The roughly forty-year period, between the fall of the imperial Qing Dynasty to the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China, is a complex, confusing, and ambiguous era in the history of China. The era is defined by powerful and violent foreign influence in China and intense and violent Chinese nationalism.
I begin this episode near the end of the Qing Dynasty and the ushering in of its replacement the Republic of China in 1912. The early key protagonists in this story are Yuan Shikai and Dr. Sun Yat Sen. It was a portentous and unclear beginning for the new Republic.