Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T07:34:58.326Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Last Hump: The Lahore Elementary Flying Training School, the Chinese Civil War, and the final days of the British Raj

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2021

YIN CAO Open the ORCID record for YIN CAO [Opens in a new window]
YIN CAO*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Tsinghua University Email: caoyin50@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article centres on the evacuation of the Lahore Elementary Flying Training School, which was built in 1943 to train Chinese pilots and mechanics. It details the British and Chinese authorities’ concerns over the school and how the chaotic situation in India during the final days of the British Raj influenced its evacuation back to China. This article locates the story within the broad context of the British withdrawal from India and the Chinese Civil War, and it uses this case to uncover the links between the two most significant events in the history of modern India and China. In so doing, it puts forward an integrated framework for studying modern Indian and Chinese history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 250 - 268
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This research is funded by All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese of China (17BZQK213).

References

1 The National Archives at Kew (hereafter NA), AIR 395/1, Operation Record Book, RAF Liaison Office Chinese EFTS, 3 Dec. 1945.

2 NA, AIR 395/1, Operation Record Book, RAF Liaison Office Chinese EFTS, 10 Dec. 1945.

3 Bayly, C. A. and Harper, Tim, Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain's Asian Empire (London: Allen Lane, 2007), p. 1Google Scholar.

4 McGarr, Paul, The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goscha, Christopher and Ostermann, Christian (eds), Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Jian, Chen, Mao's China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Tarling, Nicolas, Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hajimu, Masuda, Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

6 Harper, Tim, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Singh, Balwant, Independence and Democracy in Burma, 1945–52: The Turbulent Years (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Cribb, Robert, Gangsters and Revolutionaries: The Jakarta People's Militia and the Indonesian Revolution, 1945–1949 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Kheng, Cheah Boon, Red Star over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict during and after the Japanese Occupation of Malaya, 1941–1946 (Singapore: NUS Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

7 India in this research refers to British India that includes today's Republic of India, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and the People's Republic of Bangladesh.

8 Ankit, Rakesh, India in the Interregnum: Interim Government, September 1946–August 1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

9 Lary, Diana, China's Civil War: A Social History, 1945–1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 National history refers to a genre of historical thinking and writing that takes the nation-state as the only and exclusive analytical subject. National history became the hegemonic way through which people understood the human past in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By emphasizing the linear conception of temporality, national history confers on the nation-state an existence in an unbroken past and a progressive future and indicates that all people living within the boundaries of the modern nation-state share the same past and that the history of the nation is the exclusive property of the single national entity. For the rise of national history and its critiques, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006)Google Scholar; Duara, Prasenjit, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chatterjee, Partha, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (London: Zed Books, 1986)Google Scholar; David Potter, ‘The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa’, in The South and the Sectional Conflict, (ed.) David Potter (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968), pp. 34–83.

11 Yin, Cao, From Policemen to Revolutionaries: A Sikh Diaspora in Global Shanghai, 1885–1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2018)Google Scholar; Sen, Tansen, India, China, and the World: A Connected History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018)Google Scholar; Duara, Prasenjit, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Tsui, Brian, China's Conservative Revolution: The Quest for a New Order, 1927–1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yang Tianshi, ‘Chiang Kai-shek and Jawaharlal Nehru’, in Negotiating China's Destiny in World War II, (eds) Hans van de Ven, Diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnon (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2015), pp. 127–140; Sinderpal Singh, ‘From Delhi to Bandung: Nehru, “Indianess” and “Pan-Asian-ness”’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 2011, pp. 51–64; Abraham, Itty, ‘Bandung and State Formation in Post-Colonial Asia’, in Bandung Revisited: The Legacy of the 1955 Asian African Conference for International Order, (eds) See Tan, Seng and Acharya, Amitav (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), pp. 48–67Google Scholar; Guido Samarani, ‘Shaping the Future of Asia: Chiang Kai-shek, Nehru and China-India Relations during the Second World War Period’, Working Paper, Center for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, 2005.

