WARLORD ERA - NAHMMACHER, Winifred Edwina.

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Nine letters from Shanghai to her sister in New York. A vivid collection of letters from an American woman living through China's turbulent 1920s, when rival warlords battled one another - and Sun Yat-Sen's Kuomintang - for control of the nation's cities and political institutions.Winifred Nahmmacher (1897-1971) moved to Shanghai in the early 1920s with her husband, Carl Alfred Nahmmacher (1899-1934), who worked variously as the owner of an automobile garage, the manager of an import-export business, and the East Asia representative for Boeing and other aviation firms. She maintained a regular correspondence with family in the United States, chiefly her sister, Ethel May Babcock (1882-1972, née Clark), and on one occasion Ethel's husband.The letters open in October 1923, days after the presidential election in which General Cao Kun secured victory through bribery and intimidation. "Wednesday is Republic Day. Tsao Kun [Cao Kun] has been elected President of China, and now trouble is feared … the faction in Shanghai … is going to fly all flags for what they call the disgrace of China" (8 October 1923). Cao's Zhili faction, closely aligned with Western powers, prompted a heavy foreign naval presence in Shanghai, with 22 American warships reported in the harbour.The following year proved still more volatile as Shanghai became a focal point in the struggle between Cao's Zhili Clique and Zhang Zuolin's Fengtian Clique. Nahmmacher describes fierce fighting between the forces of Gene

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