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Revolt against the Chinese Qing dynasty. Led and inspired by Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, the Taiping Rebellion began in Guangxi province. It developed into the most serious challenge to the Qing, bringing most of the central and lower Yangtze region under rebel control, and costing 20 million lives
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Revolt against the Chinese Qing dynasty. Led and inspired by Hong Xiuquan , claimed to be the brother of Jesus Christ, It began in Guangxi province. It was a challenge to the Qing, bringing most of the central and lower Yangtze under rebel control. Rebels captured Nanjing and established their capital before launching an unsuccessful attack on Beijing. Taiping resistance was crushed with the capture of Nanjing in 1864, Hong Xiuquan having died in the siege, but the Qing regime never recovered
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The rebels captured Nanjing in 1853 and established their capital there before launching an unsuccessful attack on Beijing
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It was essentially a response to increasing Western power and influence in China, and was an attempt to resist and redress the concessions that China had been forced to agree to- primarily with Britain. However, the movement was divided on how to ‘strengthen’ China, and successful reform and development generally failed.
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Taiping resistance was crushed with the capture of Nanjing in 1864, Hong Xiuquan having died in the siege, but the Qing regime never really recovered from the long civil war.
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China remained subjugated to the West,
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It was an anti-foreign peasant movement in north China. The Boxers were members of a secret martial arts society called the 'Harmonious Fists'. They blamed China's problems on foreigners. The movement expanded rapidly, seizing foreign properties, ripping up railroad tracks, and attacking and sometimes killing foreigners and Chinese Christian converts. In 1900, the Boxers besieged the foreign legation area in Beijing. Several foreign armies banded together and defeated the Boxers.
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The vast majority of the population were peasants. Their life was hard, working the land, and most were extremely poor. It was the peasants who paid the taxes that in turn paid for the great Manchu imperial court
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China lost more territory to Japan when it was part of the settlement in the Russo-Japanese War.
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The political weakness of the Manchu dynasty intensified with the death of the Emperor and the succession of a two-year-old boy, Pu Yi
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In an attempt to seize the political initiative, delegates from the ‘independent’ provinces gathered in Nanjing to declare the creation of a Chinese Republic. A political exile, who had been in the USA during the revolution, was invited to be China’s first President – Dr Sun Yixian.
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the ruling dynasty was overthrown in a revolution know as the Double Tenth. A republic was created. The revolution began when the government lost control of the military; soldiers in Wuchang revolted and rebellion spread quickly. Most provinces
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Sun’s party reformed as the Guomindang (GMD) and declared itself a parliamentary party. He wanted to create a unified modern and democratic China. He returned after the Double Tenth Revolution , and established a government in southern China, in Canton. Sun wasn't a communist, although he was willing to cooperate with them, and the organization of the GMD was along communist lines. Sun stated that his party had three guiding principles:
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Sun agreed for Yuan Shikai to be President of the new republic in February 1912, in exchange for the end of Manchu rule in China.
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Pu Yi renounces to the title of emperor of China.
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Yuan ruled China as a military dictator from 1912 until 1915.
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Sun attempted to undermine Yuan’s power by moving him from his power base in Beijing to the south in Nanjing to set up a new government. Yuan refused to leave. At this point the GMD were a regional power only in the southern provinces, and the republicans were not sufficiently organized to mount resistance to Yuan. A ‘second revolution’ failed and Sun had to flee to Japan in 1913.
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Yuan’s final miscalculation was to proclaim himself Emperor in 1916. At this point he lost the support of the military and stood down. He died three months later.
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It was a period of time in which generals and military governors set up their governments , they used their armies to enforce their authority and they fought each other for the control of China.
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Some Chinese intellectuals and students were influenced by this revolutionary ideology which later caused the may fourth movement
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Students led a mass demonstration in Beijing against the warlords, traditional Chinese culture and the Japanese. The hostility had been ignited by the Versailles settlement, which had given to Japan Germany’s former concessions in Shandong province. China, it seemed, had joined the Allies in the war only to be humiliated by them.It was dedicated to change and the rebirth of China as a proud and independent nation.
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As well as the GMD, another revolutionary party emerged during the warlord period, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This communist party was officially set up in 1921. Initially, its membership was mainly intellectuals, and it had no real military strength. It was due to this weakness, and some shared aims, that the CCP agreed to work with the GMD. It was also consistently encouraged to cooperate with the nationalists by the USSR.
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Both the GMD and the CCP wanted a unified China. They agreed that the first step to this was to get rid of the warlords, and in 1922 they formed the First United Front.
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the GMD made little progress towards fulfilling their ‘Three Principles’. They had been limited by their lack of power beyond the south .After the death of Sun, General Jiang Jieshi took the leadership. He was a committed nationalist, and had enthusiastically joined the GMD. He had had military training before . Indeed, the Soviets had begun to invest in the GMD, providing aid and assistance to the party. The Soviets believed they could foster good relations with a nationalist China.
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Jiang Jieshi with the communists, the GMD set out on the ‘Northern Expedition’ in 1926 to crush the warlords of central and northern China.
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This operation was a great success because they crush the warlords of central and northern China; by 1927, the GMD and the communists had captured Hangzhou, Shanghai and Nanjing.
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Jiang expelled all communists from the GMD, and his attacks on the communists reached a peak in Shanghai in the ‘White Terror’ . A powerful ‘workers’ army’ under Zhou were very effective during the Northern Expedition and Jiang turned on them, using informants from the underworld of triads and gangsters communists were shot. He carried massacres in what became known as the ‘purification movement’ which meant the shooting of thousands of communists, trade unionists and peasant leaders.
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the CCP was very nearly crushed by the end of 1927. Ignoring the orders of the Comintern to retain the United Front, the CCP decided that its only hope of survival was to flee into the mountains of Jiangsi. The GMD pursued them, determined to destroy the communists.
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The communist and the GMD took Beijing,Within two years, the United Front of the GMD and the CCP had destroyed the power of the warlords, and the GMD announced that it was the legitimate government of China and the new capital and seat of government would be Nanjing.
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