraclius commissioned an inquiry into the state of the armed forces and discovered that of the divisions which campaigned with Phocas against Maurice, only two remained.(6) The Emperor's first diplomatic attempt to slow the Persian tide came in 613 after the barbarians had captured Damascus. He sent ambassadors to Khosroes seeking a peace settlement, but the Persian turned them away. The following year Khosroes took Jordan, Palestine, and the holy city of Jerusalem after a three-week siege. Taken to Persia were fragments of the Holy Cross, on which Christ's crucifixion took place, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and many other prisoners. (7) These conquests reached their zenith between the years 615 and 619 when all Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya and Carthage were taken. In 615, segments of the Persian army got as far as the Bosphorus. The loss of Egypt in the spring of 619 was crucial since it disrupted the corn supply to Constantinople. Egypt had been the richest province of Byzantium. (8) Khosroes stood poised, ready to revive the Persian Empire of antiquity. Another reason for undertaking this campaign can be categorized as a religious crusade. A powerful concept at the time, religion dominated daily life more so than in the modern era. Most actions taken by individuals, and their rulers, had the underlying tone of either satisfying God, or because He commanded. When challenged by a different ideology, the Roman state moved to oppose it. Since the lands taken by the Persians (9) were predominately Christian and conquered by a force hostile to this belief, the obvious reaction would be to undertake a major religious reconquest. In the occupied lands Christians were persecuted, harassed, and often killed. Even the remains of the cross where Christ died, considered one of the most venerated artefacts of Christianity, was stolen and taken to Persia. (10) The city of Jerusalem experienced fire and massacre for several days. Included in the destruction was the church of the Holy Sepulcher. Prior to the start of the war, in a show of complete support, the Byzantine church contributed immensely toward the enterprise. It donated her wealth to the state which in turn melted the silver and gold icons for use as currency. The war began in what Ostrogorsky claims was "an atmosphere of religious fervour unknown in the earlier period."(11) Even the actions taken by the Emperor and his men after the war began exhibited highly accentuated religious overtones. Campaigning in 621, Heraclius began by taking an image of Christ and, putting his faith in it, proceeded to address his dispirited and undisciplined army. A year later, the Emperor invaded Persia and again addressed his troops with holy undertones. He reminded them of their duty to avenge the insults to God. They were also to retaliate for the ravishing of their maidens, the terrible things done to Christians, and to pledge murder for their murders. After this speech, Heraclius considered his army ready. (12)

Another target of the crusade was the recovery of the Holy Cross (or fragments of the Cross) taken in 614 from Jerusalem and sent to Persia. This ideal served as a goal to rally the troops around. After the conflict began, the Byzantine army behaved like a real crusading army. Before the winter of 622 arrived, Heraclius ordered the troops purified. He then opened the bible and found where he should winter, in this case Albania. (13) Upon arriving, he freed all prisoners and cared for them, most of them joining his expedition as a gesture of gratitude. Finally, as further evidence of this religious undertaking, in the spring of 630 Heraclius again set up the Holy Cross in Jerusalem amid great rejoicing. This act symbolized the successful conclusion to Christianity's first holy war. The final reason for launching such an encompassing enterprise can be attributed to the youthful, adventurous ego of Heraclius. Destined to become one of the greatest rulers in Byzantine history, he took field command in such a large scale never before seen by any emperor. (14) He showed unbelievable courage and self risk as seen in the year 624 when in the Taurus Mountains, he met the Persian general Sarbaros across from the river Saros. Many Byzantine troops charged across the bridge, but the Persian defence stopped them. The enemy broke ranks in pursuit and Heraclius marched after them. As he advanced to the Persian side, he met a big man. (15) The Emperor struck him and hurled him into the river. When he fell the barbarians turned in flight. Fighting in superhuman fashion, Heraclius nobly crossed and attacked the barbarians with only a few companions, amazing even Sarbaros. He received many blows though none were serious.

Two years later on his victorious final campaign against Khosroes, the Emperor reached the Greater Zab River. There he drew battle lines in a nearby plain against a new Persian general named Rhazates. The battle commenced when the Emperor sprang forth ahead of everyone to meet a Persian officer whom he then overthrew. He met and overthrew another. A third Persian struck him with a spear and wounded his lip but the Emperor was able to overcome this attack and kill him. Once the fight was underway his horse was wounded. By the end of the struggle Heraclius had many sword-strokes at his face but remained unharmed thanks to his leather armour and fighting skills. (16) He returned to Constantinople after a six years' absence, a hero who had just defeated a growing and powerful empire. He spent the following year in celebration. A combination of faith and leadership united to overcome a powerful and seemingly unstoppable force is a situation encountered few times in history. One of those times occurred between 621 and 626 A.D., when the faith of the Byzantines and the leadership of their Emperor Heraclius coalesced to end the Persian conquests of Roman territory and ultimately destroy their military might.

Notes: 1- the second ruling year of the Byzantine Emperor Phocas. 2- Theophanes- 292 3- Theophanes- 296 4- 610296 4- 610 A.D. 5- Theophanes- 299 6- Theophanes- 300 7- Theophanes- 301 8- Ostrogorsky- pg. 95 9- Persians believed in two gods, one good and one evil. This faith goes back to the great Persian philosopher Zoroaster. 10- it was carried of to the Persian capital, Ctesiphon. 11- Ostrogorsky- pg. 100. Ostrogorsky believed that this was the first characteristically medieval war and the forerunner of the later crusades. 12- Theophanes- 307 13- Theophanes- 308. This is known as the sortes biblicae, a method of divination where a question was asked and the bible then opened at random to find the answer. The Albania in question is in the Caucasus, not the Balkans. 14- Heraclius appointed the Patriarch Sergius and the Patrician Bonus as regents for his young son to rule in his absence. Ostrogorsky- pg. 100 15- Theophanes describes him as a "giant of a man." 314 16- Theophanes- 319 Sources: Turtledove, Harry. The Chronicle of Theophanes. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia 1982. Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine state. Rutgers University Press. New Jersey 1969.

The Persian Campaign of Emperor Heraclius | eHISTORY

The republic that Sun Yat-sen () and his associates envisioned evolved slowly. The revolutionists lacked an army, and the power of Yuan Shikai () began to outstrip that of parliament. Yuan revised the constitution at will and became dictatorial. In August 1912 a new political party was founded by Song Jiaoren ( 1882-1913), one of Sun's associates. The party, the Guomindang ( Kuomintang or KMT--the National People's Party, frequently referred to as the Nationalist Party), was an amalgamation of small political groups, including Sun's Tongmeng Hui (). In the national elections held in February 1913 for the new bicameral parliament, Song campaigned against the Yuan administration, and his party won a majority of seats. Yuan had Song assassinated in March; he had already arranged the assassination of several pro-revolutionist generals. Animosity toward Yuan grew. In the summer of 1913 seven southern provinces rebelled against Yuan. When the rebellion was suppressed, Sun and other instigators fled to Japan. In October 1913 an intimidated parliament formally elected Yuan president of the Republic of China, and the major powers extended recognition to his government. To achieve international recognition, Yuan Shikai had to agree to autonomy for Outer Mongolia and Xizang (). China was still to be suzerain, but it would have to allow Russia a free hand in Outer Mongolia and Britain continuance of its influence in Xizang.

In November Yuan Shikai, legally president, ordered the Guomindang dissolved and its members removed from parliament. Within a few months, he suspended parliament and the provincial assemblies and forced the promulgation of a new constitution, which, in effect, made him president for life. Yuan's ambitions still were not satisfied, and, by the end of 1915, it was announced that he would reestablish the monarchy. Widespread rebellions ensued, and numerous provinces declared independence. With opposition at every quarter and the nation breaking up into warlord factions, Yuan Shikai died of natural causes in June 1916, deserted by his lieutenants.

Nationalism and Communism

After Yuan Shikai's death, shifting alliances of regional warlords fought for control of the Beijing government. The nation also was threatened from without by the Japanese. When World War I broke out in 1914, Japan fought on the Allied side and seized German holdings in Shandong () Province. In 1915 the Japanese set before the warlord government in Beijing the so-called Twenty-One Demands, which would have made China a Japanese protectorate. The Beijing government rejected some of these demands but yielded to the Japanese insistence on keeping the Shandong territory already in its possession. Beijing also recognized Tokyo's authority over southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia. In 1917, in secret communiques, Britain, France, and Italy assented to the Japanese claim in exchange for the Japan's naval action against Germany.

In 1917 China declared war on Germany in the hope of recovering its lost province, then under Japanese control. But in 1918 the Beijing government signed a secret deal with Japan accepting the latter's claim to Shandong. When the Paris peace conference of 1919 confirmed the Japanese claim to Shandong and Beijing's sellout became public, internal reaction was shattering. On May 4, 1919, there were massive student demonstrations against the Beijing government and Japan. The political fervor, student activism, and iconoclastic and reformist intellectual currents set in motion by the patriotic student protest developed into a national awakening known as the May Fourth Movement (). The intellectual milieu in which the May Fourth Movement developed was known as the New Culture Movement and occupied the period from 1917 to 1923. The student demonstrations of May 4, 1919 were the high point of the New Culture Movement, and the terms are often used synonymously. Students returned from abroad advocating social and political theories ranging from complete Westernization of China to the socialism that one day would be adopted by China's communist rulers.

