{"id":2479,"date":"2014-08-04T18:08:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T18:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=2479"},"modified":"2014-08-04T18:08:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T18:08:21","slug":"chinas-forgotten-world-war-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/chinas-forgotten-world-war-i","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Forgotten World War I"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 30, 2014 | by LARB Blog<\/span><\/p>\n

\"WWI-Shanghai-Memorial-624x581\"<\/a>
\nPhoto: The dedication of the WWI memorial in Shanghai, in 1924.<\/p>\n

By Maura Elizabeth Cunningham<\/p>\n

World War I has always been primarily associated with Europe. That\u2019s where the conflict began, where the major battles took place, and where the war had its most visible effect \u2013 the map of the continent was redrawn in its aftermath. But with the one hundredth anniversary of the war\u2019s outbreak being commemorated this summer, we\u2019re seeing more attention being paid to how non-European countries figured into \u201cthe war to end all wars.\u201d Delhi-based writer Chandrahas Choudhury, for example, discusses India\u2019s involvement in World War I in this Bloomberg View article, and The Guardian produced a documentary detailing the global nature of the conflict, though it\u2019s still fairly Euro-centric.<\/p>\n

China, too, became entangled in the fight in many different ways, and Penguin China is releasing a series of short \u201cspecials\u201d that each focus on a specific aspect of China\u2019s World War I history. These brief introductions (just about 100 pages), written by experienced journalists and historians, are available in Kindle editions and offer readers a quick overview of their subject matter.<\/p>\n

I received review copies of four books in this series from Penguin China (there are two more titles scheduled for publication at the end of August) and arranged them in chronological order before I started reading. I began with The Siege of Tsingtao, in which journalist Jonathan Fenby recounts the story of the war\u2019s only battle fought in East Asia, which took place in the fall of 1914. Tsingtao (now rendered as Qingdao, though the city\u2019s famous beer retains the old spelling) was Germany\u2019s main territorial holding in China and its base of naval operations in East Asia. Japan had long desired to expand its possessions in China, so it teamed up with Britain to attack the German port almost immediately after war was declared in Europe. Qingdao\u2019s defenders never had a chance of keeping the settlement in German hands: they had few men and no supply lines. Though the Japanese and British forces were slowed down by heavy rains, they prevailed and took control of Qingdao by mid-November. Japan immediately moved to assert itself as the settlement\u2019s new authority; its territorial ambitions in China would have long-reaching consequences.<\/p>\n

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For detail please visit here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 30, 2014 | by LARB Blog Photo: The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[394],"tags":[1343,604],"views":2646,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2482,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions\/2482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}