Welcome to this week’s History Thread!

Per our friend Robert Maitland’s suggestion, our topic this week: Cities and urban development. Discuss the rise and fall of cities and human population trends, whether specific cities and time periods or general overviews of the human tendency to cluster together like ants.

Today’s picture: December 12th, 1936 saw a key incident in the Chinese Civil War. Several members of Chiang Kai-Shek’s inner circle, disgusted with the Kuomintang’s ongoing fight with the Communists while Japan prepared to invade, kidnapped Chiang from his headquarters near Xi’an. Despite pressure to kill him from more hotheaded subordinates, Marshall Zhang Xueliang decided instead to coerce a United Front against the Japanese between Kuomintang and Communist forces. Chiang acquiesced, and while the ensuing alliance was decidedly fraught during the Sino-Japanese War, it allowed the Communist Party, heretofore on the verge of defeat, to increase its strength and influence within China – therefore sowing the seeds of love Mao’s ultimate victory.