Revolutionaries on revolutionaries: how Chinese Xinhai revolutionaries and Young Turks viewed each other

Abstract

This article explores the Chinese Xinhai revolutionaries’ views of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, and the Young Turks’ semi-official organ Tanin’s coverage of the Chinese Xinhai Revolution in 1911. The Chinese and Ottoman revolutionaries were greatly interested in each other. And there was a striking similarity between their views of each other: both the Chinese and Ottoman revolutionaries analyzed each other’s revolution in the context of international politics. They knew a revolution in the other country would change that country’s position in international politics and impact the great powers’ thinking and behavior, and the response of the great powers in turn would have an influence on the fate of their own country. For Chinese revolutionaries, the Young Turk Revolution proved the need for a revolution in China. The revolutionaries’ interests in each other and similarity in their views proved an important but neglected intellectual connection between revolutions in the early twentieth century.