13 Hsiao-Ting, Lin, Tibet and Nationalist China's Frontier: Intrigues and Ethnopolitics, 1928–49 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

14 Sen, India, China, and the World, pp. 337–349.

15 Since Lahore was British India territory until 1947, a study of the LEFTS from 1942 to 1946 has been taken as a study of India-China connections rather than Pakistan-China connections. The colonial period refers to the period from the eighteenth century when the British established colonial rule in India to 1947 when British India was partitioned into India and Pakistan (including East Pakistan, today's Bangladesh).

16 The primary sources provided by the LEFTS are mostly British official documents, which only shed light on the British official view on the event. By locating the LEFTS within the broader context of Anglo-China tensions during the Second World War, the chaotic ending of the British Raj, and the Chinese Civil War, and by combining British official documents with Chinese and Indian archives, this study attempts to transcend the national and colonial narratives of an event that is transnational in nature. In so doing, this study contends that the transnationalization of both perspectives and primary sources could be helpful in addressing problems and challenges brought about by the overreliance on national and colonial materials. For the limitations and problems of national and colonial archives, see Stoler, Ann Laura, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

17 NA, AIR 23/5348, from Ho Yin-ching to Major General J. G. Bruce, 29 June 1942.

18 Zhu Liyang, Zhongguo Kongjun Kangzhan Jiyi (Memories of the Chinese Air Force in the Second Sino-Japanese War) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Daxue Chubanshe, 2015), pp. 311–313.

19 NA, AIR 23/5348, from Air Vice Marshal T. M. Williams to Group Captain, Staff Office, 11 Aug. 1942.

20 Ibid.

21 NA, AIR 23/5348, from Air Headquarters, New Delhi to British Military Mission, Chungking, 4 July 1942.

22 NA, AIR 23/5348, from Governor General, New Delhi to Secretary of State for India, London, 4 July 1942.

23 NA, AIR 23/5348, from Air Headquarter, India to Air Attache, Chungking, 11 Jan. 1943.

24 NA, FO 371/25829, from Foreign Office to G. N. Moleworth, India Office, 18 Aug. 1943.

25 NA, FO 371/35829, from British Embassy, Chungking to Minister for Foreign Affairs, Chungking, 29 Jan. 1943.

26 NA, AIR 23/5348, from Group Captain, Staff Officer to Air Vice Marshal T. M. Williams, 19 Nov. 1942.

27 Chhina, Rana, The Eagle Strikers: The Royal Indian Air Force 1932–1950 (New Delhi: Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research, 2006), p. 291Google Scholar.

28 NA, AIR 23/5348, from Org.1 to Air Vice Marshal T. M. Williams, 1 Aug. 1942.

29 In addition to the 30 Ryan Trainer Aircraft in Allahabad, another 120 trainer aircraft (American-made Boeing Stearman PT-17) in Karachi that were supposed to be transported to China were handed over to the Lahore Elementary Flying Training School in November 1942.

30 NA, AIR 395/1, Operation Record Book, RAF Liaison Office Chinese EFTS, 31 Aug. 1943.

31 Ibid., 27 Nov. 1944.

32 Ibid., 31 July 1944.

33 Ibid., 22 Mar. 1944.

34 NA, FO 371/4303, Memorandum from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the British Embassy, 15 Aug. 1944.

35 NA, AIR 395/1, Operation Record Book, RAF Liaison Office Chinese EFTS, 14 Feb. 1945.

36 Ibid., 4 Oct. 1943.

37 Ibid., 15 Jan. 1944.

38 Ibid., 22 Sept. 1943.

39 Ibid., 8 June 1944.

40 Ibid., 11 Apr. 1944.

41 Ibid., 28 July 1944.

42 Ibid., 16 Sept. 1944.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 NA, AIR 23/7646, Concerning ‘Observation from RAF Point of View’, 1 Aug. 1945.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 NA, AIR 23/7646, from Office of the Air Attache British Embassy, Chungking to Wing Commander H. F. Bishop, 6 Oct. 1944.

