RUAHIS401 ASSIGNMENT

History Assignment 2020-21

for Year

Semester 4

Subject Code RUAHIS401

Subject Title Landmarks in Global History (1300A.D. – 1945 A.D)

Topic Life of Doctor Sun Yat Sen and his Role in the Chinese
Revolution

Name/Class/Roll ➢ Raj Jadhav/ SYBA-A / 2136 / rajj45211@gmail.com

no./Email ID
➢ Vihaan Vadnere/ SYBA-B / 2376/
vihaanvadnere1@gmail.com

➢ Sakshi Malbari/ SYBA-A/ Roll No. 2162/

malbarisakshi04@gmail.com

➢ Namit Gaikwad/ SYBA-A/ 2127/

namitgaikwad998877@gmail.com

Date of Submission 31st March 2021.

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No. Topic Contribution Page no.

1 Early Life 3-5

➢ Influence of Western Ideology Sakshi Malbari - 2162
➢ Impact of Christianity

Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen And His Exile 6-9

2 ➢ Founding of The United League Raj Jadhav - 2136
➢ Second Sino-Japanese War
➢ Allied Influence and The
Japanese Surrender
Return to China 10-13
3 ➢ Decline of Qing Dynasty Vihaan Vadnere -
➢ Wuchang Uprising of 1911 2376
➢ Aftermath
Political Success Namit Gaikwad - 14-17
4 ➢ The bomb making of 9th October 2127
1911
➢ Northern Expedition
Death Sakshi Malbari - 2162 18
5
Bibliography 19
6

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Early Life
Sun Yat Sen was born on November 12, 1866, into a peasant household in Choyhung in Kwangtung
near the Portuguese colony of Macao. His father worked as a farmer, which had been his family's
traditional occupation for many generations. His early education, like his birthplace, established him
as a man of two worlds, China and the West. After a basic training in the Chinese classics in his
village school, he was sent to Hawaii in 1879 to join his older brother. There he enrolled in a college
where he studied Western science and Christianity. Upon graduation in 1882, he returned to his
native village. After learning about Christianity, Sun had come to believe that the religious practices
in the village where he grew up were nothing more than superstitions. He soon showed these
changed beliefs by damaging one of the village idols and was banished from the village. Though Sun
returned home briefly to undergo an arranged marriage, he spent his late teens and early twenties
studying in Hong Kong. He began his medical training in Canton, China, but in 1887 returned to
Hong Kong and enrolled in the school of medicine. After graduation in June 1892, he went to
Macao, where Portuguese authorities refused to give him a license to practice medicine.

By the time Sun returned to Hong Kong in the spring of 1893, he had become more interested in
politics than in medicine. Upset by the Manchu government's corruption, inefficiency, and inability
to defend China against foreign powers, he wrote a letter to Li Hung-chang (1823–1901), one of
China's most important reform leaders (social-improvement leaders), supporting a program of
reform. Ignored, Sun returned to Hawaii to organize the Hsing-chung hui (Revive China Society).
When war between China and Japan appeared to present possibilities for the overthrow of the
Manchus, Sun returned to Hong Kong and reorganized the Hsing-chung hui as a revolutionary secret
society. An uprising was planned in Canton in 1895 but was discovered, and several of Sun's men
were executed. Having become a marked man, Sun fled to Japan. The pattern for Sun's career was
established: unorganized plots, failures, execution of coconspirators, overseas wanderings, and
financial backing for further coups (hostile takeovers). Sun grew a moustache, donned Western-style
clothes, and, posing as a Japanese man, set out once again, first to Hawaii, then to San Francisco, and
finally to England to visit a former school instructor. Before leaving England, he often visited the
reading room of the British Museum, where he became acquainted with the writings of Karl Marx
(1818–1893).
Sun returned to Japan in July 1905 to find the Chinese student community stirred to a pitch of
patriotic excitement. Joined by other revolutionists such as Huang Hsing and Sung Chiao-jen (1882–
1913), Sun organized, and was elected director of, the T'ungmeng hui (Revolutionary Alliance). The

