This lively history of China's Nationalist revolution tells the story of a small group of Chinese patriots headed by Sun Yat-sen until his death in 1925. They mobilised men, money, and propaganda to create a provincial base from which they launched a revolutionary military campaign to unify the country, end imperialist privilege, and bring the Kuomintang to power. Soviet Russia induced the fledgling Chinese Communist Party to join the effort, and sent money, arms, military and political experts to guide the revolution. But there was a fatal flaw in this co-operation, and when the fighting was over, the remnant Communist Party had been driven underground, the Russian experts had been expelled, and a faction-riven Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek could claim to be China's new government. This study of a key period in China's history, reprinted from Volume 12 of The Cambridge History of China, is solidly based in Chinese, Russian, and Western languages sources.

Describes the history of China in the first half of the twentieth century, a period of intense civil war following the overthrow of the Mancu dynasty, which in turn led to the establishment of a communist government under Mao Tse-tung.

"The destruction of absolutes has been the main concern of modern man. Perhaps this event has been no more evident than in the arena of political affairs. The main expression of this has occurred in the development of the state, that set of structures, habits, attitudes, ideals, and myths having no other source of origin than human activity. Unlike most traditional forms of political organization, the modern nation-state, especially as it developed in the West, does not trace its authority to divine or supernatural intervention in human affairs. To understand more fully the ramifications of this development, I have chosen to examine the case of Nationalist China. The decade before the Japanese invasion in 1937 witnessed a series of events which placed in high relief the important considerations of state and nation building in the present age. Heretofore, the efforts of Chinese Nationalism at nation-building had been treated largely as an aberration in China's search for modern identity, or as an accident resulting from the shortsightedness and cupidity of various important figures. The main premise of the present study, however, is that if indeed a decade of Nationalist government was an accident, then its lessons and experiences were shared by ALL Chinese, whether Nationalists or Communists or liberal democrats. The problems which confronted China in 1928 would have faced any Chinese government: foreign imperialism, domestic warlordism, rural poverty and general disorder"--Page 1

The Chinese state of the 1920s was one of disunified parts, ruled by warlords too strong for civilians to oust and too weak to resist the demands and bribes of foreign powers. China's treaty ports were crucibles of change in which congregated the educated elite, exposed to modern ways, who felt the need for a national revolution to revitalize their country and to provide her with a new, more integrated political system. Nationwide in their origins and representing varying political ideologies, this elite formed a loose coalition to achieve a common goal. In 1926 the first step in the military campaign known as the Northern Expedition was launched to conquer the armed forces of the warlords, the greatest obstacle in the path toward reunification of China. Until now, historians have ascribed much of the success of the Northern Expedition, culminating in the capture of Peking, to the Communist-led mass organizations who were reported to have won over the populace in the territory ahead of the National Revolutionary Army. Dr. Jordan's research, especially in Communist materials, has uncovered evidence indicating that, although the mass organizations did aid the army at particular points in 1925 and 1926, there had also been a side to the mass movement that was disruptive to the goal of reunification. Of additional import, some of the key participants in the later governments of Taiwan and Peking—among them Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, and Lin Piao—received their basic political training in the National Revolution.

Analyzes the internal pressures and social crises that fostered the beginnings of the Chinese Revolution