The Black Flag Army

[Rafiq]

The Black Flag Army (Chinese: 黑旗军; pinyin: Hēiqí Jūn; Vietnamese: Quân cờ đen) was a splinter remnant of a bandit group recruited largely from soldiers of ethnic Zhuang background, who crossed the border from Guangxi province of China into Upper Tonkin, in the Empire of Annam (Vietnam) in 1865. They became known mainly for their fights against French forces in cooperation with both Vietnamese and Chinese authorities. The Black Flag Army is so named because of the preference of its commander, Liu Yongfu, for using black command flags.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Black_Flag_Army_Flag.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Soldier_Black-Flag.jpg


French sources invariably mention that Liu Yongfu's personal command flags were very large, black in colour, and rectangular. In December 1873, when Liu Yongfu confronted Francis Garnier outside Hanoi, the Black Flag Army is described as marching under enormous black flags. At the Battle of Palan (1 September 1883), Liu Yongfu's headquarters was marked with seven identical black flags, bordered in silver. In the Son Tay Campaign (December 1883), Liu Yongfu ordered three large black flags to be flown above the main gate of the citadel of Son Tay, bearing Chinese characters in white.

Those flags must have been really intimidating...


Now tell me these guy's aren't badass or what. Discuss.

[Susurrus]

Was there any political context to the black flag, or was it just style?

[Comrade Crow]

They do sound badass, not going to lie.

[OhYesIdid]

Indeed, must know more.
To the google machine!

[OhYesIdid]

Wikipedia say:

The Black Flags demonstrated their usefulness to the Vietnamese government in helping to suppress the indigenous tribes that populated the hills between the Red (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_%28Vietnam%29) and Black Rivers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_River_%28Vietnam%29), and Liu was rewarded with official military rank.

They were basically mercenaries, hired killers, and thugs. Baddass, but "bad guys" in the grand sheme of things. They emerged during the chaos that the Taiping rebellion brought China to, and were never rally nothing more than bandits imho.

[Rafiq]

:crying: But they sounded so cool!

[Black Sheep]

enormous black flags
what a waste of fighters..

commander - it's time to charge!
troops - huzaaaah!
commander - you 50! you'll carry the flags
them 50 - :(

[Tim Finnegan]

what a waste of fighters..

commander - it's time to charge!
troops - huzaaaah!
commander - you 50! you'll carry the flags
them 50 - :(
I dunno, people used to get really into flags. Standard bearers usually had the highest casualty rate in any army, but people would still fight for the job. Hell, in the British army, getting to be the guy who stood near the guy with the flag was considered to be a prestigious position (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_Sergeant). Human beings are weird like that. http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif

[Rafiq]

Well think about it this way, looking back, at pictures such as the American flag raising and the Soviet flag above the reichstag, it would seem that flag raisers and carriers are the most popular and most remembered.

[Black Sheep]

Yeah but it's a waste of fighters.. A rifle on your hands is more effective at enemy-killing..
The chinese got it right , arm yourself with your sword, and have the banner mounted on your back.Morale generating and killing combined!

[Susurrus]

The chinese got it right , arm yourself with your sword, and have the banner mounted on your back.Morale generating and killing combined!

Not to quibble, but I believe that was the Japanese. I may be wrong about that, though.

[Tim Finnegan]

Yeah but it's a waste of fighters.. A rifle on your hands is more effective at enemy-killing..
Yes, but at that point, it was also necessary for effective coordination of troops. A flag-less army may have marginally more fire-power, but their inability to deploy it in a coordinated fashion in the field would render them useless.


The chinese got it right , arm yourself with your sword, and have the banner mounted on your back.Morale generating and killing combined!As Susurrus said, that was actually the Japanese, but I'll also add that the those flags, the "sashimono", were not intended for strategic purposes, but to identify individual warriors and their retainers, like the heraldic shields worn by European knights. In both cases, larger banners were still used, as in all cultures which developed a form of warfare large and complex enough for the commander to be unable to direct combat personally.

[Queercommie Girl]

Wikipedia say:

They were basically mercenaries, hired killers, and thugs. Baddass, but "bad guys" in the grand sheme of things. They emerged during the chaos that the Taiping rebellion brought China to, and were never rally nothing more than bandits imho.


That's a rather one-sided analysis. Of course they were not completely progressive, but the fact that they fought against French imperialism in Asia cannot be written off simply because they may have been hired to suppress indigenous tribes as well. A wrong does not simply write-off a right.

[Tim Finnegan]

That's a rather one-sided analysis. Of course they were not completely progressive, but the fact that they fought against French imperialism in Asia cannot be written off simply because they may have been hired to suppress indigenous tribes as well. A wrong does not simply write-off a right.
Anti-imperialism is not, in itself, a "right". The Confederated States of America were fighting against a de facto imperialist power, and Marx still backed the Union to the hilt.

[Queercommie Girl]

Anti-imperialism is not, in itself, a "right". The Confederated States of America were fighting against a de facto imperialist power, and Marx still backed the Union to the hilt.

You may have a point in a purely abstract sense, but I don't think your Confederacy example would apply at all to 19th century Vietnam. So in the context of 19th century Vietnam, anti-imperialism was partly progressive. I did not claim to be making any kind of an "universal statement" about anti-imperialism, I was only looking at this particular case.

[Tim Finnegan]

You may have a point in a purely abstract sense, but I don't think your Confederacy example would apply at all to 19th century Vietnam. So in the context of 19th century Vietnam, anti-imperialism was partly progressive. I did not claim to be making any kind of an "universal statement" about anti-imperialism, I was only looking at this particular case.
My point was that you can't separate the simple fact of anti-imperialist deployment from the motivations of that deployment, and it seems, as far as we can tell, that the Black Flag Army fought the French not because of any particular attempt to defend the interests of the peasants, let alone to attain their political autonomy, but because it was interest of the indigenous authorities for them to do so. Liu Yongfu seems to have been a mercenary rather than a nationalist of any sort; more like some sort of condottiero than a popular nationalist like, say, Garibaldi, or even a thoroughly bourgeois one like, say, Bolívar.

[Queercommie Girl]

My point was that you can't separate the simple fact of anti-imperialist deployment from the motivations of that deployment, and it seems, as far as we can tell, that the Black Flag Army fought the French not because of any particular attempt to defend the interests of the peasants, let alone to attain their political autonomy, but because it was interest of the indigenous authorities for them to do so. Liu Yongfu seems to have been a mercenary rather than a nationalist of any sort; more like some sort of condottiero than a popular nationalist like, say, Garibaldi, or even a thoroughly bourgeois one like, say, Bolívar.

Well Liu was not Vietnamnese, he was ethnic Chinese. Vietnam at this time was still partly within the sphere of influence of the Qing Dynasty.

However, simply because he might have suppressed indigenous tribal peoples to some extent doesn't imply necessarily that he must have been a mercenary. After all, Bolivar wasn't exactly an advocate for native American indigenous rights either. (Frankly, even socialist revolutionaries like Castro and Che had some prejudices against the indigenous peoples)

I'd say he did defend the interests of ethnic Vietnamnese peasants to some extent, just not the interests of indigenous pre-feudal tribal peoples. Like the American revolution defended the interests of white settlers against the British monarchy, but not really the rights of black or indigenous peoples.