Guerilla warfare in the context of "Hit-and-run tactics"

Mao Zedong (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976) was a Chinese politician, communist revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and led the country from its establishment until his death in 1976. Mao served as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1943 until his death, and as the party's de facto leader from 1935. His theories, which he advocated as a Chinese adaptation of Marxism–Leninism, are known as Maoism.

Born to a peasant family in Shaoshan, Hunan, Mao studied in Changsha and was influenced by the 1911 Revolution and ideas of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism. He was introduced to Marxism while working as a librarian at Peking University, and later participated in the May Fourth Movement of 1919. In 1921, Mao became a founding member of the CCP. After the start of the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and CCP, Mao led the failed Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan in 1927, and in 1931 founded the Jiangxi Soviet. He helped build the Chinese Red Army, and developed a strategy of guerilla warfare. In 1935, Mao became leader of the CCP during the Long March, a military retreat to the Yan'an Soviet in Shaanxi, where the party began rebuilding its forces. The CCP allied with the KMT in the Second United Front at the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, but the civil war resumed after Japan's surrender in 1945. In 1949, Mao's forces defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to Taiwan.

The Seminole Wars (also known as the Florida Wars) were a series of three military conflicts between the United States and the Seminoles that took place in Florida between about 1816 and 1858. The Seminoles are a Native American nation which coalesced in northern Florida during the early 1700s, when the territory was still a Spanish colonial possession. Tensions grew between the Seminoles and American settlers in the newly independent United States in the early 1800s, mainly because enslaved people regularly fled from Georgia into Spanish Florida, prompting slaveowners to conduct slave raids across the border. What began as small cross-border skirmishes became the First Seminole War, as Andrew Jackson led U.S. forces into Florida—despite Spanish objections—to pursue the Seminoles. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole, Mikasuki and Black Seminole towns, as well as captured Fort San Marcos and briefly occupied Pensacola before withdrawing in 1818. In 1819 the U.S. and Spain agreed to transfer Florida in the Adams–Onís Treaty; in return, the United States renounced its claims to Texas and fixed the boundary at the Sabine River.

The United States gained possession of Florida in 1821 and coerced the Seminoles into leaving their lands in the Florida panhandle for a large Indian reservation in the center of the peninsula per the Treaty of Moultrie Creek. In 1832 by the Treaty of Payne's Landing, however, the federal government under United States President Andrew Jackson demanded that they leave Florida altogether and relocate to Indian Territory (modern day Oklahoma) as per the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Those who refused to move resisted violently, leading to the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), which was by far the longest and most wide-ranging of the three conflicts. Initially, less than 2,000 Seminole warriors employed hit-and-run guerilla warfare tactics and knowledge of the land to evade and frustrate a combined U.S. Army and Marine force that grew to over 30,000. Instead of continuing to pursue these small bands, American commanders eventually changed their strategy and focused on seeking out and destroying hidden Seminole villages and crops, putting increasing pressure on resisters to surrender or starve with their families.

The Pacification of Samar was a counterinsurgency operation initiated by General Adna Chaffee during the Philippine-American War, following the Balangiga massacre. General hostilities had largely ceased following the capture of Emilio Aguinaldo, president of the insurgent Philippine Republic, and his publication of a manifesto on April 10, 1901 acknowledging and accepting U.S. sovereignty throughout the Philippines.

General Vicente Lukban had been the commander, under Aguinaldo, of a guerilla force on the island of Samar and had, when offered the opportunity to surrender, replied that he intended to fight on to the end. In September, in an action that became known as the Balangiga massacre, Lukban's forces assisted by townspeople in a surprise uprising inflicted 54 killed and 18 wounded on a U.S. Army company garrisoning that town. Following this, General Jacob H. Smith was tasked with the pacification of Samar.