Opposing the Warlords

The May Fourth Movement helped to rekindle the then-fading cause of republican revolution. In 1917 Sun Yat-sen had become commander-in-chief of a rival military government in Guangzhou () in collaboration with southern warlords. In October 1919 Sun reestablished the Guomindang to counter the government in Beijing. The latter, under a succession of warlords, still maintained its facade of legitimacy and its relations with the West. By 1921 Sun had become president of the southern government. He spent his remaining years trying to consolidate his regime and achieve unity with the north. His efforts to obtain aid from the Western democracies were ignored, however, and in 1921 he turned to the Soviet Union, which had recently achieved its own revolution. The Soviets sought to befriend the Chinese revolutionists by offering scathing attacks on "Western imperialism." But for political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both Sun and the newly established Chinese Communist Party ( CCP). The Soviets hoped for consolidation but were prepared for either side to emerge victorious. In this way the struggle for power in China began between the Nationalists and the Communists. In 1922 the Guomindang-warlord alliance in Guangzhou was ruptured, and Sun fled to Shanghai (). By then Sun saw the need to seek Soviet support for his cause. In 1923 a joint statement by Sun and a Soviet representative in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance for China's national unification. Soviet advisers--the most prominent of whom was an agent of the Comintern, Mikhail Borodin--began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the Guomindang along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CCP was under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the Guomindang, and its members were encouraged to join while maintaining their party identities. The CCP was still small at the time, having a membership of 300 in 1922 and only 1,500 by 1925. The Guomindang in 1922 already had 150,000 members. Soviet advisers also helped the Nationalists set up a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilization techniques and in 1923 sent Chiang Kai-shek ( Jiang Jieshi in pinyin), one of Sun's lieutenants from Tongmeng Hui days, for several months' military and political study in Moscow. After Chiang's return in late 1923, he participated in the establishment of the Whampoa ( Huangpu in pinyin) Military Academy outside Guangzhou, which was the seat of government under the Guomindang-CCP alliance. In 1924 Chiang became head of the academy and began the rise to prominence that would make him Sun's successor as head of the Guomindang and the unifier of all China under the right-wing nationalist government.

Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in Beijing in March 1925, but the Nationalist movement he had helped to initiate was gaining momentum. During the summer of 1925, Chiang, as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, set out on the long-delayed Northern Expedition against the northern warlords. Within nine months, half of China had been conquered. By 1926, however, the Guomindang had divided into left- and right-wing factions, and the Communist bloc within it was also growing. In March 1926, after thwarting a kidnapping attempt against him, Chiang abruptly dismissed his Soviet advisers, imposed restrictions on CCP members' participation in the top leadership, and emerged as the preeminent Guomindang leader. The Soviet Union, still hoping to prevent a split between Chiang and the CCP, ordered Communist underground activities to facilitate the Northern Expedition, which was finally launched by Chiang from Guangzhou in July 1926.

In early 1927 the Guomindang-CCP rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. The CCP and the left wing of the Guomindang had decided to move the seat of the Nationalist government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. But Chiang, whose Northern Expedition was proving successful, set his forces to destroying the Shanghai CCP apparatus and established an anti-Communist government at Nanjing in April 1927. There now were three capitals in China: the internationally recognized warlord regime in Beijing; the Communist and left-wing Guomindang regime at Wuhan (); and the right-wing civilian-military regime at Nanjing, which would remain the Nationalist capital for the next decade.

The Comintern cause appeared bankrupt. A new policy was instituted calling on the CCP to foment armed insurrections in both urban and rural areas in preparation for an expected rising tide of revolution. Unsuccessful attempts were made by Communists to take cities such as Nanchang (), Changsha (), Shantou (), and Guangzhou, and an armed rural insurrection, known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising, was staged by peasants in Hunan Province. The insurrection was led by Mao Zedong ( 1893-1976), who would later become chairman of the CCP and head of state of the People's Republic of China. Mao was of peasant origins and was one of the founders of the CCP.

But in mid-1927 the CCP was at a low ebb. The Communists had been expelled from Wuhan by their left-wing Guomindang allies, who in turn were toppled by a military regime. By 1928 all of China was at least nominally under Chiang's control, and the Nanjing government received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimate government of China. The Nationalist government announced that in conformity with Sun Yat-sen's formula for the three stages of revolution--military unification, political tutelage, and constitutional democracy--China had reached the end of the first phase and would embark on the second, which would be under Guomindang direction.

Republican China

The history of Southeast Asia has been characterized as interaction between regional players and foreign powers. Though 11 countries currently make up the region, the history of each country is intertwined with all the others. For instance, the Malay empires of Srivijaya and Malacca covered modern day Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore while the Burmese, Thai, and Khmer peoples governed much of Indochina. At the same time, opportunities and threats from the east and the west shaped the direction of Southeast Asia. The history of the countries within the region only started to develop independently of each other after European colonialisation was at full steam between the 17th and the 20th century.

Introduction

Evidences suggest that the earliest non-aboriginal Southeast Asians came from southern China and were Austronesian speakers. Contemporary research by anthropologists, linguists (and archaeologists suggests that the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago migrated from southern China to islands of the Philippines around 2,500 BC and later spread to modern day Malaysia and Indonesia.

The earliest population of Southeast Asia was animist before Hinduism and Buddhism were exported from the Indian subcontinent. Islam arrived mostly through Indian Muslims and later dominated much of the archipelago around the 13th century while Christianity came along when European colonization started around the 16th century. During the classical age, the existence of Southeast Asia had been known to the Greeks. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy in his Geographia named the Malay Peninsula as Aurea Chersonesus (Golden Peninsula) while Java was called Labadius. Labadius was probably a corruption of Sanskrit Yavadvipa which refers to the same island. An ancient Hindu text may have earlier referred to Southeast Asia as Suvarnabhumi which means land of gold.

The region has been an important source of spices and this was one of the reasons European explorers were attracted to the Far East. During the colonization period, states of the region became important assets to the British, the Dutch and the French. British Malaya for instance was the world’s largest producer of tin and rubber while the Dutch East Indies was the source of Dutch’s wealth.

During the 1990s, Southeast Asia emerged as the fastest growing economy in the world. Its successes have caused some to call Southeast Asia an economic miracle and Singapore one of the "Four Asian Tigers". Though the Asian Financial Crisis struck in the late 1990s and left many crippled, the economy of the region has started to pick up again at a more sustainable rate as demand from the United States and People’s Republic of China soar.

Ancient and classical kingdoms

Southeast Asia has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The communities in the region evolved to form complex cultures with varying degrees of influence from India and China.

The ancient kingdoms can be grouped into two distinct categories. The first is agrarian kingdoms. Agrarian kingdoms had agriculture as the main economic activity. Most agrarian states were located in mainland Southeast Asia. Examples are the Ayutthaya Kingdom, based on the Chao Phraya River delta and the Khmer Empire on the Tonle Sap. The second type is maritime states. Maritime states were dependent on sea trade. Malacca and Srivijaya were maritime states.

A succession of trading systems dominated the trade between China and India. First, goods were shipped through Funan to the Isthmus of Kra, portaged across the narrow, and then transhipped for India and points west. Around the sixth century, BC merchants began sailing to Srivijaya where goods were transhipped directly. The limits of technology and contrary winds during parts of the year made it difficult for the ships of the time to proceed directly from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. The third system involved direct trade between the Indian and Chinese coasts.

Very little is known about Southeast Asian religious beliefs and practices before the advent of Indian merchants and religious influences from the second century BC onwards. Prior to the 13th century, Buddhism and Hinduism were the main religions in Southeast Asia.

The first dominant power to arise in the archipelago was Srivijaya in Sumatra. From the fifth century BC, the capital, Palembang, became a major seaport and functioned as an entrepot on the Spice Route between India and China. Srivijaya was also a notable centre of Vajrayana Buddhist learning and influence. Srivijaya’s wealth and influence faded when changes in nautical technology in the tenth century CE enabled Chinese and Indian merchants to ship cargo directly between their countries and also enabled the Chola state in southern India to carry out a series of destructive attacks on Srivijaya’s possessions, ending Palembang’s entrepot function.

In the Philippines, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription dating from 900 BC relates a granted debt from a Maharlika caste nobleman named Namwaran who lived in the Manila area. This document shows strong Srivijayan influence, and mentions a leader of Medan, Sumatra.

Java was dominated by a kaleidoscope of competing agrarian kingdoms including the Sailendras, Mataram,Singosari, and finally Majapahit.

European colonization

Europeans first came to Southeast Asia in the sixteenth century. It was the lure of trade that brought Europeans to Southeast Asia while missionaries also tagged along the ships as they hoped to spread Christianity into the region.

Portugal was the first European power to establish a bridgehead into the lucrative Southeast Asia trade route with the conquest of the Sultanate of Malacca in 1511. The Netherlands and Spain followed and soon superseded Portugal as the main European powers in the region. The Dutch took over Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641 while Spain began to colonize the Philippines (named after Phillip II of Spain) from 1560s. Acting through the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch established the city of Batavia (now Jakarta) as a base for trading and expansion into the other parts of Java and the surrounding territory.

