This word originated as one of the laurels of the German Emperor. Translated as “Kriegsherr”, it is equated with the title of Supreme Commander.
A more wide reaching use of the word war lord derives from Chinese. It refers to the breakdown of state authority and specifically to the characters who may attempt to take advantage of a power vacuum. In 1922 the New York Times described a war lord as a person “with his own army and his own laws” with his respect for the central government “proportioned inversely to the size of his army and his distance from the capital”. A person, one might say, who is a law unto himself.
It’s no coincidence that the Chinese language gave us this definition. The Chinese people have had ample opportunity to see it in practice. After the Xinhai Revolution overturned the Qing government in 1911, the lives of those in China were dictated by a procession of military leaders. The key western witness was Bertram Simpson, a journalist, interpreter and novelist who spent most of his life in China. He described what he saw in both fact and fiction, as a foreign correspondent for American, Australian and British newspapers, as an advisor to the Chinese government and also as a novelist. In his book Why China Sees Red, he writes that the essence of the war lord system is “the interception of national revenue at the points where it is levied”. In other words, the war lord pays for his wars by stealing your taxes.
