“In the Character of their Material, Animate and Inanimate, the Troops of the United States Excelled”

Abstract

This article considers logistics and supply in the China Relief Expedition. In the China campaign, as in all armed conflicts, the availability of matériel and subsistence determined what military options were available to commanders. In 1900, because of a strong industrial base and a burgeoning logistical network, the US Army, Marine Corps, and Navy demonstrated an increased capacity and capability to project power on hemispheric scales. Throughout the entirety of their intervention in China, Americans moved animals, artillery, medical supplies, men, ordnance, and subsistence across great distances – over sea and land, to and within the theatre of operations – with remarkable efficiency under difficult conditions. Thus, the China Relief Expedition was instructive for the US profession of arms, and pointed to a future in which large-scale combat operations on land and at sea would require careful integration and more extensive logistical support than military operations of nineteenth-century conflicts.