Britain, in the form of the British East India Company, came relatively late onto the scene. Starting with Penang, the British began to expand their Southeast Asian empire. They also temporarily possessed Dutch territories during the Napoleonic Wars, In 1819 Stamford Raffles established Singapore as a key trading post for Britain in their rivalry with the Dutch. However, their rivalry cooled in 1824 when an Anglo-Dutch treaty demarcated their respective interests in Southeast Asia. From the 1850s onwards, the pace of colonization shifted to a significantly higher gear.

This phenomenon, denoted New Imperialism, saw the conquest of nearly all Southeast Asian territories by the colonial powers. The Dutch East India Company and British East India Company were dissolved by their respective governments, who took over the direct administration of the colonies. Only Thailand was spared the experience of foreign rule, although, Thailand itself was also greatly affected by the power politics of the Western powers.

By 1913, the British occupied Burma, Malaya and the Borneo territories, the French controlled Indochina, the Dutch ruled the Netherlands East Indies while Portugal managed to hold on to Portuguese Timor. In the Philippines, Filipino revolutionaries declared independence from Spain in 1898 but was handed over to the United States despite protests as a result of the Spanish-American War.

Colonial rule had a profound effect on Southeast Asia. While the colonial powers profited much from the region’s vast resources and large market, colonial rule did develop the region to a varying extent. Commercial agriculture, mining and an export based economy developed rapidly during this period. Increased labour demand resulted in mass immigration, especially from British India and China, which brought about massive demographic change. The institutions for a modern nation state like a state bureaucracy, courts of law, print media and to a smaller extent, modern education, sowed the seeds of the fledgling nationalist movements in the colonial territories. In the inter-war years, these nationalist movements grew and often clashed with the colonial authorities when they demanded self-determination.

Japanese colonization

During World War II, the region was invaded by the Japanese Imperial Army and included in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Thailand was the only country to maintain a nominal independence by making a political and military alliance with the Empire of Japan.

Decolonization

With the rejuvenated nationalist movements in wait, the Europeans returned to a very different Southeast Asia after World War II. Indonesia declared independence in 17 August 1945 and subsequently fought a bitter war against the returning Dutch; the Philippines were granted independence in 1946. Burma secured their independence from Britain in 1948, and the French were driven from Indochina in 1954 after a bitterly fought war against the Vietnamese nationalists. The newly-established United Nations provided a forum both for nationalist demands and for the newly demanded independent nations.

During the Cold War, countering the threat of communism was a major theme in the decolonization process. After suppressing the communist insurrection during the Malayan Emergency from 1948 to 1960, Britain granted independence to Malaya and later, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak in 1957 and 1963 respectively within the framework of the Federation of Malaysia. In one of the most bloody single incidents of violence in Cold War Southeast Asia, General Suharto seized power in Indonesia in 1965 and initiated a massacre of approximately 500,000 alleged members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

The United States intervention against communist forces in Indochina during a conflict commonly referred to in the United States as the Vietnam War meant that Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia had to go through a prolonged and protracted war in their route to independence.

In 1975, Portuguese rule ended in East Timor. However, independence was short-lived as Indonesia annexed the territory soon after. Finally, Britain ended its protectorate of the Sultanate of Brunei in 1984, marking the end of European rule in Southeast Asia.

Contemporary Southeast Asia

Modern Southeast Asia has been characterized by high economic growth by most countries and closer regional integration. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand have traditionally experienced high growth and are commonly recognized as the more developed countries of the region. As of late, Vietnam too had been experiencing an economic boom. However, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and the newly independent East Timor are still lagging economically.

On August 8, 1967, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was founded by Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. Since Cambodian admission into the union in 1999, East Timor is the only Southeast Asian country that is not part of ASEAN, although plans are under way for eventual membership. The association aims to enhance cooperation among Southeast Asian community. ASEAN Free Trade Area has been established to encourage greater trade among ASEAN members. ASEAN has also been a front runner in greater integration of Asia-Pacific region through East Asia Summits.

Short History of Southeast Asia

By Con Coughlin 7:47PM BST 26 Apr 2013

Britain's great wartime leader first went into battle at 22 – against the Taliban’s brutal ancestors – and almost lost his life. An extract from Con Coughlin's new book recreates the dramatic events

Young Winston: aged 19, as a second lieutenant in the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars Photo: HULTON/GETTY

In 1897, British forces launched a bloody campaign against Pashtun tribesmen on the North West Frontier. It was the first time Winston Churchill, a junior cavalry lieutenant and aspiring war correspondent for 'The Daily Telegraph’, had taken part in military action. In his new book, 'Churchill’s First War’, Con Coughlin recalls an act of courage and resolve that almost ended in disaster, but which helped prepare the future prime minister for the great challenges that lay ahead of him.

Winston Churchill was conspicuous riding a grey charger when the 2nd Brigade of the Bengal Lancers moved out from Inayat Kila at 6am and headed for the Mohmand Valley. He had bought his horse at an auction of the effects of a junior officer who had been killed earlier in the campaign. By choosing to ride a grey, Churchill was making sure that no one could fail to notice his endeavours were he to find himself in the thick of the action.

The Mohmand Valley, to the south-east of the Afghan border, is a fan-shaped cul-de-sac about 10 miles in length from north to south. Traditionally it has been controlled by tribes that jealously guard their independence, and it later became a renowned stronghold for the Taliban.

The 2nd Brigade’s mission was to “chastise” the valley’s tribes by burning crops, destroying reservoirs and blowing up fortified buildings in the villages. Within the context of Major General Sir Bindon Blood’s broader campaign to restore order to the North-West Frontier, this was a routine operation designed to curtail the threat posed by one particularly troublesome group. But it was not without risk.

The Afghans had learnt, over many decades of fighting, that they were no match for the British in set-piece battles. Instead, they relied on classic guerrilla tactics, withdrawing when confronted by a superior force, and then launching highly effective ambushes.

Churchill rode out with a force of 1,000 fighting men, who were divided into three columns to cover as much of the valley as possible in a day. He was attached to the centre column commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Goldney of the 35th Sikhs.

The objective of Goldney’s column was to destroy two villages at the far end of the valley, Badelai and Shahi-Tangi. Seventy-five men from the Sikhs were detached from the main force to take the conical hill between the two villages, while another company of around 85 men, including Churchill, were ordered to advance up the long, rocky spur that led to Shahi-Tangi.

Having satisfied themselves that the village was deserted, the soldiers set fire to whatever would burn before being ordered to withdraw after 15 minutes. But in their haste to reach the village, the Sikhs had inadvertently strayed beyond the safety of the cover provided by the mountain guns.

This was just the opportunity the tribesmen thrived upon. The British force suddenly found itself isolated, and the tribesmen gathered to attack. As Churchill and the other soldiers rested from the exertion of their morning climb, they found the eeriness of the deserted village disconcerting. “We are rather in the air here,” remarked one officer.

When Goldney eventually gave the order to retire, the enemy began to collect on all sides, and “thereupon promptly attacked in force, and the Sikhs were driven back about a mile, to the foot of the spur”, as the official account recorded. While Churchill and the Sikhs were fighting their way to safety, another large group of tribesmen moved to the foot of the hills to cut off their retreat. Winston and his party suddenly found themselves in a position of the utmost peril. As he later recalled in My Early Life: “Like most young fools, I was looking for trouble, and only hoped that something exciting would happen. It did!”

The tribesmen had kept themselves well concealed as the Sikhs advanced on Shahi-Tangi, but now attacked the retreating British in force:

“Suddenly the mountain-side sprang to life. Swords flashed from behind rocks, bright flags waved here and there. A dozen widely scattered smoke-puffs broke from the rugged face in front of us. Loud explosions resounded close at hand. From high up on the crag, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand feet above us, white or blue figures appeared, dropping down the mountain-side from ledge to ledge like monkeys down the branches of a tall tree. A shrill crying rose from many points. Yi! Yi! Yi! Bang! Bang! Bang! The whole hillside began to be spotted with smoke, and tiny figures descended nearer to us.”

The spur along which the British force was retreating consisted of three interconnected knolls. Churchill, another officer and eight sepoys were left to hold the second knoll and provide cover as the rest of the unit withdrew to the third knoll below. But when the turn came for Churchill’s group to retire, they came under heavy fire from tribesmen who had seized the first knoll vacated by the retreating British.

Churchill, unaware of the impending danger, had spent around five minutes taking what he called “casual pot-shots” at the tribesmen from his protected position at the second knoll. Then, as Churchill’s 10-strong group rose to withdraw to the third knoll, they were met with a well-aimed volley of fire from the tribesmen, which killed two, including Churchill’s fellow officer, and wounded three others.

As Churchill recalled: “The rest of our party got up and turned to retreat. There was a ragged volley from the rocks: shouts, exclamations, and a scream. I thought for a moment that five or six of our men had lain down again. So they had: two killed and three wounded. One man shot through the breast and pouring with blood, another lay on his back kicking and twisting. The British officer was spinning round just behind me, his face a mass of blood, his right eye cut out. Yes, it was certainly an adventure.”

Winston and the other uninjured soldiers desperately tried to pull the wounded back to safety, but had no covering fire. As Churchill observed: “It is a point of honour on the Indian frontier not to leave wounded men behind. Death by inches and hideous mutilation are the invariable measure meted out to all who fall in battle into the hands of the Pashtun tribesmen.”

