Hello, I’m Yang Zhao.

Europe was remarkably peaceful in the second half of the nineteenth century. It might seem that without European wars armies should have become unimportant, but that would be profoundly mistaken.

Arendt moves steadily toward her central concern, the origins of totalitarianism. The politicized bourgeoisie used its immense wealth to control governments and their values. Alongside this expansion of bourgeois political power, soldiers and military institutions continually expanded their own influence.

How did they do so?

European powers divided the Middle East, Arabian Peninsula, and Africa into spheres of influence. Their agreements remained merely lines on maps unless enforced in reality, which required sending armies.

These forces were not primarily needed for conquest. Industrialization, especially modern weapons and military organization, had created an overwhelming disparity that left local societies unable to resist imperial armies.

In ancient and civilized China, the familiar image of the Eight-Nation Alliance’s 1900 invasion shows Walderseeleading allied troops into Beijing. The photograph encourages us to imagine eight countries joining forces to bully China.

In fact, the opening campaign relied mainly on small foreign garrisons already stationed in China. Together they badly defeated the Boxers and Qing forces transferred from Shaanxi; reinforcements arriving from Europe and elsewhere in Asia then entered Beijing. The original garrisons alone exerted immense military pressure, and Beijing had already fallen two months before Waldersee arrived as commander.