Just a Little Story

As WW I proceeded in the initial year or two....manpower in the UK was becoming a problem for industry and agriculture.  It's hardly ever discussed.

In the early part of 1916, Field Marshall Haig of the British Army came to this conclusion....the war wasn't going to end shortly, and the manpower shortage would be the bigger threat for the survival of the UK.  So he devised this nifty plan.....to bring in 21,000 Chinese laborers.  It had been done in the past, and no one suggested it was a bad idea.

By the conclusion of the war.....Indians, South Africans and Egyptians had been used for such labor.  Additionally, Chinese were brought in.

The French had gone along with this idea as well....with 50,000 Chinese assembled in France.  The contract?  Written and signed in May of 1916.

To get them to the UK....a ship route was developed, with the Chinese being initially delivered to a UK installation on the shores of western Canada (oddly enough....a quarantine station).  Metchosin was the name of the site.  They'd go through some exam, and be sent by railway cars across Canada....to leave by ship and arrive in the UK.  Some would go onto France from there. 

There's evidence to say that a fair number were there by the end of 2016, and by the end of 2017.....at least 50,000 were in France and Belgium....as part of the war-support effort.

The Chinese who came?  From various regions.....but it's noted that a fair number of those were from the Wuhan region.   Yeah....just an odd fact.

The Spanish flu?  In general, it's always discussed that it started up in January of 1918....however a number of folks have looked at reporting and concluded that it was already existing in early 1917. 

Back in the early 1990s.....a leading virus expert (Claude Hannoun) came to the opinion that the Spanish flu probably started out in China.  Enough facts to convince people?  No. 

So the odds that the Spanish flu started in China, instead of Kansas or Spain?  This becomes a matter of debate, with no clear evidence.

The suggestion that no real flu deaths occurred in China?  This story is often laid out for the 1917/1918 period.  But to be truthful.....a lot of people simply didn't collect data like this.  So facts aren't exactly existing. 

If the war hadn't existed?  The Chinese workers would not have been brought in.

The Spanish flu killing more than the WW I participants themselves?  That's another odd part of the story.  Death numbers for the flu go from 15-odd million to 50-odd million...depending on which historian you follow.