Autumn Harvest Uprising

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Autumn Harvest Uprising
Part of Chinese Civil War
Map of planned insurrection in Hubei and Hunan.
Planned insurrection locations by the August Seventh Conference.
DateSeptember 7, 1927
Location
Hunan, Jiangxi and Hubei.
Result Uprising crushed, Communists forced to retreat to the Jinggang Mountains
Belligerents

Nationalist government

Soviet Zone

Commanders and leaders
Mao Zedong
Li Zhen
Casualties and losses
About 390,000 Hunanese civilians were killed[1]
Autumn Harvest Uprising
Hanyu Pinyin
Qīushōu Qǐyì
Wade–GilesCh’iu-shou Chi-yi

The Autumn Harvest Uprising was an

insurrection that took place in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces of China, on September 7, 1927, led by Mao Zedong
, who established a short-lived Hunan Soviet.

After initial success, the uprising was brutally put down by Kuomintang forces. Mao continued to believe in the rural strategy but concluded that it would be necessary to form a party army.[2]

Background

In support of the Northern Expedition, Mao was sent to survey peasant conditions in his home province of Hunan. His Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan urged support for rural revolution.[3]

The uprising

Initially, Mao struggled to garner forces for an uprising, but

guerrilla tactics. This paved the way for the Long March
of 1934.

Reasons for the uprising's failure

The uprising shows the overwhelming importance of an organized military force to the success or failure of an insurrection, the failure reveals that the role and question of military force was given different emphasis by operatives of different levels in the communist party and came to be a topic of serious contention and disagreement which led to the disorganization. An obvious lack of appreciation for rudimentary pre-insurrectionary military organization hints that Mao was more "putschist" (to a point) than his Chinese or Russian superiors.[5]

Mass killings against Hunanese civilians

Nationalist anti-communist mass killings were directed against all Hunanese civilians. About 80,000 Hunanese were killed in Hunan's Liling and about 300,000 Hunanese were killed in Hunan's Chaling County, Leiyang, Liuyang and Pingjiang.[6]

Notes

  1. ISBN 9781786730152
    .
  2. ^ Li, Xiaobing. China at War: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2012) pp 5–8.
  3. ^ Hofheinz, Jr. (1977).
  4. ^ Wu 吴, Zhife 志菲 (2003). "Li Zhen: cong tongyangxi dao kaiguo jiangjun 李贞：从童养媳到开国将军". Renmin Wang. Archived from the original on 8 July 2015. Retrieved 27 November 2011.
  5. S2CID 154891728
    .
  6. ISBN 9781786730152
    .

References and further reading
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Autumn_Harvest_Uprising&oldid=1216876431"