Retrieving the 'voices of the voiceless': Historiographical issues in writing the history of the chinese labour corps
While scholars have produced tens if not hundreds of thousands of books on the First World War, the Chinese Labour Corps has only wielded a relatively very small number of dedicated works. For this marginalization of the CLC in the historiography, three main reasons can be identified: the subordinate position in the social and military hierarchy of the time, the elevated number of illiterate members in the corps and as a consequence the lack of personal recollections, and boundaries of language and culture. However, these difficulties should not prevent researchers from entering this field of research. Working with bicultural and multilingual 'middlemen' and interpreting 'alternative sources' such as photos, film, objects, poetry, songs and oral history can offer different but rewarding routes to uncover the past of 'subordinate groups' such as the Chinese Labour Corps.
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