The existence of warlords and warlordism is not a post-9/ll phenomenon. The international arms trade has a long history and includes the sale of foreign weapons to Chinese provincial governments after the First World War. First published in 1982, this book remains the classic account of the arms trade in warlord China. The second edition includes a new preface that reframes the argument within the paradigm of critical militarism and state criminality. Arming the Chinese tells the story of the warlords who sought weapons for their expanding armies and of the Western and Japanese merchants who provided them. The armaments trade, Chan argues, was a new form of imperialism, perpetrating the continued foreign domination of China. But the warlords were also hearty individualists who retained control over domestic affairs and rarely relied on single foreign suppliers. This authoritative explanation of why China sank into a morass of warlordism between 1920 and 1928 links the arms trade to the rise and fall of political and military regimes in China and exposes the complicit role of foreign governments.
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