Articles
The Regional Structure of the 1911 Revolution:
The North and the South in Chinese History
MURATA Yūjirō*

The 1911 Revolution was a great political event marking the beginningof a new era in modern Chinese history. Yet as the end of 2,000 years ofdynastic rule（imperial politics）, it also has long-term historical significancethat can be felt even in the present. Today, a century after the 1911
Revolution, we need to look at this event from a macro perspective, on ascale of centuries and millennia, in order to fix its place in Chinese history. In
other words, we need to reexamine the significance of the modern in the fullsweep of Chinese history by looking at the 1911 Revolution. This will
involve critically reexamining not only the 1911 Revolution but also perceptions and theories of modern Chinese history. From the perspective of theseissues, in this essay I would like to present my views of the historical significance of the 1911 Revolution as seen from changes in the regional structureof Chinese history.

1. The Chinese World and the Qing Dynasty
The Chinese world is a cultural sphere spread out on the eastern portionof the Eurasian landmass, a historical world that was called Hua or Xia
during the Zhou dynasty（eleventh century-256 BCE）, and that was governedby many political systems over a long stretch of time. Though a succession ofdynasties considered themselves rulers of the “center of civilization”（Zhonghua, China）, the culture of this area was strongly ethnocentric. This
central region exerted great influence on surrounding areas and peoples, andit created a variety of diplomatic relations with these peoples through acceptance of tribute.
According to some Japanese scholars（for example, Nishijima Sadao, withhis thesis of the “East Asian world”）, leading to the formation of the Chineseworld was a combination of political and cultural elements, such as
Confucianism, Chinese characters, and Mahayana Buddhism （a variety of* Murata Yūjirō is a professor in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at
the University of Tokyo.

8

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012

Buddhism translated into Chinese）. Consistent with this view is the image ofConfucian China. This image of China has become the received view inJapanese scholarly circles and is spreading widely in society at large. Yet it isimportant to note that the notion of the center of civilization in play here
meant more than the diplomatic order between China and the “barbarians,”
and more than the system of tribute and trade.
This larger significance is connected, of course, to the fact that regional
order and international relations were frequently discussed in the context ofrelations of the Chinese court with the tribute states of Korea, Ryukyu, andVietnam and with the Southern and Western states. For though commercial
and military relations with these regions varied in intensity, court officials
considered each of these regions worthy of attention. Also, by describing anorder of Chinese and “barbarians” that made China central, the Confucianelite actively engaged in creating a Chinese world that defined the relation ofcenter and periphery. From the perspective of the central elite, the Chineseworld had a historically stable structure reflecting the two millennia ofexpansion and development since the Qin and Han dynasties.
Yet this Chinese world internally comprised a complex mixture of diverse
elements related to different historical periods and regions that, geographically as well, gave rise to great changes. This is especially true of the great
historical transition from classical China to early modern China in the ninth
to twelfth centuries, as delineated in the thesis known as the Tang-Songtransformation.1 This transformation was marked by the following changes:
In the political sphere, the transition from an aristocratic system to a despotic
monarchyIn the cultural sphere, the waning of aristocratic culture and the rise of popular
cultureIn the military and economic spheres, the institution of a standing army ofrecruited soldiers, and the introduction of government finance to support
such an army
In international relations, the birth of the nation-state in China and the establishment of independent states among the peoples of East Asia
In the realm of philosophy, the development of Neo-Confucianism by theliterati and the reform movements in Buddhism and Daoism
In his reinterpretation of Naitō’s thesis of a Tang and Song transformation,
Seo Tatsuhiko understands the millennium from the late Eastern Han dynasty
to the Song dynasty as “a period of transition from the Northern and1 Naitō Konan first presented his thesis of the Tang-Song transformation in“Gaikatsuteki Tō Sō jidai kan” （A Synoptic View of the Tang and Song
Periods）（Rekishi to chiri 9, no. 5）, published in 1922.