50 NA, AIR 23/5348, from A. A. Chungking to Air HQ, Delhi, 18 Sept. 1943.

51 NA, AIR 23/5348, from J. G. Bruce to Air Headquarter, New Delhi, 4 July 1942.

52 NA, AIR 23/7646, from O. C. RAF, Liaison Office, CEFTS, Walton to the Commandant, IDCAFCS, 5 Sept. 1944.

53 NA, AIR 395/1, Operation Record Book, RAF Liaison Office Chinese EFTS, 20 Oct. 1945.

54 Academia Historica,Taipei (hereafter AH), Jiangzhongzheng zongtong wenwu, shilue gaoben (Documents of President Chiang Kai-shek, the chronology of the event), 26 Aug. 1945.

55 AH, Jiangzhongzheng zongtong wenwu, gemingwenxian, kanluanshiqi (Documents of President Chiang Kai-shek, documents of the nationalist revolution, the period of the civil war), 14 Sept. 1945.

56 NA, AIR 395/1, Operation Record Book, RAF Liaison Office Chinese EFTS, 12 Oct. 1945.

57 Ibid., 25 Sept. 1945.

58 AH, Jiangzhongzheng zongtong wenwu, kangming huoguo kuojunpanluan, kanzhanshiqi 10 (Documents of President Chiang Kai-shek, the uprisings of the Communists, the period of the War of Resistance 10), 17 Oct. 1945.

59 Ibid., 25 Oct. 1945.

60 AH, Jiangzhongzheng zongtong wenwu, gemingwenxian, guogongxieshang yu gongjunpanluan (Documents of President Chiang Kai-shek, documents of the nationalist revolution, the peace talk and the uprising of the Communists), 26 Oct. 1945.

61 NA, AIR 395/1, Operation Record Book, RAF Liaison Office Chinese EFTS, 1 Oct. 1945.

62 Ibid., 29 Oct. 1945.

63 Ibid., 19 Oct. 1945.

64 Ibid., 5 Nov. 1945.

65 Ibid., 7 Nov. 1945.

66 Ibid., 20 Nov. 1945.

67 Ibid., 18 Nov. 1945.

68 Ibid., 22 Nov. 1945.

69 Ibid., 24 Dec. 1945.

70 Ibid., 2 Jan. 1946.

71 Ibid., 12 Jan. 1946.

72 Ibid., 31 Jan. 1946.

73 Ibid., 1 May 1946.

74 Ibid., 4 May 1946.

75 Ibid., 21 Mar. 1946 and 13 Apr. 1946.

76 Ibid., 27 Feb. 1946.

77 Duncan, David, Mutiny in the RAF: The Air Force Strikes of 1946 (London: Socialist History Society, 1999), pp. 7–14Google Scholar.

78 Ibid., pp. 8–9.

79 Ibid., pp. 22–23.

80 Ibid., pp. 8–9

81 Ibid., pp. 27–33.

82 Ibid., p. 33.

83 Spence, Daniel Owen, ‘Beyond Talwar: A Cultural Reappraisal of the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 43, no. 3, 2015, p. 500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 Roy-Chaudhury, Rahul, Sea Power and Indian Security (London: Brassey's, 1995), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

85 Indian Office Records (IOR), L/MIL/17/9/379, Report of the RIN Commission of Enquiry, pp. 37–38; Spector, Ronald, ‘The Royal Indian Navy Strike of 1946: A Study of Cohesion and Disintegration in Colonial Armed Forces’, Armed Forces and Society, vol. 7, no. 2, 1981, pp. 271–284CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 Ibid., pp. 30–35.

87 Ibid., pp. 28–30.

88 NA, ADM 1/21104, from Miles to Admiralty, 14 Jan. 1948.

89 Spence, ‘Beyond Talwar’, pp. 489–508.

90 NA, AIR 395/1, Operation Record Book, RAF Liaison Office Chinese EFTS, 22 Feb. 1946.

91 Ibid., 18 May 1946.

92 Ibid., 7 June 1946.