The Warlord Era (Chinese: 軍閥時代 Jūnfá shídài) was the period in the history of the Republic of China, from 1916 to 1928, when the country was divided among military cliques in the mainland China regions of Sichuan, Shanxi, Qinghai, Ningxia, Guangdong, Guangxi, Gansu, Yunnan, and Xinjiang.
The Warlord Era lasted from the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916 until 1928, when the conclusion of the Northern Expedition with the Northeast Flag Replacement began the "Nanjing decade"; however, when old warlords, such as Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang, were deposed, new minor warlords persisted into the 1930s and 1940s, as the central government struggled to keep its allies under rein, a great problem for the Kuomintang (KMT) through World War II and after the civil war. Some of the most notable warlord wars, post-1928, including the Central Plains War, involved nearly a million soldiers. The division of the country continued after the Warlord Era until the fall of the Nationalist government at the end of the Chinese Civil War.
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“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)