The Regional Structure of the 1911 Revolution: The North and the South in Chinese History 9Southern Dynasties period, when nomadic-tribe movements directly gave rise
to turning points, to the Sui and Tang dynasties, which saw the rise ofcontinuous culture. Henceforth, development converged along a single path,
namely, the formation of a common Han culture and the Han ethnic group.”
And he presents the continuous changes in clothing, food, and housing, incoming of age, marriage, funerals, and ancestor worship, that produced theHan cultural identity.2
This early modern China also experienced changes in dynasties — fromthe Song to the Yuan, Ming, and Qing — and witnessed expansion of its territory and changes in lifestyles and culture. During the Qing dynasty, theextension of control over the peripheral areas of Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai,
and Tibet led to a compound system of rule that gave a different character topolitics, the economy, society, and culture. This new character not only
greatly defined perceptions of China and debates over reform during thenineteenth-century confrontation with the West. Even during the twentiethcentury down to the present, this expanded notion of China has provided theprototype for thinking about China’s national territory, Chinese ethnic minorities, and unification of China.
On this matter, the historical geographer Ge Jianxiong has offered thefollowing interesting point. In Chinese history, the alteration of unificationand division has frequently been discussed. Though the unification of Chinaby the First Emperor in 221 BCE established a central government over thecentral plains, over the next more than 900 years, up to Mongol control
during the Yuan dynasty, the territory controlled by the central government
expanded and shrank, while autonomous governmental authorities continued
to exist in Chinese territory outside the control of the central government.
This state of affairs cannot be called “unification” in the strict sense. True
unification of China occurred in 1759 with the success of China’s central
Eurasian campaigns to pacify the Dzungars, but this unification lasted only till
the Opium War, a total of a mere 81 years. Hence, in Chinese history, division and divided rule were the norm, and unification was rather short-lived.3
Here we can see that China of the Qianlong period（1736-1795）has been
made the standard of how unified or divided China should be. Hence, with
China at its largest extent（in 1759）as the yardstick, governments throughout
2 Seo Tatsuhiko, “Chūka no bunretsu to saisei”（The Division and Rebirth of
China）, in Iwanami kōza sekai rekishi（Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1999）, vol. 9,
p. 73.
3 Ge Jianxiong, Tongyi yu fenlie: Zhongguo lishi de qishi （Unification andDivision: Lessons form Chinese History）, revised and enlarged ed.（Beijing:
Zhonghua Shuju, 2008）, pp. 77-78.

10

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012

Chinese history are compared in terms of power and territory, and in this way
the geographical growth of China is measured. In this sense, while presentday China historically follows the China of 1759 after its expansion under the
Qianlong emperor, it is seen as something more — the rightful successor to
the power of a unified Qing China that lasted for a mere 81 years.
In the view of Yoshikai Masato, this contemporary geographical andterritorial perspective, enunciated as a thesis on the historical China, wascreated by historians and geographers amid a modern crisis of tense relations
with the outside world in the context of trying to preserve the territorial
integrity of China, and has developed into its present form today.4 Suchtheses on the historical China are interesting not only for studying the Qing
dynasty, which expanded China to its largest extent, but also for consideringmodern and contemporary views of China’s past.5 Here I wish to emphasize
a bird’s-eye view of twentieth-century Chinese history as a continuation of thehistory of the Qing dynasty and prior central dynasties in the context of
external factors（especially the global economy）. Of particular concern havebeen the positive and negative effects on China’s modernization, of “traditional” strengths that have continued as an undercurrent in China’s system andculture, but that have surfaced amid China’s pursuit of its Reform andOpening Policy since the 1980s.
In this context, the assumed tradition is not the legacy of the ancient past.
Rather, it is usually the recent past, a period contiguous with but separate
from the present, namely, Qing China of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Thus, to understand present-day China, it is necessary to return to Chinaof the Qianlong period. In other words, while looking at all the changes, wehave to seek out unchanging structures and thinking, and reconsider presentday China in light of the last two to three hundred years.6
4 Yoshikai Masato, “Rekishigakusha to kokudo ishiki”（Historians and Territorial
Perceptions）, in Shirīzu 20 seiki Chūgokushi, edited by Iijima Wataru, Kubo
Tōru, Murata Yūjirō, vol. 2: Kindaisei no kōzō （Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku
Shuppankai, 2009）, pp. 81-102.
5 Kō Tōran（Huang Donglan）, “Shinmatsu, Minkokuki chiri kyōkasho no kūkanhyōshō: Ryōdo, kyōiki, kokuchi,”（Spatial Representations in Late Qing andRepublican Textbooks: Territory, Borders, and National Humiliation）,
Chūgoku kenkyū geppō, no. 685（March 2005）: 24-39.
6 An important feature of the 1911 Revolution is that it began not in a metropolitan city but in the southern provinces. In particular, the New Armies
seized the provincial government offices and proclaimed their independence. It
was Mizoguchi Yūzō who first pointed out this peculiarity of the 1911
Revolution and the unique developments of modern Chinese history, incontrast to the French Revolution and the Meiji Restoration, which began in
the central cities. From the late Ming and early Qing, the maturation of local

