Reconsidering 1911: Lessons of a sudden revolution

Abstract

The year 1911 launched China on a century of revolution and ended one of the most successful dynasties in Chinese history, the Qing. The New Policy reforms of the late Qing were remarkably successful in transforming China into a modern state. They failed only at the end, because of the ill-advised power-centralizing policies of the regent Zaifeng. Zaifeng's policies focused opposition on the Manchu ruling family and created the conditions for a sudden revolution in 1911. Understanding the 1911 Revolution requires more focus on the revolutionary milieu of 1911 that brought China to its tipping point. As a sudden revolution, China in 1911 is more similar to France in 1789, Russia in 1917, or Egypt in 2011 than it is to the subsequent revolutions of the Nationalist and Communist parties. Our analysis requires more attention to all the political forces that allied to overturn Manchu rule but could not maintain that unity to establish effective republican institutions.

Keywords:

• 1911 Revolution
• sudden revolution
• tipping point
• anti-Manchuism

Notes

¹Mary Wright's seminal volume on the 1911 Revolution was entitled China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900–1913 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).

²Luo Zhitian, Jindai dushuren de sixiang shijie yu zhixue quxiang [The Mental World and Intellectual Choices of Modern Scholars] (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2009), 9, 104–141.

³Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959); Pierre-Etienne Will, Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China, trans. Elborg Forster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990); Pierre-Etienne Will, R. Bin Wong, and James Lee, Nourish the People: The State Civilian Granary System in China, 1650–1850 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1991).

⁴Li Huaiyin, “Fiscal Cycles and the Low-Equilibrium Trap under the Qing,” (paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, 31 March–3 April, 2011).

⁵R. Kent Guy, Qing Governors and their Provinces: The Evolution of Territorial Administration in China, 1644–1796 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010).

⁶Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005).

⁷Recent Chinese scholarship on the New Policies period has so far exceeded past efforts abroad that I would only mention one general work in English, stressing the Japanese connection: Douglas R. Reynolds, China: 1898–1912—The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1993).

⁸Joan Judge, Print and Politics: “Shibao” and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Barbara Mittler, A Newspaper for China?: Power, Identity and Change in Shanghai's News Media, 1872–1912 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004); Tang Haijiang, Qingmo zhenglun baokan yu minzhong dongyuan: yizhong zhengzhi wenhua de shijiao [Late Qing Political Journals and Popular Mobilization: A Political Culture Perspective] (Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2007).

⁹Xu Shuang, Jiu wangchao yu xin zhidu: Qingmo lixian gaige jishi (1901–1911) [Old Dynasty and New System: A History of Constitutional Reform in Late Ch'ing (1901–1911)] (Beijing: Falü chubanshe, 2009).

¹⁰Kit Siong Liew, Struggle for Democracy: Sung Chiao-jen and the 1911 Chinese Revolution (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971); Hsueh Chün-tu, Huang Xing and the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961). Recently I was struck by a letter of Liang Qichao, written shortly after the Wuchang Uprising on 29 October 1911, in which he says: “Sun [Yat-sen] and Huang [Xing] have long been at odds. Huang is courageous and committed to action, while Sun is crafty and a dreamer. Huang's group despises him. Last year they at one point decided to remove Sun.” See Ding Wenjiang and Zhao Fengtian, Liang Rengong xiansheng nianpu changbian (chugao) [Chronological Biography of Liang Qichao (draft)] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010), 287.

¹¹The best recent Chinese scholarship seems to support this view. See Feng Tianyu and Zhang Duqin, Xinhai shouyi shi [A History of the 1911 Uprising] (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 2011), 198–212.

¹²Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (New York: Back Bay Books, 2002).

¹³Joseph W. Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), 171.

¹⁴Ibid., 168.

¹⁵Edward J.M. Rhoads, Manchus & Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861–1928 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000).

¹⁶The most important and representative books of the New Qing History are Mark C. Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); Evelyn S. Rawski, The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); Pamela Kyle Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1999); and Michael G. Chang, A Court on Horseback: Imperial Touring and the Construction of Ethno–Dynastic Hegemony in Qing China, 1680–1785 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).

¹⁷One of the clearest statements of this position is in Wu Zesheng, “Man-Han wenti” [The Manchu–Han Problem], Datong bao, no. 1 (June 25, 1907), Taipei reprint edition, 1985, 57–106.

¹⁸Rhoads, Manchus & Han, 290–91.

¹⁹Elliott, Manchu Way, xv. Much of Elliott's argument is that ethnic discourse does exist in the Manchu documents, which makes them so essential to the New Qing History (pp. xv, 169).

²⁰R. Kent Guy, The Emperor's Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch'ien-lung Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1987), 157–200.

²¹The best new work on the Triads is Barend J. ter Haar, Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads: Creating an Identity (Leiden: Brill, 1998). See esp. 23–25, 324–64, 400–402.

²²Liang Qichao is the source of this alleged statement by Gangyi, cited in Rhoads, Manchus & Han, 18.

²³Everard Fraser, December 1900, cited in Rhoads, Manchus & Han, 75.

²⁴Rhoads, Manchus & Han, 12–18.

