Riots, Stand-Offs & the Bomb
[TAIWAN.]
中華民國四十六年國慶閱兵大典集影 Album of the Grand Review of the National Day of the Republic of China (the 10th of October 1957). 參謀總長王叔銘贈 Presented by General Wang Shu-Ming, Chief of General Staff, Ministry of National Defence, Republic of China. [Taiwan, 1957.]
Oblong 4to album, with 20 gelatin silver prints, each 152 x 203 mm with tissue guards mounted on black card; traces of adhesive in corners of some photographs but otherwise in very good condition in a presentation binding of green velvet, gilt-lettered in English and Chinese with the arms of the Republic of China Armed Forces; velvet a little scuffed.
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中華民國四十六年國慶閱兵大典集影 Album of the Grand Review of the National Day of the Republic of China (the 10th of October 1957). 參謀總長王叔銘贈 Presented by General Wang Shu-Ming, Chief of General Staff, Ministry of National Defence, Republic of China.
A fine commemorative album documenting the military alliance between the United States and the Kuomintang/Republic of China, apparently unrecorded and made for presentation to a high-ranking dignitary at a tense time for both Cross-Strait and US–Taiwan relations.
The first five images show meetings between US and ROC military leaders, chiefly involving Admiral Austin K. Doyle, Commander of the United States Taiwan Defense Command. One of these appears to show the inspection of a nuclear bomb deployed by the US to Taiwan. The remaining photographs are of the ROC’s 1957 National Day military parade, showing the arrival of Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling, an inspection of the troops, marching soldiers, tanks and other equipment, and a flypast.
The album was produced at a period of high tension over Taiwan. Two crises, in 1954–5 and 1958, brought the ROC and the People’s Republic of China as close as they have come to war since 1949, leading Eisenhower to threaten (and seriously consider) nuclear intervention against the mainland. These threats in turn prompted Mao to launch a nuclear programme, the first tests of which began the following decade.
Relations between the US and the ROC were both strengthened and tested. The communists’ shelling of ROC-controlled islands caused the US Senate to adopt the Formosa Resolution of 1955, giving the president full authority to defend Taiwan from PRC attacks. But the presence of American troops on the island, and their diplomatic immunity, was resented. These tensions exploded on 24 May 1957 after the killing of a local by an American sergeant and the latter’s acquittal by a US court-martial. Outraged crowds stormed the US Embassy and other American buildings, some of them shouting ‘Kill the Westerners’. The unrest left one dead and more than eighty injured. US officials suspected Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek and future President of the ROC, of fomenting the riots, a charge denied by the Taiwanese.
Relations were quickly patched up with compensation and an apology, and the alliance recovered – as evidenced by the present album, produced five months after.
We find no copies of this album in OCLC or elsewhere.