The Global First World War

African, East Asian, Latin American and Iberian Mediators

Ana Paula Pires, María Inés Tato, Jan Schmidt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000377552
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Prima guerra mondiale

This volume deals with the multiple impacts of the First World War on societies from South Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, usually largely overlooked by the historiography on the conflict. Due to the lesser intensity of their military involvement in the war (neutrals or latecomers), these countries or regions were considered "peripheral" as a topic of research. However, in the last two decades, the advances of global history recovered their importance as active wartime actors and that of their experiences.

This book will reconstruct some experiences and representations of the war that these societies built during and after the conflict from the prism of mediators between the war fought in the battlefields and their homes, as well as the local appropriations and resignifications of their experiences and testimonies.

1
Chinese workers on the Western Front and their extraordinary artistic and personal journey

XU Guoqi

During the Great War or the First World War, the Chinese wanted to be involved to fight against Japanese aggression and to search for justice and equality in the new world order and the family of nations. The Allied countries, especially France and Great Britain, needed human resources as the fighting became increasingly bloody and deadly. With this background, about 140,000 Chinese labourers, most of them illiterate peasants, travelled to Europe to support the Allied war effort. These labourers were recruited by the governments of France and Britain to help both countries in their Great War against the Germans; later when the United States of America joined the war, the Americans took advantage of Chinese labour as well.

One hundred years after the end of the war, while few know of the Chinese journey to France, even fewer have paid attention to their artistic footprints. This chapter will shed light on the personal journey of the Chinese as well as their artistic tastes and activities in transnational contexts. The keywords here are “strangeness” and “shared.” After all, strangeness is a defining feature of their personal journey, and strangeness, or the obscure, and shared are part and parcel of the arts and, to a certain extent, an inspiration for arts.

Sense of strangeness from the Chinese side

To understand the Chinese journey and their artistic activities in Europe, we first have to bear in mind that these workers were strangers in a strange land. Few could read Chinese, even fewer understood Western languages or cultures. As a matter of fact, most had never travelled beyond their villages before they were recruited to go to Europe, the centre of so-called Western civilisation. But the civilised West was mired in a terrifying war. It was not in a position collectively to show off the cultural, intellectual, or political triumphs of peacetime but could reveal only its ugliest, most barbarous attributes: total mutual destruction and horrendous brutality. Nobody had prepared the Chinese for the culture shock or taught them how to adjust to this new life. Everything they saw, everything they were supposed to do was new and strange to them. The food, the language, the customs, and the management, all of these were a shock. There was no time or opportunity for them to ponder, digest, and ask questions since the West needed their labour immediately.

To these Chinese workers, their jobs in Europe were extremely strange. While in Europe, most Chinese workers were under military management. According to British military rule, they had to wear approved clothing at all times, with the exception that civilian underclothing, boots, shoes, or head-gear might be worn on or off duty. They were managed by Western officers and frequently had to march to work. An American officer, Norman W. Pinney of Florida, later recalled, “I often saw these Chinese [under the British] marching along the roads to and from labor details. They were exceptionally neat and clean and their march discipline … excellent. At first, I thought they were Chinese troops”.¹ The Chinese, and especially those under British command, often worked in, or close to, military zones. If they broke the rules, they would be court-martialled.

The Chinese engaged in multiple types of work. They repaired tanks and roads, dug foundations, worked in powder factories, arsenals, acid factories, loaded and unloaded trains and boats, manned paper factories. The Great War in Europe was a trench war, and most Chinese working for the British got involved in digging trenches, which occupied most of their time and labour. Some Chinese died from bombardment. According to one labour corps officer, the Chinese called bombs from German aero-planes “German eggs”, and sometimes they saw “plenty German eggs”. In a daylight raid, Chinese “merely stopped their work in order to gaze better at the altitudinous Germans, and when a bit of shrapnel whizzed to earth, the coolies would pounce on it, laughingly crying out, ‘plenty souvenir-la’”.²

Besides bombs, the Chinese also faced deadly threats from gas shells. Captain A. McCormick, an officer for the Chinese labour camp, wrote:

The great fear we had was not so much ordinary shell fire as gas shell fire. Frequently large numbers of gas shells fell in close proximity to our camp and what saved us was simply that the wind was blowing from where our camp was situated to where the shells had fallen. I do not wish to magnify, but I must not minimize these troubles which were seldom absent…. I can convey the best idea to my readers of how it affected me specially who held command of a Labour Company and whose duty it was to look after the safety of my men when I say that for three months after that attack I never dared take my trousers off when going to bed and I always had to have my gas mask in readiness at my side.³

