Tag: Chinese

The History of Gunpowder: From Elixir of Life to the Revolution of Warfare

The History of Gunpowder: From Elixir of Life to the Revolution of Warfare

by | May 8, 2025 | , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
One of the most famous materials in history, gunpowder is largely responsible for European dominance in the 20th Century, the fall of Constantinople’s impregnable walls, and much more.
Yet this devasting and destructive powder did not materialise into rifles and cannons in Europe in the 14th and 15th Centuries. Rather, it was discovered initially in China, several hundred years prior, by alchemists searching for, ironically, the elixir of life.
So how did gunpowder go from a powder for immortality in 9th Century China, to the fiery fuel of guns in Europe and the Middle East over 500 years later?

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THE 25,000-LI JOURNEY: INSIDE THE LONG MARCH, MODERN CHINA’S FOUNDING MYTH

THE 25,000-LI JOURNEY: INSIDE THE LONG MARCH, MODERN CHINA’S FOUNDING MYTH

by | Oct 31, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 12 minutes
On 21th September 1949, Mao Zedong took to the podium in Huairen Hall, Zhongnanhai, a former royal residence in Beijing, to announce that “the Chinese people, comprising one quarter of humanity, have now stood up.”

These striking words were all too appropriate for the moment: for Mao it represented the end of a quarter-century journey to the pinnacle of his own party and finally his country – a journey which began with the Long March.

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“IT WON’T DO TO PRETEND THAT WE ARE POWERFUL”: CHINA’S GERMAN-TRAINED ARMY

“IT WON’T DO TO PRETEND THAT WE ARE POWERFUL”: CHINA’S GERMAN-TRAINED ARMY

by | Aug 20, 2024 | | 0

Reading time: 11 minutes
In 1926, a newly-unified China had millions of men under arms, but few who could wield them effectively. Determined to make the country ready to defend itself, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek turned to an unusual ally.
For a decade, officers and experts from Germany’s Reichswehr oversaw the transformation of China’s army. While their plans were never fully realised, they had a significant impact on the war to resist Japanese invasion.

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Australia refused to endorse China’s claim to Taiwan in 1972 because it foresaw a time like this

Australia refused to endorse China’s claim to Taiwan in 1972 because it foresaw a time like this

by | Jul 29, 2024 | | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
Journalists and policy analysts should spend more time reading history. If they did, they would be better placed to challenge the diplomats and politicians who casually requisition the past in order to lay claim to the present. We might also find our way towards policy prescriptions with real meat, as opposed to the all-too-common superficialities that substitute true engagement with historical context for little more than a doff and a wink at times gone by. Wisdom is in the files.

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Fook Shing, colonial Victoria’s Chinese Australian detective

Fook Shing, colonial Victoria’s Chinese Australian detective

by | Jan 3, 2024 | | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
On July 25 1882, Inspector Frederick Secretan, the head of Victoria Police’s Detective Branch, shifted uncomfortably in his seat. In the wake of the Kelly Gang fiasco, during which Ned’s infamous band of outlaws had managed to elude the police until the bloody shootout at Glenrowan, a royal commission had been called to inquire into Victoria’s police force. Secretan’s detectives had been singled out for particular criticism. Now, as he fronted the commissioners, the inspector sought to explain the methods he deployed for detecting crime in Melbourne and across Victoria.

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Tales from the Special Operations Executive: Operation Remorse

Tales from the Special Operations Executive: Operation Remorse

by | Oct 5, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
It was ‘the biggest currency black market in history’,  a secret operation under the auspices of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain’s Second World War clandestine warfare organisation. This was Operation Remorse, a deeply imperial venture, dedicated to maintaining the commercial interests and prestige of the British Empire – sometimes acting in direct competition with its allies. Most significantly, it was a dramatic success. It returned over 15 times the money invested,  a return totalling £77,741,758 at the time – about £2.5 billion today.  It achieved this feat by smuggling valuable luxury items, trading wartime goods, and most profitably by manipulating exchange rates in illicit currency transactions on the Chinese Black Market. The money financed several British operations and organisations in China.

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Linguistics locates the beginnings of the Austronesian expansion – with Indigenous seafaring people in eastern Taiwan

Linguistics locates the beginnings of the Austronesian expansion – with Indigenous seafaring people in eastern Taiwan

by | Oct 2, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The study of Indigenous languages spoken in maritime South-East Asia today has shed new light on the beginnings of the Austronesian expansion. This was the last major migration of people spreading out across the Pacific Ocean and, ultimately, settling Aotearoa. Scientists all agree that people speaking Austronesian languages started out from Taiwan and settled the Philippines around 4,000 years ago. They used sails as early as 2,000 years ago. Together with other maritime technologies, this allowed them to disperse to the islands of the Indo-Pacific ocean.

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Regimes Around the World are Manipulating History and Threatening Historians

Regimes Around the World are Manipulating History and Threatening Historians

by | May 31, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
In March 2022, overshadowed by British asylum policies, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published its findings about the state of free speech in Rwanda. In 2018, the government of President and “darling tyrant” Paul Kagame adopted the latest version of a law making punishable, by up to seven years imprisonment, public speech questioning the events and statistics related to the 1994 Genocide. However, the law lacks clear definitions and its vague language is seen as instrumental in prosecuting legitimate debate, in particular over crimes committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), of which Kagame was the commander. Prosecution of legitimate historical discourse took place under earlier versions of the law, but in the lead-up to the thirtieth anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the Kagame government has increased its efforts to combat “genocide ideology.”

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Sino-Vietnamese War

Sino-Vietnamese War

by | Dec 13, 2022 | | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The Sino-Vietnamese war was a short, nasty conflict fought between China and Vietnam in early 1979. Largely forgotten by almost everybody including the belligerents, it was a side plot of the Sino-Soviet split, itself a sideshow to the Cold War. Let’s go over the events before, during and after the war to see what it was all about.

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The Chungking Legation: Australia’s first diplomatic mission to China, as soon to be wartime allies

The Chungking Legation: Australia’s first diplomatic mission to China, as soon to be wartime allies

by | Oct 27, 2022 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Gough Whitlam’s visit to China in 1971 is an iconic moment in the history of Australia-China relations. As prime minister, he officially recognised the People’s Republic of China the following year, heralding a new era of engagement with China.
But Whitlam’s visit overshadows an earlier and equally significant moment in Australia’s relationship with China.
On October 28 1941, Australia opened its first diplomatic mission in China, a legation in the wartime capital of Chungking (Chongqing) in central Szechwan (Sichuan) province.

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