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Lascarins (Lascareen, Lascoreen and Lascarine) is a term used in Sri Lanka to identify indigenous soldiers who fought for the Portuguese during the Portuguese era (1505–1658) and continued to serve as colonial soldiers until the 1930s.
The Hamidiye corps, full official name Hamidiye hafif süvari alayları, Hamidiye light cavalry regiments, were well-armed, irregular Sunni Kurdish, Turkish, Turkmen and Yörük, also Arab cavalry formations that operated in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.<br/><br/> Established by and named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1891, they were intended to be modeled after the Russian Cossacks and were supposedly tasked to patrol the Russo-Ottoman frontier. However, the Hamidiye were more often used by the Ottoman authorities to harass and assault Armenians living in Turkish Armenia.<br/><br/> A major role in the Armenian massacres of 1894-96 has been often ascribed to the Hamidiye regiments, particularly during the bloody suppression of the revolt of the Armenians of Sasun (1894).
In 1875, Siamese (Thai) forces crossed the Mekong River at Nong Khai, northeastern Thailand, in the first miltary expedition of what would become known as the 'Haw Wars'. The expedition's goal was to capture the Haw base at Thung Chiang Kham in Laos.
In 1875, Siamese (Thai) forces crossed the Mekong River at Nong Khai, northeastern Thailand, in the first miltary expedition of what would become known as the 'Haw Wars'. The expedition's goal was to capture the Haw base at Thung Chiang Kham in Laos.
During the late 19th century, all the territory stretching from Dien Bien Phu in the south to the Chinese frontier in the north formed an autonomous region called Sipsongchutai, or ‘Twelve Tai Principalities’. It was ruled over by a hereditary White Tai prince from his capital at Lai Chau and paid tribute, at one time or another, to Siam, Vietnam or China, and sometimes to all three.<br/><br/> At this time the White Tai chieftain was Kham Sing, known to the Vietnamese as Deo Van Seng. He ruled over Sipsongchutai from his capital at Lai Chau, but was old and tired, so real power had already passed to his eldest son, the fiercely independent Kham Hum, known to the Vietnamese (and to the recently arrived French) as Deo Van Tri.<br/><br/> Neither Deo Van Seng nor Deo Van Tri wanted to submit completely either to Bangkok or to Hanoi, preferring to pursue the delicate balancing act between the two that had for long years allowed continuing autonomy. But times were changing fast, maps being drawn and frontiers delimited as modern nation states came into being in mainland Southeast Asia.<br/><br/> Accordingly in 1889 Deo Van Tri signed a treaty with France making Sipsongchutai a semi-autonomous region within the French Protectorate of Tonkin – and therefore, ultimately, a part of Vietnam.
Khun Sa, aka Chang Chi-fu (pinyin: Zhāng Qífú; Thai: Chan Jangtrakul (17 February 1934 – 26 October 2007) was a Burmese warlord. He was dubbed the 'Opium King' due to his opium trading in the Golden Triangle region. He was also the leader of the Shan United Army and the Mong Tai Army.<br/><br/> Khun Sa was born to a Chinese father and a Shan mother. He adopted the pseudonym Khun Sa, meaning 'Prince Prosperous'. In his youth he trained with the Kuomintang, which had fled into the border regions of Burma from Yunnan upon its defeat in the Chinese Civil War, and eventually went on to form his own army of a few hundred men. In 1963 he re-formed it into a Ka Kwe Ye local militia loyal to Gen Ne Win's Burmese government. Ka Kwe Ye received money, uniforms and weapons in return for fighting the Shan rebels.<br/><br/> When Khun Sa had expanded his army to 800 men, he stopped cooperating with the Burmese government, took control of large area in Shan and Wa states and expanded into opium production. In 1967 he clashed with the Kuomintang remnants in Shan State, which resulted in his defeat, demoralizing him and his forces. In 1969, the Rangoon government captured him. He was freed in 1973 when his second-in-command abducted two Russian doctors and demanded his release. By 1976 he had returned to opium smuggling, and set up a base inside northern Thailand in the village of Ban Hin Taek. He renamed his group the Shan United Army and began ostensibly fighting for Shan autonomy against the Burmese government.<br/><br/> It is claimed that Khun Sa surrendered to Burmese officials in January 1996, reportedly because he did not want to face drug smuggling charges in the USA. Khun Sa died on 26 October 2007 in Yangon at the age of 73.
Norodom Sihanouk (born 31 October 1922) was the King of Cambodia from 1941 to 1955 and again from 1993 until his retirement and voluntary abdication on 7 October 2004 in favour of his son, the current King Norodom Sihamoni.<br/><br/> Following his abdication he was known as The King-Father of Cambodia, a position in which he retained many of his former responsibilities as constitutional monarch. He died of a heart attack in Beijing, China, on October 15, 2012.
During the late 19th century, all the territory stretching from Dien Bien Phu in the south to the Chinese frontier in the north formed an autonomous region called Sipsongchutai, or ‘Twelve Tai Principalities’. It was ruled over by a hereditary White Tai prince from his capital at Lai Chau and paid tribute, at one time or another, to Siam, Vietnam or China, and sometimes to all three.<br/><br/> At this time the White Tai chieftain was Kham Sing, known to the Vietnamese as Deo Van Seng. He ruled over Sipsongchutai from his capital at Lai Chau, but was old and tired, so real power had already passed to his eldest son, the fiercely independent Kham Hum, known to the Vietnamese (and to the recently arrived French) as Deo Van Tri.<br/><br/> Neither Deo Van Seng nor Deo Van Tri wanted to submit completely either to Bangkok or to Hanoi, preferring to pursue the delicate balancing act between the two that had for long years allowed continuing autonomy. But times were changing fast, maps being drawn and frontiers delimited as modern nation states came into being in mainland Southeast Asia.<br/><br/> Accordingly in 1889 Deo Van Tri signed a treaty with France making Sipsongchutai a semi-autonomous region within the French Protectorate of Tonkin – and therefore, ultimately, a part of Vietnam.