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T'ung-meng hui was carefully organized, with a sophisticated and highly educated membership core
drawn from all over China. By this time Sun's ideas had developed into the "Three People's
Principles"—his writings on nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood. When Sun returned
from another fundraising trip in the fall of 1906, his student following in Japan numbered in the
thousands. However, under pressure from the government in China, the Japanese government threw
him out. Sun's fortunes had reached a low point. The failure of a series of poorly planned and armed
coups relying upon the scattered forces of secret societies and rebel bands had reduced the reputation
of the T'ungmeng hui in Southeast Asia. However, Sun found that Chinese opinion in the United
States was turning against his rivals. Sun visited the United States and was on a successful
fundraising tour when he read in a newspaper that a successful revolt had occurred in the central
Yangtze Valley city of Wuchang, China. In the early 1800s Sun sent his brother to ‘lolani school’,
which was under the supervision of British Anglicans and directed by an Anglican prelate named
Alfred Willis, with the language of instruction being English. At the school, a young Sun Wen first
came in contact with Christianity. In his work, Schriffin speculated that Christianity was to have a
great influence on Sun's future political career. Sun was later baptized in Hong Kong (on 4 May
1884) by Rev. C. R. Hager an American missionary of the Congregational Church of the United
States (ABCFM) to his brother's disdain. The minister would also develop a friendship with Sun. Sun
attended To Tsai Church, founded by the London Missionary Society in 1888, while he studied
Western Medicine in Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese. Sun pictured a revolution as
similar to the salvation mission of the Christian church. His conversion to Christianity was related to
his revolutionary ideals and push for advancement. During the Qing-dynasty rebellion around 1888,
Sun was in Hong Kong with a group of revolutionary thinkers who were nicknamed the Four Bandits
at the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese.[34] Sun, who had grown increasingly frustrated
by the conservative Qing government and its refusal to adopt knowledge from the more
technologically advanced Western nations, quit his medical practice in order to devote his time to
transforming China.
Furen and Revive China Society
In 1891, Sun met revolutionary friends in Hong Kong including Yeung Ku-wan who was the leader
and founder of the Furen Literary Society. The group was spreading the idea of overthrowing the
Qing. In 1894, Sun wrote an 8,000-character petition to Qing Viceroy Li Hongzhang presenting his
ideas for modernizing China. He traveled to Tianjin to personally present the petition to Li but was
not granted an audience. After this experience, Sun turned irrevocably toward revolution. He left
China for Hawaii and founded the Revive China Society, which was committed to revolutionizing
China's prosperity. Members were drawn mainly from Chinese expatriates, especially the lower
social classes. The same month in 1894 the Furen Literary Society was merged with the Hong Kong
chapter of the Revive China Society. Thereafter, Sun became the secretary of the newly merged
Revive China society, which Yeung Ku-wan headed as president. They disguised their activities in
Hong Kong under the running of a business under the name "Kuen Hang Club.
First Guangzhou uprising-
In the second year of the establishment of the Revive China society on 26 October 1895, the group
planned and launched the First Guangzhou uprising against the Qing in Guangzhou. Yeung Ku-wan
directed the uprising starting from Hong Kong. However, plans were leaked out and more than 70
members, including Lu Haodong, were captured by the Qing government. The uprising was a failure.
Sun received financial support mostly from his brother who sold most of his 12,000 acres of ranch

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and cattle in Hawaii. Additionally, members of his family and relatives of Sun would take refuge at
the home of his brother Sun Mei at Kamaole in Kula, Maui. Sun was born to a family of poor
farmers in Xiangshan, in the South China province of Guangdong. In 1879 his brother Sun Mei, who
had earlier emigrated to Hawaii as a laborer, brought him to Honolulu, where, as a student at a
British missionary school for three years and at an American school, Oahu College, for another year,
he first came into contact with Western influences. Because his brother objected to his penchant for
Christianity, Sun returned to his native village in 1883 and went to study at the Diocesan Home in
Hong Kong in the fall; late that year, he was baptized by an American missionary. In 1884 he
transferred to the Government Central School (later known as Queen’s College) and married Lu
Muzhen (1867–1952), who was chosen for him by his parents. Out of this marriage a son and two
daughters were born. After another trip to Hawaii, he enrolled in the Guangzhou (Canton) Hospital
Medical School in 1886. He transferred later to the College of Medicine for Chinese in Hong Kong
and graduated in 1892.

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Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen And His Exile: -

In 1895 a coup he plotted failed, and for the next sixteen years Sun was an exile in Europe, the
United States, Canada, and Japan, raising money for his revolutionary party and bankrolling
uprisings in China. In Japan, where he was known as Nakayama Shō (Kanji: -The Woodcutter of
Middle Mountain), he joined dissident Chinese groups (which later became the Tongmenghui) and
soon became their leader. He was expelled from Japan due to fears of the large level of support he
had there and went to the United States. On October 10, 1911, a military uprising at Wuchang in
which Sun had no direct involvement (at that moment Sun was still in exile and Huang Xing was in
charge of the revolution), began a process that ended over two thousand years of imperial rule in
China. When he learned of the successful rebellion against the Qing emperor from press reports, Sun
immediately returned to China from the United States. Later, on December 29, a meeting of
representatives from provinces in Nanjing elected Sun as the provisional President of the Republic of
China and set the January 1 of 1912 as the first day of the First Year of the Republic. This republic
calendar system is still used in Taiwan today. The official history of the Kuomintang (and for that
matter, the Communist Party of China) emphasizes Sun's role as the first provisional President, but
many historians now question the importance of Sun's role in the 1911 revolution and point out that
he had no direct role in the Wuchang uprising and was in fact out of the country at the time. In this
interpretation, his naming as the first provisional President was precisely because he was a respected
but rather unimportant figure and therefore served as an ideal compromise candidate between the
revolutionaries and the conservative gentry. However, Sun is credited for the funding of the
revolutions and for keeping the spirit of revolution alive, even after series of failed uprisings.

