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The Conquerors (Phoenix Fiction)

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Andre Malreaux lead what can only be described as the life of a "man in full". He was an author and many of his best books reflect his role as a participant in and witness to history. His career spanned the colonial struggles in Indochina (he founded a left-leaning newspaper and, in 1925, he was an organizer of the "Young Annam League", an anti-colonialist group), the Spanish Civil War (Malraux was active in the anti-Fascist Popular Front in France and, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he joined the Republican forces in Spain serving in, and helping to organize the Republican air force). He was later active in the French Resistance during WW-II. In addition to his career as a successful novelist, he was also a statesman (de Gaulle appointed Malraux Minister for Information and later France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs). His amazing career concluded as an art commentator. A more well-rounded curriculum vitae would be hard to produce. This book, "The Conquerers", is his first novel. It tells the story of the 1922 Canton/Hong Kong dockworker strike against the British in Hong Kong.

"The Conquerors" is a young man's notion of a Book of Ideas. Every character is intended to represent a Larger Concept. For example, the revolutionist/protagonist, Garine: he is a uni-dimensional avitar standing for the apparently cynical but fundamentally idealistic revolutionary professional. He, like many of the other characters in "The Conquerors" are actual historical personalities. Some of those who make their appearance in this "historical fiction" include Michael Borodin (a nom de guerre as with many Communist revolutionists of the time; his real name was the less inspiring Gruesenberg). Borodin (whom, according to Conrad Brandt in, "Stalin's Failure in China" was one of the Comintern's "most experienced field agents") served as "personal advisor" to Sun Yat-sen (head of the Koumintang). Others appearing in the book include "Galen" (actually General Vasily Blucher, military commander of the Far Eastern Republic in 1921-1922, who from 1924 to 1927 was a Soviet military adviser in China), future Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (who puts in a minor appearance), Ch'en Chiung-ming (military governer of Kwangtung Province) and numerous other now nearly forgotten principals in the struggle for the liberation of China from foreign influence. The author himself appears as a narrator of events, rather than as a significant participant: he is the mirror in which the events reflect. The plot recounts the efforts of Garine (an "anarchist" who pragmatically served Communist goals) and Borodin to orgainze the dockworkers' strike while attempting to "instill a Communist soul into the Koumintang body".

One would think, given Malraux's intimate involvement in the Strike, his vast learning and keen eye for detail, that this would be a gripping account of a tense historical event. Actually, it is dull, tendentious and tedious, quite unlike "Man's Fate" and (to a lesser extent), "Man's Hope". There is too much posturing, too much vaporizing of "great ideas" and far too little character development. For the historian, Brandt's 1958 "Stalin's Failure in China". For a better historical novel of similar events, "The Sand Pebbles" (a 1962 novel by American author Richard McKenna about a Yangtze River gunboat in 1926) conveys a fuller understanding of the milieu in the China of that period.

In summary, this book is of interest to Malraux scholars, but is otherwise of little novelistic interest. Had this been Malraux's only foray into the history of Revolutionary China, Shakespeare's epigram from "King Henry IV" (Part II) would apply: "You are too shallow, Hastings, much too shallow, To sound the bottom of the after-times". Fortunately, subsequent novels are better and one of them ("Man's Fate") is a true classic.