Trench Art and the Story of the Chinese Labour Corps in the Great
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© James Gordon-Cumming 2020 All rights reserved. First published on the occasion of the exhibition Western Front – Eastern Promises Photography, trench art and iconography of the Chinese Labour Corps in the Great War hosted at The Brunei Gallery, SOAS University of London 1st October to 12th December 2020 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the permission of the publisher, James Gordon-Cumming. Front cover: Collecting stores for the long journey ahead © WJ Hawkings Collection, courtesy John de Lucy 2 Page Contents A New Republic ..................................................................................................................... 5 A War Like No Other ........................................................................................................... 7 The Chinese Solution ......................................................................................................... 9 The Journey to Europe .................................................................................................... 10 Across Canada ..................................................................................................................... 13 In support of the war machine ..................................................................................... 14 From Labourer to Engineer ............................................................................................ 18 Nowhere is too far from the Front Line .................................................................... 21 No 1 Chinese Hospital ...................................................................................................... 24 Leisure time ......................................................................................................................... 26 Gambling................................................................................................................................ 28 An Unexpected Visitor ..................................................................................................... 29 Discipline, Prison and an Escape ................................................................................. 30 Working with the War Graves Commission ............................................................. 32 The Post-War Period: The Clear Up Begins ............................................................. 33 Returning Civilians ........................................................................................................... 35 The 1919 Peace Conference .......................................................................................... 36 The End of the Corps and the Return to China ..................................................... 37 The bronze British War Medal ....................................................................................... 39 What is trench art? ........................................................................................................... 40 CLC Trench Art ................................................................................................................... 42 Chinese Iconography On Trench Art .......................................................................... 43 More Chinese labourer trench art ............................................................................... 52 The first masters of trench art? .................................................................................. 60 William James Hawkings ................................................................................................ 62 End Notes .............................................................................................................................. 63 3 Page 4 Page A New Republic On 1st January 1912, after more than two thousand years of Imperial rule, the Republic of China was born, ending a century of unrest under the decaying Qing dynasty that had lasted since 1644. Representatives of all the provinces had gathered in Nanjing on 29th December 1911 and elected Sun Yat-Sen to be China’s first President. He was inaugurated on 1 January, the first day of the First Year of the Republic. Sun had been involved in the revolutionary movement in China since the late 1880s and was credited with having kept the spirit of revolution alive over the preceding twenty years. Sun Yat-Sen, first President of China 120 representatives from the provinces formed a provisional National Assembly of the Republic of China, to act as the parliament for the new Republic, in anticipation of formal elections happening when they could be arranged. The army, however, remained loyal to Emperor Puyi and the Qing Court. To avoid a bloody fight to remove the old order and firmly establish the new Republic, Yuan Shikai, head of the army, was promised the position of President if he could convince the Qing Court to abdicate. This he managed to do and Emperor Puyi abdicated on 12th February. Sun Yat-Sen duly stood down and Yuan became the Republic’s President Yuan Shikai, on 10th March 1912. second President of China In August 1912, Song Jiaoren formed a new party, the Kuomintang (KMT), to bring together the main Sun- supporting parties. The National Assembly was then divided between KMT members and supporters of Song Jiaoren, KMT leader 5 Yuan Shikai. Page During December 1912, and January 1913, the first democratic elections were held in the Republic, electing the members to the newly founded Senate and House of Representatives. The election was considered a great success for KMT, who won 45% of seats in both the lower House and the Senate. Their success, however, was seen as a threat to Yuan and detrimental to Yuan’s power as President. Yuan had no intention of relinquishing his power after less than a year as President. On 20th March 1913, the leader of the KMT party, Song Jiaoren, was assassinated. He was shot twice, at close range, at the Shanghai railway station by a lone gunman on the orders of a Shanghai underworld boss, Ying Guixin. Guixin was the leader of the infamous Green Gang, who controlled the opium and prostitution trades and organised crime in the whole of Shanghai. Guixin also had close links to the Yuan Shikai regime. Ying Guixin After the removal of Song Jiaoren, Yuan Shikai quickly began to consolidate his power, leading to the opposition rising up in the failed ‘Second Revolution’ in July and August 1913. Victorious, Yuan took control of many of the republican organisations created in 1912. Those he could not control, he ignored. China effectively descended into a military dictatorship, with Yuan eventually declaring himself Emperor of China in 1915. Under Yuan’s dictatorship the republic began to fragment, with regions declaring themselves independent and, eventually, Yuan was forced to abdicate in 1916, leaving the Republic as little more than a group of warlord-led regions, only nominally ruled by an ineffectual military government in Beijing. By this stage, the eyes of the world were firmly fixed on the war now raging in Europe. China, after its brief emergence as a new Republic, once again began to disappear from view. 6 Page A War Like No Other The war that erupted in Europe in 1914 was 1914: uniquely catastrophic; an ill-prepared-for clash of The war they expected nineteenth century army tactics and experience with twentieth century mass-produced weapons. A total war, incorporating massive volunteer and conscripted citizen armies. Fighting the static, trench-based war that had developed by the end of 1914 hugely favours the defender. Germany sought to build an impenetrable wall that the French and British armies would be repeatedly forced to assault in order to remove the invaders from the occupied territory. The German Chief of General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn intended to “bleed France white” in so doing. France bore the brunt of the fighting through 1914 and 1915 and by the end of 1915, had lost almost Postcard published by Raphael Tuck & Co a million men, either killed, captured or missing. Even before 1914, the potential shortage of labour in the event of a 1917: large-scale war had been identified The war they fought and France had already considered the concept of Chinese labour. The idea had not been welcomed by the French working community, however, citing concerns that it would lead to a decline in wage levels, although Union objections were thought to be “more by workmen who were reluctant to make close acquaintance with life in To the Last Man, by R D Westwood; © Author’s collection the trenches than by fear of Chinese cheap labour”, according to David Robertson, the British military attaché in Peking. 7 Page The scale of the French losses in 1914 and 1915 simply could not be replaced domestically and Lt Col Georges Truptil was sent to China to organise the recruitment of 70,000 men in January 1916. After some delays, an agreement was signed in May with a newly created commercial entity, Huimin, to recruit 50,000 men, with the first contingent of 1,711 men setting out from China on the SS Empire in July 1916. “China and France are at peace and how could it be possible to prevent the free passage of travellers between the two countries…. It must be clearly understood that the French Government has no official part in the recruiting of Chinese labour: it is purely private enterprise.” North-China Herald, 7th October 1916 Unfortunately, in October