warlords

It's a well known fact that during the russian civil war there was the rise of warlords such as Makhno and Ungern who temporarily carved their own fiefdoms for a variety of reasons after the collapse of the Russian Empire This state of affairs would ultimately not last however, as the soviets...

So, some context. In the 1650s, during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, he tried to institute what can be best described as a military dictatorship in the Commonwealth. England and Wales were divided into eleven regions, each governed by a major-general who were Puritans, Congregationalist reformers...

I've recently been thinking about the idea of something similar to a "warlords era" or "warring states period" in 20th century Russia, and I've decided it would be interesting enough for a TL, but I wanted to get some feedback and information from the community before I started. Now, what I...

The Zhili Clique was a Chinese warlord clique whose political power flourished in the Central China Plain in the period between 1920 and 1924. It had the support of Anglo-American business interests, and its army was led by the capable commander Wu Peifu (first Chinese man to have appeared on...

Yan Xishan was a warlord of Shanxi and seems to one of few warlords who seemed to be good. He did alot to develop Shanxi and modernise to verying levels of success, supported by some modern and progessive social policies at the time. He was once on times magazine as next president of china so...

NOTICE: The maps shown here, as well as the Q&A, are outdated. The new series can be accessed through the threadmarks. The Warlord Atlas is a history of the Republic of China, running from 1910 to 1958 (although the latest maps I've produced yet are 1939). It is meant to be used a reference for...

Yes yes I know a Russia thread on the Post 1900 board, let's get all the jokes about the "absent man of Europe" out of the way now so we can actually discuss this topic seriously. So most TLs and WIs pertaining to the Russian question deal with butterflying the 1917 revolution and the...

This is gonna sound stupid, I feel. But suppose that there is no Napoleon Bonaparte. That the many excellent officers and generals of France at this time remain loyal to the ideals of the Revolution (at least to start), and campaign and wage war on behalf of the Consul and Directorate... at...

Suppose that the Zhili clique had been able to defeat the competing warlord cliques in the early 1920s. From what I gather the Zhili were significantly more anti-Japanese than their Anhui and Fengtian counterparts. Does this lead to an earlier 2nd Sino-Japanese War? Are the southern warlords...

Another vignette, because why not? :p Западные ворота Урумчи, провинция Синьцзян Весна, 1933 Н.Э. 西門 烏魯木齊市，新疆省 春天，公元1933年 West Gate Urumqi, Xinjiang Province Spring, 1933 C.E. Urumqi, China's western gateway. Since the time of the silk road, the city had long been a crossroads for...

Yuan Shikai was what is considered to be the last official emperor of China. After managing to consolidate his power in the first chinese republic as a military dictator, Yuan proclaimed himself emperor in late 1915, in hopes of being accepted by the chinese public, but the reaction was the...

In 1913, Song Jiaoren, first elected President of the RoC, was assassinated, almost certainly by Yuan Shikai. Had Song not been assassinated, whether through Yuan's plot failing, or through other means, how would China have turned out?