Interior East Africa (1852–1863 CE): Consolidation, Conflict, and Rising European Presence

The Central Pacific Railroad hires agents to recruit thousands of Chinese workers from Guangdong Province in March 1865.

In the United States, the western labor teams will be primarily made up of Chinese emigrant workers with up to twelve thousand such laborers employed by the Central Pacific Railroad, representing ninety percent of the entire work force.

Armand David, ordained in 1862 had shortly afterwards been sent to Beijing, where he had begun a collection of material for a museum of natural history, mainly zoological, but in which botany, geology, and palaeontology are also well represented.

Born in Ezpeleta near Bayonne, in the north of Basque Country, David had entered the Congregation of the Mission in 1848, having already displayed great fondness for the natural sciences.

At the request of the French government, important specimens from his collection had been sent to Paris and had aroused the greatest interest.

The Jardin des Plantes has commissioned him to undertake scientific journeys through China to make further collections.

He succeeds in obtaining many specimens of hitherto unknown animals and plants, and the value of his comprehensive collections for the advance of systematic zoology and especially for the advancement of animal geography will receive universal recognition from the scientific world.

The most remarkable of the animals found by David that were hitherto unknown to Europe are the Giant Panda in Baoxing County and Père David's Deer.

The latter had disappeared with the exception of a few preserved in the gardens of the Emperor of China, but David had succeeded in securing the carcasses of an adult male, an adult female and a young male, and sent them to Paris, where the species is named Père David’s Deer by Alphonse Milne-Edwards, a French biologist.

After the death of Yuan Shikai, the second President of the Republic of China, China had fragmented into numerous fiefdoms ruled by warlords.

Sun Yat-sen, the first provisional president when the Republic of China (ROC) was founded in 1912 and later co-founder of the Kuomintang (KMT), serving as its first leader.

had attempted in 1917 and 1920 to set up a base in his native Guangdong to launch a northern campaign to unite China under his Three Principles of the People.

However, his government had remained militarily weaker than local warlords’ armies.

Calls by Sun for arms and money had been ignored by the western powers.

Then in 1921, the representative of Comintern, Henk Sneevliet (using the name Maring), had met with Sun in Guangxi, proposing to set up a military academy and train the revolutionary army.

As this had confirmed Sun's ideas, he had accepted this with no hesitation.

The Communist Party of China had sent Li Dazhao and Lin Boqu to discuss with Sun and his party on how to set up this academy.

In 1924, in the 1st National Congress of Kuomintang, the policy of alliance with the Soviet Union and CPC is passed as guidance for KMT.

As a result, the final decision of establishment of a military academy is made and a preparatory committee is set up accordingly.

The Soviets provide the money necessary for the construction and support of the Academy in 1924-1925.

Thus the Kuomintang, or KMT, now an alliance of convenience between China’s Nationalists and Communists begins, in 1924, to be reorganized along Leninist lines.

The Whampoa Military Academy officially opens on June 16, 1924.

When Sun Yat-sen dies in 1925, the political leadership of the Nationalist Party falls to Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin, respectively the left wing and right wing leaders of the Kuomintang.

The real power, however, lies with Chiang Kai-shek who, as superintendent of the Whampoa Military Academy, is in near complete control of the military.

With this military power, the Kuomintang confirm their power in Guangzhou and Guangdong (the province containing Guangzhou) and

The alliance between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party is questioned after the Zhongshan Warship Incident in March 1926, and the following events have effectively made Chiang Kai-shek the paramount military leader of the KMT.

Although Chiang doubts Sun Yat-sen's policy of alliance with the Soviet Union and the CCP, he still needs aid from the Soviet Union, so he cannot break up the alliance at this time.

Above all, Chiang needs a stage to display his military talent and his role of paramount leader.

On the other hand, the Soviet Union and the CCP cherish the alliance more than Chiang, as they require a platform to display their friendship to the KMT.

Thus, all three parties agree to launch the Northern Expedition to solve their own problems.

The main targets of this expedition are three notorious and powerful warlords: Zhang Zuolin, who governs Manchuria, Wu Peifu in the Central Plain, and Sun Chuanfang in the eastern coastal region.

Advised by the famous Russian general Vasily Blyukher, using the pseudonym Galen, the expedition’s command headquarters decides to use all its power to defeat these warlords one by one: first Wu, then Sun, and finally Zhang.

On July 9, 1926, Chiang delivers a lecture to one hundred thoiusand soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army, which has been set up by the students trained in the Whampoa Military Academy and equipped with a Russian arsenal in the opening ceremony, which is the official commencement of Northern Expedition.

NRA soldiers are far better organized than the warlord armies which they face, for they have good military advisors, better weapons, and commissars from CCP to inspire the soldiers.

In addition, the NRA is regarded as a progressive force on behalf of ordinary people persecuted by warlords, for which it receives warm welcome and strong support from peasants and workers.

The NRA is thus able to march from the Zhu River area to