Years in Exile: -
Sun Yat Sen, the republican who took on the role of revolutionary, travelled around the world in the
early 20th century with a heavy price on his head to garner support for overthrowing China’s
Manchu Qing Dynasty. He was 29 in 1895 when he first led an uprising against the Qing Dynasty.
When that failed, he fled China and became a “globetrotter with a cause”. He first visited Penang in
1906 and formed a branch of the Zhongguo Tongmenghui (the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance) with
Wu Shirong as its founder chairman. He came back the next year and addressed the local Chinese,
emphasising that ‘The Overthrow of the Manchus is the Prerequisite for Saving China’. In 1908, Wu
Shirong formed the Penang Philomatic Union, a reading club that was a front for the revolutionaries.
The PPU moved into 120 Armenian Street, which became the informal headquarters of the local
revolutionaries.

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Sun Yat Sen returned to Penang in July 1910, this time for four months, during which he drew up
plans for a second uprising. He transferred the Nanyang revolutionary headquarters from Singapore
to Penang, in fact, to 120 Armenian Street. And it was there that in November 1910 he drew up plans
to make the Second Uprising possible. Called the ‘Canton March 29 Uprising’, that too failed. But in
October 1911, the Wuchang or Double Tenth Uprising triggered what became the successful Xinhai
Revolution. Sun Yat Sen, who had been banished from Penang by the British the previous year,
immediately left for China in December 1911, and on January 1, 1912, the Republic of China was
inaugurated with Sun Yat Sen as its Provisional President.
Taking advantage of China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) and the ensuing crisis, Sun
went to Hong Kong in 1895 and plotted for an uprising in Guangzhou (Canton), the capital of his
native province. When the scheme failed, he began a 16-year exile abroad. In 1896, under
circumstances not entirely clear, Sun was caught and detained for 13 days by the Chinese legation in
London. It appears likely that Sun ran into a fellow Cantonese who worked for the legation and was
found out and seized while visiting him under an alias. The legation planned to ship Sun back to
China, but, before this could be done, Sun had converted a British employee at the legation to his
side and got word through to James Cantlie, former dean of Hong Kong College of Medicine. The
British Foreign Office intervened, and Sun was released from his captivity. The incident engendered
great publicity and gave Sun’s career a powerful boost.
After spending much of the ensuing eight months reading in the British Museum, Sun traveled to
Japan by way of Canada. Arriving in August 1897, he was met by Miyazaki Torazō, an adventurer
who had heard of the London incident and who was willing to help Sun in his political activities.
Miyazaki introduced Sun to many influential Japanese, including the elder statesmen Ōkuma
Shigenobu, Soejima Taneomi, and Inukai Tsuyoshi, from some of whom Sun was to receive both
political and financial assistance. During the turmoil of 1900, Sun participated in secret maneuvers
involving Sir Henry Blake, the British governor of Hong Kong, and He Kai, an influential Chinese in
that colony. Their aim was to persuade Li Hongzhang to declare independence from the Qing.
Responding to an invitation by Li’s staff, Sun journeyed to Hong Kong, but, fearing a trap, he did not
go ashore. Instead, he was represented by Miyazaki and two other Japanese at the meeting, which
proved fruitless.

Founding of The United League: -

The year 1903 marked a significant turning point in Sun’s career; from then on, his following came
increasingly from the educated class, the most prestigious and influential group in China. For this
decisive change Sun owed much to two factors: the steady decline of the Qing dynasty and the
powerful propaganda of Liang Qichao, a reformist who fled to Japan in 1898, founded a Chinese
press, and turned it into an instant success. Liang did not actually oppose the Qing regime, but his
attacks on Cixi, the empress dowager, who effectively ruled the country, served to undermine the
regime and make revolution the only logical choice. As a consequence, Sun’s stock rose steadily
among the Chinese students abroad. In 1904 he was able to establish several revolutionary cells in
Europe, and in 1905 he became head of a revolutionary coalition, the United League (Tongmenghui),
in Tokyo. For the next three years the society propagandized effectively through its mouthpiece,
“People’s Journal” (Minbao). The rise in Sun’s fortune increased many of his difficulties. The United
League was very loosely organized, and Sun had no control over the individual members. Worse
still, all the revolts Sun and the others organized ended in failure. The members fell into despair, and

