Chapter 25 Research Reconnaissance · HIST 270 Background Essays

Audit disposition. Chapter 25 had no FA26 background essays, so this reconnaissance covers four new essays and an audit of the four FA26 decks (The Barrel of a Gun, Paris of the East, Eight Thousand Arrived and Two Capitals), built from the approved arc plan in October 2026. The decks pass. Every textbook detail that the decks correct was checked against a named source; where no reliable source confirmed a correction, the deck keeps or softens Ebrey's wording. Section 8 lists every such point, by lecture and slide.

1. Governing standards and scope

Research precedes presentation. Ebrey's Chapter 25, "War and Revolution, China (1927–1949)," pp. 439–454, is the course baseline, not its ceiling. Dates, names, numbers and quotations in the decks were checked against the textbook (from an OCR of the course PDF, with doubtful readings checked against the page images), against standard monographs, and against party and government chronologies where they exist.

The rule for every correction is the instructor's: contradict Ebrey only when a reliable source confirms the correction; otherwise keep her wording or soften it. When a deck corrects her, the visible slide teaches the corrected history, the speaker notes quote Ebrey and explain the difference, and the source is named in the notes and on the deck's Sources slide. No slide carries a visible "outside the textbook" tag.

Two instructor decisions shape the chapter. There is no primary-source reading for Chapter 25; students watch Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), to which Lecture 3 points. And the Nanjing massacre is taught in the main lecture, on one restrained slide with no photographs of violence, with a documentary to be embedded from Canvas Studio.

2. Textbook baseline

Ebrey's chapter supplies the spine: the founding of the Communist Party and the First United Front (pp. 439–440); the April 1927 purge (p. 440); Mao in Hunan and Jiangxi (pp. 440–442); the Nationalist government in Nanjing (pp. 442–444); Shanghai (pp. 444–445); the Long March and Zunyi (pp. 445–446); Yan'an and Mao's rivals (pp. 446–448); Japan, Xi'an and the war of 1937–1938 (pp. 448–450); Chongqing and Yan'an at war (pp. 450–452); and the civil war (pp. 452–454). It includes the Biography of Yuetsim (p. 443), Material Culture: Qipao (p. 448), the Documents box with Wang Shiwei's "Wild Lilies" (pp. 446–447), and Map 25.1 (p. 449).

The chapter covers twenty-two crowded years in sixteen pages, so some dates are compressed and some numbers are dated. Statements needing correction or caution:

Li Dazhao's "six years" of law "in Japan" (p. 441): six years in Tianjin, then about two at Waseda.
Mao at the "Fourth Normal School… (1913–1918)" (p. 441): the Fourth merged into the First Normal in 1914.
Changsha assaulted "in October 1930" (p. 442): July and September 1930.
Nanjing "not used as a capital since the early Ming" (p. 442): the Taiping capital and Sun Yatsen's 1912 capital.
A marriage law "outlawing concubinage" (p. 442): the Civil Code did not criminalize it.
The Bund park signs (p. 445): the exclusion was real, the single sign a legend.
The Central Committee to Jiangxi in "1932" (p. 445): January 1933.
"Seventeen" leaders at Zunyi (p. 446): about twenty.
"Almost 10,000 kilometers" (p. 445): the official figure; a retracing measured about 6,000.
Snow "visited Yan'an in 1936" and the base "from 1936 to 1946" (pp. 446–447): Bao'an in 1936; Yan'an from January 1937 to March 1947.
The Russian-trained group "arrived in late 1935" (p. 447): Wang Ming arrived in November 1937.
The Marco Polo Bridge incident "staged" (p. 450): probably not planned.
The Yellow River flood "drowned some three hundred thousand" (p. 450): at least 400,000–500,000 deaths.
Soviet aid ending "in 1939" and aid flown "from Burma" (p. 451): it ended in 1941; the Hump flights left from India.
Chiang at "Cairo and Yalta" (p. 451): Cairo only.
The civil war "broke out in 1947" (p. 454) and Chiang to Taiwan "in early 1949" (p. 453): June 1946; December 1949.

