The Autumn Harvest Uprising was an

insurrection Rebellion, uprising, or insurrection is a refusal of obedience or order. It refers to the open resistance against the orders of an established authority. A rebellion originates from a sentiment of indignation and disapproval of a situation and ...

that took place in

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangx ...

and

Kiangsi Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north into h ...

(Jiangxi) provinces of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

, on September 7, 1927, led by

Mao Tse-tung Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC ...

, who established a short-lived Hunan Soviet. After initial success, the uprising was brutally put down. Mao continued to believe in the rural strategy but concluded that it would be necessary to form a party army.

Background

In support of the

Northern Expedition The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT), also known as the "Chinese Nationalist Party", against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The ...

, Mao was sent to survey peasant conditions in his home province of Hunan. His Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan urged support for rural revolution.

The uprising

Initially, Mao struggled to garner forces for an uprising, but Li Zhen rallied the peasantry and members of her local communist troop to join. Mao then led a small peasant army against the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Ta ...

and the landlords of Hunan, successfully establishing a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

government. The uprising was eventually defeated by Kuomintang forces within two months after the Soviet was established. Mao and the others were forced to retreat to the Jinggang Mountains on the border between

and

Jiangxi Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north int ...

provinces, where he encountered an army of

miner A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting ...

s which would help him in later battles. This was one of the early armed uprisings by the Communists, and it marked a significant change in their strategy. Mao and

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

founder

Zhu De Zhu De (; ; also Chu Teh; 1 December 1886 – 6 July 1976) was a Chinese general, military strategist, politician and revolutionary in the Chinese Communist Party. Born into poverty in 1886 in Sichuan, he was adopted by a wealthy uncle at ...

went on to develop a rural-based strategy that centered on

guerrilla tactics Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tacti ...

. This paved the way for the

Long March The Long March (, lit. ''Long Expedition'') was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Army of the Chinese ...

of 1934.

Mass killings against Hunanese civilians

Nationalist anti-communist mass killings were directed against all Hunanese civilians. About 80,000 Hunanese were killed in Hunan's Liling and about 300,000 Hunanese were killed in Hunan's Chaling County,

Leiyang Leiyang () is a county-level city and the third most populous county-level division in Hunan Province, China. Leiyang is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Hengyang. Located on the south of the province, the city is bordered ...

, Liuyang and Pingjiang.

Notes

References and further reading

* Reprinted: De Gruyter, 201
eBook
* Li, Xiaobing. ''China at War: An Encyclopedia'' (ABC-CLIO, 2012) pp 15–16. {{authority control Conflicts in 1927 1927 protests September 1927 events Military operations of the Chinese Civil War 1927 in China Military history of Hunan Military history of Jiangxi