Hankou

Hankou was the destination on the escape route of groups of missionaries fleeing the Boxers in the Northern provinces around 1900. The flight of some missionaries from the T'ai-yüan massacre in Shan-si is recorded in the work A Thousand Miles of Miracle in China,[7] by Reverend A E Glover, one of the fleeing missionaries.

Troops sent to recapture Hankou

Bombardment of Hankow (1911)

On 10 October 1911, a revolution to establish the Republic of China and replace the Qing dynasty led to the involvement of Hankou in the struggle between Hubei revolutionary forces and the Qing army, led by Yuan Shikai. Although the revolution began in Wuchang with a revolt started by members of the New Army, revolutionaries quickly captured major strategic cities and towns throughout the province, including Hankou on October 12. The Qing Dynasty Army recaptured Hankou later, but as the revolution spread throughout China, eventually the town and the province came under control of the Republic of China.

Foreign concessions along the Bund, circa 1900

Hankou used to have five foreign concessions belonging to the United Kingdom (115 acres (47 ha), est. 1862), France (60 acres (24 ha), est. 1886), Russia (60 acres (24 ha), est. 1886), Germany (100 acres (40 ha), est. 1895) and Japan (32 acres (13 ha), est. 1898). The German and Russian concessions ended in 1917 and 1920 respectively and those areas were administered by the Chinese government as the First and the Second Special Area.

In 1862, Russian tea merchants arrived in the British concession of Hankou. Russians in Hankou established four factories using assembly lines and machinery to produce brick tea, and became the city's richest industrialists in what would become the Russian concession.[8][9]

Bastille Day celebrations, 1932

Early in 1927, the British concession was occupied in the course of the revolutionary troubles that accompanied the Northern Expedition when the Chinese Kuomintang forces occupied the concession and showed no intention of withdrawing. The Chen-O'Malley Agreement of February 1927 provided for a combined British-Chinese administration of the concession and in 1929 the British concession formally came to an end. From then on it was administered by the Chinese authorities as the Third Special Area.

Chinese Kuomintang soldiers marching into the British concession during the Northern Expedition

In the 1920s and 30s, Hankou was one of the Yangtze River ports patrolled by the US Navy to maintain US interests in the area (Yangtze Patrol.)

1926, Hankow, American sailors from the USS Palos (docked behind)

Hankou was flooded in the 1931 China floods.

Japanese child's blanket 1938 includes name Hankow. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm. The culture of war.

Hankou was captured by the Japanese invaders in 1938 (Battle of Wuhan).

An important logistical center, the city was heavily bombed in December 1944 by the US aircraft based in the Chengdu area (part of Operation Matterhorn).

On 19 August 1945, a group of enraged Chinese civilians and soldiers massacred 26 Japanese soldiers in the Hankou reprisal massacre.

The government of Vichy France relinquished the French concession in 1943, and the restored French Republic relinquished it formally in 1946.

The Japanese concession came to an end with the surrender of Japan in 1945.

Before the Communist Revolution, Hankou was the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hankou, covering the province of Hubei. The dioceses in Wuchang, Hanyang and elsewhere in the province were subordinated to it.

In the 1930s, the airports served in Hankow were Wuhan Wangjiadun Airport and Wuhan Nanhu. Wangjiadun served as a civil and military base until 2007 while Nanhu, on the other hand, shut down while Tianhe Airport opened in 1995.

Former Hankou Orthodox Church