3. Inventory and authority determination

Authoritative for this audit: the four FA26 decks in the_lyceum/chinese-history/reveal_decks/chapter-25/; the Chapter 25 reading guide (eleven review questions, with the RQ7 and RQ10 anchors corrected in October 2026); and the arc plan used to build the decks (planning only, not published). The three SU26 decks of Chapter 25 are superseded and were not audited. The background essays are new:

The Barrel of a Gun (Lecture 1; RQ1, RQ2).
Paris of the East (Lecture 2; RQ3, RQ4, RQ5; required Pierian Spring RQ11).
Eight Thousand Arrived (Lecture 3; RQ6, RQ7; Pierian Spring on Edgar Snow and Yan'an).
Two Capitals (Lecture 4; RQ8, RQ9, RQ10; Pierian Spring on Jiang Qing and the Dixie Mission).

4. Fresh chapter-wide research reconnaissance

The Communist Party to 1930

Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism (1989), and Hans van de Ven, From Friend to Comrade (1991), for the party's founding; Elizabeth Perry, Shanghai on Strike (1993), for 1927; Stuart Schram, ed., Mao's Road to Power, vols. 1–3, for Mao's writings, including the Hunan Report (1927) and the Xunwu investigation (1930); Stephen Averill, Revolution in the Highlands (2006), for Jinggangshan.

The Nanjing Decade and Shanghai

Lloyd Eastman, The Abortive Revolution (1974), and the China Quarterly special issue "Reappraising Republican China" (no. 150, 1997), with William Kirby and Frederic Wakeman, for the debate over the regime; Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo (2009), for Chiang; Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai (2009), Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers (1986), and Robert Bickers and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (1995) for Shanghai; Kathryn Bernhardt (1999) and Lisa Tran (2015) for the Civil Code.

The Long March and Japan

Benjamin Yang (1986) on Zunyi; Ed Jocelyn and Andrew McEwen, The Long March (2006); Helen Praeger Young, Choosing Revolution (2001); Louise Young, Japan's Total Empire (1998); Parks Coble, Facing Japan (1991); Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally (2013); Joshua Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (2000); Diana Lary (2001) and Micah Muscolino (2015) on the Yellow River flood.

Wartime and civil war

Lloyd Eastman, Seeds of Destruction (1984); Mark Selden, China in Revolution (1995); Chen Yung-fa, Making Revolution (1986); Gao Hua, How the Red Sun Rose (2018); Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters (2003); Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China (1978); Steven Levine, Anvil of Victory (1987); Tony Saich, From Rebel to Ruler (2021).

5. Four-lecture roadmap audit

The arc plan assigns RQ1–2 to Lecture 1; RQ3–5 to Lecture 2, with RQ11 in its required Pierian Spring; RQ6–7 to Lecture 3; and RQ8–10 to Lecture 4. All eleven questions are taught, ten in the main lectures and one in a required Pierian Spring, and each checkpoint follows the slides that teach it. The roadmap passes. It follows Ebrey's order while giving each lecture one narrative problem: how a small urban party became a peasant army; what the Nationalists built and whom they left out; how a disastrous retreat and a foreign invasion saved the Communists; and why the war decided the civil war. Two seams need care. The fifth encirclement campaign is taught in Lecture 2 (slide m) and finished in Lecture 3 (slide c), so "German-planned" is softened identically in both. Yan'an's dates appear in Lecture 3 (slides o, y, z) and are consistent with Lecture 4.

6. Individual background essay audits

Essay 1 — The Barrel of a Gun

Passes. Follows the deck's corrected history for Li Dazhao's schooling, Mao's normal school and the Changsha attacks, and softens the 12 April death toll to "hundreds, then thousands."

Essay 2 — Paris of the East

Passes. Restores Nanjing's Taiping and 1912 capitals, softens concubinage and "German-planned," treats the park sign as a legend with a real rule behind it, and keeps unconfirmed figures as Ebrey's.

