Sea Control · CIMSEC Podcasting Team

Sea Control 576: Rescuing Heritage from Humiliation with Tommy Jamison

June 7, 2025·35 min·2 clips

Dr. Tommy Jamison explains how China is recasting its 19th-century naval defeats as a source of pride for its modern navy.

1. Sea Control 576 features Dr. Tommy Jamison of the Naval Postgraduate School discussing his article 'Rescuing Heritage from Humiliation,' published in the October 2024 issue of the Journal of Military History. 2. Dr. Tommy Jamison is an assistant professor of strategic studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, a historian of the US in the Pacific world dating back to the 19th century, and a former Navy intelligence officer. 3. The episode's central thesis is that China's reinterpretation of two 19th-century naval defeats — the Sino-French War and the Sino-Japanese War — from shameful humiliations into sources of heritage reveals how the PLAN legitimizes its contemporary blue-water expansion. 4. The Sino-French War (1883) climaxed with the Battle of Fuzhou, in which French forces sailed upriver and destroyed the Chinese South Sea Fleet without losing a vessel, widely read as an indictment of Qing civilizational standing. 5. The first Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) turned on the Battle of the Yalu, where Japan's newly built navy destroyed Admiral Ting's fleet, which Western observers had expected to dominate, delivering a second catastrophic verdict on Chinese maritime power. 6. Jamison visited the Dagu Forts Memorial near Tianjin in 2016 and found, instead of expected condemnation of Qing naval failures, exhibits celebrating the technological sophistication of late Qing fortifications under the slogan 'those who lag behind will be bullied.' 7. He identifies three historiographical phases: Maoist-era condemnation (the defeats proved advanced technology couldn't substitute for people's warfare), Deng-era rehabilitation (the defeats as tragedy offering didactic lessons), and current Xi-era glorification (the defeats as genuine achievements and the first step toward PLAN modernization). 8. The shift correlates with Liu Huaqing's rise in the 1980s, when PLAN reform began emphasizing aircraft carriers and blue-water combatants along Soviet and US Navy lines, creating demand for a compatible historical heritage. 9. Jamison draws a parallel to Alfred Thayer Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote about the US War of 1812 — a defeat — as naval heritage justifying investment in a US battle fleet in the 1880s and 1890s, with results that led to victory over Spain in 1898. 10. He argues the same dynamic is operating in China today: a continental superpower choosing to fund a blue-water navy needs historical precedent to justify the expenditure to other services and constituencies. 11. The specific type of heritage the PLAN celebrates carries predictive intelligence value: glorifying blue-water fleet battles suggests symmetric great-power competition ambitions, while celebrating asymmetric coastal defenses suggests anti-access/area-denial priorities. 12. Jamison identifies an information warfare implication: because the historical revisionism is politically motivated, it is vulnerable to critique, and encouraging Chinese public skepticism about naval spending could impede PLAN resource allocation. 13. He suggests that promoting inter-service rivalry between the People's Liberation Army, Air Force, and Navy over finite resources could generate friction in joint operations — an outcome useful to those seeking to constrain PLAN development. 14. The Marine Corps parallel comes up: Walker Mills notes that USMC debates about force structure similarly rely on mobilizing obscure historical precedents — like defense battalions — to legitimize organizational changes. 15. Jamison recommends S.C.M. Payne's book The Sino-Japanese War (Naval War College professor) as the best departure point for listeners wanting more on the first Sino-Japanese War. 16. He also previews his forthcoming Cambridge University Press book The Pacific's New Navies: An Ocean, Its Wars and the Making of US Sea Power, due in January 2025. 17. The episode has a collegiate, discursive tone — both host and guest clearly enjoy the subject and talk around ideas freely, with occasional Marine Corps humor from Walker Mills. 18. The conversation is scholarly but not overly academic; Jamison regularly grounds abstract historiographical arguments in concrete anecdotes like the museum visit. 19. Listeners interested in Chinese naval development, PLAN strategy, or the use of history as strategic communication will find this episode directly applicable to current events. 20. Those seeking tactical analysis or recent PLAN operational reporting rather than historiographical context may find the historical framing indirect.

As heard by us

A careful look at how naval defeat gets rewritten into memory, doctrine, and ambition.

Sea Control 576 revisits naval defeat as something people keep re-reading instead of simply filing away. Dr. Tommy Jameson talks through his Journal of Military History article on the Sino-French and Sino-Japanese wars, and the episode tracks how late Qing losses moved from…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want a clear map of how China's naval past is being re-read for the present?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Sea Control