Fear isn't always rational. and yes by 1871 the writing was on the wall, but in 1871 Britain was neither particularly interested in the contintental affairs (versus its colonial affairs) and Bismarck presented (in contrast to Wilhelms erratic 'weltpolitik') the opinion that he supported and would hold the consensus together the reason France continued to be perceived as the peer rival hostil power was because of the French decision to try and mess with British interests in Egypt and Africa more broadly, while also after 1871 cozying up with the Russians who again the Great Game. Now we know with hindsight Cossacks in India is a silly fear, but back then Britain didn't really want a repeat of the Crimean war (even though they won, and yes theBritish assumed they would win, but they didn't want to fight in the first place. It was not a case of winning so much a case of being put in a pyrrhic victory scenario of a cost (and this is in relation to India, which Britain would have fought very hard to keep as in like the Royal navy would have ended up sailing into the neva or bombarding petrograd (because those are things the Royal navy talked about doing in summer campaign plans)) but again the question remained does France come to Russia's aid against britain where as Bismarckian Germany was neutral if not potentially an ally in the 1880s in those war plans.
At present or at least in 1916 it'd probably be in the chinese silver dollars issued by the Customs and Import office these were very common in North China because they were issued by the British with guarantees on standard and were prefered to copper cash (since heavily devauled, taxes were to be paid in silver value) or provincial currencies, I don't think I ever mentioned it explicitly. Xian doesn't start issuing its own paper currency until 1920, there is probably some degree of scrip issuing going on because that was common in this period where the value of a paycheck could be redeemed in corporate stores for goods
According to Van de ven in 1916 Yan Xishan's (as dujun of Shanxi province) total military expenditure was 300k yuan (which seems really odd) given two years earlier his budget was 3.2 million yuan and I don't honestly think its a case of Van de ven putting the decimal point in the wrong place, because the provincial military budget in 1912 is estimated at half a million.yuan.
I have a JSTOR account (https://www.jstor.org/) I've used them as a my default research tool since I was in undergrad. If your school doesn't count (for regional reasons, I wouldn't assume they do that, but it does strike me as a possibility), you can make a free account I think its like a hundred articles a month
Trying to get to med school here.
Should be cadre, though technically they could be considered synonyms, but it should be Cadre in that part.
Brigades are being retained as specific specialist units and then they'll go to combined armed later, I think I mentioned this, and basically this a historical holdover in some militaries, and the US largely discontinued the use of the Regiment after ww2 in favor of smaller brigades
Not so much liberator, Gordon's period reflective attitude seems to be more force against chaos, which better describes Allen than liberator would. A lot of Gordon's positive propganda was that he represented good governance, tradition, learned excellence, values that could be construed in the light as being civilized (and again this is because especially by the end the Taiping were not nice people and were in their own civil war within a civil war). Allens fundamental basis of good relations with the general public (people not employed or by proxy) is that he represents law and order, he's against banditry. he's militarily successful (and thats important) the ability to get things done the association with beijing and nominally working in the system (if this were set earlier Allen or some of hte older senior members of the cadre who would have been in the late qing eligible for Mandrin status for the kind of recognition of public works and good as perceived by the dynasty this was a status that the late Qing conveyed on foreign officials involved in diplomacy, education it was their equivalent of sorts to a British knighthood to put it in a contemporary comparison)
I will get to your PMs probably tomorrow, maybe the day after, the holidays are exhausting for me and don't have a lot of my notes. Which when we move into the next chronological period, in the twenties I'm probably going to have to start including excerpts from primary sources because the 1920s and after involves a bunch of people holding a lot of zany opinions there is this 'madness' after the first world war in terms of public opinions, that effects leadership in various countries to avoid future wars, which ulimately proves detrimental to that end goal, there are ... well everyone's reaction to the soviet union springing up, there are the soviets internal antics (and the Russian civil war in general), but it would behoove me to quote a bunch of people's actual speechs, their diary entries of the period to encapsulate that this was an odd duck time period
I forgot about that story actually, I actually had to go double check.
Frankly the Emperors basically after Qianlong (and frankly even before him) simply didn't have the centralized control to enforce that, there was significant corruption within both the banner armies particularly those in the south, where it was functionally impossible to maintain large standing cavalry forces in the napoleonic era. So as opposed to militantly rejecting this, the empreror would coopt these local militias with personal approval and sanction (ussually by siccing them on rebels the next province over) because the Qing were dealing with a significant number of small local rebellions. (Between 1905 and 1911, there are more than a hundred rebellions in different parts of china, and during the 1860s there are a significant number of other rebellions beyond just the really big one that is the Taipings).
THe problem with Krupps naval shells is that (and this is wht I've been told) is that filler they used basically is asphalt, so if improperly stored rather than burning then going boom it solidifies into a block of inert material (which is perfectly fine for non naval use because the shells aren't being exposed to sea water, and the changes in temperature) I'll have to double check that, and of course this is also a period where quality control on shells is b ad, so your high explosive shells in naval guns you might have litterally a couple hundred rounds out of a thousand fail to detonate for any number of reasons
Yes, this is true, however even by september of 1915 the British were still suffering a failure shell rate (that is duds) of between 20 and 25 percent of all shells fired
This is what I would argue is more important than shell failure rate, that and doctrine. The Japanese had by this point had already adopted their version of Mahan and knew they they were going into a close range knife fight. The Beiyang fleet did not, they did not have that doctrine the Japanese were fully prepared to take serious losses by closing but were aiming for a knock out fight (this is descisive battle theory)