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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
One interesting aspect of the Revolution of 1911 in China was the role of the new-style army. The new-style troops, as one category of revolutionary activists distinct from the civilian radical intellectuals, determined the opening phase of the revolution, initiating the Wuchang uprising and bringing pressure to bear on most of the provincial leaders. Their contribution was the physical strength which the revolutionary intellectuals, who provided the ideology, lacked. The army played its vital role, not in the beginning of the revolutionary movement, but at a later stage when the prevailing order had been discredited and the imperial government had lost the allegiance of the people. Indeed, the success of the revolution reflected the interaction between revolutionary ideas and military power.
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35 Ibid.
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50 I have dealt with this issue more fully in an article, entitled ‘Li Yüan-hung and the Revolution of 1911’, to be published in Monumenta Serica.Google Scholar
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