Warlord Era

The Warlord Era was the period from 1916 to 1928 when China was divided among rival military leaders. A central government in Beijing still existed and was recognised abroad, but real power lay with generals who controlled their own armies, provinces and revenues.

When the Qing dynasty fell in 1912, the general Yuan Shikai became president of the new Republic of China. Yuan had built the Beiyang Army, the most modern army in China, in the 1890s and 1900s, and its officers owed him personal loyalty. Yuan's death in June 1916, after a failed attempt to make himself emperor, left no one able to hold the country together. His former subordinates in the Beiyang Army split into cliques, named after their home regions.

The main cliques fought for control of Beijing and the central government. The Anhui clique, led by Duan Qirui, dominated from 1916 to 1920, borrowing heavily from Japan. In 1917 the general Zhang Xun briefly restored the last emperor, Puyi, for twelve days. In 1920 the Zhili clique, led by Cao Kun and Wu Peifu, defeated the Anhui clique. The Fengtian clique, led by Zhang Zuolin, the "Old Marshal", controlled Manchuria with Japanese support. The Zhili-Fengtian wars of 1922 and 1924 involved hundreds of thousands of soldiers. In 1923 Cao Kun bribed members of parliament to elect him president. In 1924 the general Feng Yuxiang betrayed Wu Peifu, seized Beijing and expelled Puyi from the Forbidden City.

Warlords funded their armies through heavy taxes, sometimes collected years in advance, opium cultivation and trade, banditry and loans from foreign powers. Soldiers often looted the areas they passed through, and civilians suffered. Some warlords were brutal; Zhang Zongchang, of Shandong, the "Dogmeat General", was notorious. Others tried to modernise: Yan Xishan, the "Model Governor" of Shanxi, ruled from 1911 to 1949, building roads, schools and industry; Feng Yuxiang, the "Christian General", was said to have baptised his troops with a fire hose and banned alcohol and opium among them.

In the south, Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, set up rival governments in Guangzhou, depending on southern warlords who sometimes turned against them; in 1922 the general Chen Jiongming drove Sun out. Sun then sought help from the Soviet Union, reorganised the Kuomintang, allied with the Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1921, and founded the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924, with Chiang Kai-shek as commandant.

Despite the chaos, these were years of intellectual ferment. The New Culture Movement, led by intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu, editor of New Youth magazine, and Hu Shi, criticised Confucian traditions and promoted science, democracy and writing in vernacular Chinese. On 4 May 1919, students in Beijing protested against the Treaty of Versailles, which gave Germany's rights in Shandong to Japan, and against the government's weakness. The May Fourth Movement spread across China. The writer Lu Xun published "A Madman's Diary" in 1918 and "The True Story of Ah Q" in 1921.

In July 1926, after Sun's death, Chiang Kai-shek launched the Northern Expedition from Guangzhou to defeat the warlords and unify China. Nationalist armies took Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai. In April 1927, Chiang turned on his Communist allies, massacring thousands in Shanghai. In June 1928, Nationalist forces took Beijing. Zhang Zuolin, retreating to Manchuria, was killed when Japanese officers blew up his train. His son, Zhang Xueliang, the "Young Marshal", declared allegiance to the Nationalist government in December 1928, nominally unifying China. Many warlords kept their power under the Nationalist government, and divisions continued until 1949.

Our maps use the name on the 1920 and 1930 maps, with an outline of about 5.5 million square kilometres, entirely in today's China. Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou lie inside it. The basemap keeps the label on the 1930 map, after the Nationalist reunification of 1928. Before and after, our maps show the Republic of China.