Who are there "Kansu Braves"

[big_paul]

Hey Guys, I hope you can help me.

I'm looking information on the "Kansu Braves",of Rear Division under Gen Tung Fu-hsiang ,but all the information i got, is from a few Osprey books.

1) Are the officer dress like there men.

2) Did  battalion carry a Std.

3)Did there have any MG

4)Is it, Kanus "Braves or Irregulars"

Any information will be Helpful,thanks

Paul

[Gluteus Maximus]

Hey Guys, I hope you can help me.

I'm looking information on the "Kansu Braves",of Rear Division under Gen Tung Fu-hsiang ,but all the information i got, is from a few Osprey books.

1) Are the officer dress like there men.

2) Did  battalion carry a Std.

3)Did there have any MG

4)Is it, Kanus "Braves or Irregulars"

Any information will be Helpful,thanks

Paul

Hi Paul,

I have the Fondry book on China. If no-one else gets back to you earlier, I will try & go through it to see if the info is in there.

Warning - I won't be very fast, I'm afraid, but I will try & do it ASAP.

Cheers,
Ian

[big_paul]

Thanks for that.
Paul

[Gluteus Maximus]

HI Paul,

I've found the book [it was in my carefully catalogued filing system and therefore easy to find- not!] 

There is a fairly small amount of info directly relevant to the Kansu Braves in the Boxer Rebellion. I will read it through, scan it and send it all as an attachment in a PM.

The basic questions you asked were:

1) Are the officer dressed like their men.

No specific info on officers' dress, but I presume they would be in standard Chinese Officer dress. In the book, each formation's uniforms are described individually with no mention of Officers, whilst Officers' dress has it's own section. This leads me to believe Officers would have their own standardised dress, independant of the formation they commanded.

2) Did  battalion carry a Std.

Sorry, no specific details on Kansu standards, but considering the profusion of standards in Chinese armies, they must have done. There appears to be little specific info on unit standards of most formations, so you can probably just assign your own to each battalion, with no fear of contradiction 

3)Did there have any MG

Yes, apparently they were armed with modern weapons - "Mauser rifles, Maxim and Nordenfeldt machine-guns and Krupp artillery".

4)Is it, Kanus "Braves or Irregulars"

Definitely Braves.

There is some info on numbers of troops, breakdown of troop types, uniform details etc that you may or may not have. I will try and send it all to you ASAP.

Hope that helps,
Ian

[aecurtis]

Provincial militia designated as "yung" were usually translated as "braves" by English-speaking barbarians at the time.  But the Kansu troops of the warlord Tung Fu-hsiang (Dong Fuxiang) were also identified by contemporary writers as  "Irregulars".  There is some information on their background in the Osprey by Peter Harrington, "Peking 1900: the Boxer Rebellion", an easily accessible source; as well as in many contemporary accounts. 

Tung Fu-hsiang had raised these troops to suppress a Muslim revolt in Kansu province (even though his yung were predominantly Muslim themselves), and was summoned by the Dowager Empress to Peking to secure her position.  They were reorganized almost immediately as the Rear Division of the Guards Army.

Allen

[Gluteus Maximus]

Provincial militia designated as "yung" were usually translated as "braves" by English-speaking barbarians at the time.  But the Kansu troops of the warlord Tung Fu-hsiang (Dong Fuxiang) were also identified by contemporary writers as  "Irregulars". 
Allen

I hadn't realised that. Ian Heath translates "Yung" as "Braves" and he says that the "Yung-ying" [ Braves battalions] were "paid and provisioned on a regular basis [theoretically] and received regular training [also theoretically]"

Though I'm far from being an expert on china or the Boxer Rebellion, I've always assumed translating from the various Chinese languages can be tricky, with several possible meanings.

As ever, I'm ready to stand corrected 

Cheers,
Ian

[aecurtis]

Please don't misunderstand, Ian.  I'm agreeing with you about the translation of "yung" as "braves", and only pointing out that contemporary Westerners also referred to them as both "irregualrs" (as a characterization) and "Irregulars" (as a designation).

The yung-ying system is interesting.  It was indeed more modern than the traditional Manchu banner system of troop recruitment.  You may wish to read about it in the Cambridge History of China, p, 202, passim:

http://books.google.com/books?id=pEfWaxPhdnIC&pg=PA208&dq=yung-ying&sig=UfzeeVp-Ux6O4u6Rz_HoZdud1nY#PPA202,M1

(If that does not display properly and displays an error message, try refreshing your browser page.  If that doesn't work, go to the table of contents in the right-hand sidebar and select the chapter which begins on p.202.)

I can't back it up, but I suspect that Tung Fu-hsiang's troops may have been referred to as "irregulars" because they had been recently raised.

It's also interesting to note that both before and after the end of the Qing dynasty, Kansu was notorious as a destination for deserting soldiers.  Owen Lattimore (in "The Desert Road to Turkestan", p.41) described bands of hundreds of deserters along the road to Kan-su, in the 1920s.

Allen

[Gluteus Maximus]

Hey Allen,

no worries! I've really only just started to delve into 19thC China - let alone the rest of it's history 

Anyone who can help me to learn more is OK in my book.

Thanks for the URL - I hadn't seen it before and it looks to be fascinating. I'm sure from the little I've read about the Kansu troops, that they were highly irregular, even if designated as the opposite - as so many Chinese appear to have been.

Cheers,
Ian

[big_paul]

Thanks Allan,for the Url,it look very interesting.

Paul