In 1894–1895, after suffering defeat against Japan in a war primarily fought over the control of Korea, the Qing government initiated fundamental military reforms and established “New Armies” modeled after the German and Japanese military. One of the main goals was to overcome the alleged physical weakness and lack of martial spirit attributed to Chinese soldiers in particular and to Chinese men in general.
The book examines the cultivation of new soldiers, officers, and civilians through new techniques intended to discipline their bodies and reconfigure their identities as military men and citizens. It shows how the establishment of German-style “New Armies” in China between 1895 and 1916 led to the re-creation of a militarized version of masculinity, which stressed physical strength, discipline, professionalism, martial spirit, and “Western” military appearance and conduct. Although the military reforms did not prevent the downfall of the Qing Dynasty or provide stable military clout to subsequent regimes, they left a lasting legacy by reconfiguring Chinese military culture and re-creating military masculinity and the image of men in China.
Dr. Nicolas Schillinger is a research fellow of Chinese Studies at Free University Berlin. The new publication is his dissertation, which resulted from his research as a doctoral student at the Cluster in 2013. Schillinger was involved in project A4 “Bureaucracies - The Fascination of Efficiency: Migrating Ideas and Emerging Bureaucracies in Europe and Asia since the Early Modern Era”.
Schillinger’s dissertation “The Body and Military Masculinity in Late Qing and Early Republican China. The Art of Governing Soldiers” was published by independent publisher Rowman & Littlefield.
For more information on the book, please visit the publisher’s website.
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