The adjutant of the 35th Sikhs, Lieutenant Victor Hughes, with a number of sepoys, rushed to assist with the recovery of the dead and injured, but was himself shot. Churchill and the other survivors continued to drag and carry the casualties down the hill, passing through a group of deserted houses, with the tribesmen in hot pursuit, firing at the retreating British.

“The bullets passed in the air with a curious sucking noise, like that produced by drawing the air between the lips,” Churchill observed. One of the Sikhs helping to carry the wounded along the spur was shot through the calf, causing him to shout out in pain. “His turban fell off,” Churchill recorded, “and his long black hair streamed over his shoulders – a tragic golliwog.”

Now Churchill and another soldier tried to drag the injured Sikh to safety, but they treated him so roughly, dragging him across sharp rocks, that he pleaded to be allowed to go alone. “He hopped and crawled and staggered and stumbled, but made a good pace. Thus he escaped.”

Churchill reacted with fury when he spotted a group of Pashtuns about to attack the injured adjutant and his rescuers. Four soldiers trying to carry Hughes to safety were attacked by half a dozen Pashtun swordsmen. The bearers dropped the adjutant and rushed for their lives. Churchill was aghast as “the body sprawled upon the ground. A tall man in dirty white linen pounced down upon it with a curved sword. It was a horrible sight.” Churchill could not bear to see his injured comrade hacked to death by the fanatical tribesman.

As he later wrote: “I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man. I wore my long cavalry sword well-sharpened. After all, I had won the Public Schools fencing medal. I resolved on personal combat a l’arme blanche. The savage saw me coming. I was not more than 20 yards away. He picked up a big stone and hurled it at me with his left hand, and then awaited me, brandishing his sword. There were others waiting not far behind him. I changed my mind about the cold steel. I pulled out my revolver, took, as I thought, most careful aim, and fired. No result. I fired again. No result. I fired again. Whether I hit him or not, I cannot tell. At any rate he ran back two or three yards and plumped down behind a rock. The fusillade was continuous. I looked around. I was alone with the enemy. Not a friend was to be seen. I ran as fast as I could. There were bullets everywhere.”

Churchill had demonstrated courage and resolve in the face of a determined enemy – qualities he would display on many more occasions during his long and eventful life.

© Con Coughlin 2013

Baptism of fire showed Winston Churchill’s inner steel - Telegraph

By Thomas DuBois | Published in History Today Volume: 63 Issue: 3 2013

Some commentators predict that the 21st century will be the ‘Asian century’, marking a significant shift in power from West to East. If so, it will not be so different from the global order of the 19th century, says Thomas DuBois.

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The American wall goes up as the Chinese original goes down', published in Puck, 1882. China opens up to trade, while America uses ethnic workers to curb immigration. Library of Congress

As late as the 1990s the global dominance of western ideals, values and institutions seemed unassailable. The Soviet Union had collapsed and China was in disarray. The California dotcoms were booming. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 looked like the final vindication of the clean and open economic institutions of the West over the back room crony capitalism of the humbled Asian tigers. Protests from political leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad in defence of what they called ‘Asian values’ sounded like sour little grapes in the path of history’s steamroller.
How far we have come. Two decades after Francis Fukuyama triumphantly declared ‘the end of history’ America and Europe faced what to many appears to be a future of waning global influence, especially while the seemingly unstoppable rise of Asia has taken its place as the apocalypse du jour. There is little question that Asia will continue to shape the world during the coming century. However, if we are to accept the often-heard formulation that the next century ‘belongs’ to Asia, we might also do well to understand that in many ways the previous one did as well.

It takes a particular sort of nostalgia to imagine that the current global order, the one that the rise of Asia supposedly threatens to upend, ever belonged to the United States, any more than it did to the British Empire at its height. This is not to say that this one-two punch of Anglo-American power did not have a transformative global influence; it unquestionably did. But that power became global precisely because it creatively adapted to new realities.

The world of empires was remarkably well connected. At its height the British Empire was the largest and most successful trading bloc in history, creating a cycle of commerce that linked six continents not only to Britain itself, but also to each other. European imperialism of the late 19th century helped lay the foundation of the political, financial, scientific and religious institutions that we see as underpinning the world system today. But influence flows both ways and, as western interests took root throughout the world, Europe itself had to change. From the late 19th century the unique challenges and opportunities emanating from Asia played an ever increasing role in transforming the private commerce of Europe into the first truly global order.

In 1894 China and Japan went to war. The conflict grabbed the attention of the world and marked the first time that Europe would become directly involved in a struggle between two sovereign nations so far from its own shores. Regardless of how the European powers felt about either of the two belligerents, they had strong interests in regional stability in Asia, based on open access to China. Too weak to fend off foreign aggression and too large to partition, China could not be allowed to fall under the control of any single power. When victorious Japan sought an exclusive leasehold over China’s Liaodong peninsula as part of the 1895 treaty of Shimonoseki, Russia, Germany and France all felt their own interests to be sufficiently threatened to demand that Japan back down. Crisis was averted, but stability never returned. In rapid succession China suffered two more wars: the eight nation suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and a showdown between Russia and Japan in 1904-05, which was fought largely on Chinese soil.

When the dust cleared, north-east Asia was scarcely recognisable. China had entered the decade a lumbering giant and left it a political nonentity. Russia’s designs in the East had been crushed and, although badly bloodied by the war, Japan was now recognised as the region’s pre-eminent power. Recognising the new reality, each of the major powers abandoned the pretence of consensus and came forward one by one to make private deals with Tokyo. These ‘Asian ententes’ recognised Japan’s unofficial hegemony over Korea and Manchuria in return for similar concessions elsewhere: Britain in India, France in Indochina, the United States in the Philippines and Russia in Mongolia.

Britain led the chorus of voices pressing Japan to keep China politically and territorially intact. It had entered into an alliance with Japan as early as 1902, as a counterweight to Russian designs on Manchuria, and renewed the alliance after the Japanese victory in order to safeguard the ‘preservation of the common interests of all Powers in China by insuring the independence and integrity of the Chinese Empire’. Like the other powers, Britain recognised that a land grab in China would not serve its interests. China’s Qing dynasty remained a viable partner in trade and diplomacy and most powers preferred to prop up the government they knew than to risk a lopsided and divisive partition. But of all the powers in China, Britain had the most to lose from a potential collapse of the government.

Britain’s strategic interests in China were few and relatively minor: its overwhelming concern was how best to position itself to exploit a changing mix of commercial opportunities. Over the course of the 19th century British interests in East Asia had shifted from Manchester to London, in other words from industrial manufacture to finance. This was a very dramatic change to the situation earlier in the century, when Britain had gone to war not once but twice in order to force China to open its markets. Britain still had a large export market in Asia: as Japan and India rose as competing industrial producers of textiles, Britain moved in to exploit the new market for factory machinery. The real money, however, was in financial services and credit. As early as the 1870s the house of Jardine, Matheson & Company abandoned the opium trade to concentrate on shipping, insurance and banking. As China’s solid finances groaned under the costs of war, with enemies at home and abroad, investors were more than happy to make up the balance by buying Chinese government debt on the London market. Between 1874 and 1895 the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (now HSBC) raised £12 million on its behalf. Between 1896 and 1900 that total increased to £32 million.

The British Foreign Office sought to protect private banking interests in China, but was by no means the handmaiden of the financiers. Just as the great trading houses had once goaded Britain to go to war over the opium trade, policy towards Asia was deeply intertwined with financial interests. Dominance in the area of finance became a key focus of British foreign policy in Asia and one of many interests in which competition from Japan and the United States threatened more than profits. Yet the Foreign Office also pressed the Hong Kong and Shanghai to accommodate competition from inside China and elsewhere in Europe, especially after 1895, when the market for credit began to accelerate. Despite enjoying extraterritorial status, the foreign banks understood the importance of maintaining good relations with the Chinese government.

The 20th-century explosion of inter-Asian commerce expanded the market for British services, entirely separately from direct British commerce. Even without the dip in European trade during the First World War, there was at least as much money to be made in facilitating commerce between Hong Kong and Yokohama, Singapore and Bombay as there was in trading between Britain and the East. Here, as well, China remained the greatest prize of all. Hoping to tap into the heart of this market, foreign investors poured money into Chinese land transport. Exclusive permission to construct railways into the interior, together with a right to develop resources along the line, was written into the treaties that Britain, France, Russia and Japan made with China. Chinese nationalists took to calling these unfavourable agreements ‘unequal treaties’. Y. Tak Matsuzaka, the historian of Japan, has another name for it: railway imperialism.

Labour movements

The expansion of trade, both internationally and within Asia, also ushered in an era of unprecedented demographic mobility. With better transportation, safer seas and a global market for labour, people moved more and more freely than ever before. As with the flow of goods, the centre of gravity of migration wobbled between the North Atlantic and the Pacific. The latter represented a far larger movement of people. Between 1846 and 1940 some 55 to 58 million Europeans migrated to the Americas. During those same years roughly 100 million people moved within Asia, with most heading for destinations in Manchuria and the south-east of the continent.

The emergence of Asia into what was now a global labour market was felt throughout the world. Between the 1880s and 1920s burgeoning labour movements in North America, Australia and New Zealand capitalised on fears of the threat from cheap Chinese workers and supported a series of anti-Chinese strikes, tariffs and immigration restrictions. The flow of migrants also required governments to standardise procedures for dealing with each other’s citizens. This was not a problem within the context of imperial globalisation: most of the great wave of Indian migration of the 19th century went to Malaya, Kenya and South Africa and thus remained within the confines of British administration. Rather, as the historian of modern China Adam McKeown has so effectively shown, it was the global flow of migrants from East Asia, especially from China, that prompted governments to adopt the modern passport as a standard system.

