| The 1920s marked a decade in the history of modern China which is typically referred to as the period of warlords. This period was characterised by political chaos, internal division and internecine warfare between various cliques of military strongmen who controlled China's numerous provinces. These de facto military dictators of China, known as warlords in historical literature, were customarily construed to be avaricious and self-serving despots who ruled their large territories with little regard for the welfare of their subjects or that of the Chinese nation.;My thesis aims to revise these previously held assumptions concerning the historical agency of Chinese warlords by investigating the unusual conduct of a particularly influential warlord: Wu Peifu. Wu's display of deeply seated nationalistic tendencies throughout his political career, I argue, complicates our understanding of the impact that Chinese warlords exerted on the rise of Chinese national consciousness during the early 20th century. |