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outside financial contributions declined. Furthermore, as a result of pressures exercised by the Qing,
foreign governments increasingly shunned Sun. In 1907 the Japanese government gave him a sum of
money and asked him to leave the country. A year later French Indochina, where Sun had hatched
several plots, banned him completely. Hong Kong and several other territories were similarly out of
his reach.
Second Sino-Japanese War: -
(1937–45), conflict that broke out when China began a full-scale resistance to the expansion of
Japanese influence in its territory (which had begun in 1931). The war, which remained undeclared
until December 9, 1941, may be divided into three phases: a period of rapid Japanese advance until
the end of 1938, a period of virtual stalemate until 1944, and the final period when Allied
counterattacks, principally in the Pacific and on Japan’s home islands, brought about Japan’s
surrender.
The Establishment of Manchukuo And the Creation of The United Front: -
For much of the early 20th century, Japan had exercised effective control of Manchuria, initially
through the terms of the Twenty-one Demands (1915) and later through its support of Chinese
warlord Zhang Zuolin. However, a serious conflict was developing, and the Chinese in Manchuria
were especially restive under the privileges held by the Japanese. Chinese citizens formed the vast
majority of the population, and the legal title of the region was held by China. Yet Japan controlled
much of south Manchuria through its railways and its leasehold on the Liaodong Peninsula and in
other ways that compromised Chinese sovereignty in an attempt to assert their independence, the
Chinese began building a series of railroads that would in part encircle the Japanese lines and
terminate at Huludao, a port which the Chinese were developing. Zhang Xueliang, Zhang Zuolin’s
son and the ruler of Manchuria after his father’s murder by Japanese officers in 1928, was
increasingly disposed to ally himself with the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) and its desire to rid
China of foreign control. In the summer of 1931, the friction expressed itself in minor incidents.
Those in control of the main body of Japanese forces in Manchuria believed that the time had passed
for temporizing and compromise. On the night of September 18–19, 1931, alleging that Chinese had
blown up part of the track of the South Manchuria railway near the city, the Japanese seized Mukden
(Shenyang). Facing little resistance from Nationalist forces, the Japanese established the puppet state
of Manchukuo in 1932 and installed the deposed Qing emperor Puyi as its titular head. Japan soon
demonstrated that it was not content with confining its control of China to regions north of the Great
Wall, and in the spring of 1934 a pronouncement from Tokyo in effect declared all China to be a
Japanese preserve in which no power could take important action without its consent. In 1935 the
Japanese forced the withdrawal from Hebei and Chahar (now part of Inner Mongolia) of any officials
and armed forces that might prove unfriendly to Japan. These territories passed partly into Japanese
control, and Suiyuan, Shansi (Shanxi), and Shantung (Shandong) were threatened. Nationalist leader
Chiang Kai-shek did not offer open opposition, preferring instead to pursue his campaign against
Chinese communist forces. In December 1936, in what came to be known as the Xi’an Incident,
Chiang was seized by forces under the command of his own generals and compelled to ally with the
communists in a United Front against Japan.
Allied Influence and The Japanese Surrender: -
In the last phase of the war, from early 1944 to August 1945, some help was beginning to come to
China from the outside, chiefly from the United States. War matériel was being flown from India,

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and Chinese pilots and mechanics were being trained. Japanese strongholds were bombed by U.S.
and Chinese planes. In India the United States also was training and equipping Chinese forces that
had taken refuge there after the fall of Burma. Yet the main theatre of war was far from China,
whose armies by then were too debilitated to play an important part in the final campaigns. The
Nationalist government had been seriously undermined by seven years of war and inflation, while
the strength of the communists, under Mao Zedong, had grown. As Japan withdrew divisions to fight
in the Pacific islands, the communist armies were able to move in and organize more “liberated
areas.” The danger of fratricidal war in the event of Japan’s defeat became obvious. The U.S.
government was drawn into China’s domestic crisis because the United States had provided the main
external supports—financial, military, and diplomatic—for the Nationalist government.

The United States also had wished for China to take a place as a stabilizing influence in eastern Asia
after the war. In various ways U.S. representatives in China tried to bring about a reconciliation
between the Kuomintang and the communists. A fundamental difficulty, besides the bitter distrust
and intransigence of both Chinese parties, lay in the United States’ position of trying to mediate
between them while supporting one side, the Nationalists, as the government of China. Resumption
of hostilities between the Nationalists and the communists seemed inevitable, and the fragile peace
of the United Front collapsed shortly after the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945.

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Return to China and End of the Qing Dynasty