The Regional Structure of the 1911 Revolution: The North and the South in Chinese History 11

Relatedly, Philip Kuhn says that the modern era began for China with aseries of sociopolitical crises that occurred in the 1790s late in the Qianlong
period, and that prior to the confrontation with the West, some Chinese officials and literati were beginning to become aware of areas where China
needed to modernize and beginning to conceive of reforms that might beinstituted.7 He points to three structural dilemmas that imperial China facedlate in the Qianlong period:• Confronting the abuse of power• The political energies of the cultural elite• Governing a huge society with a small bureaucracy
As is well known, each of these dilemmas were problems calling for fundamental systemic reforms affecting the basis for operating a modern nation,and each became a widely discussed political topic during the late Qing SelfStrengthening Movement, Hundred Days Reform, and Constitutional
Movement, and also in the Republican government after the 1911 Revolution.
Yet the perception of crises and the search for solutions to overcome thecrises had already begun among “traditionalists” as early as the late eighteenth century.
Seen in this fashion, the concept of the Chinese world — while including
foreign relations based on the order between China and the “barbarian” states,and on the system of tribute and trade — can perhaps also be interpreted as atranscending concept directed at a high-level system of culture. In otherwords, this system of culture, while defining China as a country with a territory and border, also defines China as an arena opening up to oceanic Asiaand the central Eurasian landmass.8 From this perspective, it becomes possible
to reinterpret the concept of China-as-center thinking（Zhonghua sixiang）, a
concept frequently encountered in Japanese historiography to mean
Han-Chinese-centered ethnocentrism. In contrast to the internal-oriented,
exclusive concept of Chinese-versus-barbarian thinking（Hua-Yi sixiang）, we
can interpret China-as-center thinking as a universal ideology along the lines
space strengthened the provinces, making them capable of developing modern
local self-government （“Shingai Kakumei no rekishiteki kosei” [Historical
Peculiarities of the 1911 Revolution], Shisō [Iwanami Shoten], no. 989[September 2006]: 88-107）.
7 Philip A. Kuhn, Origins of the Modern Chinese State（Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 2002）, p. 162.
8 Hamashita Takeshi, Kindai Chūgoku no kokusaiteki keiki: Chōkō bōekishisutemu to kindai Ajia（Modern China’s International Moment: The Tribute
Trade System and Modern Asia）（Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1990）.
Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia（Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005）.

