The Kuomintang was founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1919, after the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew of the Qing dynasty, and the establishment of the Beiyang regime. From 1926 to 1928, the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek successfully led the Northern Expedition against regional warlords and unified the fragmented nation. From 1937 to 1945, the Nationalists led China through the Second Sino-Japanese War against Japan. By 1949, the KMT was decisively defeated by the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War and withdrew the Nationalist government to Taiwan, a former Qing prefecture-turned-Japanese colony that ruled from 1895 to 1945.