The Qing’s were from Manchuria, and they established their dynasty as a conquering force of the
Ming dynasty by non-Chinese outsiders, maintaining that identity and organization throughout their
268-year reign. In particular, the court marked itself off from its subjects in certain religious,
linguistic, ritual, and social characteristics, always presenting themselves as outside conquerors.
Social uprisings against the Qing began with the White Lotus uprising in 1796–1820. The Qing had
forbidden agriculture in the northern regions, which were left to the Mongol pastoralists, but the
introduction of new world crops such as potato and maize opened the northern region plains farming.
At the same time, technologies for treating contagious diseases such as smallpox, and the extensive
use of fertilizers and irrigation techniques were also imported from the West. As a result of such
technological improvements, the Chinese population exploded, increasing from just shy of 178
million in 1749 to almost 359 million in 1811 and by 1851, the population in Qing dynasty China
was close to 432 million people.1 At first, farmers in regions adjacent to Mongolia worked for the
Mongols, but eventually, the people in the overcrowded Hubei and Hunan provinces flowed out and
into the region. Soon the new migrants began to outnumber the indigenous people, and conflict over
local leadership grew and grew strong. The White Lotus rebellion began when large groups of
Chinese rioted in 1794. Eventually, the rebellion was crushed by the Qing elites, but the White Lotus
organization remained secret and intact, and advocated for the overthrow of the Qing dynasty.
Another major contributing factor to the downfall of the Qing dynasty was European imperialism
and China's gross miscalculation of the power and ruthlessness of the British crown.
Decline of Qing Dynasty: By the mid-19th century, the Qing dynasty had been in power for over a
century, and the elites and many of their subjects felt they had a heavenly mandate to remain in
power. One of the tools they used to stay in power was a very strict restriction on trade. The Qing
believed that the way to avoid the errors of the White Lotus rebellion was to clamp down on foreign
influence. The British under Queen Victoria were a huge market for Chinese teas, but the Qing
refused to engage in trade negotiations, rather demanding that Britain pay for the tea in gold and
silver. Instead, Britain began a lucrative, illicit trade in opium, traded from British imperial India into
Canton, far from Beijing. The Chinese authorities burned 20,000 bales of opium, and the British
retaliated with a devastating invasion of mainland China, in two wars known as the Opium Wars of
1839–42 and 1856–60. Completely unprepared for such an onslaught, the Qing dynasty lost, and
Britain imposed unequal treaties and took control of the Hong Kong region, along with millions of
pounds of silver to compensate the British for the lost opium. This humiliation showed all of China's
subjects, neighbors, and tributaries that the once-mighty China was now weak and vulnerable. With
its weaknesses exposed, China began to lose power over its peripheral regions. France seized
Southeast Asia, creating its colony of French Indochina. Japan stripped away Taiwan, took effective
control of Korea (formerly a Chinese tributary) following the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895–96,
and also imposed unequal trade demands in the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. By 1900, foreign
powers including Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan had established "spheres of influence"
along China's coastal areas. There the foreign powers essentially controlled trade and the military,
although technically they remained part of Qing China. The balance of power had tipped decidedly
away from the imperial court and toward the foreign powers. Within China, dissent grew, and the
empire began to crumble from within. Ordinary Han Chinese felt little loyalty to the Qing rulers,
who still presented themselves as conquering Manchus from the north. The calamitous Opium Wars
seemed to prove that the alien ruling dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven and needed to be
overthrown. In response, the Qing Empress Dowager Cixi clamped down hard on reformers. Rather
than following the path of Japan's Meiji Restoration and modernizing the country, Cixi purged her
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court of modernizers. When Chinese peasants raised a huge anti-foreigner movement in 1900, called
the Boxer Rebellion, they initially opposed both the Qing ruling family and the European powers
(plus Japan). Eventually, the Qing armies and the peasants united, but they were unable to defeat the
foreign powers. This signaled the beginning of the end for the Qing dynasty. Strong rebel leaders
began to have major impacts on the ability of the Qing to rule. In 1896, Yan Fu translated Herbert
Spencer's treatises on social Darwinism. Others began to openly call for the overthrow of the existing
regime and replace it with a constitutional rule. Sun Yat-Sen emerged as China's first "professional"
revolutionary, having gained an international reputation by being abducted by Qing agents in the
Chinese Embassy in London in 1896. One Qing response was to suppress the word "revolution" by
banning it from their world-history textbooks. The French Revolution was now the French
"rebellion" or "chaos," but in fact, the existence of leased territories and foreign concessions
provided plenty of fuel and varying degrees of safety for radical opponents.
Wuchang Uprising of 1911: The crippled Qing dynasty clung to power for another decade, behind
the walls of the Forbidden City, but the Wuchang Uprising of 1911 put the final nail in the coffin
when 18 provinces voted to secede from the Qing dynasty. In 1911 the Qing decided to nationalize
all the trunk railways, thus incurring the wrath of local vested interests. Armed rebellion broke out in
the province of Sichuan, and the court exposed itself to further attacks by failing to suppress it. In
October of the same year a local revolutionary group in Wuhan, one of many in China by this time,
began another rebellion, which, in spite of its lack of coordination, unexpectedly managed to
overthrow the provincial government. Its success inspired other provincial secessions. The Wuchang
Uprising was the Chinese uprising that served as the catalyst to the Xinhai Revolution, ending the
Qing Dynasty and two millennia of imperial rule. It began with the dissatisfaction of the handling of
a railway crisis.