With the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the League of Nations and the occupying powers chose to redraw the borders of the Eastern Mediterranean. The ensuing decisions, most notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, gave birth to the French Mandate of Syria and British Mandate of Palestine. In September 1922, Transjordan was formally created from within the latter, after the League of Nations approved the British Transjordan memorandum which stated that the Mandate territories east of the River Jordan would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement. The country was under British supervision until after World War II. In 1946, the British requested that the United Nations approve an end to British Mandate rule in Transjordan. Following the British request, the Transjordanian Parliament proclaimed King Abdullah as the first ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.
Hoa Hao is a religious tradition, based on Buddhism, founded in 1939 by Huynh Phy Sy, a native of the Mekong River Delta region of southern Vietnam. When America began intervening in South Vietnam, the most powerful groups to concern the Americans were the Cao Dai, the Binh Xuyen and the Hoa Hao, which had formed a small private army under General Ba Cụt. O.S.S. Colonel Edward Lansdale used bribery with CIA funds to split the Hoa Hao and in 1956 General Duơng Van Minh crushed the Hoa Hao and General Ba Cụt was captured and beheaded in public. This was the end of the Hoa Hao as an armed group, some later joining the Viet Cong in opposition to the Diem regime. After Diem was deposed and killed, the Hoa Hao changed their emphasis from anti Diem to anti Communist.
A diminutive female Vietnamese militia woman drives a captured Chinese PLA soldier ahead of her during the 1979 Chinese invasion of Vietnam (the Third Indochina War). The image is strikingly (and perhaps deliberately) reminiscent of a similar photograph from the Second Indochina War showing a large American pilot being driven by a tiny Vietnamese female soldier.
The Great Leap Forward (simplified Chinese: 大跃进; traditional Chinese: 大躍進; pinyin: Dà yuè jìn) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China (CPC), reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern communist society through the process of rapid industrialization, and collectivization. Mao Zedong led the campaign based on the Theory of Productive Forces, and intensified it after being informed of the impending disaster from grain shortages.<br/><br/> Chief changes in the lives of rural Chinese included the introduction of a mandatory process of agricultural collectivization, which was introduced incrementally. Private farming was prohibited, and those engaged in it were labeled as counter revolutionaries and persecuted. Restrictions on rural people were enforced through public struggle sessions, and social pressure.<br/><br/> The Great Leap ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of excess deaths. Estimates of the death toll range from 18 million to at least 45 million.<br/><br/> In subsequent conferences in 1960 and 1962, the negative effects of the Great Leap Forward were studied by the CPC, and Mao was criticized in the party conferences. Moderate Party members like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping rose to power, and Mao was marginalized within the party, leading him to initiate the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
The Laotian Civil War (1953–75) was fought between the Communist Pathet Lao (including many North Vietnamese of Lao ancestry) and the Royal Lao Government in which both the political rightists and leftists received heavy external support for a proxy war from the global Cold War superpowers. Among United States Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Division US and Hmong veterans of the conflict, it is known as the Secret War.<br/><br/> The Kingdom of Laos was a covert theatre for battle for the other belligerents during the Vietnam War. The Franco–Lao Treaty of Amity and Association signed 22 October 1953, transferred remaining French powers – except control of military affairs – to the Royal Lao Government – which did not include any representatives from the Lao Issara anti-colonial armed nationalist movement — and otherwise establishing Laos as an independent member of the French Union.<br/><br/> The following years were marked by a rivalry between the neutralists under Prince Souvanna Phouma, the right wing under Prince Boun Oum of Champassak, and the left-wing Lao Patriotic Front under Prince Souphanouvong and future Prime Minister Kaysone Phomvihane. A number of attempts were made to establish coalition governments, and a 'tri-coalition' government was finally seated in Vientiane.<br/><br/> The fighting in Laos involved the North Vietnamese Army, U.S., Thai, and South Vietnamese forces directly and through irregular proxies in a battle for control over the Laotian Panhandle. The North Vietnamese Army occupied the area for use as the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply corridor and staging area for offensives into South Vietnam. There was a second major theatre of action on and near the northern Plain of Jars.<br/><br/> The North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao emerged victorious in 1975, as part of the general communist victory in Indochina that year.
The Hamidiye corps, full official name Hamidiye hafif süvari alayları, Hamidiye light cavalry regiments, were well-armed, irregular Sunni Kurdish, Turkish, Turkmen and Yörük, also Arab cavalry formations that operated in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.<br/><br/> Established by and named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1891, they were intended to be modeled after the Russian Cossacks and were supposedly tasked to patrol the Russo-Ottoman frontier. However, the Hamidiye were more often used by the Ottoman authorities to harass and assault Armenians living in Turkish Armenia.<br/><br/> A major role in the Armenian massacres of 1894-96 has been often ascribed to the Hamidiye regiments, particularly during the bloody suppression of the revolt of the Armenians of Sasun (1894).
The Black Flag Army (Chinese: Hēiqí Jūn; Vietnamese: Quân cờ đen) was a splinter remnant of a bandit group recruited largely from soldiers of ethnic Zhuang background, who crossed the border from Guangxi province of China into Upper Tonkin, in the Empire of Annam (Vietnam) in 1865. They became known mainly for their fights against French forces in cooperation with both Vietnamese and Chinese authorities. The Black Flag Army is so named because of the preference of its commander, Liu Yongfu, for using black command flags.