12

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012of its principle of openness and broadness.9
In short, the concept of China（Zhonghua）does not designate a physicalbody but rather proscribes the existing relationship between one’s own culture
and that of others. This notion began in ancient China and throughout
Chinese history has influenced the content of thought and the order of
discourse according to the social relations and mutual perceptions of one’s
own culture and that of the other.10 For example, in Dayi juemi lu（Record ofGreat Righteousness Resolving Confusion, 1729）, Yongzheng, the mid-Qing
Manchu emperor of China, transcended the distinction between China（Zhonghua）and barbarian（yidi）with his notions of “Chinese and barbarianas one family”（Hua-Yi yijia）and “China and the periphery as one body”（Zhong-wai yiti）. The Qing court ruled over the empire not by reason of race,
but by reason of its virtue. Similarly, the legitimacy of the Qing emperor’srule over the empire had nothing to do with force or origins, and everything
to do with the emperor’s present historically unprecedented benevolent
governance. So asserted the Yongzheng emperor with supreme confidence.
This work, together with the emperor’s edicts aimed at relieving oppressionof commoners and the system of talent selection based on merit, can be seenas the acme of open Qing China-as-center thinking.11
China of the Qianlong period saw unprecedented expansion of its territory.
If we view China of this period as the prototype for present thinking about
unification of China, we can think of the Chinese world as a composite
nation of several ethnic groups and cultures transcending the former distinction between Chinese and “barbarian.” Moreover, this world is not a concentrically structured model of Han and non-Han Chinese. Rather, it is a pluralistic, stratified political order with spatially disparate elements.12 If this is thecase, the Chinese world is not a fixed body transcending history. It is a way
9 Seo Tatsuhiko, Chōan no toshi keikaku（Chang’an Urban Planning）（Tokyo:Kōdansha, 2001）, p. 66.
10 Watanabe Hideyuki, Kodai “Chūka” kannen no keisei（The Formation of theConcept of China [Zhonghua] in Premodern Times）（Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,2010）.
11 Kishimoto Mio and Miyajima Hiroshi, Min Shin to Ri-chō no jidai（The Ageof Ming and Qing China and the Korean Yi Dynasty）, Sekai no rekishi（History of the World）, no. 12（Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1998）, pp. 318-320.
12 Oka Hiroki, Shindai Mongoru meiki seido no kenkyū（Studies of the Mongol（Tokyo: Tōhō Shoten, 2007）.
League-Banner System during the Qing Period）
Sugiyama Kiyohiko, “Dai Shin Teikoku no Manshū tōji to teikoku tōgō nokōzō” （Qing Imperial Rule over Manchuria and the Structure of Imperial
Integration）, in Kindai Tōhoku Ajia no tanjō: Kokyōshi e no kokoromi（TheBirth of Modern Northeast Asia: Toward a Transborder History）, edited by
Sakon Yukimura（Sapporo: Hokkaidō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2008）.

The Regional Structure of the 1911 Revolution: The North and the South in Chinese History 13

of expressing the compound political order created in a particular historicalenvironment — that of Qing China, or more fully, the central Eurasian Great
Qing Empire.
The southern revolutionaries in the 1911 Revolution sought to overthrow
this Qing state and its accompanying political order.

2. The Nation and the StateIn thus historically resituating the 1911 Revolution according to thisperspective, we confront the new concepts of minzu （nation） and guojia（state）and the relation between these two concepts. The word minzu, a category that acknowledges the people of different groups as bound together, first
appeared in China at the end of the nineteenth century. Around the time of theBoxer Rebellion at the turn of the twentieth century, nationhood became
perceived as an essential element in progress, civilization, and national
survival. As Chen Tianhua and Sun Yat-sen said, what was needed wasnationalism, that cohesive force of the people, to bind scattered individuals
together so that they could thrive in an age of imperial contention. Perceptionof this need could not be separated from criticism of and reflection on
China’s present and past circumstances, as seen early on in Liang Qichao’s
essay “Zhongguo jiruo suyuan lun”（The Sources of China’s Weaknesses）（Qing yi bao, nos. 77-84 [1899]）. In “Zhongguo-shi xulun”（An Introduction（Qing yi bao, nos. 90-91 [1901]）, Liang Qichao tried to
to Chinese History）
refocus history on the people. And in Xinmin shuo（The New Citizen）, he
forcefully presented the pressing need for forming a citizenry. These twoworks thus show that Liang Qichao sought to form a modern state truly organized around the citizenry.
During the 1911 Revolution, revolutionaries, royalists, and constitutionalists, whether supporting or opposing the existing system, sought politicalinfluence to build a modern state capable of prospering and defending itself,
and to create a constitutional form of government that encourages private
enterprise. For this purpose, the revolutionaries pursued an ethnic revolutionof overthrowing the Manchus and promoting Han Chinese, while the royalists
and constitutionalists pursued a more moderate transition from imperial absolutism to a constitutional monarchy. At the time, the nationalism of the revolutionaries conveyed two meanings to people, whether they approved or
disapproved, namely, a domestic ethnic revolution and opposition to foreigninvasion and carving up of China. That is, the revolutionaries pursued atwofold nationalism comprising an anti-foreign-power statism（national imperialism, to use Liang Qichao’s term）and a racial movement seeking to overthrow the Manchus and promote Han Chinese. Even prior to this topical14