The crisis then escalated to an uprising where the revolutionaries went up against Qing government
officials. The uprising was then assisted by the New Army in a coup against their own authorities in
the city of Wuchang. The Battle of Yangxia led by Huang Xing would be the major engagement in
the uprising. General Yuan Shikai was removed from his positions of power as he was suspected to
have killed the empress. A Royal Cabinet was formed. With provinces separating from Qing control,
Yuan Shikai was brought back to power by the dynasty. But with so much power and control it was
only a matter of time before the empire crashed and the Republic of China was formed under his
leadership. Puyi, the last emperor, had no choice but to abdicate and Yuan Shikai became President
of the Republic of China. On February 12, 1912 China’s boy emperor, Hsuan T’ung, was forced to

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abdicate, ending the Manchu Ch’ing dynasty. The last dynasty of China Qing dynasty or Manchu
dynasty, ruled the country from 1644 to 1912.
Aftermath: Sun Yat-Sen himself played no direct part in the uprising in Wuchang. He was traveling
in the United States, trying to drum up financial support from overseas Chinese. At the time he was
in Denver at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. He received a telegram from Huang Xing that was one
week old, but he couldn't decipher it because he didn't have the secret key with him. After the
Wuchang Uprising, the revolutionaries telegraphed the other provinces asking them to declare their
independence, and 15 provinces in Southern China and Central China did so. Representatives from
the seceding provinces met and declared the founding of the Republic of China on January 1, 1912.
He returned to Shanghai in December and was elected provisional president by delegates meeting in
Nanjing. Knowing that his regime was weak, Sun made a deal with Yuan Shikai (Yüan Shih-k’ai),
an imperial minister who had been entrusted with full power by the court. On Feb. 12, 1912, the
emperor abdicated; the next day Sun resigned, and on the 14th, Yuan was elected his successor.

In September, Yuan appointed Sun director-general of railway development. Their entente might
have lasted if Song Jiaoren, who had reorganized the Alliance Society into the Nationalist Party and
was serving as its head, had not been assassinated in March 1913, reportedly at Yuan’s instigation.
This precipitated a second revolution, in which Sun opposed Yuan. When the campaign failed, Sun
fled once again to Japan. While there, he unavailingly sought Japanese aid by promising vast
concessions in China, and he also alienated many revolutionaries by requiring them to take an oath
of personal allegiance to him. He was also criticized for marrying his secretary, Song Qingling
(Soong Ch’ing-ling), in October 1915, without divorcing his first wife. A combination of internal
opposition and external pressures defeated Yuan in 1916. The next year Sun went from Shanghai to
Guangdong to launch a movement against the premier, Duan Qirui (Tuan Ch’i-jui). Elected
generalissimo of a separatist regime in July, Sun had to resign and leave for Shanghai toward the
middle of 1918, when he lost the support of Lu Rongting, the military overlord of Guangdong.

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Earlier, Lu had agreed to Sun’s gaining control over 20 battalions of armed guards if the forces
would remain outside Guangdong. Accepting this condition, Sun appointed Chen Jiongming (Ch’ien
Chiung-ming) as the commander and dispatched his men to Fujian. By persuading Chen to fight Lu,
Sun found his way back to office for another 16 months, at the end of which Chen turned against
him, and Sun had to leave for Shanghai again. From that sanctuary, he wooed the troops from
Guangxi and Yunnan, and with their help he again returned to Guangzhou. In February 1923 he
installed himself as generalissimo of a new regime. Meanwhile, a new factor had risen in Sun’s
political life. Unsuccessful at obtaining aid from the West and Japan, he looked increasingly to the
Soviet government, which had come to power in Russia in 1917.

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Political Success
The bomb making of 9th October 1911: The bombmaker gingerly places the device with the
others. In a few days these explosives will signal revolutionaries and army officers along with
students and activists to take up arms. The bombmaker reaches for another device and it exploded
Qing police arrived and they find a membership book. A book full of army officers’ names, they
realized where the explosives came from, Police begin hammering on doors. After 16 years of
planning the revolution is about to begin by an accident. The revolutionaries in Wuchang were not
part of sun's faction, They were influenced by sun and in contact with his alliance but this uprising
the Wuchang uprising turned on local issues, When the empress Dowager and Emperor Died in
1908,The emperor's two year old son inherited the throne and with the conservative Dowager
Empress Gone officials ruling on the behalf of the child Emperor scrambled to implement reforms,
They made move towards constitutional monarchy but it was too little too late, Every reform seemed
a half measure and they reneged on promises more than once .The Qing had burned all their
credibility and rumors swirled that they secretly planned to sell china out to foreigners, At which
point they decided to take over the rail networks with foreign money and under foreign control.
When people protested about this Qing shot them outrage followed Local revolutionaries in
Wuchang plan to make their move plotting an uprising between the secret societies and sympathizers
in the new army until accidental bombing forced their hand. Oct 10 Double Ten day. Police round up
a new army soldiers at random. Tension is boiling hot Several officers from the 8th Engineering
Battalion Corner a sergeant. They suspect he supplied the explosives or knows who did after that
Sergeant Immediately draws his Revolver and Killed Officers. The sergeant rallies his unit to mutiny
and sees the City's arsenal, New army soldiers tie white cloths around their arms to mark themselves
as revolutionaries. The street fighting begins, Revolutionaries storm the city's fort sending the
governor and commanding general into flight. Leaderless the victory drunk rebels move on to the
neighboring city and force a popular army commander at gunpoint to become their Commander, they
make him draft telegrams to other provincial governments urging them to rise up more unit’s mutiny.
More provinces expel the Qing. In some places its nearly a bloodless coup but in others
Revolutionaries massacred Qing officials and Manchu Ethnic minorities. By early December only
eight of China's 22 provinces remain under imperial control.
Sun meanwhile finds out about the uprising from a newspaper article in Denver and four days later,
he learns again by newspaper that he's been proposed as the first President of the Republic. He didn't
go back, not immediately because he was a better diplomat than general, he instead hit Washington
DC, London and Paris. He wanted Assurances that the western powers would not intervene and
would prevent Japanese intervention, He wanted a grant of loans to the new Republican Government
and all loans to the Qing cancelled. He was not successful exactly because none of the western
powers were taking bets on the outcome of the revolution quite yet. They would withhold all loans
until a single legitimate government ruled china, No money for the revolutionaries but no money for
Beijing either. He'd accomplished little but when he arrived in Shanghai on Christmas day, He found
that the diplomatic tour raised his prestige and four days later the provincial assembly
overwhelmingly elected sun as provincial president of the Republic of China. They swore him in on
January 1st 1912 within two months Sun had gone from an outcast rebel to the head of the republic
and yet there was no time to enjoy the Movement. The revolutionary government was mired in peace
talks. Not just with each other but with Yuan ShiKai. Yuan was Currently prime minister of imperial
China; He was general who had been instrumental in creating the New army. So, the day after sun
assumed the presidency, he went down with yuan for secret peace talks both Sun and yuan were

