Until recently the story of the nearly 140,000 Chinese contract workers recruited by the British and French governments during World War One for war-related work in France was completely ignored by historians in the West and China. This was principally due to the Eurocentric approach adopted by most western historians of World War One on the one hand, and, on the other, to the prevailing view in mainland China after 1949 that the recruitment was simply another example of western imperialist exploitation of China and hence not worthy of serious study.
In recent times, however, the episode has attracted interest. In France this has much to do with a wider official agenda of celebrating contemporary ethnic diversity in the country; in 1988 a plaque unveiled in Paris commemorating the contribution of Chinese workers to the allied war effort in 1914–1918 associated those who stayed on in the country after 1918 with the first Chinese community in France (strictly not true, since the first Chinese migrants to France comprised hawkers and peddlers—mostly from the province of Zhejiang—who arrived at the turn of the twentieth century). Another motivation is the promotion of tourism, and what one may call “local boosterism”; in 2002 the mayor's office in the small village of Noyelles-sur-Mer—at the mouth of the Somme and the site of the largest British-run camp for Chinese workers, and near to which is located a cemetery where over 800 Chinese workers are buried—produced a pamphlet describing the “Chinese Cemetery” as a place of vital historical interest for visitors and tourists.
Meanwhile, in China the episode is now given a more positive spin because it conveniently accords with an increasing official and academic focus on China's productive global interactions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; far from being the “victims” of western imperialism, Chinese workers in World War One France are now viewed as active contributors to democracy and world peace; in 2008 an international conference exploring the role of British-recruited Chinese workers in World War One was hosted by the Archives Bureau in Weihai (Shandong province)—the former British concession territory from where many of the Chinese workers embarked for France.
Unfortunately, this historiographical background is not addressed in any substantial way by Xu Guoqi's book, the first full-length study in English (which is a reworking of a Chinese-language study commissioned by the Chinese government—the “News Office” of the State Council, to be precise—in 2007) charting the recruitment and experiences of Chinese contract workers in World War One. Rather, this study is a somewhat simple (and simplistic) account that insists the contributions of Chinese contract workers in World War One were the “most significant” (p. 1) of all the non-European conscripted personnel (soldiers and workers). Notwithstanding the crucial role Chinese workers did play in World War One, this is a rather absurd and meaningless statement since Xu does not specify exactly what he means by “significant” (in terms of numbers? tasks performed?), nor make any reference (however brief) to the many thousands of Indians, Vietnamese, north Africans, or black Africans who likewise served the allied cause.
Furthermore, Xu makes woolly and ill-defined assertions that the Chinese workers in World War One played a role in China's “internationalization” (p. 3) whose role led China to become a “key player in a new international political system” (p. 4). In fact, as far as China was concerned, the international political system did not change at all after 1918; the unequal treaty system remained in place, while the contributions of Chinese workers during the war (they worked on the docks unloading goods and raw materials, as well as being employed in transportation, munitions production, equipment maintenance, road and aerodrome construction, and even burial of the war dead and building trenches at the front) were soon forgotten in the West and in China.
Xu uses a wide variety of English and Chinese language archival sources as well as personal testimonies such as the diaries of British supervisors of Chinese workers (although French archival sources have not been much utilized, and the book is weak on the French recruitment and the experiences of Chinese workers under French employ), but the end result reads like a collection of anecdotes; there is very little nuance and depth to the analysis. The study also lacks context; the story of the recruitment of World War One Chinese workers should be situated within the larger history of Chinese overseas labor to show, for example, how it was fundamentally different from the infamous “coolie trade” of the nineteenth century. Typos and writing errors sprinkle the text, suggesting careless copy-editing. The incorrect use of the definite and indefinite article is frequent. Truptil, the representative of the French Ministry of War who began negotiations with the Chinese government in 1915 concerning recruitment of Chinese labor becomes “Triptil” (p. 17); the Qianlong emperor becomes “Qianglong” (p. 32); Cai Hesen, a friend of Mao Zedong who was a work-study student in France in 1919 becomes “Cai Hesheng” (p. 218); and “brothels” becomes “brothers” (p. 148).
Xu's book is certainly to be welcomed as the first English-language study of Chinese contract labor in World War One, but there is still scope for further and more substantial exploration of the episode that highlights its importance in the history of Chinese overseas labor as well as of Sino-western interaction and mutual perceptions.