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012

development, an ethnic nationalism comprising cultivation of national awareness and construction of a modern state organized around the people had been
conceived and implemented in educational reforms at the end of the Qing
period.
Yet in the history of late Qing revolutionary thought, not enough attention
has been paid to how such new concepts as race, people, and nation affected
actual revolutionary thought and political movements, particularly with regard
to ethnic differences within the nation. One conceivable reason is that for
China to resist foreign pressure, it was first necessary for China to drive out
the Manchu “barbarians,” and that once China established a Han Chinesestate and democratic republic, one desideratum of ethnic nationalism would
be fulfilled, or so it was thought. Though some thought like Chen Tianhua in“Lun Zhongguo yi gaichuang minzhu zhengti” （China Should Institute a（Minbao, no. 1, 1905）, most revolutionaries
Democratic Form of Government）
thought that China should integrate or exclude Manchus, Mongols, Turkic
Muslims, and Tibetans according to abstract notions of the nation.
However, in the creation of a modern nation-state out of the multiethnic,
multicultural Qing empire, a one-time, short political revolution could notprovide the means to solve issues such as how to manage the territory andethnic composition of the new China, or how to promote ethnic awarenessamong ethnic groups. In fact, tense relations and an interesting controversy
broke out between revolutionaries and constitutionalists over the place ofManchus, Mongols, Turkic Muslims, and Tibetans in the future Republic ofChina.
As can be seen in the controversy in Minbao（People’s News）and Xinmin
congbao（New Citizen Journal）, one of the points of contention between therevolutionaries and the royalists （reformers） was whether to exclude theManchus from the revolution or to not discriminate between Manchu and Han
Chinese. The revolutionaries emphasized the history of Manchu suppression
and exploitation of Han Chinese, and advocated a return to the nationalism of
the Ming and earlier dynasties, when Han Chinese controlled the reins ofgovernment. In response, the constitutionalists asserted that the Manchus had
already reigned over Han Chinese society for a long time, and that they haveculturally and linguistically assimilated to Han Chinese society, and thus saw
no basis for excluding the Manchus as a way of exacting revenge. The antiManchu racism of the revolutionaries around Sun Yat-sen was later pointed
out as limited by its Han Chinese chauvinism and overly optimistic assessments about imperialism（and Japan in particular）. Yet Sun Yat-sen’s nationalism was not limited to racial revenge, but was clearly aimed at forming amodern nation-state system. In other words, the goals of overcoming ethnic

The Regional Structure of the 1911 Revolution: The North and the South in Chinese History 15

differences and creating a new Chinese nation were closely tied together. But
was it wise to seek to achieve these two aims through revolution? Howshould we today understand the nationalism of the time, with its intertwined
notions of race, people, and nation?
If we look at the racial theories of the revolutionaries of the time, we cansee that in the table on the “yellow race” in Zou Rong’s Geminjun （The
Revolutionary Army）, this race was broadly divided into the Chinese race andthe Siberian race, and that Mongols and Manchus were included in the
Mongolian race, which was subsumed under the Siberian race. As is obvious,
the purpose of this division was to emphasize differences between Manchus
and Han Chinese. At the time, this theory of racial classification was received
as the latest science. There were also cases where racially tinged SinoJapanese disturbances became politicized and even became diplomatic issues,
such as the Anthropology Pavilion incident of the fifth National Industrial
Exposition, held in Osaka in 1903.
Only after his exile to Japan did Liang Qichao begin borrowing ethnic
and racial terms from Japanese and applying them to the Chinese revolution.
Contributing greatly to the spread of such terms was his essay “Zhongguo-shi
xulun.” In the fifth section of this essay, he divided China residents into thesix ethnicities of “the Miao, the Han, Tibetans, Mongols, the Xiongnu, andTunguses,” thus redefining the peoples of Chinese history. In addition, in his
essay “Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili zhi xueshuo”（The Theories of the Great（Xinmin congbao, nos. 38-39）,
Political Scientist Johann Kaspar Bluntschli）
Liang Qichao also wrote, “China will not perish in the future. That being thecase, we ought to adopt strong political tactics toward the outside world,
uniting Han Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, Muslims, the Miao, and Tibetans
into one great nation.” He thus advocated unity of the five ethnic groups
located in Qing quasi-official ethnic regions （the Manchus, Han Chinese,
Mongols, Muslims, and Tibetans）, together with the Miao, to form one great
nation. Needless to say, this nation largely included the same ethnic groups as
the term “Chinese nation” of later periods.
In fact, the ethnic and racial arguments supporting the revolutionaries’“ethnic revolution” echoes in various places Bluntschli’s theory of the state,
as introduced by Liang Qichao. For example, a comparison of Wang
（Minbao, nos. 1-2,
Jingwei’s essay “Minzu de guomin”（An Ethnic Nation）
1905） with Liang Qichao’s “Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili zhi xueshuo”
reveals at a glance that the former essay builds on the ethnic and racial theories of Liang Qichao to come to opposite conclusions. Notwithstanding theirwithering criticism of the royalists on the correctness of the ethnic revolution,
the ethnic theories of such revolutionaries as Wang Jingwei borrowed many
concepts, terms, and frameworks of the issues from Liang Qichao’s previ-

