THE 1911 REVOLUTION IN CHINA Term Paper

In the early twentieth century the Qing dynasty struggled to preserve its empire in China. Nineteenth-century attempts to match the military strength of Western nations had been mostly unsuccessful. In 1900 several European nations and Japan combined to defeat the so-called Boxer Rebellion, a movement directed against missionaries and foreign businessmen.

After the Boxer Rebellion, the Qing government began several reforms. In order to encourage education along Western lines it ended the examination system based on the Confucian classics and moved toward the establishment of a constitutional system of government. Additionally, it founded the New Army, which was organized and equipped along Western lines. Despite reform efforts, mass protests continued among the urban and rural poor, and revolutionaries organized to overthrow the regime. The most prominent revolutionary was Sun Yat-sen, educated in Guangzhou and Hong Kong as a doctor. Sun advanced what he termed the “Three People’s Principles”: nationalism, democracy, and “people’s livelihood,” a vaguely socialist approach to the improvement of living standards. Sun’s party, the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmeng hui), had organized several revolutions before 1911, but all had been suppressed. The 1911 Revolution began by accident with a bomb explosion in Hankou, Hubei province. The revolutionaries realized that the government officials investigating the explosion would soon track them down, so they acted first by seizing nearby Wuhan on 10 October 1911. The revolution quickly spread to other parts of southern China, then north. New Army officers and provincial elites joined the revolution. The Qing counterattacked, but foreign powers, worried about trade, wanted a cease-fire. After the cease-fire in December, a provisional government was established and Sun was elected president. The Qing emperor abdicated on 12 February 1912. Sun soon turned the presidency over to Yuan Shikai, a powerful Qing official who had negotiated the abdication of the emperor. Yuan declared himself emperor in 1915, but China was already slipping into warlordism, a situation where local or provincial military leaders ruled without regard to the national government. In 1916 Yuan died, but it took several more years for Sun and his party, now called the Guomindang, to become powerful enough to begin thinking about uniting China once again.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Investigate the Boxer Rebellion, the methods used, and what those involved hoped to accomplish, and evaluate its significance for the history of China in the early twentieth century.
2. One of the most important contemporaries of Sun Yat-sen was Liang Qichao, a nationalist and reformer. Trace his political activities in the 1890s and the first part of the twentieth century and compare them with those of Sun.
3. Review the efforts of the Qing dynasty between the end of the Boxer Rebellion and the start of the 1911 Revolution to bring change to China. Why did these efforts fail?
4. Read Sun Yat-sen’s writings on the “Three People’s Principles.” What did he appear to want for China, and why?
5. Examine Yuan Shikai’s career before and after the 1911 Revolution. How had he become powerful enough to emerge as the major figure in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution? Why was he not able to rule China effectively as president?
6. After the 1911 Revolution China was ruled by a number of warlords, some with good intentions, others not. Find out more about one warlord and evaluate his time in power.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The Revolution of 1905 in Russia” (#2), “The Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920” (#4), “The May 4th Movement in China, 1919” (#12), and “The Northern Expedition in China, 1926–1928” (#16). Search under Kang Youwei (Book of the Great Community), Emperor Guangxu, Zou Rong (The Revolutionary Army), Qui Jin, Lu Xun, and Emperor Puyi (The Last Emperor).

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Schurmann, Franz, and Orville Schell, eds. Republican China: Nationalism, War, and the Rise of Communism, 1911–1949 . Volume 2 of The China Reader. New York: Random House, 1967. Contains a few documents on the 1911 Revolution and the early Republic of China.

Teng, Ssu-yü and John K. Fairbank, eds. China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954. A convenient source of several important documents.

Sun, Yat-sen. Prescriptions for Saving China: Selected Writings of Sun Yatsen. Wei, Julie Lee, Ramon H. Myers, and Donald G. Gillin, eds. Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1994. A useful collection of Sun’s political writings.

Secondary Sources

Cohen, Paul A. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. A very important study of the Boxer Rebellion.

Dunn, John. Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. The chapter on China is a good introduction.

Esherick, Joseph W. Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. An investigation of the 1911 Revolution focused on two important centers of revolution.

Gasster, Michael. Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911: The Birth of Modern Chinese Radicalism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969. A good overview.

Gillin, Donald. Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province, 1911–1949. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. One of several fascinating studies of warlords.

Levenson, Joseph. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and the Mind of Modern China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953. A very useful study of the most influential spokesman for change before the 1911 Revolution.

MacKinnon, Stephen. Power and Politics in Late Imperial China: Yuan Shi-Kai in Beijing and Tianjin, 1901–1908. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. An investigation of the early activities of the most powerful figure to emerge from the 1911 Revolution.

Rankin, Mary. Early Chinese Revolutionaries: Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902–1911. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971. A scholarly study of key figures in the events leading up to the 1911 Revolution.

Rhoads, Edward. China’s Republican Revolution: The Case of Kwangtung, 1895–1913. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975. Kwangtung was an important center of early revolutionary activity.

Schiffrin, Harold Z. Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. A useful introduction to Sun and his role in the 1911 Revolution.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895–1980. New York: Viking Press, 1981. A highly readable book that discusses revolution in twentieth-century China largely from the standpoint of writers. The early chapters contain much information on the 1911 Revolution and the period leading up to it.

———. The Search for Modern China. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. A masterful survey of Chinese history since the late Ming dynasty. Chapters 11 and 12 provide a good introduction to the 1911 Revolution and the new republic.

Wilbur, C. Martin. Sun Yat-sen, Frustrated Patriot. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. A useful study of Sun.

Wright, Mary C., ed. China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900–1913.New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968. An important collection of essays on the 1911 Revolution.

Young, Ernest. The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k’ai: Liberalism and Dictatorship in Early Republican China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977. A study of the most powerful figure after the 1911 Revolution.