ABSTRACT
When Gee and Orrin Smith arrived in Beijing in the fall of 1922, China was in the middle of its warlord period. Starting in 1916 with the death of Yuan Shikai and ending with the nominal unification of the country in 1928 by the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek, the warlord period was characterized by shifting combinations of military leaders and their forces. The Beijing government, unable to rule the country, was nonetheless a prize; it was recognized by the Western powers, and whichever warlord controlled it gained access to the revenues collected by the customs service, a Western-administered organization. In the nineteenth century, regional armies like those of Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan still related to the central government; in the warlord period the development of regional military power went to its greatest extreme. It was all against all. As European powers did with the American Indians, the Western powers allied with their favored Chinese warlords to promote their own interests. In this political and military quicksand, missionary educators conducted business as they wished. Sometimes they considered Chinese aspirations; more often they did not.
