Revolution and the Birth of the Republic: Sun Yat-sen, the 1911 Uprising, and the End of the Imperial System
The 1911 revolution, conventionally known in China as the Xinhai Revolution (辛亥革命), was the event that ended more than two thousand years of imperial monarchy in China. It was led by Sun Yat-sen and the Tongmenghui, the United League; it began with the accidental explosion in the Wuchang garrison in October 1911; and it produced the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor (Puyi) on 12 February 1912, and the founding of the Republic of China. For the comprehensive account, see the [history of the fall of imperial China] (../). For for the deeper background of late imperial China, see [history of the Qing and Ming] (../../pillar-history-of-imperial-china/cluster-late-imperial-china/).
The 1911 revolution is conventionally dated from the Wuchang Uprising of 10 October 1911, but it had been brewing for a decade. The revolutionary movement of Sun Yat-sen and his allies was, in part, a response to the failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform, the Boxer Rebellion, and the late Qing constitutional movement. The revolutionary movement was, in part, a response to the foreign encroachments of the late nineteenth century, and to the political weakness of the Manchu court. The wider crisis of the late Qing state is the context in which the revolution took place.
The Roots of Revolutionary Thought
The Chinese revolutionary movement drew on a number of intellectual sources. The first was the late Ming thought of Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), whose Waiting for the Dawn (明夷待访录) had argued that the emperor was a public official, not a private ruler, and that the people had a right to rebel against a tyrant. The second was the nineteenth-century reformist tradition of Lin Zexu, Wei Yuan, and Feng Guifen, who had insisted that China needed to learn from the West. The third was the late Qing reformist tradition of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, whose own work had been read by the revolutionaries before they rejected the reformist approach. The fourth was the Western political thought, including the works of Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and Henry George, that had been translated into Chinese in the 1890s and 1900s. The philosophical background of the revolutionary movement is treated in the larger site.
The most influential of the Chinese revolutionary thinkers was Sun Yat-sen. Sun’s Three Principles of the People — nationalism, democracy, and people’s livelihood — provided a coherent ideology for the revolutionary movement. Sun’s strategy of using overseas Chinese, secret societies, and sympathetic elements within the Qing army as the basis of a revolutionary movement was equally important. The history of Sun Yat-sen and the early Republic is the focus of the in-depth page.
Sun Yat-sen and the Tongmenghui
The history of Sun Yat-sen is treated at length in the in-depth page. He was born in 1866 in Guangdong, the son of a poor farmer; he was educated in Hawaii and Hong Kong; he converted to Christianity in his youth; he graduated from the College of Medicine for Chinese in 1892; and he became a revolutionary after the failure of his reform plan to Li Hongzhang, the defeat by Japan, and the suppression of the Hundred Days’ Reform. He founded the Revive China Society (兴中会, Xingzhonghui) in Honolulu in 1894, and he organized a series of uprisings in south China in the 1890s and early 1900s, all of which failed.
In 1905 Sun Yat-sen and a group of like-minded revolutionaries, including Huang Xing, Song Jiaoren, Hu Hanmin, and Cai E, founded the United League (中国同盟会, Tongmenghui) in Tokyo. The United League was the first serious attempt to unite the patchwork of revolutionary groups under a single political program. It drew its members from overseas Chinese, students in Japan, and the secret societies of south China. It published a newspaper, Min Bao (民报, The People’s Journal), in which Sun and his allies debated the gradualist constitutionalists led by Liang Qichao. The wider context of the revolutionary movement is the political background of the United League.
The revolutionary program was, in theory, comprehensive. It called for the overthrow of the Manchu Qing, the establishment of a republic, the redistribution of land, the development of industry, and the recovery of Chinese sovereignty. In practice, however, the United League was a loose coalition of secret societies, students, and conspirators, and its ability to coordinate action was limited. The history of the late Qing crisis is the context in which the United League operated.