16

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012

ously published essay.
In short, the revolutionaries and the royalists, which had sharply opposed
views on whether to preserve the Qing imperial system, were unexpectedly
closely aligned on integrating ethnic differences. Even the foremost championof excluding Manchus, Zhang Binglin（also known as Zhang Taiyan）, though
advocating revenge and Han political restoration during his editorship ofMinbao, gradually abandoned his notions of ethnicity and increasingly spokeof building a China that integrated citizen Manchus, Mongols, and Tibetans
into society. During that time, he held that preserving China’s national
essence（national characteristics）was crucial to Chinese nationalism, and thus
he founded, together with such revolutionary classics scholars as Liu Shipei
and Huang Jie, Guocui xuebao（Journal of National Essence）and worked toadvertise and promote China studies. On this conception of China studies,
traditional scholarship, reread in the modern framework of national essenceacquired from Japan, was to provide backing for the revolution.
The term “Chinese nation”（Zhonghua minzu）spread around 1905, during
the debates of the Minbao and the Xinmin congbao. There was divergence inthe use of the term. It sometimes meant Han Chinese（thus lending support tonationalism in the narrow sense）and sometimes included the five（or six）
ethnic groups of China （thus lending support to nationalism in the broad
sense）. Yet in general, revolutionaries gradually came to accept this notion in
the broad sense, and as a result of the 1911 Revolution, the term came tosuggest that the ethnic groups would integrate and blend together.

3. North and South in Chinese History
In the controversy over the Chinese race, the 1907 debate between theconstitutional monarchists and the revolutionary Zhang Binglin is interesting.
Yang Du, in “Jintiezhuyi shuo” （The Theory of Economic Militarism）,
asserted that “the five ethnic groups — Han, Manchus, Mongols, Turkic
Muslims, and Tibetans — are all Chinese nationals,” and that these five ethnic
groups should be united to form the Chinese nation. Yang Du opposed a
revolution that excluded Manchus; saw Manchus and Han Chinese as equal;
wanted to assimilate Mongols, Turkic Muslims, and Tibetans; and proposed a
policy of uniting China’s ethnic groups. Writing in rebuttal was Zhang
Binglin in “Zhonghua Minguo jie”（Explaining the Republic of China）. Here
we can see his tone shifting from a racially inflected call for revenge tosomething more subtle. It was not that his revolutionary thesis based on aconfrontation between Manchus and Han Chinese had changed. Rather, in his
criticism of economic militarism, this peerless revolutionary theorist here
turned his attention to the complicated relation between ethnic differences andThe Regional Structure of the 1911 Revolution: The North and the South in Chinese History 17