Something similar could be said for the other part of the now familiar border crossing procedure: quarantine. Within Europe certain ports, particularly those along the Mediterranean, had long-established practices for monitoring incoming ships. But as late as 1850 there was no standard procedure for monitoring the health of people passing across national borders. Nor was there any urgency to establish one; even considering the devastation wrought by typhus and smallpox, Europe had not faced a major pan-continental epidemic for centuries.

Coming of cholera

All of this changed when cholera, which reached the Russian Urals in 1829, spread like wildfire across the Continent. By 1831 the disease had reached Paris and within a year killed 12,733 in that city alone. The extreme virulence and rapid spread of cholera caused panic in medical circles and prompted the French authorities to convene a series of International Sanitary Conferences. The first two, held in 1851 and 1859, aimed to determine the cause of, and potential countermeasures to, the disease and were remarkable primarily for their dithering lack of productivity. In addition to a lack of epidemiological knowledge, divergence of political interest hampered any form of consensus. Delegates from seafaring nations discounted the proposal to quarantine routinely ships arriving in port, not because it was expensive but because they felt it was scientifically unsound. So at least it was claimed. Although Britain was hardly unique in this regard, outside observers were quick to note a ‘surprising concordance between England’s commercial interests and its scientific convictions’.

'Cholera on the Bowsprit', an illustration by F. Fritz Graetz, shows the disease personified by a Turkish immigrant.

The third conference, held in 1866, was substantially more productive. Convened in Istanbul, the conference was prompted by a major outbreak of the disease in Egypt, carried by hajji pilgrims on their way to Mecca, who arrived in unprecedented numbers via the newly opened Suez Canal. Scientific politics did not stop entirely: delegates from Persia and the Ottoman Empire vocally opposed the charge that cholera was endemic in their lands, while Britain continued to resist ‘with an almost religious fervour’ the claim that the disease had originated in India. Nevertheless the urgency of the situation carried the day. The Istanbul conference proposed the first of a series of practical containment measures, including the construction of a quarantine facility at the entrance to the Red Sea, which required an unprecedented level of co-operation among the European powers.

Although this new partnership within Europe was prompted by fears of disease spreading from Asia, it was the next generation’s creation of an epidemic prevention infrastructure within Asia that represented a real globalisation of public health. Two major changes made this possible: the Pasteurian revolution transformed scientific understanding about the origin and prevention of disease, while the expansion of inter-Asian trade and migration gave everyone a stake in tackling epidemics beyond their own borders. Regardless of what flag was flying over Shanghai or Singapore, these port cities belonged to the world by virtue of the fact that nearly everyone shared an interest in making sure that trade flowed through them freely. When plague struck the great Asian trading hub of Hong Kong in 1894 colonial authorities sprang into action, establishing quarantine areas, distributing medicine and disinfectant and mobilising both British and Chinese charities to care for the afflicted.

They were not alone. Crisis in an international city prompted a global response, with epidemiologists from Europe, the US and Japan racing to be the first to isolate the bacillus. Although European and Japanese teams each made the discovery independently, it was the Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin (1863-1943) who eventually claimed naming rights over the plague bacteria now known as Yersinia pestis. When the same disease struck the Manchurian boomtown of Harbin in 1910 the Qing government convened an international conference of experts to come up with a solution. China realised how much was at stake. The plague came fast on the heels of the war between Russia and Japan and was concentrated along the railway, the heart of foreign interests in the region. China had to make some attempt to control the outbreak; doing nothing might be seen as an abdication of sovereignty. The response to plague in Asia showed a new appreciation that neither pathogens nor national interest stopped at national borders. Disease anywhere was now everybody’s problem.

Rival religions

The final pillar of European interest in Asia was religion. Christian missionaries had been making the journey there in increasing numbers since the 16th century, almost as soon as the opening of the sea route round the south of Africa allowed them to do so without traversing Muslim lands. The first wave was the Jesuits, who set up in Goa and from there branched out to Malacca and Japan, all with an eye to the final prize of China. The Jesuits came to admire the lands they visited and developed a strategy of explaining Christianity, not only in local languages, but through the symbols and idioms of local beliefs. This conciliatory strategy endeared them to Asian elites, who regarded the highly educated priests as their peers, but put them into conflict with their own co-religionists. Arriving in Asia following very different experiences in Africa and the Americas, other denominations were far less conciliatory towards local beliefs. They claimed that the Jesuit approach bordered on idolatry and insisted that the Catholic faith must be inseparable from European language, dress and culture.

Two centuries later a new wave of Protestant missionaries in Asia would face the same question: what exactly had they come to preach? While 16th-century Jesuits stood in awe of a materially and culturally superior Asia, those of the 19th century became convinced of the White Man’s Burden to civilise the continent. Even people like James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), who instructed members of his China Inland Mission to dress, speak and live like Chinese, also recognised that one of the best ways to bring potential converts to the mission was to entice them with western education and medicine.

Throughout the world even long-established Christian communities remained under the care of missionaries, who tended to regard the native Christians as converts, rather than as equals within the faith. We might pause before judging the missionaries too harshly: looking out at the world from the apex of western power, delegates at the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 saw the aggressive march of Anglo-American Protestantism (Catholic missions were not invited) as an irresistible force for good and envisioned the gospel radiating out to every corner of the globe. The small sprinkling of Asian Christians present at the conference clearly viewed things differently. Like the Jesuits two centuries earlier, they and their allies advocated adapting the Christian message to native spirituality, particularly in relation to Asia’s great religions: Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. After lengthy debate the conference decided that making such comparisons risked diluting the uniqueness of the Christian revelation and, instead of conciliation, urged missionaries in the field to draw the ‘frankest comparison’ with native religions.

By the time the next major missionary conference was held in Jerusalem in 1928 things had changed. The First World War and the rise of the Soviet Union had weakened the confidence of the previous generation in the West’s ‘superior’ civilisation and taken the wind out of the call to missionise the globe ‘in our lifetimes’. Asian Christians themselves grew ever more active and vocal. Japanese Christians, although few in number, flatly rejected any suggestion of second class status. They were joined by a new generation of erudite Chinese Christians, such as Soong May-ling (1897-2003), the American-educated wife of Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975). More important, these communities had endured events such as the Boxer Rebellion in China and the 1919 independence movement in Korea, both of which visited disproportionate violence on Christians, and emerged with their faith unscathed. They could scarcely be called Christians in training and were no longer willing to be treated as such. While delegates in Edinburgh had politely broached the question of how Asian Christianity would eventually be accepted as an equal by the mission community, those in Jerusalem were more direct, demanding a specific timetable for when local churches would come under full Asian control.

The deteriorating political situation in the 1930s added ever more urgency to the question. The days when Europeans could protect their missionaries with gunboat diplomacy were a distant memory. Japan was growing increasingly aggressive in Manchuria and China and more openly hostile to the European powers in Asia, particularly Great Britain. This situation presented missionaries in Japanese areas with a difficult decision. Should they attempt to assuage Japanese suspicions by ceding authority to native Christians, or should they delay leaving and try to use the mission as a political shield? Anglo-American Protestants in Korea and Manchuria chose the latter path, a decision that eventually led to open confrontation in 1937, when the authorities forcibly replaced the missionaries with Japanese Christians.

The Catholic situation was more complex. The largest Catholic mission in East Asia was the French Missions Etrangères de Paris (MEP), which had a long history in Japan and a more sympathetic view of that country as a civilising force. A previous generation of MEP priests had already reached an accommodation with Japan at the time of its wars with China and Russia. Japanese Catholics had enthusiastically supported their nation as a chance to show their loyalty. The priests blessed troopships departing the docks and praised the patriotic valour of Catholic soldiers, such as the wounded lieutenant who shouted with his dying breath: ‘My heart with God and my body with the Emperor!’

Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931, which was renamed Manchukuo early the following year, wrecked its relations with the Anglo-American powers. Yet even after the League of Nations condemned Manchukuo as a puppet of Japan, MEP priests, such as vicar apostolic Auguste Gaspais (1884-1952), continued to press an unwilling Vatican to establish rapprochement with the state. Such a request was particularly surprising coming from the French missions, which had for decades thwarted Rome’s attempts to build a diplomatic profile in Japan and China by invoking the French protectorate over the Church in China.

It was war with the Allies that finally forced a resolution. With hundreds of thousands of Catholics living under Japanese rule in China and Korea, and foreseeing the same outcome for Indochina and the Philippines, the Holy See moved from decades of indecision and established relations with Japan in 1942. This move, viewed with obvious dismay in Britain and the United States, was in fact entirely consistent with the Vatican’s long-held position of neutrality in conflict between states, a principle that it reaffirmed a month later when, this time against vigorous Japanese protests, it established relations with the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek in Beijing.

The importance of culture

Much of the current discussion of how Asia will shape the coming century is based on culture. We are already seeing a more confident and vocal expression of alternative political and social ideas coming out of Asia and can no doubt expect to see much more in the future. The historiography of imperialism in Asia has revolved largely around the cultural encounter: the ideas that lay behind resistance, alternate conceptions of modernity and the voices that were suppressed.

