Conclusion

The most important indication of the triumph of warlordism in the North-South War was the extent to which the war's course was determined by the political decisions of individual military commanders. The political behavior of these commanders was not simply the result of their rejection of legitimate political authority, but also reflected the difficulty in determining where that authority should lie. The breakdown of the constitutional compromises worked out after the Anti-Monarchical War gave provinces seeking to preserve greater administrative autonomy a basis on which to question the legitimacy of the Beiyang-dominated Beijing government. Under these conditions, even Lin Xiumei, who had helped to initiate the war with his declaration of independence, later acknowledged that commanders on both sides in the war could honestly differ on where they owed their allegiance:

I think that when the two armies were waging war, northern military men no doubt said, "I am obeying my superior's orders," while southern military men certainly also said, "I am obeying my superior's orders." If we look at the loyalties of the military men on both sides, then formally speaking it is truly hard to judge who was right and who was wrong.^[58]

This problem was exacerbated by the efforts of competing authorities, whether the Beijing and Canton governments, or provincial leaders like Tan Yankai and Fu Liangzuo, to win military support for their causes. Indeed, the events of the North-South War showed how factional divisions, such as that between Feng Guozhang and Duan Qirui, also created a range of political options for military commanders. The most important consequence of this situation, though, was that military commanders were drawn into politics by the simple need to decide which authority to recognize. Meanwhile, the competition for their support also gave them leeway to pursue their own political ambitions.

The issue of motivation becomes more problematic under these circumstances. There is a tendency in many conventional Chinese histories of the warlord period to distinguish between good "military commanders" who acted out of principle and bad "warlords" who acted out of self-interest. For example, in most Chinese accounts, Chen Fuchu's decision to remain "loyal" to Beijing is disparagingly explained in terms of the gains he sought from this allegiance. In contrast, Liu Jianfan and Lin Xiumei's declared adherence to "Constitutional Protection" principles is accepted at face value.^[59] The motivations for their revolt come under less scrutiny than Chen's simply because conventional history assumes the validity of the southern case against the north and hence sees their actions as serving legitimate purposes. A different bias, though, might suggest that their declarations of independence were hardly disinterested. Indeed, as Chen charged at the time, this declaration helped Liu and Lin save their own "rice bowls" when they were threatened with dismissal.^[60]

In the end, it is difficult to measure the relative importance of public statements by commanders that are uniformly couched in principled terms with actions that appear as uniformly to serve their self-interests. No military commander moved in this period without public declarations, usually in the form of "circular telegrams" addressed to all leading officials and released to the press, justifying his action on constitutional, legal, or moral grounds. There is no reason to assume automatically that these men did not take these political arguments seriously. An excellent case study by Winston Hsieh has shown that at least some warlords, rather than being purely opportunistic, had complicated political beliefs that influenced their actions.^[61] Nonetheless, the regularity with which most actions taken by warlords clearly served their political interests suggests that principles were not normally their main concern. Although it is impossible to see into the minds of individual commanders, one can identify conditions that

allowed self-interest to take increasing precedence over principle as a motivating force.

The differences in opinion over what constituted legal authority meant that there was no lack of legal and constitutional arguments to support different political positions. Faced with the prospect of competing authorities vying for support, military men had the opportunity to determine which allegiance best advanced their own interests. Under these conditions, no military commander had any difficulty justifying self-interested actions in principled terms. This was certainly a situation that favored the unprincipled. At the same time, even commanders motivated by strong principles could not afford to ignore more practical political considerations. Just as civilian politicians often need to make political compromises to get elected, military commanders had to maintain their military bases to retain their political influence. Commanders who acted purely out of principle against their own interests were quickly eliminated from the field. Warlord behavior was therefore often defined by what Lucian Pye has called the "paramountcy of mere political survival."^[62] Whatever issues originally brought military men into politics, the conditions created by the militarization of politics ensured that their own interests would increasingly determine the course of political conflict. Hence, the struggle between central-government control and provincial autonomy that had supposedly provoked the North-South War ended only in the further fragmentation of political power among competing warlords.