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backed into a corner due to banking neutrality neither state could secure foreign loans and both had
armies teetering on the verge of financial collapse neither could afford to continuing fighting each
other so they decided to go with agreement, the agreement was Yuan's Play! He convinced the
emperor to abdicate and recognize the republic in return Sun would resign the presidency and let
Yuan Take his place Sun had little choice and his dream wasn't to be president It was to end Qing
rule and replace it with a republic This compact secured that.
Northern Expedition1926-28
Emerging from the wreckage of an empire badly mauled by foreign powers and decomposed
internally, Chinese nationalism had by the 1920s begun to spread beyond the new urban elites to the
proletariat of the treaty ports and out into the countryside. Although the antiforeign racialism of
1911’s revolutionaries had helped to topple the decadent Manchus, the feelings of nationhood had
grown slowly among the Chinese and had meaning primarily for the modern educated. The civilian
visionaries of the anti-Manchu movement were ill prepared for the frustrating realities that befell the
infant republic. Their dreams vanished as the ex-military lieutenants of the Manchus rose in power,
sparring among themselves for territory, while the foreign imperialists continued their rapacious
exploitation of the defenseless ghost republic. The political idealism of those Chinese educated in
Anglo-American values seemed irrelevant in a world where at Versailles the Western democracies
sold China’s interests in Shantung to an expansive Japan in return for satisfaction of their own
desires. Frustrated parliamentarians, republicans, and ex-revolutionaries who had worked for the end
of the old regime, groped impotently for some means to reintegrate the shattered economy, society,
and body politic. By the 1920s, the debates of modern intellectuals turned away from complete
Westernization toward a reappraisal of what China really needed. Even the greediest military
governor, a warlord, might mouth “saving China”—but what then was China? Neither the idealistic
rhetoric of thinkers nor the raw armed force of the warlords had been sufficient, separately, to pull
China back together. Sun Yat-sen, the quixotic leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), and his faithful had
been able to reflect on this lesson while exiled abroad after successive losses to warlord forces.

In campaigning against the warlords, the United Front selected three main targets:
➢ Wu Peifu, who was master of an area known as the Central Plains, between the Yellow and
Yangzi rivers
➢ Sun Chuanfang, who dominated much of eastern China.
➢ Zhang Zuolin, who controlled northern China between Beijing and Manchuria.