Cultural perspectives are important, but on their own they can also be a bit of a red herring. Regardless of how Asia and the West may have perceived each other in cultural terms, the fact remains that neither had the ability to walk away from the relationship. This is why talk of the coming ‘Asian century’ is so misleading. In many ways the world was more connected in 1910 than it was in 1970. Sometimes, but not always, under the cover of empire, western interests spanned the globe, bringing wealth, knowledge and prestige back to the home countries, yet they also made themselves vulnerable to the same vicissitudes of markets and politics that we see today. Whether we are talking about diplomacy, finance, science or religion, the trajectory of the early 20th century is not of European imperialists blithely imposing their will and ways upon the world, but rather of a nimble yet vulnerable set of institutions that adapted to the threats, promises and opportunities of a rapidly changing world. Asia was as much a part of that world as it is of ours.

Thomas David DuBois is Senior Research Fellow in the History of China at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific.

Asia and the Old World Order | History Today

By Jonathan Fenby | Published in History Today Volume: 63 Issue: 3 2013

Jonathan Fenby looks at a brief experiment in Chinese democracy, brought to an end by political assassination one hundred years ago this month.

Face of Chinese democracy: Song Jiaoren, c. 1910

On the night of March 20th, 1913 China’s most successful politician was driven to Shanghai railway station to travel to Beijing (or Peking, as it was then transliterated). As he waited to board the train, Song Jiaoren, a slim 30-year-old with a thin moustache and wearing a western suit, was shot by a black-shirted assassin. He died two days later.

With Song’s death ended China’s brief flirtation with electoral democracy, in which he had led the Kuomintang Party to victory in polls held over the previous months. The country has never again had contested elections of the kind tried in 1913, which had seemed to optimists at the time to point the way towards the nation’s political evolution after the ending of two millennia of imperial rule in the revolution of 1911-12.

The republic proclaimed at the beginning of 1912 was a ramshackle affair and the first president, Sun Yat-sen, soon stepped down in favour of a military strongman, Yuan Shikai, who had been an imperial general but then turned against the old regime for his own purposes. Though no democrat, Yuan was obliged to bow to the call for a national election to pick a new government.

Sun’s long revolutionary career should have made him the natural democratic electoral standard bearer, but he preferred to place himself above the fray; he was always a theoretician and dreamer rather than a practical politician and expected automatic obedience from those around him. He found a new enthusiasm as director for railways and it was the pragmatic, self-assured Song who ran the campaign at the head of the Kuomintang, formed in the summer of 1912 to replace earlier revolutionary groups.

As a youth Song had been a revolutionary in central China, who then fled the imperial authorities to Japan for six years, where he met Sun and joined his Revolutionary Alliance, soon showing capabilities as an organiser and a constitutional thinker who sought to marry foreign ideas to Chinese realities.

In place of Sun’s vague if wide-ranging thoughts on nationalism, democracy and improving the people’s livelihood, Song crafted an election platform to appeal to the gentry, landowners and middle-class merchants who made up the bulk of the 10 per cent of the population entitled to vote: around 40 million men. Finding many of the voters equated Sun’s principle of the ‘people’s livelihood’ with socialism, he dropped it along with a call for gender equality; one suffragette slapped him in the face at an election rally.

The campaign was marked by intimidation, bribery and fraud but in February, 1913 the results gave the Kuomintang 269 of the 596 seats in the lower house of the legislature and 123 of 274 in the upper house. Song was said to have turned down a big bribe offered by Yuan and was bent on concluding alliances with smaller parties to form a majority, enabling him to become prime minister and rein in his opponent.

To eliminate that challenge the general and his henchmen used a contact in Shanghai, Ying Guixin, who combined revolutionary and underworld activities. He was sent a coded telegram from the capital promising him rewards if he destroyed Song. He enlisted a young man called Wu in a teahouse and offered him a trip to Europe if he would ‘lighten the labours of Yuan Shikai and smooth his path’.

At the station on the night of March 20th Wu shot at Song with a Browning revolver. The politician was rushed to a hospital where the doctors were told to wait for official permission from Peking to operate. By the time this came, peritonitis had set in. Song died the following morning. A western woman doctor said he could have been saved if she had been able to act immediately. From his death bed Song sent Yuan a telegram saying: ‘I die with deep regret. I humbly hope that your Excellency will champion honesty, propagate justice and promote democracy.’ Ying also sent telegrams to the capital. One read: ‘The urgent order was executed’; the other: ‘The insurgent leader is already annihilated.’

The Yuan administration tried to blame the assassination on internal Kuomintang feuds, conjuring up an unknown organisation called the Women’s Assassination Group. But Ying was an immediate suspect and was arrested as he was smoking opium in a brothel. Police found the exchange of telegrams with Peking in his house, together with the murder weapon. There was also an incriminating letter from the prime minister, who soon stepped down on the grounds that he was suffering from toothache; he died of poisoning the next year. Wu was arrested and also died of poisoning while awaiting trial. Ying escaped to Peking but was stabbed to death soon afterwards in a railway compartment.

As Yuan clamped down, Sun joined the opposition. The general surrounded parliament with troops and sacked three provincial governors who sympathised with the nationalist cause. Seven provinces declared independence from Peking, but were defeated. Yuan ordered the dissolution of the Kuomintang, meaning parliament could not meet for lack of a quorum.

A constitutional conference in the spring of 1914 confirmed Yuan as dictator for life. Egged on by an American adviser, F.J.Goodnow, who thought empire the most appropriate form of government for China, Yuan elevated himself to the throne. But China wanted a new leader and he was forced to step down, dying of blood poisoning in 1916. This opened the door to the ten years of warlord anarchy that gripped the country until Sun’s self-made heir, Chiang Kai-shek, used a mixture of military force, politics and bribery to establish a wobbly supremacy over the warlords and proclaim the Nationalist Republic in 1927.

What would have happened had Song made the trip to Beijing is one of the great questions of modern Chinese history. If he had formed a government he would have found himself in conflict with Yuan and the military winners of the revolution, none of whom had much time for democracy and who were building up their regional power.

Chinese society remained rooted in its traditions; modern ideas about politics did spread among the intellectual elite but had a limited influence. The 1913 election had been an experiment on which much building would have been needed, not least in evolving the rule of law. It would have been a major task for a young man but he had shown his abilities and that brief moment before he died still represents China’s clearest glimpse of democracy.

Jonathan Fenby is the author of Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How it Got There and Where it is Heading (Simon and Schuster, 2012).

Chinese Democracy: The Silencing of Song | History Today

By Jonathan Fenby | Posted 14th January 2013, 14:54

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom Stephen Platt Atlantic Books   471pp   £25 Buy this book

The Taiping rebellion in mid-19th century China is largely forgotten in the West. But it was a huge event which, in terms of its duration, death rates and damage far outdid other conflicts of the time, including the American Civil War. It represented a crisis in which Chinese tradition was confronted with a new teaching from abroad – Christianity – and the possibility for the West, in this case Britain, to ally with a progressive cause when China’s 2,000-year-old empire was in dire straits.

Initially the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, whose rebel followers surged out of southern China in the early 1850s to take the imperial southern capital at Nanjing, appeared a highly attractive movement. It practised Christianity with Chinese characteristics and a form of Communism that promised equality for its supporters. Its troops overcame the poorly organised, often debauched, ‘banner’ troops of the Manchu emperors, who had conquered China two centuries earlier, and their Han Chinese mercenaries. Combining military success under some exceptional self-taught commanders, they seemed to offer a new hope for the ancient nation.

With its heavenly capital established in Nanjing, however, the movement quickly succumbed to the luxuries of power and to vicious internal feuding. Its leader, a former village teacher called Hong Xiuquan, who imagined himself the son of the Christian God entrusted with a divine mission to overthrow the Qing dynasty and eliminate Confucianism, turned out to be an ineffectual ruler, as he dallied with concubines and listened to an organ brought to his palace from a Nanjing church.  Armies raised by rural gentry leaders, who came from the majority Han race rather than from Manchus like the Qing emperors, clawed back territory in a series of horrendous battles, eventually taking Nanjing in 1864, where Hong had died shortly before, probably from eating poisonous herbs as the besieged city starved.

In the end those who followed the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace were liquidated but in fact they left behind only a string of ‘what might have beens’ for a country that was embarking on a century of decline. The movement might have offered a new start but the forces of conservatism proved too strong and the exponents of change too amateurish, though the manner in which the Qing dynasty was forced to cede authority to the Han gentry to defeat the rebellion helped to pave the way to its fall half a century later. Today the rebels are seen through a double mirror – as prototype revolutionaries but also as a force that threatened the thing Chinese rulers, past and present, value most: stability.

Stephen Platt tells this epic story better than it has ever been told before. His book is a model blend of narrative and scholarship, combining sharp character sketches with clear accounts of battles. A major element he brings to the fore is the equivocal involvement of Britain and the international context of this Chinese power struggle, including the impact of the civil war across the Atlantic on British economic policy. Officially London was neutral towards both the Qing and the rebels, even though some of the missionaries who met the Taiping saw them as a force that might modernise China and open up relations with the West, a prospect encouraged by Hong Rengan, a far-sighted relation of the Taiping leader who plays a major role in Platt’s narrative. He had spent time in Hong Kong and got on well with foreigners and might have changed the course of Chinese history had he been able to turn their interest into material support. But the senior British diplomats in China disapproved of the rebels, who, indeed, gave plenty of reasons for disapproval with their odd behaviour and their strange interpretation of Christianity. So the British, including the mercenary British officer ‘Chinese’ Gordon, helped the gentry armies that gradually hemmed in Taiping in Nanjing, which fell to imperial forces with a  massacre typical of the relentless blood-letting of the war.