²⁵Gugong bowuyuan Ming-Qing dang'anbu, ed., Duanfang memorial (31 July 1907), in Qingmo choubei lixian dang'an shiliao [Historical Materials on Late Qing Constitutional Preparations], vol. 2 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 915–18.

²⁶See note 17.

²⁷Xu, Chapters 3–6, in Jiu wangchao yu xin zhidu, 77–81.

²⁸Zhang Pengyuan, Lixianpai yu xinhai geming [The Constitutionalists and the 1911 Revolution], 3rd. ed. (Changchun: Jilin chubanshe, 2007), 16–39. Zhang's path-breaking study of the constitutionalist movement and the 1911 Revolution, first published in 1969, remains an indispensable study of the topic. See also Xu, Jiu wangchao yu xin zhidu, 140–41.

²⁹Rhoads, Manchus & Han, 121–72. The complexity of court politics in this period, the paucity of reliable documentation, and the problematic quality of various yeshi accounts make it difficult to discern exactly how political decision-making went so terribly wrong in 1910–1911. Having done no research on this myself, I find it difficult to understand the intersecting and competing networks of Manchu princes, Yuan Shikai's supporters, conservatives around Qu Hongji, corruption-fighting Cen Chunxuan with his links to Liang Qichao and the constitutionalists abroad, Manchu reformers like Duanfang with their own complex networks, and senior established figures like Prince Qing and Zhang Zhidong. There seem to me important issues to be understood here, and new Chinese research that I have not read may be exploring these important questions.

³⁰Ding and Zhao, Liang Rengong nianpu, 290.

³¹Sang Bing, Gengzi qinwang yu wan Qing zhengju [The 1900 Loyalist Movement and Late Qing Politics] (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2004), 272–73.

³²Zhang Hailin, Duanfang yu Qingmo xinzheng [Duangfang and the Late Qing New Policy Reforms] (Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2007), 484–504.

³³Jin Chengyi, Qingchao diwei zhizheng shishi kao [Studies of the Evidence on Qing Imperial Succession Struggles] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010), 229–30.

³⁴Rhoads, Machus & Han 131–72; Xu, Jiu wangchao yu xin zhidu, 167–70.

³⁵Zhang, Lixianpai yu xinhai geming, 84–95.

³⁶ Guofeng bao, 1: 32, 89–92, cited in Zhang, Lixianpai yu xinhai geming, 77.

³⁷Yi Zongkui speech, cited in Zhang, Lixianpai yu xinhai geming, 79.

³⁸Gladwell, Tipping Point. There are specific parts of Gladwell's insightful analysis that may be particularly appropriate to the Chinese situation in 1911, especially his stress on the importance of three types of people – connectors, mavens (information specialists), and salesmen (charismatic persuaders) – and on the importance of context.

³⁹Zhang Jian, “Dai Lufu Sun Baoqi Sufu Cheng Dequan zouqing gaizu neige xuanbu lixian shu” [Memorial Written on Behalf of Shandong Governor Sun Baoqi and Jiangsu Governor Cheng Dequan Requesting a Reorganization of the Cabinet and Proclamation of Constitutional Government], October 1911, in Zhang Jian quanji [Complete works of Zhang Jian], vol. 1 (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1994), 176.

⁴⁰ Minli bao, October 25, 1911.

⁴¹Cited in Zhang, Lixianpai yu xinhai geming, 115.

⁴²Zhang, Lixianpai yu xinhai geming, 114–20; Esherick, Reform and Revolution, 221–33.

⁴³Zhang, Lixianpai yu xinhai geming, 169–86; Zhang Jian quanji, vol. 1, 163–216.

⁴⁴Henrietta Harrison, The Making of the Republican Citizen: Political Ceremonies and Symbols in China, 1911 – 1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 16–22. For an interesting recent Chinese web posting on the impact of revolutionary ideology on the frontiers, see Caoyuan de erlang [Son of the Grasslands] Quexuejun, “Xinhai geming shiqi de shibasheng jianguo sixiang ji qi houguo” [The Idea of Establishing a Nation of Eighteen Provinces at the Time of the 1911 Revolution and its Consequences], http://bbs.tiexue.net/post2_4225367_1.html (accessed 6 January 2012). I have also explored this issue in “How the Qing became China,” in Joseph W. Esherick, Hasan Kayali, and Eric Van Young, Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 229–59.

⁴⁵Letter from Sheng Xianjue to Liang Qichao, in Ding and Zhao, Liang Rengong nianpu, 297.

⁴⁶Rhoads, Manchus & Han, 217.

⁴⁷Zhang Pengyuan, Lixianpai yu xinhai geming, 182–83.

⁴⁸“Zhang Jian riji” [Zhang Jian Diary], February 2, 1912, in Zhang Jian quanji, vol. 6, 662.

⁴⁹Esherick, Reform and Revolution, 8.

⁵⁰Liang Qichao, “Xin zhongguo jianshe wenti” [The Problem of Constructing a New China], cited in Ding and Zhao, Liang Rengong nianpu, 294.

⁵¹For a simple introduction, see Antonia Fraser, ed., The House of Hanover and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, part of the series A Royal History of England (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000).

⁵²Xu, Jiu wangchao yu xin zhidu, 170–72.

⁵³Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution, trans. Gerald Bevan (1865; repr., New York: Penguin, 2008).