The 1911 Wuchang Uprising
The Wuchang Uprising began as an accident. In September 1911 the Qing government, alarmed by the spread of revolutionary activity in the New Army units stationed in the central Yangzi cities, ordered the Hubei provincial government to arrest known revolutionaries in the Wuchang garrison. The list of names was leaked, and the revolutionary societies, which had been planning a major uprising for the autumn, decided to act at once. On 9 October 1911, a group of revolutionaries was preparing bombs in the Russian Concession of Hankou when one of them exploded. The conspirators realized that the authorities would be alerted and would come for them; they decided to launch the planned uprising that night.
The actual uprising broke out on the evening of 10 October 1911. The New Army units in Wuchang mutinied, killing their officers and seizing the city. The Qing viceroy, Rui Cheng, fled; the commander of the garrison, Zhang Xun, was unable to rally his troops. By the next morning, the revolutionaries controlled the three cities of Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang. The Hubei Military Government was set up under the leadership of Li Yuanhong, a former Qing general who had joined the revolution. The wider context of the late Qing crisis treats the Wuchang Uprising as a turning point.
The Wuchang Uprising triggered a cascade of provincial declarations of independence. Within a few days, revolutionary uprisings had broken out in Changsha, Xi’an, Nanchang, and other cities. By the end of November, fifteen of the eighteen provinces of “China proper” had broken with the Qing. The court tried to send the Beiyang Army under Yuan Shikai to crush the revolution, but Yuan, who saw the situation as an opportunity, stalled. He calculated that the dynasty was finished and that the only way to preserve his own position was to negotiate with the revolutionaries. The wider context of the late Qing crisis is the political background of the revolution.
The speed of the collapse was astonishing. Provincial viceroys, who had governed their provinces with a free hand for decades, declared independence from the dynasty that had appointed them. The Beiyang Army, the most modern and best-trained force in the empire, refused to march south to suppress the revolution. The navy, on which the dynasty had spent a fortune in the Self-Strengthening Movement, mutinied in October 1911 and joined the revolutionaries. The military history of the late Qing crisis describes the collapse.
The revolution succeeded, in part, because the dynasty had no defenders. The Manchu imperial house, which had ruled for nearly 270 years, had no loyal base in the south and no enthusiastic supporters even in the north. The conservative Manchu faction at court had destroyed the reform movement and lost the Boxer war; it was widely blamed for the disasters of the last decade. The wider history of the late Qing crisis is the context in which the dynasty collapsed.
The Provisional Republic in Nanjing
In December 1911, the various revolutionary groups met in Nanjing, the former Taiping capital, to organize a provisional government. Sun Yat-sen, who had been abroad fundraising and organizing, was elected provisional president of the Republic of China on 29 December 1911. He took office on 1 January 1912, the formal founding of the Republic of China.
The provisional government was a fragile institution. It had no real military power; the New Army units in the south were in the hands of various revolutionary commanders, who owed their primary loyalty to their own factions. The government was unable to pay its troops, and the finances of the new state were chaotic. The provisional government depended heavily on loans from the foreign banks in Shanghai, and it was unable to honor the foreign debt service. The government had no international recognition, and the foreign powers, who had supported the Qing, were unwilling to recognize the new state until it could demonstrate that it could govern. The wider context of the late Qing crisis is the political background of the provisional government.
The provisional government did, however, accomplish several things. It established a calendar based on the new Republic (years counted from 1912). It passed a series of laws abolishing the queue, the Manchu hairstyle, and other symbols of the old order. It opened the imperial parks and the imperial collections to the public for the first time. It established a system of modern primary and secondary education. And it set in motion the drafting of a permanent constitution, which was adopted in 1912 but never fully implemented. The history of the late Qing crisis is the context in which the provisional government’s work is to be understood.