the formation of a nation. Here Zhang Binglin definitely defined the Republicof China as a republic organized around the Chinese race.
Moreover, Yang Du’s argument was by no means an isolated statement.
There were many sympathizers, including royalists such as Liang Qichao, as
well as the capital intellectuals and country gentry who moved for a provisional constitution. Moreover, it was noticed that some Manchu aristocrats
studying in Japan supported Yang Du’s call for uniting the five ethnic groups
into the Chinese race, and that they also advocated constitutional reforms
allowing a multiethnic nationalism（Wuzesheng, Preface, Datong bao, no. 1,1907）. Of course, as beneficiaries of the Qing imperial system, these Manchu
bannermen were politically up against the nationalism excluding Manchus.
Indeed, bannermen foreign students were enemies in the eyes of revolutionaries. Nonetheless, Yang Du and Wuzesheng were without doubt Chinese
nationalists in that they conceived early on how the new state should relate to
the ethnic groups.13
If we look at these developments regionally, we can see that Yang Du
was led to a nationalism of uniting the five ethnic groups in large measure
because he was active in Beijing, where relations were tense between
Manchus and Han Chinese. Since he worked in the Xianzheng Biancha Guan
（Office to Draw Up Regulations for Constitutional Government）and saw atfirst hand the ramifications of constitutional reform, he must have been keenly
aware of the dual structure of the Qing empire consisting of a central region
and periphery. In contrast, most revolutionaries were based mainly in thesouth and had little sense of the reality of events in Mongolia, Tibet, andother peripheral regions. For them, events in these regions were those of a
distant world, or they were negatively associated with Qing court corruption
or “barbarians.” Such was the context in which the 1911 Revolution
occurred.
From this perspective, the difference in views toward ethnic groups of therevolutionaries（Zhang Binglin）and the constitutionalists/royalists（Yang Du
and Liang Qichao）consisted of more than just a difference in attitudes toward
the Qing court, for in the development and growth of the Chinese world, we
can see north-south regional differences.
As touched on above, Seo Tatsuhiko calls the millennium from the third
to thirteenth century the age of “Chinese division and rebirth,” and he places
the historic epoch-making events of the Tang and Song transformation amid
13 Murata Yūjirō, “Chūka minzoku ron no keifu”（The Genealogy of Theses on
Chinese Ethnic Groups）, in Shirīzu 20 seiki Chūgokushi, edited by Iijima
Wataru, Kubo Tōru, Murata Yūjirō, vol. 1: Chūka sekai to kindai（Tokyo:
Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2009）, pp. 81-102.

18

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012

the transition from the nomadic-tribe movements and southern incursions of
the Northern and Southern Dynasties period to the continuous culture of theSui and Tang periods. He then presents the historical undercurrents of theformation of Han ethnic identity. This ethnic identity had two culturalfeatures bequeathed to later ages. They were “the nomadic and livestockfarming culture of the dry regions of the north, and the crop- and producefarming cultures of the wet regions of the south.” After the Sui and Tangdynasties, the Liao and Jin dynasties（contending with the Song dynasty to thesouth）, and later the Yuan and Qing dynasties, based themselves in thenorthern natural climes and historical environment and controlled not only
China proper but also Manchuria and Mongolia. These northern dynasties had
cultures widely seen on the Eurasian steppes. They deployed nomadic
mounted armies and worshipped world religions（Buddhism, etc.）, and theyruled linearly over their peoples from scattered cities. In contrast, the Han
Chinese dynasties that ruled over the south and that succeeded the Southern
Dynasties（the later Tang, the Song, and the Ming）produced cultures thatwere continuous with Southeast Asia, cultures based on fertile farm land andsouthern sea trade. These dynasties had infantry armies and navies, and theyworshipped traditional religions（Daoism）. They ruled directly on a face-toface basis, bringing government down to the local level. So writes Seo.14
If we thus look at Chinese history since the Northern and Southern
Dynasties, or since the Sui and Tang dynasties, as being a confluence of
influences from cultures of the north and south, then it is not too far off themark to say that the revolutionaries’ view of China’s ethnic groups and thestate was based on southern crop- and produce-farming culture, whereas theconstitutionalists’ view of China’s ethnic groups and the state was based on
northern nomadic and livestock-farming culture.
Viewed in terms of its regional structure, the historical event that was the1911 Revolution produced a dynamism of these two strong intertwined andconflicting threads running through Chinese history. We can say that politically, the southern revolutionaries won the abdication of the emperor and theestablishment of the republic, but we can also say that the northern constitutionalists achieved their aim of continuing the legacy of a multiethnic nation.
The contest of strength between the contrasting cultures of north and south
seen in the 1911 Revolution unleashed an active dynamism in Chinese politics. In the future as well, we can expect China’s multiethnic complex
cultural environment to determine the course of Chinese history.

14 Seo Tatsuhiko, “Chūka no bunretsu to saisei,” p. 76.