Abstract
One of the myths that underpins the scholarly and military discourse regarding modern insurgencies is the belief that Mao Zedong created a radically new form of insurrectionary warfare and that this new breed of combat transformed the character of insurgent strategies across the world. The first chapter of this book explains the premises that comprise the myth and outlines its prevalence in much of the Western literature on insurgencies and counterinsurgency doctrine since the end of the Second World War. It then lays out the structure for how the remainder of the book goes about systematically critiquing and deconstructing the myth.
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Notes
- 1.
This book uses the newer pinyin rather than the older Wade-Giles translations for the majority of names of Chinese people, ships, and locations, such as “Mao Zedong” instead of “Mao Tse-tung” and “Guomindang” rather than “Kuomintang.” There are two exceptions to this rule, however. First, when referring to the titles of specific books and articles, the original titles of those publications have been maintained. For example, the various writings of Mao that were published by the Foreign Languages Press in Peking are entitled “The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung” and this title has been kept unchanged. Second, the leader of the Guomindang is referred to in the book as “Chiang Kai-shek” rather than “Jiang Jieshi” because he is widely known by the former rather than latter name.
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Grice, F. (2019). Introduction. In: The Myth of Mao Zedong and Modern Insurgency. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77571-5_1
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