Essay 3 — Eight Thousand Arrived

Passes. Dates the Central Committee's move to January 1933, gives about twenty at Zunyi, treats the distance and the Luding battle with caution, distinguishes the Marco Polo Bridge from Mukden, gives the Nanjing figures and their dispute, raises the flood toll, and places Snow at Bao'an.

Essay 4 — Two Capitals

Passes. Corrects the Hump, Cairo and Yalta, Wang Ming's arrival, the start of the civil war and Chiang's departure; softens the assassinations and "moderate" land reform; keeps Ebrey's party-membership figure for 1940 (an OCR misreading of "1949" was caught against the page image) and continues it to 1949.

7. Primary-source and narrative shortlist

Mao Zedong, "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan" (1927) and "Xunwu Investigation" (1930), in Schram.
The Civil Code of the Republic of China, Books IV–V (1930–1931).
Chiang Kaishek, "Essentials of the New Life Movement" (1934).
Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (1937).
Minnie Vautrin's diary and John Rabe's diary, Nanjing, 1937–1938.
Wang Shiwei, "Wild Lilies" (1942), excerpted in Ebrey, pp. 446–447.
Mao Zedong, "Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" (1942).
John S. Service's Yan'an reports (1944), in Lost Chance in China.
The Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party (1945), preamble.
The United States China White Paper (1949).

8. Deck issues and fixes applied

Each row names the permanent slide letter, the point checked, its type and the result. "Corrected" means the visible slide gives the corrected history and the notes quote Ebrey and name the source. "Softened" means no reliable source confirmed a correction, so the slide keeps or hedges Ebrey's wording. "Kept" means the deck quotes Ebrey, attributed. No slide was added or relettered after its first build.

Lecture 1 · The Barrel of a Gun

Slide	Point checked	Type	Result and source
d	Li Dazhao "studied law for six years in Japan" (p. 441).	Corrected	Six years at the Beiyang School of Law and Politics, Tianjin, then Waseda, 1914–1916 (Peking University Library).
p	Mao at the Fourth Normal School, 1913–1918 (p. 441).	Corrected	The Fourth merged into the First Normal School in 1914; he graduated in 1918.
p	Mao walked "30 or so miles" to Changsha (p. 441).	Softened	Distance dropped; he left from the Xiangxiang county school.
x	Changsha assaulted "in October 1930" (p. 442).	Corrected	Taken briefly in late July; a second assault failed in September 1930.
b, l	12 April 1927, "an estimated five thousand were killed" (p. 440).	Softened	No reliable total; "hundreds, then thousands" (Perry 1993).

Lecture 2 · Paris of the East

Slide	Point checked	Type	Result and source
c	Nanjing "not used as a capital since the early Ming" (p. 442).	Corrected	Taiping capital 1853–1864; provisional capital 1912 (taught in Chs. 18 and 24).
e	A marriage law "outlawing concubinage" (p. 442).	Softened	Not recognized as marriage, not criminalized (Tran 2015).
m	"German-planned" fifth campaign (p. 445).	Softened	German advice plus Chinese planning (Wei 1985).
s	Shanghai "about 4 million" (p. 444).	Softened	"Over 3 million" for the mid-1930s.
t	"More than thirty-six thousand" foreigners (p. 445).	Softened	"Tens of thousands"; Ebrey's figure in the notes.
u	"No dogs" and "No Chinese" signs (p. 445).	Corrected	Exclusion real until 1 June 1928; single sign a legend (Bickers and Wasserstrom 1995).
d, t	Concessions 33 → 13; Sassoon's 1,900 buildings.	Kept	Not confirmed; attributed to Ebrey in the notes.

