Qing New Army Military Service System

The system of military service is a significant component of the national military, which changes constantly along with the needs of wars and the changes of political system, economic, cultural, military and demographic aspect. After the Sino-Japanese War of1894-1895, the Qing government organized and trained a new army by the imitation of western military system and formulated a set of military service system with the characteristics of modernization, which opened the prelude to the modernization of China's military. But a systematic and comprehensive study on military service system of the late Qing New Army has never been undertaken in historiographical realm for a long time. Therefore, the system of military service of the late Qing New Army is chosen to be studied.The present study discusses the formulation and implementation of the new military service in late Qing Dynasty on the theoretical foudation of the books and newspapers in that period and the reference of the researches by modern scholars. It adopts literature analysis, comparative analysis and other research methods and involves related knowledge of military science and sociology. With the guidance of historical materialism, it illuminates specific circumstance of the system of military service in the process of implementation and its causes, and attempts to explore the historical status and impact of the new military system of military service.The full text is divided into three parts, which contains introduction, main body and references:The introduction mainly prescribes related concepts of military service system, military system and troop recruitment system, then introduces current state of academic research on this topic and related issues abroad and at home and make an overview of academic value and significance for the present study.The Text consists of three parts.The first part concludes the system of military service varied continuously along with the time vicissitude and points out the inevitability of the substitution of a new system of military service for the old one by looking at history and sorting out military service systems in various dynasties. On this basis, the author narrates and illustrates the military service system of the old army, then discusses the veteran-related provisions and the implementation of the old army-the Eight Banners, Green Camp, Xiang Huai conscription; Meanwhile, the author analyzes the reasons for constant changes of Qing military service system in the aspect of the development of military service system.The second part expounds the New Army military service system in late Qing Dynasty from two aspects. One the hand, it illustrates the refined process of the formulation of the the late Qing New Army Conscription by summarizing the requirements and methods for the recruitment, and the service period. It points out that the provisions in the text draw on the advantages of Chinese and foreign military systems and it has taken a valuable step on the road of China's military modernization; then presents the operational procedures of the enlistment of the late Qing New Army, the implementation of conscription and the problems in the process of implementation in detail and analyses the causes and problems specifically. On the other hand, it focuses on another constitute of the military service system of the late Qing New Army—retired system. It analyzes the provisions of veteran system in the text from the age and method for the retirement, the management of the Veterans and the measures for the resettlement of soldiers which Qing government took. And the aspects of the veterans who were injured and killed during the service time,and their resettlement is also discussed briefly. Then it describes the problems existing during the operation of the New Army veterans system in the late Qing Dynasty minutely and analyzes the reasons for this problem. The author believes that since the placement of the soldiers is a systematic Military social project, late Qing Dynasty does not have the basic conditions for placement of all veterans. Although there are a lot of problems in the system of the new army and the placement of the servicemen, late Qing New Army made the placement of the demobilized soldiers into a system, which is an undeniable fact that it is a real opening of China's modern soldier placement.The third part is the conclusion part which discusses the historical status of the late Qing New Army military service system and its impact on the following generations. It decalres that the reform of late Qing New Army military service system is a major one in our military system and plays a connecting role in the development process of China's modern military service system, impacts on the modernization of China's military system;meanwhile, in order to play a reference on future generations it also expounds the shortcomings of the late Qing New Army military service system.