The irony was that the British and French had launched a punitive military expedition against Beijing in the midst of all this, which forced the emperor to flee and included the destruction of the Summer Palace and imposition of onerous terms on China. So at the same time as attacking the Qing the British were helping to save it from its deadly enemy. This was yet another irony in a period when Europeans used force and muscular Christianity to get what they could from China but propped up the decaying empire because its very weakness suited them so well.

Jonathan Fenby’s latest book is Tiger Head, Snake Tails; China Today. He blogs on China at www.trustedsources.co.uk/blog/china

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom | History Today

By Rod Paschall  Originally published by Vietnam magazine. Published Online: January 04, 2013

In late 1967, Gens. Westmoreland and Irzyk had taken steps to ensure that Headquarters Area Command in the Saigon area had some combat potential. The number of MPs was doubled, and cooks, clerks, drivers, mechanics and others were issued weapons, ammunition, communications equipment, body armour and steel helmets, and were dispatched to key installations. (National Archives photo)

A small but resourceful Headquarters Area Command was all that stood in the way of a massive surprise VC onslaught.

It was Tuesday, January 30, 1968, and by 10 o'clock in the morning Tet celebrations had already begun in earnest, with firecrackers exploding all over Saigon. Traffic, never good, was rapidly becoming impossible as boisterous revellers quickly filled the streets. Consequently, the man in charge of the U.S. Army's Headquarters Area Command in the city, Brigadier General Albin Irzyk, was just considering letting his troops off early when his phone rang.

"Irzyk, this is Westmoreland! I have strong indications that sappers may be operating in town tonight. I want your command at maximum alert." Click!

Well, so much for the afternoon off, thought Irzyk. The 51-year-old, a highly decorated tank battalion commander under General George S. Patton in World War II, was not prone to panic, though Headquarters Area Command (HAC) was neither a combat nor a combat support unit. It was a service support unit that kept the peace and assisted staffs, headquarters and offices in Saigon. The HAC was an amalgamation of 2,031 clerks, military policemen (MPs), cooks, engineers, drivers, generator operators, procurement and finance officers and others who supervised some 6,500 Vietnamese installation guards, repairmen, workers, maids, janitors and more, all of whom supported, housed, clothed, fed, guarded and transported the 35,000 U.S. and allied military personnel in South Vietnam's 50-square-mile Capitol Military District, the CMD.

The CMD was an overcrowded urban maze without a single U.S. ground combat arms unit. American and South Vietnamese HAC personnel secured 450 widely scattered leased facilities, drove and maintained more than 2,000 vehicles, billeted 11,000 people and served about 30,000 meals a day in 22 dining facilities. Irzyk's command also operated and maintained 21 water purification plants, as well as several swimming pools, theatres, basketball and tennis courts. While they were good at what they did, there was no way this outfit could be considered combat-ready.

However, in late 1967, Generals William Westmoreland and Irzyk had taken a number of steps to ensure that this collection of police, administrative and logistical organizations had some combat potential, and Westmoreland had personally assumed operational control of HAC. They had beefed it up with a 196-man Security Guard Company, supplementing HAC's main fighting potential, the 716th Military Police Battalion, which had itself been reinforced with additional MP units to bring its strength up to 1,100. Although Army MP units had a rarely used standing mission to fight as infantry if necessary, the Army had not required infantry training for MPs above the level of fundamental basic training that all U.S. Army soldiers received.

The efforts of Westmoreland and Irzyk to enhance the combat potential of this service support organization would be sorely tested when the small but resourceful HAC was all that stood in the way of a massive surprise onslaught on dozens of sites across Saigon on January 31.

As soon as Irzyk had hung up his phone, he summoned his staff and commanders to begin planning how to defend against sapper attacks, a somewhat familiar task. In addition to bombarding Saigon with Soviet-made 120mm rockets almost weekly, infiltrators from the Viet Cong C-10 Sapper Battalion had made frequent terrorist-style attacks for the past year. These were more often brief encounters, such as a grenade tossed into a crowd, a drive-by pistol shot from a motor scooter rider or sometimes a bombing of a headquarters or a hotel leased as an American billet or similar facility. In April 1966, three 716th MP Battalion members had earned posthumous Silver Star medals engaging a VC attack on a bachelor officer quarters (BOQ) in Saigon that also cost three Vietnamese policemen's lives and left 113 Americans and Australians wounded.

Indeed, bombing U.S. facilities had the potential for causing the greatest number of casualties and therefore required the employment of major HAC resources. With 450 facilities to secure inside the most densely populated city in the world, surveillance, coordination and especially guard placement had to be carefully planned, scheduled and supervised.

Unfortunately for Westmoreland and Irzyk, the attack for which they were now gearing up would have a magnitude of violence far beyond their wildest expectations. After infiltrating thousands of men and tons of weapons over several weeks into and around the CMD, the Viet Cong were only hours away from moving 19 local force battalions, including the C-10 Sapper units, to assault targets during the early morning of January 31. Eleven of these battalions would have targets in the CMD, where the overall security responsibility belonged to the Government of South Vietnam (GVN). Since there were no U.S. combat ground forces in the district, HAC secured U.S. facilities including the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) Headquarters complex at Tan Son Nhut. (The U.S. Air Force secured Tan Son Nhut Air Base.) Viet Cong objectives included the seizure of the U.S. Embassy, the Presidential Palace, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) artillery and armour school, Tan Son Nhut, the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff compound, Radio Saigon and several other facilities. The attackers were to hold their gains for 48 hours while VC and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) main force units fought their way into Saigon and Cholon.

Fortunately for the defenders, Westmoreland had taken a precaution that would prove critical when the Communists launched the Tet Offensive. On January 10 he heeded the advice of one of his commanders, Lt. Gen. Frederick Weyand, who alerted him to indications of some enemy movements toward Saigon. Westmoreland decided to cancel his own plans to move a large part of the U.S. ground forces in the III Corps region northward. As a result, Communist forces would face 27 U.S. combat battalions in near proximity to Saigon during Tet.

Irzyk began notifying all of his units to assume a maximum alert posture and planning for increased readiness, widespread street surveillance and the creation of mobile reaction forces. He ordered that all building security plans be immediately implemented. The number of MPs assigned to stationary guard posts at sensitive facilities was doubled. Beginning at 6 p.m., MPs would discontinue walking patrols, and the number of mobile jeep patrols would jump from about 20 to 41. Some of the jeep patrols were issued M-60 light machine guns. By midafternoon, these measures were either established or being implemented.

Irzyk had also identified members of HAC who could perform security and combat functions through the night without substantially degrading essential duties within the units and offices they served. These personnel—cooks, clerks, drivers, mechanics and others—were organized as Quick Reaction Forces (QRF) in groups sized to the anticipated threat. Placed under command of a HAC officer or non-commissioned officer, they were issued weapons, ammunition, communications equipment, body armour and steel helmets, and then they were assigned vehicles and dispatched to key HAC installations.

Quick Reaction Force 1, composed of troop movement specialists and special services personnel who maintained such facilities as gyms, libraries, swimming pools and movie theatres, was positioned near Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Another team made up of mechanics, drivers and clerks, QRF 2, was sent to a HAC motor pool near Phu Tho Racetrack. Quick Reaction Force 3 was dispatched to a downtown Saigon HAC motor pool, and QRF 4, consisting of commissary and storage specialists, was directed to the HAC commissary in Cholon. Similar dispositions were made for four other QRFs, which were instructed to monitor the military police network of telephone lines and radio net (call sign "WACO").

In late afternoon, with his orders given and his forces fanning out across the city, General Irzyk sat in his now quiet office and reflected on his past experiences an-ticipating battle. He had joined the U.S. Army horse cavalry in 1940 and become a tank unit commander. Serving in France in late 1944, he recalled receiving urgent orders to quickly assemble his tank battalion, turn it 90 degrees north and begin an 18-hour, 150-mile march in bitter cold and snow aimed at a little town in Belgium he'd never heard of, Bastogne. On the way, Irzyk and his men rolled right into the Battle of the Bulge, a desperate fight that began with the American leadership being caught off guard by a massive enemy assault. Now, in steamy Saigon nearly a quarter of a century later, Irzyk assumed his disparate collection of soldiers probably believed this maximum alert was just another false alarm. The grizzled recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, four Bronze Star Medals and two Purple Hearts considered they could be right. But, then again, maybe not.

Irzyk had long ago learned that a commander needed rest before a battle, so after going over some contingencies with the incoming operations office night shift, he had his driver take him to their quarters for a few hours of sleep. Getting there took longer than usual as their sedan could only inch along through the several blocks that were teeming with festive crowds.

At 2:47 a.m., thunderous explosions suddenly awakened General Irzyk. The U.S. Embassy, the Presidential Palace and other key targets were under attack. He and his driver dashed to their car and sped out and into a now eerily deserted city—a unique sight at any hour in Saigon. As they sped through scattered gunfire at speeds hitting 60 miles per hour, Irzyk suspected that the population must have known something was going to happen.

