Sun Yatsen: Seeking a Newer China, 1st edition

Published by Pearson (June 18, 2009) © 2010

  • David Gordon
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This biography introduces readers to the life and times of Sun Yatsen (1866-1925), a Chinese revolutionary whose popularity stretches across Greater China and into the 21st century.

Concise and incisive, each interpretive biography in the Library of World Biography Series focuses on a person whose actions and ideas either significantly influenced world events or whose life reflects important themes and developments in global history.  

 

Sun Yatsen (1866-1925) was ceaselessly dynamic, leading a movement among Chinese to overthrow the last traditional dynasty of China’s history and replace it with a modern-style republic. When this republic became a reality, he briefly served as its president, afterward continuing to influence his country for decades to come through the political party he created, the controversial foreign assistance he accepted, and the many writings he left behind.   China is today rapidly transforming itself into the international powerhouse that Sun envisioned.  In this respect, Sun’s life story—occurring as it did on the dividing line between traditional dynastic rule and the search for what would replace it—enables us to understand a broad swath of China’s road to contemporary prominence.

CONTENTS Editor’s Preface Author’s Preface

  • A Note on Chinese Spellings
  • Acknowledgments
I High and Dry
  • The Rome of the East
  • The Confucian Heritage
  • Manchu Rule
  • The Frightening Nineteenth Century
II A Marginal Youth
  • Growing Up Marginal
  • Sun Becomes a Doctor
  • The Failure of Self-Strengthening
  • Sun and China at the Crossroads
  • The Sino-Japanese War
  • Reviving China by Force
III Kidnapped in London
  • Kidnapped at the Chinese Legation
  • Effects of the Kidnapping
  • The New Imperialism Comes to China
  • The Hundred Days of Reform
IV Sun in Meiji Japan
  • The Japanese Model
  • Sun Meets Miyazaki
  • The Huizhou Uprising
  • Sun’s Japan Connection

V Creating the Revolutionary Alliance

  • Chinese Students in Tokyo
  • The New Climate of Opinion
  • The Russo-Japanese War
  • The Birth of the Revolutionary Alliance
VI Planning China’s Future
  • The Principle of Nationalism
  • The Principle of Democracy
  • The Principle of People’s Livelihood
  • The Principles in Historical Perspective
VII In Pursuit of Revolution
  • Revolutionaries vs. Reformists
  • The French Connection
  • Qing Efforts at Reform
  • Sun’s Second Wind
VIII The News in Denver
  • Running Off the Track
  • Where Was Sun?
  • Sun as Provisional President
  • The Revolution in Hindsight
IX The Dream Goes Awry
  • Sun and Railways
  • Yuan Shikai Becomes a Dictator
  • Sun’s Opportunism, Yuan’s Fall
  • The Turn to Warlordism
X Interlude: Sun’s Marriages
  • Sun’s Relationships Before the Revolution
  • Sun and Soong Qingling
XI The South Secedes
  • World War I, China, and Sun
  • Sun and the May Fourth Movement
  • Sun’s Writings at the Rue Molière

XII The South Gains Soviet Help

  • Sun’s Second Guangzhou Government
  • The Russian Connection
  • The “United Front” Alliance
  • Sun’s Underlying Impatience

XIII Sun’s Death and Beatification

  • Sun’s Beatification, Pre-1949
  • Sun’s Beatification, Post-1949
  • Sun as Nationalistic Dreamer

Study Questions

Chronology

Glossary

A Note on the Sources

Index

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