“A First World War centennial book with a difference,” AFP's Asia Pacific director Eric Wishart reviews.
In From the Tsar's Railway to the Red Army, journalist-turned-historian Mark O'Neill (International Journalism Programme) reveals the hardship of 200,000 Chinese labourers who went to Russia during the Great War and Bolshevik Revolution to assist in the Allied war effort, and how they became part of the game of thrones between the Chinese, British, French, Americans and Japanese, which led to the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles.
In less than 100 pages, Mark “tells a story that is scarcely known in Russia or China and rarely told elsewhere. History books describe the ferocious battles of the Great War, the October Revolution, and the Civil War, but the Chinese workers are a mere detail in the corner of this huge canvas.”
Mr O'Neill is a master in approaching heavy subjects in a light writing style. He has proven this before in works where he tracked his missionary grandfather during China's political turbulences in the Qing Dynasty and in a twin-series about the labourers, The Chinese Labour Corps: The Forgotten Chinese Labourers of the First World War: Penguin Special. No doubt his stories had no sooner been published by Penguin than they became bestsellers.
(Republished from MPRO’s UIC Beacon Issue XII)
