Author : Francis Stanley Grice
Release : 2014
Genre : China
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Insurgent Myth of Mao by : Francis Stanley Grice

Download or read book The Insurgent Myth of Mao written by Francis Stanley Grice. This book was released on 2014. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amongst many Western scholars and policy makers. there exists an assumption that the Chinese guerrilla legend. Mao Zedung. helped to fundamentally transform the nature of modern insurgencies. The thesis shows that the scale of Mao·s impact in this area has. in fact. been significantly intlated. and explains why this distortion has occurred. The thesis begins by performing a qualitative content analysis on all of the official writings. interviews. and speeches of Mao. and identifies sixteen themes about insurgent warfare within these worb. Taken together. these themes provide a comprehensive characterisation of ·Maoist warfare.' Using the sixteen themes and examples of armed rebellion throughout history. including the American War of Independence. the Second Indo-China War. and the Shining Path insurgency. the thesis shows how Mao's teachings not only lacked originality. but also failed to exert any meaningful influence upon later insurgencies in other parts of the world. It also exposes how Mao failed to apply his own teachings in the Chinese Revolutionary Civil War. Finally. the thesis suggests that the myth about the importance of Mao for redefining the nature of insurgency has been propagated not because it was true. but because all of the main actors affected by the myth were incentivised by their own circumstances to support it. The findings of the thesis are important because the Western belief that Mao revolutionised insurgencies has shaped how scholars view these kinds of conflict and has contaminated the historical development of Western counterinsurgency doctrine.