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| 1908–12 |
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| The XUANTONG REIGN of Puyi, China's last emperor. | 1 |
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| 1909, Jan. 2 |
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| The dismissal of Yuan Shikai and the death of Zhang Zhidong (Oct. 4) placed the entire Qing administration in Manchu hands. The provincial assemblies met, and they insisted on the earlier convocation of a national assembly, which was finally promised for 1913. | 2 |
| Scholarship of an extraordinary order continued uninterrupted throughout the last years of the Qing dynasty. Even the memorials of Zeng Guofan and Zhang Zhidong are considered models of classical Chinese prose. Wang Xianqian (1842–1918) compiled a supplement in 320 volumes (1886–88) to the Huangchao jingjie, the finest critical edition of the two Han histories (Han shu and Hou-Han shu) with collected modern commentaries, and the Donghua lu (Records from within the Eastern Flowery Gate, a selection from the dynasty's historical archives through 1874 in 284 volumes, 1879–87). | 3 |
Baron Iwasaki Yanosuke (1851–1908) purchased and took to Tokyo (1907) the library of Lu Xinyuan (1834–94), a famous critic, archaeologist, bibliophile extraordinaire, and historical scholar; this collection became the basis for the outstanding Seikad Bunko near Tokyo. Miao Quansun (1844–1919), bibliographer and archaeologist, thereupon persuaded Governor-General Duanfang (1861–1911) to buy the extensive library of the Ding family for Nanjing as the first public library in China (1909). | 4 |
| Ke Shaomin (1850–1933) authored the New History of the Yuan Dynasty. Yan Fu (1853–1921) translated into Chinese important Western works such as John Stuart Mill's (1806–73) On Liberty, Charles de Secondat Montesquieu's (1689–1755) L'Esprit des lois, Adam Smith's (1723–90) Wealth of Nations, and Thomas Huxley's (1825–95) Evolution and Ethics. | 5 |
| Kang Youwei's Xinxue weijing kao (Study of the Forged Classics of the Xin Era, 1891) and Kongzi gaizhi kao (Study of Confucius as an Institutional Reformer, 1897) served to focus on early texts the sort of historical criticism that had not been popular for some time. Kang's foremost intellectual and political opponent in the world of letters was the violently anti-Manchu Zhang Binglin (1869–1936) of the old text school; Zhang had gone to prison with Zou Rong (1904) for lèse majesté. | 6 |
| Chinese envoys to Japan Yang Shoujing (1839–1915) and Li Shuchang (1837–97) found there many rare editions of Chinese works, which they reproduced in Guyi congshu (Collection of Old Books Lost, 1882–84). A profusion of other early documents, both Chinese and central Asian, was recovered in 1907–8 by Aurel Stein (1862–1943) and Paul Pelliot (1878–1945) from a temple library that had been sealed off (c. 1000) at Dunhuang, the point of bifurcation of medieval caravan routes north and south of the Tianshan mountain range. In 1899 a deposit of oracular inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells was discovered; they dated from the Shang dynasty, and upon decipherment by paleographers already trained in the ancient script from bronze vessel inscriptions, turned out to be the earliest form of Chinese writing. | 7 |
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| 1911, Oct. 10 |
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| The OUTBREAK OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION was precipitated by the discovery of the headquarters of the revolutionary organization in Wuchang. The movement, fueled by provincial distrust of the central railway administration of Sheng Xuanhuai (1849–1916), spread rapidly through the west and south, without much shedding of blood. | 8 |
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| Nov. 8 |
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| Yuan Shikai, who had been recalled to military command by the court (Oct. 14), was elected premier of the provisional National Assembly. | 9 |
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| Dec. 4 |
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| Yuan signed a truce with the rebel general Li Yuanhong (1864–1928), and he sent Tang Shaoyi (1860–1938) to represent him in negotiations in Shanghai. | 10 |
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| Dec. 30 |
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| Sun Zhongshan, recently returned from the United States and Europe, was elected provisional president of the Chinese republic by delegates from 16 provinces meeting in Nanjing. | 11 |
| The provinces rapidly seceded from the Qing and joined the revolutionary cause after Oct. 10: Jiangsu (Nov. 3), Sichuan (Nov. 22), Shandong (Dec. 12), and so on. | 12 |
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