Strangers on the Western Front: Xu Guoqi on Chinese Labourers in the First World War

China's emergence as a global power in the 21st century, with the world's second-largest economy, a growing influence in international politics and a blue water navy, can be traced back almost 100 years to the country's involvement in World War I. Professor Xu Guoqi of the Department of History has spent much of his academic career unearthing the facts of China's little-known contribution to the war effort in Europe when the fledgling republic was eager to establish a national identity and claim a place at the table of international power brokers. China was also keen to recover Shandong Province which had been a German concession since 1898.

It was for these reasons that China sent 140,000 peasants to act as labourers for the French, British and United States Allies on the Western Front. They began arriving in 1916, most of them illiterate farmers from Shandong who were mainly employed digging trenches and transporting munitions, and who were paid a lot more than they could earn at home. They were not allowed to fight, but still about 3,000 of them were killed during the conflict because they had to work on the frontline.

China officially declared war on Germany in 1917, but the Treaty of Versailles the following year dashed hopes of recovering Shandong when Japan, which had joined the Allies in 1914, was given control of Germany's colonial possessions in China. Xu has written two books on the subject, one in 2005 and the latest, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War, published in 2011 by Harvard University Press.

(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)

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