China under the War-Lords, Part I

In 1912 the Manchu Emperor abdicated in Peking. Henry McAleavy describes how there began a confused period in Chinese history during which both the Nationalist Kuomintang and the Communist party were founded.

Henry McAleavy | Published in History Today Volume 12 Issue 4 April 1962

“The son of heaven has abdicated,” said The Times newspaper on Monday, A February 12th, 1912, “the Manchu Dynasty reigns no longer and the oldest monarchy in the world will be formally constituted a Republic today. History has witnessed few such surprising revolutions and none perhaps of equal magnitude which has been carried out in all its later stages with so little bloodshed.

Whether the last of those stages has been reached is one of the secrets of the future. Some of those who know China best cannot but doubt whether a form of government so utterly alien to Oriental conceptions and to Oriental traditions as a Republic can be suddenly substituted for a monarchy in a nation of four hundred millions of men, whom Kings with semi-divine attributes have ruled since the first dim twilight of history.”