The Chinese also faced other dangers and challenges. They were often called on to bury dead soldiers’ remains. Anyone would count this work as gruesome, but it was especially hard on the Chinese, who believe that touching dead bodies is extremely unlucky. The men suffered nightmares and thought they were cursed by the dead. Imagine the psychological toll! TS Eliot’s lines about the burial of the dead surely convey their distress:

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.⁴

Of course, Chinese ignorance of Western culture made them suspicious of the rules and policies imposed on them. They were offended that they had to follow so many rules, with no room for flexibility. Thus, suspicion led to misunderstandings. Misunderstandings led to serious problems, which sometimes proved deadly since the French called in the military to suppress uprisings.⁵

Not everything was both strange and horrifying. Occasionally some strange but exciting events happened to the Chinese workers too. While in Europe, for example, Chinese labourers had opportunities to watch movies and soon they came to recognise and look for Charlie Chaplin just like the “Tommies” and “Yanks”. Another exciting and strange case deals with their experience in accepting the British king. In late 1918, George V was inspecting his victorious armies and needed a quiet location for luncheon on a certain Friday. Interestingly enough, a Chinese labour company was deemed to be a suitable venue for the king. Word of the king’s visit reached the Chinese there only days earlier.

The Chinese naturally got excited. Some asked, “May we receive the emperor?” Others wondered, “How shall we do it?” Somebody suggested, “On parade, with a King’s salute, and a cheer”. There was not enough time for the Chinese to learn how to pronounce “Hurrah”, so a secretary of Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) decided that the Chinese word hao or “good” would be used instead. The Chinese thus practised until three hao’s sounded something like a British cheer. The Chinese also practised salutes with a sharp turn of the hand to the side. They were instructed, “Don’t bring it down till the emperor returns your salute”. “What? Will the emperor return our salute?” “Yes, of course, he will”. The cheer was to follow the salute. “Be sure and shout with all your might”. “Won’t it startle His Majesty?” asked one intelligent labourer. “No, he is used to it”, the YMCA secretary answered.

In addition to practising the cheer, the men took the initiative and added something more after their own style. They quietly pooled their francs and sent into the nearby town (Cambrai) for bright-coloured cloth and from it worked a fantastic yet pretty archway over the door to the royal mess-room. They also erected a real Chinese triumphal arch in his honour. Chinese mottos about the dawn of peace and the virtues of the king and his ministers emblazoned the walls, and flags fluttered everywhere. The best writer of the company wrote a message of welcome in large Chinese characters, which meant in English “All rejoice at the dawn of peace”.

On the day the king arrived, the 480 Chinese lined up from the roadway to the mess-hut and waited with bright faces and eager eyes. The king seemed surprised at the smart appearance of these labourers, all standing at salute, which His Majesty smilingly acknowledged. Then the three “hao’s” rang out, and of course, the king did not know they were shouting “Good, good, good” to him. They shouted a Chinese welcome when His Majesty came and sent him off with a cheer like “the sound of many waters”. The king seemed “highly pleased and the Chinese, of course, were much elated”. The king sent a special message to the men telling them of his pleasure at their kind welcome and thanking them for the decorations and good wishes. The YMCA secretary who witnessed the whole thing wrote, “Those lads from far Cathay appreciated the king’s thoughtfulness and were delighted that his majesty had acknowledged their salute. You may be sure that incident will be talked of in many a far-off home”. After lunch, the king had paused on his way to the car to ask a few interested questions about the Chinese and shook hands with their captain. After the cars had sped away with the king, the Chinese were shocked to notice that the king’s food had been only sandwiches. They peered at the leftover sandwiches and scarcely believed what they saw. They tried some, and one Chinese declared ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editors and contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: the global First World War and its mediators
• 1 Chinese workers on the Western Front and their extraordinary artistic and personal journey
• 2 The impact of the First World War on Japan’s foreign book market
• 3 Mediating enmity: the propaganda war in Latin America, 1914–1919
• 4 Reporting the war in British Africa
• 5 Coverage of the First World War in regional Mexican press: an analysis of El Informador in Guadalajara
• 6 All about national survival: Chinese intellectuals’ understanding of war during the interwar period, 1914–1937
• 7 Not a secondary experience: the First World War in Japanese mass media, ministerial bureaucracy publications, elementary schools, and department stores
• 8 An Argentine reporter in the European trenches: Lieut. Col. Emilio Kinkelin’s war chronicles
• 9 Covert wars in Spain (1914–1918): belligerent agency and local impacts
• 10 Portuguese humanitarian efforts during the First World War
• Index