Photograph captioned "Stilwell consults with the generals of the Chinese Expeditionary Force"

The objectphotographed as held, uncropped

Catalogue description

Four men sit around a table in a dark interior of timber posts and hanging matting, lit from the front. At the left, seen almost in profile, a man in a light open-collared shirt sits with his hands raised and pressed together in front of his chest. Beside him a second man, head shaved, in round wire-rimmed spectacles and a plain dark open-collared shirt or tunic with no visible insignia, leans forward with an open hand raised, fingers spread, a wristwatch on that wrist. A third man sits behind the table at the centre, facing the camera, mouth closed. At the right an older, gaunt, sharp-featured man in an open-collared service shirt sits in a plank chair, one arm out across the table, mouth open. A flat case or board lies on the table between them, and the table is covered to the ground by a cloth printed with large sprays of flowers.

The object is a single sheet carrying a reproduced photograph with one line of caption type below it. No publisher, date, credit line or series number appears anywhere on the photographed face, so the object cannot be attributed or dated from itself, and whether it is a card, a leaf cut from a book or magazine, or a later reproduction print is not established. No regular dot screen resolves in the available photograph of the sheet; that is a limit of the file, and it settles nothing about how or when the sheet was printed.

The caption does its work in one verb. "Consults" makes the scene a conference among peers — the American general and the Chinese generals in conversation, the alliance functioning. It also names one man and no others: Stilwell is a surname, the Chinese officers are "the generals of the Chinese Expeditionary Force", a body rather than people, and the object gives the archive no way to identify them. The second man from the left wears round wire-rimmed spectacles; whether the older man at the right also wears them is not resolvable in the available photograph of the object. The archive declines to say which figure the caption means. It cannot confirm that the men shown are CEF generals, or where and when the exposure was made. What can be said is that this is a picture of men of two armies at one table, that the caption presents the encounter as consultation, and that the command relationship the picture stands for was not a settled one.

The copy shows a light curl at the right edge and a mottled surface; there are no tears, stamps or annotations on the face. Nothing on it records who printed it or for whom.

Transcriptiontext on the object, as printed

Stilwell consults with the generals of the Chinese Expeditionary Force

[A single line of caption type in the lower margin, sans-serif italic, running the width of the image. No other text appears anywhere on the photographed face: no title, publisher imprint, series or negative number, credit, date, price, stamp, cancellation, pencil note or signature in any margin. Verso not photographed.]

Historical context

The Chinese Expeditionary Force was a formation of China's National Revolutionary Army sent into Burma and later India to fight alongside British and American forces; its first expedition ran from March to August 1942 and its second from early 1943 to March 1945. Joseph W. Stilwell was promoted lieutenant general in February 1942 and assigned to the China-Burma-India theatre as commander of all US forces in China, Burma and India and as military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. After the Allied collapse in Burma he led his staff of 117 out of Burma into Assam on foot in May 1942; in August 1942 he opened a training centre at Ramgarh in India, where 32,000 Chinese troops were in training by the end of December 1942. Chinese forces operated from Yunnan and attacked across the Salween in the spring of 1944. The Ledo Road, driven from Assam through northern Burma to China, was later renamed the Stilwell Road by Chiang. Stilwell's authority over Chinese forces was never clearly defined and was disputed for the duration of his command; Roosevelt recalled him on 19 October 1944.

What is not known

• No publisher, series number, credit line, date or imprint appears anywhere on the photographed face; the object cannot be attributed or dated from itself.
• Whether the object is a card, a leaf cut from a book or magazine, or a later reproduction print is not established. The dc_type "Photograph" records only that the sheet carries a reproduced photograph and does not settle the question.
• The verso was not photographed. Any series number, caption slug, printer's line or collection stamp on the back is unrecorded; a photograph of the back is the single thing most likely to yield the publisher and the printing date.
• The date of this printing is not established. No regular dot screen resolves at 4x magnification of the full-resolution file, but that is a limit of the photograph of the object, not a finding about the printing; the process cannot be determined from this file. A previous reading of the caption typeface as post-war is withdrawn: no typeface was identified and no source was cited for any typeface history. Both questions need someone holding the sheet.
• None of the four men is identified. The caption names only Stilwell and does not say which figure he is; the archive has not confirmed the identity of any person in the picture, and notes that the second man from the left wears round wire-rimmed spectacles, while whether the older man at the right wears spectacles cannot be resolved at full magnification of this file — a detail that would bear on the identification and that needs the object itself.
• The place and date of the original exposure are unknown. The interior could be a tent, a bamboo building or a requisitioned house anywhere in the theatre.
• The coordinates given are an approximate point within the China-Burma-India theatre chosen by the archive, not a located point and not sourced; the object names no place. An earlier Burma centroid was removed because it pre-judged the location toward one of three countries.
• Open question for a future editor: does this photograph correspond to the commercially catalogued image "U.S. General Joseph W. Stilwell meets Chinese Army Generals (1944)" (Alamy 49927858), described as Stilwell at the Salween River front with Chinese generals and US Brigadier General Frank Dorn of the Y-Force Operations Staff? The catalogue page returned HTTP 403 to both the refuter and this editor and could not be read, so nothing is claimed from it. If it holds, it would date the scene to 1944, place it on the Yunnan/Salween front rather than in Burma, and give a name to the man at the left.
• The archive has not located the source photograph in a public collection. A Library of Congress photograph of Stilwell with Chinese Expeditionary Force officers (LC-DIG-ds-03107) was fetched and is a different scene — an inspection of Chinese troops in India, not this table.
• The claim that Chinese commanders frequently declined to act on Stilwell's orders without Chiang's approval was cut from this record: it is not carried by the sources listed here and was not independently verified.
• The month of the Salween crossing is contested and is given here only as "spring 1944": the Y Force article dates the crossing to the second half of April 1944, while US Army accounts title the campaign May 1944. The archive has not adjudicated this.
• The relationship of this object to the other sheets of similar format in this accession (M, N, O, Q) is assumed from their shared shape and caption style, not proven by any series marking on this object.