Sun Yat-sen, recognizing that the revolution would fail without the support of Yuan Shikai and the Beiyang Army, entered into negotiations. The agreement, brokered in part by foreign diplomats and in part by Li Yuanhong, gave Yuan the presidency of the new Republic in return for a peaceful Qing abdication. Sun Yat-sen resigned the provisional presidency in favor of Yuan on 10 February 1912. The wider context of the late Qing crisis treats the Yuan-Sun deal as a turning point.
The Abdication of the Xuantong Emperor (Puyi)
The abdication of the Xuantong Emperor on 12 February 1912 was the formal end of the imperial system. The regent Empress Dowager Longyu, sister of the late Empress Dowager Cixi and regent for the boy emperor Puyi, signed the abdication edict on behalf of her nephew. The edict transferred sovereignty to the Republic of China and was issued under the Yuan Shikai’s advice. The boy emperor was allowed to remain in the Forbidden City as a private citizen, and a small imperial household was maintained for several years.
The Puyi who abdicated in 1912 was a small child of six. He had been born in 1906 as the son of Chun, Prince Chun, the eighth son of the Daoguang emperor, and had been named heir apparent in 1908 after the death of the Guangxu emperor. He had been enthroned as the Xuantong Emperor in December 1908, and had reigned in name only. The history of the late Qing crisis is the context in which his reign occurred.
The abdication was peaceful. The Forbidden City, the imperial household, and the imperial tombs were preserved. The former emperor was given a generous annual subsidy (eventually defaulted on in 1924 when the warlord Feng Yuxiang expelled him from the Forbidden City). The imperial household continued to maintain its rituals, its genealogies, and its collection of imperial art. Puyi would later be installed by the Japanese as the puppet emperor of Manchukuo from 1932 to 1945, and would die in 1967 as a gardener in the People’s Republic. The history of the imperial system is the larger context.
The Founding of the Republic of China
The Republic of China was formally established on 1 January 1912, with the provisional government of Sun Yat-sen in Nanjing. The republic was reorganized under Yuan Shikai after the abdication. Yuan, who had been elected provisional president by the Nanjing provisional senate on 14 February 1912, was inaugurated as the first formal president of the Republic on 10 October 1913.
The republic was a fragile institution. It had no constitution. The provisional constitution of 1912 was a hastily written document that gave the president extraordinary powers. The parliament, elected in late 1912 and early 1913, was dominated by Sun Yat-sen’s newly reorganized Kuomintang (KMT). The parliamentary system produced a prime minister, Song Jiaoren, who tried to limit Yuan’s power. Yuan had Song assassinated in March 1913, and then dissolved the Kuomintang and the parliament in November 1913. The wider context of the late Qing crisis is the political background of Yuan’s dictatorship.
In late 1915 and early 1916, Yuan declared himself emperor. The reaction was immediate and devastating. Provincial governors, military leaders, and even members of Yuan’s own court rebelled. The “National Protection War” (护国战争) forced Yuan to abandon the monarchy in March 1916, and he died of uremia in June 1916. The Republic of China, with its parliament and constitution, survived in name; in practice, China entered the warlord era, a period of political fragmentation in which regional military leaders held the real power. The wider context of the late Qing crisis is the political background of the early Republic.
The Legacy of the 1911 Revolution
The 1911 revolution was incomplete. It overthrew the dynasty and established a republic, but it did not unify the country, build a working government, or solve the structural problems of the Chinese state. The new Republic of China was a fragile institution, hemmed in by the unequal treaties, by the foreign concessions, and by the regional military forces that had been created during the late Qing. The wider history of the late Qing crisis is the context in which the legacy of 1911 is to be understood.
The legacy of 1911 is, however, fundamental. The imperial system, which had ruled China for more than two millennia, was over. The new republic, however imperfect, was the first non-monarchical government in Chinese history. Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic, would be revered by both the Nationalists and the Communists as the founder of the new China. The 1911 revolution is, in Chinese nationalist memory, the founding moment of modern China. The history of the fall of imperial China treats the 1911 revolution as the conclusion of the long imperial age.