Lecture 3 · Eight Thousand Arrived

Slide	Point checked	Type	Result and source
d	Central Committee to Jiangxi "in 1932" (p. 445).	Corrected	Bo Gu reached the Soviet in January 1933 (party chronologies).
e	"Only thirty-five women" (p. 445).	Kept	Attributed; Young (2001) counts about thirty in the main column.
f	"Seventeen" leaders at Zunyi (p. 446).	Softened	About twenty, plus Braun and his interpreter (Yang 1986).
g	"Almost 10,000 kilometers" (p. 445).	Softened	"Thousands of kilometers"; official 25,000 li; about 6,000 km retraced (Jocelyn and McEwen 2006).
s	Marco Polo Bridge incident "staged" (p. 450).	Softened	Probably not planned; escalated by both governments (Mitter 2013).
t	Shanghai casualties 250,000 vs 40,000 (p. 450).	Kept	Attributed to Ebrey.
u	Nanjing: 40,000–300,000 killed (p. 450).	Kept	Range given with the Tokyo tribunal's figure and the PRC's (Fogel 2000; Yoshida 2006).
v	Flood "drowned some three hundred thousand" (p. 450).	Corrected	"Hundreds of thousands"; at least 400,000–500,000 (Lary 2001; Muscolino 2015).
o, y, z	Snow at Yan'an in 1936; base 1936–1946 (pp. 446–447, 450).	Corrected	Bao'an in 1936; Yan'an 13 January 1937 to 18 March 1947 (party chronology).

Lecture 4 · Two Capitals

Slide	Point checked	Type	Result and source
d	"As many as a third" of conscripts died (p. 451).	Kept	Attributed; exact figures unrecoverable (Eastman 1984).
e	"The end of Soviet aid in 1939" (p. 451).	Softened	Dwindled after 1939, ended 1941.
f	Aid "flown over the mountains from Burma" (p. 451).	Corrected	From Assam, India, to Kunming, 1942–1945.
g	Chiang at "Cairo and Yalta" (p. 451).	Corrected	Cairo only; Yalta's China clauses were made without him.
i	Party grew to "about eight hundred thousand in 1940" (p. 451).	Kept	Confirmed; continued to 1.2 million (1945) and 4.5 million (1949) (Saich 2021).
n	Moscow group "arrived in late 1935" (p. 447).	Corrected	Wang Ming and Kang Sheng arrived 29 November 1937.
u	Civil war "broke out in 1947" (p. 454); "moderate land reform" (p. 453).	Corrected; softened	Full war from late June 1946 (Westad 2003); land reform often violent in 1946–1947 (Pepper 1978).
x	Chiang "had his secret police assassinate" liberals (p. 453).	Softened	Secret police agents killed Li Gongpu and Wen Yiduo; Chiang's role debated (Fung 2000).
z	Chiang to Taiwan "in early 1949" (p. 453).	Corrected	Resigned January 1949; left the mainland 10 December 1949 (Taylor 2009).
r, s, v	110,000 airlifted; Soviet weapons; 600,000 per side at Huaihai.	Kept	Attributed to Ebrey.

9. Linked research apparatus

Decks: reveal_decks/chapter-25/, four FA26 decks, each with a Sources slide ("Further reading beyond Ebrey") and a link to its essay.
Images: chapter-25/images/ch25-lecN/, each folder with a SOURCES.tsv of Commons titles, licenses and dates. No AI images in the chapter.
Cross-links: the decks link back to Chapter 18 (Shimonoseki, the concessions), Chapter 24 (the Qing abdication, the Twenty-One Demands, New Youth, the First United Front) and to each other; the last slide of Lecture 4 links forward to Chapter 27 Lecture 1.
Placeholders awaiting the instructor: the Mao "Stream and Discuss" link (Lecture 1) and the Canvas Studio embed of the Nanjing documentary (Lecture 3, slide u), both marked in the deck source.

Audit conclusion

The four Chapter 25 decks and essays are fit for use. They follow Ebrey's chapter closely, correct her where named sources require it, and soften rather than contradict where the evidence is mixed. Three follow-up items remain: the two placeholders above, and the Chapter 27 link on the last slide of Lecture 4, which points to the SU26 Chapter 27 deck until that chapter is rebuilt.