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The Front’s strategy was to surround the individual warlord armies, cut their supply lines and
steadily crush them. This often resulted in brutal warfare with heavy casualties, Nevertheless, by the
summer of 1927, United Front forces had captured the key Cities of Wuhan and Shanghai,
effectively ending Wu peifu’s hold over central China. Sun Chuanfang was more difficult to
overcome, since his forces put up a particularly fierce resistance. In 1927 his army or some 100,000
launched a series of counterattacks which badly damaged the Nationalist forces. It was only after
Chiang Kaishek had built up an army of 250,000 that he was able, in 1928, to outnumber and
overcome Sun Chuanfang's forces. However, although delayed by Sun's spirited defiance, the
Alliance was not to be denied, Once Zhang Zuolin, the warlord of the Beijing area, had been finally
driven out in 1928, the GMD was in a position to announce that it was now the legitimate
government of China and that it would rule from the new capital of' Nanjing. One consistent
advantage to the Nationalists during the Northern Expedition was the hafted that most of the people
living under the warlords felt towards their oppressors. This made the local population willing to
pass on information to the Front forces and on occasion join them in the struggle. A good example of
this was the work Of Mao Zedong as a Front organizer in Hunan. His links with the peasant
associations in the province proved invaluable in enabling the Front's units to drive through Guanxi
and Hunan and outflank the warlord armies, in 1926, Mao's endeavors earned him the official
accolade son of Hunan'.
The Communist contribution to the Front's victory is important, there was little doubt that the
Communists had made a vital contribution to the victories the GMD—CCP alliance. Apart from
contributing troops, Communist workers had caused great trouble for the warlord forces through acts
of sabotage and by organizing disruptive strikes and boycotts. Mao himself attributed the United
Front's successes to the co-operation between The Nationalist and Communist forces: 'there was
unity between officers and men and between the army and the people, and the army was filled With a
Revolutionary militancy'. Mao's enthusiasm is a reminder of how easily the Chinese Communists
had let themselves be fooled by Chiang Kaishek at this juncture. Chiang had launched the Northern
Expedition with two aims:
➢ the declared one of breaking the warlords,
➢ the undeclared one of destroying his allies in the Flout, the Communists.
Confident by 1927 that the warlords were effectively beaten and that he no longer needed
Communist support, Chiang began openly to implement the second Of his aims. He had already
begun to purge his party Of Communist sympathizers. During 1926 he had dismissed a number of
CCP officials from their posts in the GMD, arrested several Comin tern advisers and removed his
closest challenger, Wang Jingwei from office.
The results of the Northern Expedition
In July 1928, Chiang Kaishek officially declared that, since it had achieved its main purpose of
defeating the warlords and reuniting China, the Northern Expedition could now be regarded as
completed. Equally important for him was that the expedition had given him the means and
opportunity to embark on a programme for the extirpation of his chief enemy, the Communists,
However, subsequent events were to undermine his claim of victory over the warlords, the defeat or
warlords was only partial;
➢ Not all the warlords had been crushed.

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➢ A number of them agreed 10 accept the GMD's authority only on condition that they allowed
to keep their private armies.
➢ Others were won over by being offered positions in the GMD Party or government.

The warlords remained a significant factor in Chinese politics. It is arguable, therefore, that the
Nationalists did not so much conquer the warlords as come to terms with them. This was the constant
assertion made by the CCP in its propaganda against the Nationalists. Indeed, it was often said by the
opponents of Chiang Kaishek that he was no more than a warlord himself and that the only
difference between him and the others was that he was more successful. The assertion was that
Chiang had used his military base in Guangzhou to make a grab for power by launching a challenge
against the legitimate Republican government in Beijing. The relative weakness of Chiang's position
had two main results:
➢ It prevented him from ever fully controlling China.
➢ It intensified his determination to destroy the Communists, whom he regarded as the
main obstacle to his exercising complete power.

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The political effect of Sun Yat Sen's death

For many years, it was popularly believed that Sun died of liver cancer. On 26 January 1925, Sun
underwent an exploratory laparotomy at Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH) to
investigate a long-term illness. This was performed by the head of the Department of Surgery,
Adrian S. Taylor, who stated that the procedure "revealed extensive involvement of the liver by
carcinoma" and that Sun only had about ten days to live. Sun was hospitalized and his condition was
treated with radium. The death of Sun Yat Sen in 1925 was a highly significant moment in Chinese
politics. It had the effect of releasing the anti- Communist fines within the GMD which Sun had
previously held in check. Chiang Kaishek's success in the GMD power struggle was a victory for the
military in the party, the element that had close relations with the Chinese middle class and which
was opposed to the social revolutionary policies of the CCP. Chiang had not shared his predecessor’s
belief that the CCP could be easily absorbed into the GMD and then rendered harmless. Although
Chiang, along with nearly all the leading members of the GMD, had received training in Moscow in
the early 1920s, he had acquired no love Marxism. His conviction was that the Communists
represented an internal challenge that had to be crushed. However, Chiang knew that the
Communists were not the only obstacle. Before he and his Nationalists could take full power in
China, the warlords, who still controlled large areas of central and northern China, had to be broken.
The time was ripe the 30 May Incident in 1925 had created a mood of national anger that could now
be turned against warlordism. Chiang planned to combine his two objectives, the destruction of the
warlords and the obliteration Of the Communists, into one major campaign. He could not, Of course,
openly declare his second objective until the first had been achieved. As long as the warlords
undefeated the GMD—CCP United Front had to be preserved he still needed the CCP as military
allies. Despite the evidence Of Chiang's hostility to Communism and the Soviet Union, the Comin
tern continued to urge the Chinese Communists to work with the GMD till the United Front. The
result was the joint planning of a Nationalist—Communist campaign aimed at the annihilation of
warlord power. In July 1926, in his southern base in Guangzhou, Chiang Kaishek made a passionate
speech calling on all true revolutionaries to join his Nationalists in a national crusade to destroy the
warlords. His speech marked the beginning of the 'Northern Expedition.

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Bibliography
➢ https://www.britannica.com

➢ http://www.islandschoolhistory.com

➢ https://www.cambridge.org

➢ https://www.oxfordreference.com

➢ https://www.facinghistory.org

➢ http://www.thatsmags.com

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