This Week in China's History: The Nanking Incident

March 24, 1927

Newspapers screamed out “the terrible tale of Nanking”: “the fall of the city, looting and fire, and a prolonged bombardment by machine guns and bombs.” Two Chinese armies converged on the city — one from the north, one from the south — while foreign destroyers at anchor in the Yangtze laid down barrages to defend their nationals. Looting and violence were widespread. Hundreds died, perhaps more. 

What were the “Nanking outrages,” to quote the New York Times’  headlines?

Nanjing of course has a tumultuous history. As a strategic asset and sometimes capital, the city changed hands between rivals, often violently. In the early Ming, again during the Qing conquest, and most horrifically during the Japanese conquest in 1937, Nanjing was a place of terror and destruction. Yet, the 1920s — while a violent decade in much of China — is not remembered as one of Nanjing’s most dangerous eras. But it was in March of 1927 that the Northern Expedition brought panic and fighting to Nanjing.

One of the great counterfactuals of 20th-century China concerns the death of Sun Yat-sen. Not yet 60 years old when he succumbed to cancer, Sun was not just China’s most famous and experienced politician: he also sat at a unique juncture between left and right, able to command the respect of those who would, in his absence, be at one another’s throats. Moreover, Sun died just as he was preparing his armies for a great “northern expedition” that he hoped would fulfill the promise of the 1911 Revolution. After the debacle of the early Republic — culminating in the assassination of Sòng Jiaòrén 宋教仁 and Yuán Shìkǎi’s abortive imperial restoration — China fragmented into what came to be called “warlordism.”