Xinhai Revolution - Background

Background

The Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908), who personified the conservative Qing court and controlled court politics for 47 years, halted the attempt of her nephew Guangxu Emperor (1871–1908), the penultimate Qing emperor, to institute reforms in 1898. After the failure of the Hundred Days' Reform in 1898, Guangxu's advisors Kang Youwei (left, 1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929) fled into exile, while Tan Sitong (right, 1865–1898) was executed. In Canada, Kang and Liang formed the Emperor Protection Society to promote constitutional monarchy for China. In 1900, they supported an unsuccessful uprising in central China to rescue Guangxu. After the Xinhai Revolution, Liang became a Minister of Justice of the Republic of China. Kang remained a royalist and supported restoring the last Qing emperor Puyi in 1917.

After suffering its first defeat to the West in the First Opium War in 1842, the Qing court struggled to contain foreign intrusions into China. Efforts to adjust and reform the traditional methods of governance were constrained by a deeply conservative court culture where ethnic Manchu rulers did not want to give too much authority to the Han Chinese majority.

In the wars against the Taiping (1851–64), Nian (1851–1868), Muslims of Yunnan (1856–1868) and the Northwest (1862–1877), the traditional Manchu armies proved themselves incompetent, and the court came to rely on local Han armies.

Following defeat in the Second Opium War, the Qing tried to modernize by adopting certain Western technologies through the Self-Strengthening Movement from 1861. In 1895, China suffered a serious defeat during the First Sino-Japanese War. This demonstrated that traditional Chinese feudal society also needed to be modernized if the technological and commercial advancements were to succeed. In 1898, Emperor Guangxu was guided by reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao for a drastic reform in education, military and economy under the Hundred Days Reforms. The reform was a failure, as it was ended prematurely by a conservative coup led by Empress Dowager Cixi. Emperor Guangxu, who had always been a puppet emperor dependent on Cixi, was put under house arrest in June 1898. Reformers Kang and Liang would be exiled. While in Canada, in June 1899, they tried to form the Emperor Protection Society in an attempt to restore the emperor. Empress Cixi mainly controlled the Qing dynasty from this point on. The Boxer Rebellion prompted another foreign invasion of Beijing in 1900 and the imposition of unequal treaty terms, which carved away territories, created extraterritorial concessions and gave away trade privileges. Under internal and external pressure, the Qing court began to adopt some of the reforms. The Qing managed to maintain its monopoly on political power by suppressing, often with great brutality, all domestic rebellions. Dissidents could operate only in secret societies and underground organizations, in foreign concessions or in exile overseas.