Abstract
These four books-a local history, an intellectual history, a collection of essays, and a diplomatic history-help to bring the 1911 Revolution into sharper focus. Perhaps the time is close when someone may synthesize new approaches to the revolution and present a thematic understanding of the period as a whole. Three generations have passed since the last Chinese emperor reigned, yet voluminous memoirs, hundreds of narratives of local events, and thousands of pages of analyses have not resolved the fundamental questions of 1911. Who made the revolution, and why? And given the continuities in local and provincial elites, in what sense was there a revolution at all? What period do we actually indicate by “1911”—1895–1911, 1890–1913, or 1864–1915? How does the 1911 Revolution stem from long-term changes in Chinese society? How does it represent a Western impact? And, looking forward, how is it related to the rise of Chinese communism and the cultural changes of the twentieth century?
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