Waved through the HAC headquarters gate, Irzyk hopped out of the car and strode into a scene of furious activity. All the phones were either being used or ringing. The WACO radio network was a chaotic cacophony of MPs reporting shootings, mortar attacks or what appeared to be assaults on facilities—seemingly coming from everywhere.

"Sir, our embassy is under attack!" the duty officer reported to the general. "MPs have been dispatched and are rushing to it."

The HAC log for the first hour of the assault recorded nearly 50 separate action reports starting with the embassy attack at 0246 hours and followed in rapid succession with reports of attacks on five BOQs, two bachelor enlisted men's quarters, the Vietnamese Joint General Staff Headquarters, the Rex Hotel and more.

During the next 16 hours, the pace of combat reports coming into HAC HQ—usually with dire calls for reaction forces, guards, escorts or other assistance—would only gradually diminish.

The duty officers resorted to a triage-type handling of the crisis, assessing the casualty numbers and the importance of the installation being attacked to determine the magnitude of HAC's reaction. But early on, HAC's top priority was the embassy, even though the Marine Security Guard detachment was responsible for its security. That was as much a result of the MP casualties sustained there as it was for the relative importance of that facility.

The first MP battle deaths came at about 2:48 a.m. Two MPs at a post just outside the embassy wall were fired on when they spotted a vehicle unloading armed Viet Cong. They quickly stepped inside the embassy grounds, slammed the gate shut and reported the incident to WACO. The VC then breached the 10-foot-tall perimeter wall with explosives. The MPs saw Viet Cong coming through the hole created by the blast and fired on them with their M-16s, killing two before being overwhelmed by the attackers, some of whom had scaled the wall. Within minutes, a two-man MP jeep patrol arrived just outside the wall, and a VC sniper killed both men. Throughout the night, Marine and HAC reaction forces were sent to the embassy where they fought the intruders and successfully defended the embassy chancery building. By 8:30 a.m., they had killed or captured all of the estimated 20 attackers, at a cost of four MPs and one Marine killed.

Meanwhile, a much bigger and far more deadly fight had been raging since 3 a.m. about 21⁄2 miles northwest of the embassy and just east of Tan Son Nhut. It began with a chance encounter and would continue well into the afternoon. The Viet Cong intended to make a battalion-size attack on the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff (JGS) compound located near a U.S. BOQ. The attackers were successful in breeching the JGS compound but would be unsuccessful in penetrating the Joint Staff office building. Much of the reason for their failure was that MPs guarding the BOQ and two MP jeep patrols encountered and engaged the VC battalion's demolition company headed for the JGS compound. The company had AK-47s, RPGs, Claymores, explosives and grenades—all the wherewithal to break through walls and building entrances. Taken under fire in the dark by the military police, the demolition company temporarily sought cover in nearby buildings around an alley.

As at the U.S. Embassy, the MPs substantially spoiled the Viet Cong attack on the JGS compound. A HAC reaction force of about 25 MPs in a 2½-ton truck with a jeep in front and a jeep mounting a machine gun in the rear, was quickly dispatched to the BOQ. Driving with lights out in the dead of night, they chose an alley to make a stealthy approach to the BOQ. Oblivious to the Viet Cong concealed in buildings on either side, they proceeded right into a fusillade of close-range VC fire.

The MPs who survived the murderous ambush fell back and called for another reaction force as they desperately attempted to retrieve their wounded while under fire. The 35 soldiers of QRF 1, which Irzyk referred to as "my cooks, bakers and candlestick makers," was dispatched to the alley, followed shortly by yet another MP reaction team to bolster the force to about 70 men total. As dawn broke, the firing became more concentrated and accurate. However, the VC demolition company had failed to overcome the Americans and thus to assist its comrades struggling to take the JGS compound. Although the Viet Cong were now stranded, they were still capable of stubborn resistance. With the aid of a South Vietnamese army armoured car element, the MPs and QRF 1 began to recover the wounded.

Finally, an end to the alley fight came into view in the early afternoon when a U.S. armour element, two tanks and two
armoured personnel carriers (APC) from the U.S. 1st Infantry Division moved in to tip the scales. One by one, buildings sheltering the attackers were reduced to rubble. At 5 p.m., after 14 hours of pitched battle, the alley fight was over, with HAC casualties totalling 17 killed and 28 wounded.

At 5:40 a.m., when the alley battle was just heating up, a frantic call from another part of town came over the net: "They got the sergeant in the guts and the driver is wounded! They're shooting automatic weapons! We're near the racetrack. They're all over the place! The fire is very heavy. We need help now!"

The Viet Cong were using RPGs, and Jeep Patrol 95 was in deep trouble. A nearby HAC reaction force was dispatched to help the patrol, getting within three blocks of the Phu Tho Racetrack before dismounting and moving closer. Suddenly the reaction force was engaged in a vicious fire fight and took cover. Patrol 95's jeep burning in the middle of the road cast just enough light for them to see three bodies: Two MPs had been killed and a third was doing his best to appear dead. (He was successful and would be rescued later.) The VC clearly had fire superiority over the Americans, so another reaction force was sent—this one composed of HAC Security Guard Company soldiers that had already been suppressing VC firing at several spots and had just routed a VC attack at a BOQ in another part of the city. They rushed toward the racetrack in a 2½-ton truck.

As the Security Guard force dismounted and began moving on toward the fire fight, it came across yet another jeep—with two more dead MPs. Near that spot, the VC opened up on them. The Americans responded, but in a few minutes the first lieutenant leading them, seeking cover, moved his men to a small hotel and then went to his truck to render a radio report. There he was hit and crumpled to the street. Two men were wounded trying to reach him, but the lieutenant was already dead.

Jeep Patrol 95 had had the misfortune of running into what turned out to be the largest concentration of Viet Cong forces in Saigon, cantered on the Phu Tho Racetrack and a hub of streets connecting Cholon to Saigon. Within the area were a VC regimental command post and two local force battalions, of which the 6th Liberation Forces Battalion had occupied the racetrack. Viet Cong Maj. Gen. Tran Do, directing the overall attack on the CMD, had his headquarters less than two miles away to the west. He had designated the racetrack as the primary assembly point for incoming VC main force and, later, NVA units.

Realizing the enemy strength that his reaction teams were encountering, Irzyk sent another into the battle. The VC began using mortars, and as the outnumbered and outgunned HAC forces lacked the firepower to suppress them, a stalemate ensued.

It was at that precarious moment that the cavalry literally rode to the rescue. A platoon of the 17th Cavalry in four APCs (two mounting 106mm recoilless rifles), helicopter gunships, and a truck-mounted rifle company from the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry, poured into Cholon toward the racetrack. After hours of heavy fighting by HAC forces, an experienced, well-armed U.S. ground force had finally joined them. By 1 p.m. these newcomers had fought their way to the track. Pausing briefly, they probed and spotted Viet Cong strong points, then delivered a blistering outpouring of firepower and launched an attack that drove the surviving VC out of the racetrack. As darkness fell, the Americans were reinforced and Phu Tho Racetrack was now in their hands.

For the next 20 days, tough fire fights with small, disorganized and isolated groups of Viet Cong hiding among the CMD's 3 million people continued. But the battle for those 50 square miles had been effectively decided by sunset on January 31. The critical facilities General Tran Do had to capture—the U.S. Embassy, Tan Son Nhut, the JGS compound, the Armour and Artillery Centre, Naval Headquarters, Presidential Palace, Radio Saigon and the racetrack—were all in American or GVN hands.

By engaging the attackers at the embassy, the JGS compound and the racetrack before the VC could gain firm control, Irzyk's HAC soldiers played a pivotal role in frustrating General Do's intricate plans, and thus thwarted a catastrophic military defeat.

Their performance during those 16 hours was no accident. It was the result of several key decisions, sound leadership, skilled planning and the bravery and grit of U.S. soldiers, particularly the military policemen. Leading into Tet, Westmoreland made critical choices that contributed to HAC's success. By eliminating any bureaucracy between himself and Irzyk, it only took one phone call to trigger Irzyk's planning, organization and delivery of orders on January 30. Also, Westmoreland had the good sense 20 days earlier to put his own plans aside and keep troops near the CMD during Tet when he was warned of danger. The decision to beef up HAC's combat worthiness was wise and timely. And Irzyk and his MP unit commanders put together an outstanding plan that increased surveillance of the CMD, provided widely scattered, mobile forces to quickly move to a hot spot and set up a workable communication plan to ensure smooth coordination and rapid action.

But, most of all, HAC's victory hinged on the military police, and they paid a grave price. In the first 12 hours of the fight, 27 MPs were killed and 44 wounded while performing their secondary role as light infantrymen. If the MPs had not spotted and engaged the VC before they had a chance to fully execute their plans, the story of Tet would no doubt have been much different.

The MP units were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, but perhaps the best indication of their courage and persistence in the Tet onslaught came from one of the captured attackers. Describing his unit's experience in Saigon, he said that everywhere they turned, they came face to face with American MPs.

Rod Paschall was a Special Forces detachment commander in Vietnam in 1962-63, served in Laos in 1964, was a company commander and staff officer in Vietnam in 1966-68 and served in Cambodia in 1974-75. He is currently editor at large for MHQ.

Tet: Circling the Wagons in Saigon