President Yuan Shih-kai photographed immediately after his
Inauguration as Provisional President, March 10th, 1912

The National Assembly sitting as a National Convention engaged on the
Draft of the Permanent Constitution. (Specially photographed by
permission of the Speakers for the Present Work)

View from rear of the Hall of the National Assembly sitting as a
National Convention engaged on the Draft of the Permanent
Constitution. (Specially photographed by permission of the Speakers
for the Present Work)




CHAPTER I

GENERAL INTRODUCTION


The revolution which broke out in China on the 10th October, 1911, and
which was completed with the abdication of the Manchu Dynasty on the
12th February, 1912, though acclaimed as highly successful, was in its
practical aspects something very different. With the proclamation of the
Republic, the fiction of autocratic rule had truly enough vanished; yet
the tradition survived and with it sufficient of the essential machinery
of Imperialism to defeat the nominal victors until the death of Yuan
Shih-kai.

The movement to expel the Manchus, who had seized the Dragon Throne in